Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson 13)

I pushed my face against his neck, tipping my lips until they touched his ear, and breathed, “You and I have a hot shower in our future. Could be fun.”

I could feel him go still. I realized, even if I hadn’t meant it, I’d done the best thing I could possibly have done to change his focus.

Another soft laugh from the peanut gallery reminded me that we had an audience. We were sitting in slush—or at least Adam was—and I wanted a hot shower. I intended to do something about both of those.

To that end, I sat up, and in a loud and (this time) deliberately whiny voice, I asked, “Did you guys have to knock me into the mud?”

“If you choose to stand next to the biggest puddle in the whole ten-acre playground, you don’t get to complain when nature takes its course,” said Warren mildly, though his wary eyes brushed past me and hesitated on Adam before he looked away again. “We didn’t do it on purpose”—all of them had been careful not to name the actual culprit; Mary Jo wasn’t the only one with a makeshift bat—“but if you’re going to provide us with that much temptation—”

The team of wolves inside the corn maze had been making a lot of noise for a while. Sometimes it sounded like it was coming from just over the wall of corn and sometimes from farther away—as was consistent with wolves playing tag in a maze. Everyone was looking at Adam and me, and Adam was looking at me—so I was the only one who saw Zack burst out of the exit.

He was running at top speed, his raised fist displaying a multitude of damp ribbons that proved he’d found the waypoints scattered throughout the maze. His face was turned to look behind him and held a sort of gleeful terror that told me Sherwood (our designated maze monster) was in hot pursuit.

I didn’t even have time to open my mouth to warn anyone.

Zack’s shoulder hit George at full speed, knocking the much bigger man into the mass of the gathered people. Zack himself tumbled all the way over George’s falling body and into Mary Jo, who dropped more from the unexpectedness of the impact than its force.

Just before Mary Jo hit the ground, a giant wolf leaped over the top of the cornstalks—which was a feat that not all the wolves in our pack would have managed, because the wall of the maze was not only nearly ten feet tall but at least that wide—and this wolf did it missing one rear leg. From my vantage point on Adam’s lap, I could see the instant in which Sherwood (the three-legged wolf) took in the whole scene.

I had no doubt that he could have landed safely. But with an expression of satisfaction in his eyes, he chose to belly flop in the deepest part of the puddle I’d already fallen into. I felt just the lightest touch of magic, then everyone, including Adam and me, was doused with icy mudwater.

Zack crawled off the top of the pile of people, wiped his face with his forearm, then showed Adam and me the fistful of ribbons, now even wetter than before. “I brought out all fifteen ribbons. My whole team gets steak dinner at Uncle Mike’s, right?”

The rest of Zack’s team, Joel in the lead, emerged from the maze at a much steadier pace. They looked, if anything, even more drenched than the rest of us—but they were laughing like lunatics. Zack’s team was the last through and the only one to make it out with all the ribbons.

Sherwood stood up and shook, splattering them (and Adam and me) with more water, his expression smug.

Adam had curled around me to protect me from the worst of it, so I could feel the exact moment at which he relaxed and laughed.

—

Adam took me home while the pack cleaned up.

“Privilege of rank” was all Adam said when I protested that we should help in the cleanup. But I knew that the reason we were leaving was because he was still worried about me.

I was fine. I’d had concussions before, and this was not one. But I wasn’t going to argue with Adam—I just rolled my eyes at Mary Jo behind his back.

She stuck her tongue out at me and crossed her eyes. We had been getting along better recently. Some of that had to do with the utterly charming deputy she was dating—so she wasn’t lusting after Adam. I thought about it for a second and decided that maybe all of it had to do with her new boyfriend. I liked that she was happy.

Adam caught her expression—she hadn’t been trying to hide it from him—and turned to look at me. But he was too late; I had my eyes front and center and my face innocent.

“I heard your eyeballs roll,” he told me, which was a phrase he used on his daughter, who had been the empress of eye rolls when she was thirteen.

I laughed.

“We’ll see you all in an hour at Uncle Mike’s,” Adam told them.

“We’ve got this, boss,” said Warren.

—

I got waylaid telling Adam’s daughter, Jesse, about my bruise and all the mud, so Adam had the shower running before I got up to our room. I started stripping out of my muddy clothes as soon as I closed the bedroom door. By the time I walked into the bathroom, I was already naked—and Adam had turned off the water and was reaching for a towel.

“Nope,” I told him, swiping the towel out of his hands and dropping it on the floor.

He narrowed his eyes at me—or at least I think he did. I wasn’t looking at his face.

“You’re hurt,” he said.