"SOME DATE," ADAM MURMURED. IT DIDN'T MATTER HOW quiet he was; we both knew that most of the pack was inside his house listening to us as we stood on his back porch.
"No one could ever accuse you of being boring," I said lightly.
He laughed with sober eyes. He'd scrubbed up in the bathroom at Uncle Mike's and changed as soon as we'd made it back to his house. But I could still smell the blood on him.
"You need to see to Mary Jo," I told him. "I need to go to bed." She would survive, I thought. But she'd survive better with me at home and not disrupting the pack, who was forcing her to fight to live.
He hugged me for not saying all of that out loud. He lifted me to my toes - clad in a pair of Jesse's flip-flops - and set me back down. "You go scrub your feet clean first so none of those cuts get infected.
I'll send Ben over to watch your house until Samuel is satisfied with Mary Jo's condition and goes home."
Adam watched from the porch as I walked home. I wasn't halfway there when Ben caught up with me. I invited him in, but he shook his head.
"I'll stay outside," he said. "The night air keeps my head clear."
I scrubbed my feet and dried them before I went to bed. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. But I woke up while the dark still held sway, knowing that there was someone in my room. Though I listened closely, I couldn't hear anyone - so I was pretty sure it was Stefan.
I wasn't worried. The vampires, except Stefan, wouldn't have been able to cross the threshold of my home. Most anyone else would have woken Samuel.
The air told me nothing, which was odd - even Stefan had a scent. Restlessly, I rolled onto my side and right up against the walking stick, which had taken to sleeping with me every night. Mostly it gave me the creeps when it did that - walking sticks shouldn't be able to move about on their own. But tonight the warm wood under my hand felt reassuring. I closed my hand around it.
"There's no need for violence, Mercy."
I must have jumped because I was on my feet, stick in hand, before it registered just whose voice I was hearing.
"Bran?"
And suddenly I could smell him, mint and musk that told me werewolf combined with the certain sweet saltiness that was his own scent.
"Don't you have something more important to do?" I asked him, flipping on the light. "Like ruling the world or something?"
He didn't move from his spot on the floor, leaning against a wall, except to put his forearm over his eyes as light flooded the room. "I came here last weekend," he said. "But you were asleep, and I didn't let them wake you up."
I'd forgotten. In the hubbub of Baba Yaga, Mary Jo, the snow elf, and the vampires, I'd forgotten why he would have come to visit me personally. Suddenly I was suspicious of the arm he'd thrown over his eyes.
That Alphas are protective of their packs is an understatement - and Bran was the Marrok, the most Alpha wolf around. I might belong to Adam's pack just now, but Bran had raised me.
"I already talked it all over with Mom," I said defensively.
And Bran grinned hugely, his arm coming down to reveal hazel eyes, which looked almost green in the artificial light. "I bet you did. Are my Samuel and your Adam hovering over you and giving you a bad time?" His voice was full of (false) sympathy.
Bran is better than anyone I know, including the fae, at hiding what he is. He looked like a teenager - there was a rip in his jeans, just over the knee, and some ironic person had used a marker to draw an anarchy symbol just over his thigh. His hair was ruffled. He was perfectly capable of sitting around with an innocent smile on his face - and then ripping someone's head off.
"You're frowning at me," he said. "Is it such a puzzle that I'm here?"
I dropped to the middle of the floor. It is uncomfortable for me to be in the same room for very long with Bran if my head is higher than his. Part of it is habit, and part of it is the magic that makes Bran the leader of all the wolves.
"Did someone call you about Adam bringing me into the pack?" I asked.
This time Bran laughed, his shoulders shaking, and I saw how tired he was.
"I'm glad I amuse you," I told him grumpily.
Behind me the door opened, and Samuel said cheerily, "Is this a private party, or can anyone join?"
How cool was that? In one sentence, one word actually (party), Samuel told his father that we weren't going to talk about Tim or why I'd killed him, and that I was going to be okay. Samuel was good at things like that.
"Come in," I said. "How's Mary Jo?"
Samuel sighed. "Da, let me tell you now. If I am dead, and a fae offers to heal me - I'd prefer you tell her no." He looked at me. "I think she'll be fine, eventually. But she's not very happy right now. She's dazed and shocky to an extent I've never seen before in a wolf. At least she's not crying anymore. Adam finally forced her change, and that helped a lot. She's sleeping with Paul, Alec, Honey, and few others on the monstrosity of a couch Adam keeps in the TV room in the basement."
He gave his father a keen-eyed look, then sat on the floor beside me - and that was a message, too. He wasn't between Bran and me, not precisely. But he could have sat beside Bran. "So what brings you here?"
Bran smiled at him, having seen the message Samuel wanted him to. "You don't have to protect her from me," he said softly. "We've all seen she does a pretty good job of protecting herself."
With the wolves, there is always a lot more going on in a conversation than just the words. For instance, Bran had just told us that he'd seen the video, from the security camera, of me killing Tim... and of everything else, too. And that he'd approved of my actions.
It shouldn't have pleased me so much; I was no child. But Bran's opinion still meant a lot.
"And yes," he told me after a moment, "someone called me about Adam bringing you into the pack. Lots of someones. Let me tell you the answers to the questions I've been asked, and you can pass them on to
Adam. No. I had no idea it was possible to bring someone who was not a werewolf into the pack.
Especially you, upon whom magic can be unpredictable. No. Once done, only Adam or you can break those ties. If you want me to show you how, I will." He paused.
I shook my head... and then tempered it. "Not yet."
Bran gave me an amused look under his eyebrows. "Fine. Just ask. And no, I'm not mad. Adam is Alpha of his pack. I do not see how anyone has been harmed by this." Then he grinned, one of the rare smiles he had when he wasn't acting, just genuinely amused. "Except maybe Adam. At least he doesn't have a Porsche you can wrap around a tree."
"That was a long time ago," I said hotly. "I paid for that. And after you practically dared me to steal it, I don't see why you were so angry about it."
"Telling you not to take it out wasn't daring you, Mercy," Bran said patiently... but there was something in his voice.
Was he lying?
"Yes, it was," said Samuel. "And she's right - you knew it."
"So you didn't have any reason to be so mad I wrecked the car," I said, triumphantly.
Samuel laughed out loud. "You still haven't figured it out, have you, Mercy? He never was mad about the car. He was the first one at the scene of the accident. He thought you'd killed yourself. We all did. That was a pretty spectacular wreck."
I started to say something and found I couldn't. The first thing I'd seen after hitting the tree was the Marrok's snarling face. I'd never seen him that angry - and I'd done a lot, from time to time, to inspire his rage.
Samuel patted me on the back. "It's not often I see you absolutely speechless."
"So you had Charles teach me how to fix cars and how to drive them." Charles was Bran's oldest son.
He hated to drive, and until that summer I'd thought he couldn't drive. I should have known better - Charles can do anything. And everything he did, he did very well. That's only one of the reasons that Charles intimidates me and everyone else.
"Kept you busy and out of trouble for a whole summer," said Bran smugly.
He was teasing... but serious as well. One of the oddest things about being grown-up was looking back at something you thought you knew and finding out the truth of it was completely different from what you had always believed.
It gave me courage to do what I did next.
"I need some advice," I told him.
"Sure," he said easily.
I took a deep breath and started with my killing Marsilia's best hope of returning to Italy, jumped to Stefan's appearance in my living room and the unexpected visit from my old college nemesis, and ended it all with the nearly fatal adventure at Uncle Mike's and the little bag that smelled like vampires and magic. I told him about Mary Jo and my fear that if I told Adam about the bag, it would cause a war.
"I'll stop by and see if I can help Mary Jo," Bran said after I'd finished. "I know a few tricks."
Samuel looked relieved. "Good."
"So," I told Bran, "it is my fault. I chose to go after Andre. But Marsilia's not attacking me."
"You expected a vampire to be straightforward?" asked Bran.
I supposed I had. "Amber gives me a reason to get out of town for a little while. Without me around, Marsilia might leave everyone else alone." And it would give me a chance to think through my response.
A day or two to figure out something that wouldn't lead to more killing.
"And give Adam and me a chance to mount a proper response," Samuel growled.
I started to object... but they had the right to go on the offensive. The right to know that they were targets.
As long as Mary Jo survived, Adam wouldn't bring a war to Marsilia's doorstep. And if Mary Jo didn't survive... Perhaps Marsilia was crazy. I'd seen that kind of madness in the Marrok's pack, where the oldest wolves often came to die.
"If you leave, Marsilia might take that as a victory," said Bran. "I don't know her well enough to know if that will help you or hurt you in the end. I do think that getting out of here for a few days might not be a bad idea."
He didn't say Marsilia would quit targeting my friends, I noticed. I was pretty sure Uncle Mike would figure out that the vampires had used his place to target the wolves - and if I thought that, Marsilia surely would. She must be truly furious if she was willing to anger Uncle Mike and enrage Adam in order to get to me.
I was betting that if I left, she'd wait, because she wanted me to witness the pain I'd made her rain down upon my friends. But I wasn't sure. Still, it wouldn't hurt.
"The problem is... there's something a little off about Amber's offer. Or maybe just after Tim..." I swallowed. "I'm afraid to go."
Bran looked at me with keen yellow eyes, weighing something in his mind. "Fear is a good thing," he said at last. "It teaches you not to make the same mistake twice. You counter it with knowledge. What are you afraid of?"
"I don't know." Which wasn't the right answer.
"Gut check," Bran said. "What does your gut tell you?"
"I think that maybe it's the vampires again. Stefan lands in my lap to give me a good scare - and look, here's a way out. Out of the frying pan and into the fire."
Samuel was already shaking his head. "Marsilia isn't going to send you to Spokane to get you out of our protection before she takes care of you. Not that it isn't a good idea, but she'd send you to Seattle maybe, she has some allies there. But in Spokane, there's only one vampire, and he doesn't allow visitors. There are no packs, no fae, nothing but a few powerless creatures who manage to stay out of his sight."
I felt my eyes widen. Spokane is a city of nearly half a million people. "That's a lot of territory for a single vampire."
"Not for that single vampire," said Samuel at the same time Bran said, "Not for Blackwood."
"So," I said slowly. "What will this vampire do if I stay in Spokane for a few days?"
"How would he know?" Bran asked. "You smell like coyote. But a coyote smells a lot like a dog to someone who doesn't hunt in the forests - which I assure you, James Blackwood doesn't do - and most dog owners smell like their pets. I wouldn't want you to move to Spokane, but a couple of days or weeks won't put you in danger."
"So do you think it's a good idea if I go?"
Bran raised his hip and pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket.
"Don't you break them like that?" I asked. "I killed a couple of phones by sitting on them."
He just smiled and said into the phone, "Charles, I need you to find out about an Amber...?" He looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
"Sorry to wake you, Charles. Chamberlain was her maiden name," I told Samuel's brother apologetically. "I don't know her married name." Charles would hear me as clearly as I heard him. Private phone calls around werewolves needed headsets, not a cell phone speaker.
"Amber Chamberlain," Charles repeated. "That should limit it to a hundred people or so."
"She lives in Spokane," I said. "I went to college with her."
"That helps," he told us. "I'll get back to you."
"Arm yourself with knowledge," said Bran when he hung up. "But I don't see why you shouldn't go."
"Take some insurance with you."
"It's Stefan," I shouted. Before I had the last word out of my mouth, Bran had Stefan up against the opposite wall from where he'd been sitting.
"Da." Samuel was on his feet as well, a hand on his father's shoulder. He didn't try to pry Bran's hands off Stefan's neck - that would have been stupid. "Da. It's all right. This is Stefan. Mercy's friend."
After a very long couple of seconds, Bran stepped back and dropped his hands from Stefan's throat. The vampire hadn't fought back, which was good.
Vampires are tough, maybe tougher than wolves because vampires are already dead. Stefan had been one of Marsilia's lieutenants, powerful in his own right. He'd been a mercenary in life... which had been in Renaissance Italy.
But Bran is Bran.
"That was stupid," said Samuel to Stefan. "What part of 'never sneak up on a werewolf' don't you understand?"
The Stefan I knew would have bowed gracefully, expressed his apologies with a hint of humor. This Stefan gave a stiff jerk of his neck. "I'm no use here. It's a good idea to get Mercy out of the line of fire - she's the weakest target. Send me to keep her safe in Spokane." He sounded almost eager... and I wondered what he'd been doing since he'd left Adam's. What was there for him to do? Maybe I wasn't the only one who was trying to find some action to take that wouldn't get me and everyone I cared about killed.
Still, I couldn't let him get away with calling me... "Weak?" I said.
Samuel turned on Stefan with a growl. "Stupid vampire. My father had her nearly talked into going, and you ruined it."
I laughed. I couldn't help it. I hoped going to Spokane would keep my friends safe, and they hoped me going to Spokane would keep me safe. Maybe we were both right.
Bran's phone rang, and we all listened to Charles tell us that Amber was married to Corban Wharton, a moderately successful corporate lawyer about ten years her senior. They had an eight-year-old son with some sort of disability, hinted at in various newspaper articles but not expressly stated. He rattled off an address or two, cell phone numbers and real phone numbers... and social security numbers and most recent tax reports, personal and business. For an old wolf, Charles knows how to make computers sit up and beg.
"Thank you," said Bran.
"I can go back to sleep now?" asked Charles. He didn't wait for an answer, just hung up his end of the connection.
I looked at Samuel. "It will make your life easier if I leave."
He nodded. "We can protect ourselves... but you are too vulnerable. And if you aren't here, if Marsilia doesn't know where you are, we can get her to the table for negotiations."
Bran looked at Stefan. "A vampire might draw too much attention in Spokane."
Stefan shrugged. "I'm not without resources. I was in this room for a quarter of an hour, and none of you noticed me. If I feed well, no one will know what I am."
"You always smell like vampire to me," I told him. Vampire and popcorn. The good buttery kind. No, I don't know why. I've never seen him eat the stuff - I don't know that vampires can.
He raised his hands. "No one without Mercy's nose, then. If I'm in the room with the Monster, then perhaps he'll notice. Otherwise, he'll never know I was there. I've done it before."
"The Monster?" Samuel asked.
"James Blackwood."
Vampires give titles to some of the more powerful ones. Stefan was the Soldier because he'd been a mercenary. Wulfe was the Wizard... and I knew he could do some magic. I resolved to stay away from any vampire that other vampires called the Monster.
"There is this, too," Stefan said. "I can jump from one location to another - and I can take Mercy with me."
"How far?" asked Bran with sudden intentness.
Stefan shrugged... and never quite straightened up, as if it was too much trouble. "Anywhere. But taking another person with me has a cost. I'll be useless for a day afterward." He looked at me. "I have the address." He'd have overheard Charles give it to the rest of us. "I can get there tonight and find a safe place nearby to spend the day."
Bran raised an eyebrow at me.
"I'll call Amber in the morning," I said. It felt like running away, but Bran seemed to think it was the right thing to do.
Stefan swept me a perfect bow and disappeared before he stood up.
"He used to hide his ability to do that," I told them. It worried me that he wasn't hiding it anymore. As if it didn't matter what people knew about him.
Samuel smiled at me. "You decided to go to Spokane because he needs to do something, didn't you?
You were all set to stay until he started looking pathetic." I gave him a look, and he raised his hands in surrender. "I didn't say he didn't have a reason to look pathetic. You just need to remember that sad sack or not, he's still a vampire - and more than a match for you if he decides not to be friendly. You've cost him a lot, Mercy. He might not be your friend."
I hadn't thought about it that way. So I did, for maybe a tenth of a second. "If he was mad at me, he'd have killed me when he dropped in here starving. For that matter he could have come here anytime tonight and killed me. You need me gone - so quit trying to make trouble."
Samuel frowned at me. "I'm not trying to make trouble. But you have to remember he is a vampire, and vampires are not nice guys, no matter how chivalrous and gallant Stefan appears. I like him, too. But you are trying to forget what he is."
I thought about the two dead people whose only crime was that they had seen me when I staked Andre.
"I know what he is," I said stubbornly.
"Vampire," said Bran. "Evil, yes." He grinned, and it made him look like he should be going to high school. "But I think his Mistress made a mistake when she chose to throw him away."
"She broke him," I said. And looking into Samuel's eyes, I whispered, "You stay safe, you and Adam.
I'll keep Stefan busy looking for ghosts."
If I was really looking for ghosts, of course, it would be stupid to bring Stefan. Ghosts don't like vampires, and they won't come out when there are vampires around. Samuel knew that, and he grinned at me with serious eyes. "We'll be fine."
"Call me if you need me," said Bran - to both of us, I thought. "If I'm going to stop in to have a look at Mary Jo, I need to go now." He kissed me on my forehead, then did the same to Samuel (who had to bend down). I didn't know if he really knew who Mary Jo was, or just seemed to. But I'd never seen him meet a wolf he didn't know by name.
Speaking of which... "Hey, Bran?"
Halfway to the door, he turned back.
"What about that girl we sent to you? The one who was Changed so young and hadn't learned control. Is she all right?"
He smiled and looked a lot less tired. "Kara? She did fine last moon. Give her a few more months, and she'll be fully in control." Waving casually over his shoulder, he walked out into the dark.
"Get some rest," I called after him. He shut the front door behind him without answering.
We listened while Bran drove off - in a doubtlessly rented Mustang. Once he was gone, Samuel said, "You have a few hours. Why don't you get some more sleep? I think I'll hop the fence to Adam's and see what Da does for Mary Jo."
"Why didn't he just call?" I asked.
Samuel reached out and ruffled my hair. "He was checking up on you."
"Well," I said. "At least he didn't ask me if I was okay. I think I'd have had to do something to him if he had."
"Hey, Mercy," said Samuel with false solicitude, "are you okay?"
I punched him, connecting only because he hadn't expected it. "I am now," I told him, as he dropped to the ground and rolled - as if I'd really had some force behind my fist, which I hadn't.
SPOKANE IS ABOUT 150 MILES NORTHEAST OF THE TRICITIES, and you know you're getting close when you start seeing trees.
My cell phone rang, and I answered without pulling over. I usually obey the law, but I was late.
"Mercy?" It was Adam, and he wasn't happy with me. I guessed Samuel had told him about the vampires being responsible for the debacle at Uncle Mike's. I'd told him he could do it once I was safely out of town.
"Uh-huh." I pulled around an RV as we chugged up a small hill. It'd pass me on the downhill side, but I had to take my passing pleasures where I could - Vanagons are not speed demons. One of these days I was going to put a Subaru flat six in it and see what that would do. "Before you yell at me for not telling you about the vampires, you should know that I am risking a ticket by talking to you while I drive. Do you really want me to get a ticket for letting you yell at me?"
He gave a reluctant laugh, so I supposed he wasn't too upset. "You're still on the road? I thought you left this morning."
"Fixed a shift linkage in a Ford Focus at that rest stop near Connell," I told him. "Nice lady and her dog were stuck after having a clutch job done by her brother-in-law. He hadn't tightened down a few bolts, and one of them fell off. Took me an hour or so before we found someone who had a bolt and nut the right size." And I had the oil stains across my shoulders and the grit in my hair to prove it. In my Rabbit I kept a towel to put on the ground. I also kept a selection of useful car bits. It was going to be a while before my Rabbit was up and running.
"How is Mary Jo?"
"She's sleeping for real now."
"Bran helped?"
"Bran helped." I could hear the smile in his voice. "You be careful ghost hunting - and don't let Stefan bite you."
There was just a little edge to the last.
"Jealous?" I asked. Yep. The RV passed me on the downhill.
"Maybe a little," he said.
"Don't be. We'll be fine. Ghosts aren't as dangerous as crazy vampire ladies." I couldn't help the anxiety that crept into my voice.
"I'll be careful - and Mercy?"
"Uhm?"
"Consider yourself yelled at," he purred, then hung up.
I grinned at the phone and closed it.
AMBER'S DIRECTIONS TO HER HOUSE HAD BEEN CLEAR and easy to follow. The relief in her voice when I'd called that morning made me want to believe she really had a ghost problem and wasn't part of some secret vampire conspiracy to get me somewhere I'd be easier to kill. Despite Bran's assurances that it was unlikely Marsilia would ship me off to Spokane, I was still feeling... not paranoid, really. Cautious. I was feeling cautious.
Zee had agreed to work the shop while I was gone. I probably could have gotten him to work cheaper than usual because he was still feeling guilty about stuff that wasn't his fault. Cheaper would mean I could eat peanut butter instead of ramen noodles for the rest of the month, but I didn't think any of it was his fault.
He had talked to Uncle Mike about the crossed bones on my door. Definitely vampire work, he told me.
The bones meant that I had broken faith with the vampires and was no longer under their protection - and anyone offering me aid of any kind was likely to find themselves on the wrong side of the vampires as well. The broad interpretation of that was horrifying. It meant that people like Tony and Sensei Johanson were at risk, too.
It meant that it was probably a good thing that I get out of town for a few days and figure out how to limit the number of victims Marsilia could claim.
Amber lived in a Victorian mansion complete with a pair of towers. The brick porch had been freshly tuck-pointed, the gingerbread work around the roof edge and the windows bore a new coat of paint. Even the roses looked ready for magazine display.
Frowning at the leaded glass glistening in the sun, I wondered when I'd last cleaned the windows in my house. Had I ever cleaned the windows? Samuel might have.
I was still thinking about it when the door opened. A startled boy gawked at me, and I realized I hadn't rung the doorbell.
"Hey," I said. "Is your mom home?"
He recovered quickly and gave me a shy look out of a pair of misty green eyes under long, thick eyelashes, and turned to ring the bell I hadn't.
"I'm Mercy," I told him, while we waited for Amber to emerge from the depths of the house. "Your mom and I went to school together."
His wary look deepened, and he didn't say anything. So I guessed she hadn't told him anything. "Mercy, I was beginning to think you weren't coming." Amber sounded harassed and not at all grateful, and that was before she saw what I looked like - covered in old oil and parking-lot dirt.
Her son and I turned to look at her.
She still looked like a show dog, but her eyes were stressed. "Chad, this is my friend who is going to help us with the ghost." As she spoke, her hands flew in a graceful dance, and I remembered Charles had said her son had some sort of disability: he was deaf.
She turned her attention to me, but her hands still moved, letting her son know what she was saying.
"This is my son, Chad." She took a deep breath. "Mercy, I'm sorry. My husband has a client coming over for dinner tonight. He didn't tell me until just a few minutes ago. It's a formal dinner..."
She looked at me, and her voice trailed off.
"What?" I said letting sharpness creep into my voice at the insult. "Don't I look like I'm up to a formal dinner? Sorry, the stitches in my chin don't come out for at least a week."
Suddenly she laughed. "You haven't changed a bit. If you didn't bring anything suitable, you can borrow something of mine. The guy who's coming is actually pretty well house-trained for a cutthroat businessman. I think you'll like him. I've got to do some inventorying and run to the grocery store." She tilted her head so her son could see her mouth. "Chad, would you take Mercy to the guest room?"
He gave me another wary look, but nodded. As he went back inside the house and started up the stairs, Amber told me, "I'd better warn you, my husband is pretty unhappy about the ghost. He thinks Chad and I are making it up. If you could manage not to mention it at dinner in front of his client, I'd appreciate it."
THERE WAS A BATHROOM ACROSS FROM THE ROOM I WAS staying in. I took my suitcase and went in to scrub up. Before I stripped off my grimy shirt, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Sometimes ghosts only appear to one sense or another. Sometimes I can only hear them - sometimes I can smell them. But the bathroom smelled like soap and shampoo, water, and those stupid blue tablets some people who didn't have pets put in their toilets.
I didn't see anything or hear anything either. But that didn't keep the hair on the back of my neck from rising as I pulled off my shirt and stuffed it into the plastic compartment in my suitcase. I scoured my hands until they were mostly clean and brushed the dirt out of my hair and rebraided it. And all the while I could feel someone watching me.
Maybe it was only the power of suggestion. But I cleaned up as fast as I could anyway. No ghostly writing appeared on the walls, no one appeared in the mirror or moved stuff around.
I opened the bathroom door and found Amber waiting impatiently right in front of the door. She didn't notice that she'd startled me.
"I have to take Chad to softball practice, then do some shopping for dinner tonight. Do you want to come?"
"Why not?" I said with a casual shrug. Staying in that house alone didn't appeal to me - some ghost hunter I was. Nothing had happened, and I was already jumpy.
I took shotgun. Chad frowned at me, but sat in back. I didn't think I impressed him much. No one said anything until we dropped Chad off. He didn't look happy about going. Amber proved that she was tougher than me because she ignored the puppy-dog eyes and abandoned Chad to his coach's indifferent care.
"So you decided not to become a history teacher," Amber said as she pulled away from the curb. Her voice was tight with nerves. The stress was coming from her end, I thought - but then she'd never been relaxing company.
"Decided isn't quite the word," I told her. "I took a job as a mechanic to support myself until a teaching position opened... and one day I realized that even if someone offered me a job, I'd rather turn a wrench." And then, because she'd given me the opening, "I thought you were going to be a vet."
"Yes, well, life happened." She paused. "Chad happened." That was too much honesty for her though, and she subsided into silence. In the grocery store, I wandered away while she was testing tomatoes - they all looked good to me. I bought a candy bar, just to see how much she'd changed.
Not that much. By the time she'd finished lecturing me on the evils of refined sugar, we were almost back to the house. She was feeling a lot more comfortable - and she finally told me more about her ghost.
"Corban doesn't believe we're haunted," she told me as she threaded her way through the city. She glanced at my face and away. "I haven't actually seen or heard anything either. I just told him I had, so he'd leave Chad alone." She took a deep breath and looked at me again. "He thinks Chad might do better at a boarding school - a private place for troubled kids that a friend of his recommended."
"He didn't look troubled to me," I said. "Aren't 'troubled' kids usually doing drugs or beating on the neighbor's kids?" Chad had looked like he'd rather have stayed home and read than go to play ball.
Amber gave a nervous half laugh. "Corban doesn't get along very well with Chad. He doesn't understand him. It's the old Disney cliche of a quarterback dad and bookworm son."
"Does Corban know he's not Chad's father?"
She hit the brakes so hard that if I hadn't been belted in, I might have become better acquainted with her windshield. She sat there in the middle of the road for a moment, oblivious to the honking horns around us. I was glad we were in a stout Mercedes rather than the Miata she'd driven to my house.
"You forget," I said blandly. "I knew Harrison, too. We used to joke about his eyelashes, and I've never see eyes like his since. Not until today." Harrison had been her one true love for about three months until she dropped him for a premed student.
Amber started forward again and drove for a little until traffic settled down. "I'd forgotten you knew him." She sighed. "Funny. Yes, Corban knows he's not Chad's father, but Chad doesn't. It didn't used to matter, but I'm not so sure. Corban's been... different lately." She shook her head. "Still, he's the one who suggested I ask you to come over. He saw the article in the paper, and said, 'Isn't that the girl you said used to see ghosts? Why don't you have her come over and have a look-see?"
I figured I'd been pushy enough, so I asked a question that was less intrusive. "What does the ghost do?"
"Moves things," she told me. "It rearranges Chad's room once or twice a week. Chad says he's seen the furniture moving around." She hesitated. "It breaks things, too. A couple of vases my husband's father brought over from China. The glass over my husband's diploma. Sometimes it takes things." She glanced at me again. "Car keys. Shoes. Some important papers of Cor's turned up in Chad's room, under his bed. Corban was pretty mad."
"At Chad?"
She nodded.
I hadn't even met him, and I didn't like her husband. Even if Chad was doing everything himself - and I had no evidence to the contrary - throwing him into reform school didn't sound like the way to make things better.
We picked up a morose Chad, who didn't seem inclined to converse, and she quit talking about the ghost.
AMBER WAS WORKING IN THE KITCHEN. I'D TRIED TO HELP but she finally sent me to my room to stay out of her way. She didn't like the way I peeled apples. I'd brought a book from home - a very old book - with real fairy tales in it. It was borrowed and I'd have to return it soon, so I was reading as fast as I could.
I was taking notes on kelpies (thought extinct) when someone knocked at my door twice and then opened it.
Chad stood with a notebook and a pencil in hand.
"Hey," I said.
He turned the notebook around and I read, "How much is my dad paying you?"
"Nothing," I said.
His eyes narrowed, and he ripped away that page and showed me the next one. Evidently he'd thought about this for a while. "Why are you here? What do you want?"
I set my book aside and stared back at him. He was tough, but he wasn't Adam or Samuel: he blinked first.
"I have a vampire who wants to kill me," I told him. Which I shouldn't have, of course, but I wanted to see what would happen. Curiosity, Bran has told me more than once, might be as fatal for coyotes as it is for cats.
Chad crumpled the paper and mouthed a word. Evidently he hadn't expected that response.
I raised my eyebrow. "Sorry. You'll have to do better. I don't lip-read."
He scribbled furiously. "Lyer" said his paper.
I took his pencil, and wrote, "liar." Then I gave him back his notebook, and said, "You want to bet?"
He clutched his notebook to his chest and stalked off. I liked him. He reminded me of me.
Fifteen minutes later his mother barged in. "Red or purple?" she asked me, still sounding frantic. "Come with me."
Bewildered, I followed her down the hall and into the master bedroom suite, where she'd laid out two dresses. "I only have five minutes before I have to put the rolls in," she said. "Red or purple?"
The purple had considerably more fabric. "Purple," I said. "Do you have shoes I can borrow, too? Or do you want me to go barefoot?"
She gave me a wild-eyed look. "Shoes I have, but not nylons."
"Amber," I told her. "I will put on high heels for you. And I will wear a dress. But you aren't paying me enough to wear nylons. My legs are shaved and tan, that'll have to do."
"We can pay you. How much do you want?"
I looked but couldn't tell if she was joking or not. "No charge," I told her. "That way I can leave when things get scary."
She didn't laugh. I was pretty sure Amber used to have a sense of humor. Maybe.
"Look," I told her. "Take a deep breath. Find the shoes for me, and go put your rolls in the oven."
She did take a deep breath, and it seemed to help.
When I went back to my room, Chad was there again with his notebook. He was staring at the walking stick on my bed. I hadn't brought it with me, but it had come anyway. I wished I could ask it what it wanted from me.
I picked it up and waited until he was looking at me so he could read my lips. "This is what I use to beat problem children with."
He clutched his notebook tighter, so I guessed his lipreading skills were up to par. I put the stick back on the bed. "What did you want?"
He turned his notebook around and showed me a newspaper article that had been cut out and was taped to a page of his notebook. "Alpha Werewolf's Girlfriend Kills Attacker" it said. There was a picture of me looking battered and dazed. I didn't remember anyone taking pictures, but there were large chunks of that night I was pretty shaky on.
"Yes," I said, like my stomach didn't suddenly hurt. "Old news."
He turned the page, and I saw he had another observation for me. "There R no vampyrs." I guessed spelling wasn't his strong suit. Even at ten, I'd been able to spell "are."
"Okay, thanks," I said. "Good to know. I guess I'll go home tomorrow."
He dropped his hands to his sides, the notebook swaying back and forth with irritation like a cat's tail. He knew sarcasm when he heard it, even if he was lip-reading it.
"Don't worry, kid," I told him more gently. "I'm not a part of the plot to send you off to kid-prison. If I don't see anything, it doesn't mean that there's nothing to see. And I'll tell your father so, too."
He blinked his eyes furiously, hugged his notebook again. He lifted his chin - a smaller, less-stubborn version of his mother's. And he left.
AMBER TROTTED UP THE STAIRS DOUBLE TIME AND waved to me as she went past. I heard her knock, then open a door. "You need to clean up, too," she told her son. "You don't have to eat with us - there's a plate in the microwave - but I don't want you scuttling around trying to be unseen, either. You know how that irritates your father. So comb your hair, wash your hands and face." I stripped off my clothes and pulled on the purple dress. It fit just fine - a little tight in the shoulders and snugger in the hips than I preferred, but when I looked at it in the full-length mirror, it looked just fine.
Amber, Char, and I had always been able to trade clothes with each other.
The heels were higher than was comfortable, but as long as we were staying in the house, they should be all right. Char's feet had been smaller than Amber's and mine. I brushed out my hair again, then French-braided it. A touch of lipstick and eyeliner, and I was good to go.
I wished it was Adam I was about to eat with instead of Amber, her jerk of a husband, and some important client. It was enough to make me wish I had a plate in the microwave, too.
