“Thank you,” said Adam dryly.
“Especially since my people say you sent the Fire Touched and the demon dog away,” Larry said. It wasn’t quite a question.
“Yes,” Adam agreed.
Larry gave him an exasperated look. “I am plying you for information, my friend. A single-word confirmation of something I already know is not useful.”
“Yes,” said Adam, amusement in his tone.
The goblin heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Did you send them away for your safety or theirs?”
“Maybe they moved because their house remodeling is finished, so they can move back in,” I suggested. The fae lie with questions all the time—I didn’t expect Larry to believe me.
Larry smiled at me. “And took the Fire Touched with them to help the tibicena stay under control,” Larry agreed. “But their house has been finished for a month or more at this point. Why now?”
“You know about Wulfe stalking Mercy,” Adam said. It was not a question. The goblins “observed” people of interest. It was part of what made them valuable allies. “We worried that Joel and his wife might become collateral damage,” he told Larry. “And we sent Aiden with him to make sure the tibicena stays controlled.”
“Speaking of Wulfe,” I said, “do you know where he is?”
Larry heaved himself to his feet with pretended effort. “This discussion needs to move inside.”
Alarmed that he might have noticed someone watching, I took in a deep breath of the night air and gave the darkness around us a careful look. Beside me, Adam did the same thing.
Larry’s mount—who smelled only incidentally like any equine I’d ever gotten a whiff of—was still around somewhere nearby. But I couldn’t detect anyone else.
“No intruders,” Larry said, observing this. “But there are creatures who can hear very well living nearby.” Like Tad, he tipped his head to indicate the back of the house. “Very, very well.”
It was a warning.
“Inside the house is better?” I asked.
“It’s warded by your magic-wielding wolf,” he said. “Nothing can listen in.” And if there was something a little rueful in his tone, we all ignored it.
I knew that Sherwood had warded the house. Larry had just made me realize that I didn’t understand exactly what that meant. Wulfe hadn’t had trouble getting in despite Sherwood’s wards. But Wulfe was a law unto himself.
I glanced at Adam, who was holding the door open in invitation. He didn’t seem perturbed by Larry’s remark; likely he had already known what Sherwood’s magic was doing.
After a quick glance up the stairs to where Jesse was sleeping, Adam took us down to the basement so we wouldn’t wake her up. The main room of our basement was set up for the pack to relax or play in. Furniture tended to get moved around—and battered.
Someone had pulled two couches to face each other. One of them was brand-new. The other would need replacing soon, and someone should probably have cleaned the hair off it. Adam took a seat on the battered one. Larry sat across from him.
I got a folding chair from a small stack leaning against the wall, popped it open, and set it next to the couch Adam was on. I sat on it backward.
“If I sit with you in that comfy couch,” I told Adam’s raised eyebrow, “I’m going to fall asleep. I have now officially been awake for twenty-four hours and change.”
Adam frowned at me in concern—though I knew that he’d gotten up at the same time I had. But he wasn’t going to send me up to bed, or grumble at me in front of Larry, any more than I would do to him. He turned his attention to Larry.
“Why are we here instead of the seethe?” Adam asked.
Larry gave him an intense look. “The goblins have alliances. We have always had alliances. We do not have allies.”
I got what he was saying before Adam did, I think. Allies. Friends. People who actually cared about each other. That was quite an offer from the goblin king. In the long history of the fae, only parts of which I was familiar with, the goblins had been thoroughly indoctrinated in the idea that they stood alone.
Adam sat back and considered that. “Why us?”
Larry pursed his lips. “Complicated question. Werewolf packs take care of their own. Only if a situation might impact the pack’s safety—or the safety of a wolf in the pack—do they step into the business of others.”
He smiled at me with teeth in full display, but when he spoke, his voice was a whisper. “Coyote’s daughter changed your pack, Adam Hauptman. She changed you. The Columbia Basin Pack is suddenly full of heroes who take on anyone to protect the innocent, the helpless, even enemies.” He paused. “Even goblins. ‘Might for right,’ in fact.”