Frost Burned: Mercy Thompson Book 7 (25 page)

Mercy drew in a breath, and Adam looked at her. There was nothing Mercy enjoyed so much as complaining to people about the idiosyncrasies of werewolves; he had always found it charming—and useful. He waited a moment, but she didn’t say anything.

Adam put his hand on her face and turned it, gently, toward Tad. It would be better if she explained the problem to him. Until Asil and Adam had been properly introduced on Adam’s territory—such things had a very well-established protocol so that no blood was shed—Asil would be easy to offend. He and Adam had both been very careful not to pay too much attention to each other.

“Mercy, would you tell Tad why poker is a bad idea?” he asked her.

“Asil and Adam don’t know each other,” she said amiably. “And even if they did … poker isn’t really a good werewolf game.” She appeared to consider that a moment. “Or rather, it is too good a werewolf game. It would end with bodies.”

Tad glanced at both wolves, one after the other. “Seven-up?” he suggested. “War? Gin rummy? I know you play gin rummy because Warren taught me to play it when I was a kid.”

“Tell him,” Adam said to Mercy.

“No games between two dominant wolves unless they know each other very well and have established their dominance. There was a very nasty chess match that happened in the Marrok’s pack when I was six or seven. Bran put an end to it, but not before one of the wolves ended up with a pickax in his leg.” Mercy continued instructing the uninitiated in her Mercy-matter-of-fact fashion. “Adam and Warren could play, for instance, because, though they are both dominant wolves, Adam has firmly established himself as more dominant in both their eyes. One lost game won’t make any difference. Darryl and Warren, though, are second and third in the pack hierarchy. They play CAGCTDPBT during pack gaming days, but they play on the same side. Always.”

Tad gave Mercy an assessing look. “No poker. No gin rummy, and especially no chess if you don’t want to end up pickaxed. And I didn’t know you played CAGCTDPBT.”

“Werewolf games,” Mercy said solemnly, “play for keeps, or go home.” She was so cute sometimes it made Adam’s heart hurt. She was also a killer CAGCTDPBT player. The pack made Mercy and him play on opposite sides to keep it fair.

“I threw out my Go-Fish cards a long time ago.” Tad’s voice was dry. “I’m going to play some solitaire and leave the rest of you to twiddle your thumbs.”

Exhausted, worried, and unhappy, Adam leaned against the wall and let his eyes half close in an old soldier’s trick. He wasn’t really asleep but not really awake, either. Any break in the current patterns of sound, sight, or scent would attract his attention.

Tad sat down in front of the mirror and laid out a game of spider solitaire. He played three or four games and lost all of them—no cheating for Tad.

Asil seemed happy to occupy himself studying Zee’s little toys as far away as he could get from Adam. The Moor wasn’t exactly what Adam had expected. Much less crazy, and also much better at the dance that kept everyone alive in a small room with two dominant wolves who were strangers to each other than a wolf of his reputation ought to be. Bran usually knew what he was doing, and that seemed to be true when he sent Asil as well.

Mercy wasn’t sleeping, but she lay quietly in his lap. She liked to cuddle when they were alone. He decided to enjoy it because it settled the beast inside him a little. The wolf was convinced that as long as he held her, nothing could touch her.

Neither could he. Not for long.

Mercy put her hand on Adam’s, and he could feel the silver go to work on his skin. He didn’t react because he craved her touch more than he minded the burn—and she’d taken it for him, hadn’t she? So maybe part of it was guilt, feeling that he deserved to hurt because he’d brought harm to her.

She leaned forward, reading the titles on the books again. He opened his eyes a bit more to make sure she didn’t try for that book that called to her again.

Zee had a modern college text on metallurgy right next to a very old book bound in leather with a title that was nearly indecipherable, between the faded gold embossing and the old German script. And just out of easy reach was the little green linen-bound book with the warped cover that had fascinated her earlier. Mercy shifted restlessly then froze, jerking her hands away from him.

“I’ve burned you,” she whispered, horrified.

Tad looked up from dealing another round, and Asil glanced their way—and then returned his attention to the fae weapons on the shelves.

“I’m a werewolf,” Adam said softly. “It won’t kill me.”

She frowned at him, and he closed his eyes again. “It’s all right, Mercy. It’s already healed.” He wanted to tell her not to worry, but then maybe she wouldn’t. Not because she chose to follow his advice but because of the damned fae artifact that made her obedient. An obedient Mercy because she had no choice—that was an abomination.

She curled up, tucking her hands in where they couldn’t accidentally touch him. She closed her eyes, too—he knew because he had only
mostly
shut his.

The better to see you with, my dear, said the Big Bad Wolf.

He also saw something else. Adam had a habit of keeping track of things in his environment—situational awareness. It had saved his butt more than once. He was especially aware of things that could be used as weapons.

One of the blades on the shelves was moving. He didn’t catch it in actual motion, but when they’d first come into the room, it had been in the back corner of the bottom shelf of the bookcase nearest the mirror. Now it was in the middle of the shelf and had slid nearly off the edge.

He wondered if it might be chasing Asil, if only very slowly.

It was a hunting knife with a dark blade that showed just a touch of rust. The hilt was some sort of antler. When he closed his eyes a little more and turned his gaze so that the knife was in the corner of his vision, he could tell that there was some sort of runic lettering down the blade. But as soon as he looked directly at it again, the runes disappeared.

Because Adam was carefully not-watching the blade, he noticed something was happening to the mirror.

The corners were darkening until, gradually, it quit reflecting the room and looked more like a huge photo of a heavy, gray, silk curtain than a silver-backed glass mirror. Adam lifted his head to see it more clearly. As soon as the whole of it was dark, frost bloomed. It started in the very center of the mirror, as if it were very cold and someone was blowing on it with a warm, wet breath. A fog of ice spiderwebbed out in a crystalline sheet across the glass.

As soon as the ice covered the entire surface, a darker line dripped down the middle of the mirror and dark, callused, long-fingered hands slid out of the glass and pulled the gray aside, sending a light snow to the rug that butted up against that end of the room.

Zee stepped through the mirror. Tad looked up and started gathering his cards together, though his game wasn’t half-finished yet. Asil’s eyes slitted, and he rolled to the balls of his feet, ready for whatever would come. Mercy turned her head, and said, “Hey, Zee. Long time no see.”

The Zee that stepped through the mirror wasn’t the one Adam was used to. Gone was the glamour that he’d presented to the world. He was no slender, balding old man—his sharp-featured face was both unaged and ancient, with skin the color of fumed oak. His body showed the musculature of a man who spent his days before a hot fire bending metal to his will—wide shoulders and taut flesh that knew hard work.

“Mercedes,” he said. “What have you done to your lips?”

Mercy touched her lips but didn’t say anything. Adam found that a hopeful sign.

White-gold hair slicked down over Zee’s shoulders like a waterfall of pale wheat. He wore, incongruously, a pair of black jeans and a gray flannel shirt with a motor-oil stain on one cuff. On his feet were his old battered, steel-toed boots.

Asil’s lips curled back, and he snarled softly.

“Peace, wolfling,” said Zee in his usual impatient and crabby fashion. “It’s been a long time since I hunted your kind. And, as I recall,
you
got away cleanly anyway. You have no axe to grind.”

The old fae frowned at Tad, who had set the deck of cards on the poker caddy and gotten to his feet.

“What’s wrong, Tad, that you’ve called me here?”

“What isn’t is a better question,” said Tad. “I’m really glad to see you. I don’t know exactly where to start.”

“If it helps,” Zee said, “I’m caught up to where someone has apparently taken most of the wolf pack captive. Last I heard, Mercy set you to guard Jesse and Gabriel while she went off to see how Kyle fared. I see that you managed to recover at least one of the wolves, Mercy.”

“Adam recovered himself,” Mercy told him. “The lips are from the silver.”

Zee frowned at her and took a couple of steps nearer. Adam stood up and pulled Mercy to her feet beside him, unwilling to let this stranger with Zee’s eyes and voice approach him when he was in a vulnerable position.

“Silver?”

Mercy explained how Coyote told her to change the rules and so she’d drunk the silver out of Adam’s body. Adam intended on having a word or two with Coyote the next time he saw him—not that it would do any good. Mercy backtracked and began again with Stefan’s helping her free Kyle and ran all the way through to escorting Asil to Sylvia’s house.

“So I sent Jesse and Gabriel to take the kids to Kyle’s house,” Mercy said.

“In Marsilia’s car, which now has a dent and a dead body in the back,” said Zee.

“It sounds worse than it is,” she assured him.

“No,” Adam disagreed. “It is exactly as bad as it sounds.”

“You know these assassins?” Zee asked Tad.

“It was Sliver and Spice.” Tad leaned against the bookcase nearest him and caught the hunting knife before it fell on the ground. He frowned at it and set it back in the corner it had started in. “You stay there,” he told it.

Zee smiled, and his face suddenly looked a lot more like the Zee Adam knew. “I wish you better luck than I have with that.” He nodded toward the knife. “It doesn’t like to stay in one place when interesting things are going on. How do you know it was Sliver and Spice? They are both skilled at hiding who and what they are.”

“Here,” said Tad, taking out the small bit of metal that the fae man’s sword had turned into. “This is yours. Sliver was using it on Asil—who fought him off with a baseball bat from Walmart. And Sliver had to drop the glamour to keep up with him.” There was a bit of hero worship coming off Tad.

“The Moor doesn’t need a pesky magic blade to triumph over evil,” Mercy murmured, and Adam gave her a sharp look.

Zee took the object from Tad, and in his hands, it formed once more into a blade. This time, though, it was black as pitch but only two feet long.

“Of course he did,” Zee said, sounding a little put out that Asil had triumphed over one of
his
blades. But his face smoothed out, and he said, “He outsmarted me for three weeks in high winter in the Alps. It stands to reason that a spriggand would have no chance at all, even with such a blade as this.”

“Sliver got away,” Tad said. “But not before Adam showed up out of the blue and stole that sword from him.”

“You didn’t bring me here to tell me this,” Zee said. He didn’t look at Mercy, but Adam could feel his attention.

“Right,” Tad said. “Mercy, touch your toes, then turn around three times.”

Adam understood why Tad had to do it, but he couldn’t help the unhappy sound he made. “You need to quit giving her orders,” he warned Tad. He wasn’t angry, not at Tad, anyway. But her easy compliance made his wolf want to jump out of his skin. The last time she’d been caught in this kind of magic, she’d been raped, and he remembered it, both wolf and man.

“Peace and Quiet, also known as the Fairy Queen’s Gift,” said Zee, in a contemplative voice that made Adam think that he wasn’t the only one who was bothered by Mercy’s obedience. “I had heard that it had surfaced again. Did Sliver and Spice get away with it?”

Adam caught Mercy’s shoulders and stopped her before she finished the second turn. “You don’t have to listen to him anymore, Mercy. Stop.”

“No,” Asil said. “The cuffs are in the trunk with the dead woman—who it is probably safe to assume is Spice.” He grimaced. “Did she pick the name from the singing group?”

Tad smiled. “Not unless they were around a couple of centuries ago.”

“Sliver is alone?” Zee sounded for a moment like a hunting wolf. “Interesting.” Then he looked at Mercy again, and some of the inhumanity slid away from him.

“Stealing someone’s willpower was always a rare and difficult fae gift,” Zee said. “It’s a spell easier to work on someone who is asleep or happy.”

Mercy shivered, as if she were suddenly cold, again. “I don’t like being obedient.” Adam hugged her and wished he could go back and kill the man who’d done this to her last time
before
he’d hurt her. Wished, at the very least, he could protect her from her memories because if this was making him remember, it had to be doing the same to her. Rage choked him—and Mercy patted his arm in reassurance.

Zee caught his eye and nodded grimly, and Adam knew he wasn’t the only one unhappy that such a spell had caught Mercy again. “Peace and Quiet was made as a gift for a fairy queen who collected the wrong fae’s son into her court.”

They’d run into a fairy queen before. They weren’t fae royalty precisely but had a gift that allowed them to enslave humans and fae alike. Almost like a honeybee queen, they set up courts designed to both feed their power and entertain them. Not Adam’s favorite kind of fae.

“She didn’t last long,” Zee continued, “because the cuffs only work for a short period of time on the fae, though it can be more permanent on humans.”

Zee put his hand under Mercy’s chin and looked into her eyes. “The woman who gave the fairy queen the gift wanted her son back. Once the queen died, all the humans and fae went back to their old lives.”

Without the glamour, his slate gray eyes were brighter and odder-colored.

“Beware of fairy gifts,” Mercy said.

“And Greeks bearing gifts,” agreed Zee without a pause.