Soul Taken (Mercy Thompson 13)

“Did you follow Tad?” I asked. Then I held up a hand. “Wait. Izzy said you fixed her car for her.” I stared at him. “Did you ensure that her tire would go flat at a time when she would naturally call here?” She hadn’t called, though, had she? “Or that Jesse, hearing how close Izzy’s car was, would call you to help her?”

He flattened his lips and didn’t reply.

I sat up straight on Adam’s lap, put my feet on the floor, and then pulled them up again because that had hurt. “Is Izzy in danger from you?”

“Everyone is in danger from me,” the old fae snarled.

“Is she in danger from you because she and Tad are dating?” Getting information out of the fae depended upon asking the right questions.

“If she is no threat to my son’s well-being,” Zee said carefully, “then she has nothing to worry about from me.”

We stared at each other.

“There are some things our friendship would not recover from,” I told him. “Harming Izzy is one of them.”

He angled his head, as if in thought. “I will agree,” he said slowly, “to accept your arbitration if she hurts my son.”

“You won’t do anything to her without talking to me about it,” I interpreted. “And if I tell you to leave her alone, you will do so.”

He nodded his head abruptly, and I relaxed.

“Unless he dated while he was back East in college, Tad hasn’t had a serious girlfriend before,” said Adam thoughtfully. “I get where you are coming from.”

There was so much sympathy in his voice that I craned my neck around so I could see him.

“You didn’t follow Jesse around,” I said.

Adam didn’t reply.

“I am disappointed in both of you,” said George solemnly. Then he ruined it by saying, “Zee, you have great magics at your beck and call and you followed Tad around like a mere mortal. Adam, you have all the spy-tech anyone could ask for, and a whole pack of werewolves to call upon.”

“Tech would have been a betrayal,” Adam said. “If Jesse’d caught me skulking around, she’d have had my hide. But if she found out I was watching her with cameras... she would never trust me again.”

I’d been watching Zee’s face.

“He caught you,” I said, amazed. Thoughtlessly, I put my feet on the ground so I could lean forward, but then pulled them back up again. “Tad caught you when you followed them to the theater.”

Zee’s face and his whole body stiffened for an instant, then he relaxed and a huge grin lit his face. “That boy is smart like his mama,” he said. “I am proud.”

And that’s why he’d given in when I confronted him about Izzy. Tad knew about the car thing, too. I relaxed further. Zee couldn’t do anything to Izzy without Tad finding out. And that made Izzy a whole lot safer.

“You were going to tell us about the Harvester?” I suggested.

“Of course,” said Zee, his smile fading. “This is a film about a man possessed by a sickle—which, for some reason I do not understand, they called a scythe.”

“We heard about that,” Adam commented.

“Ja, gut,” Zee said. “In the movie, this sickle drives the man to kill—and then to stalk and kill in more and more elaborate ways, ja?”

“Okay,” I said.

“There was such a sickle,” Zee said heavily. “I do not know how it came here, to this place. But about forty years ago, some damned fool boy found it—or was given it. This sickle is sentient—like your walking stick, Mercy. But it is more than that. It conscripts people to its purpose. This boy, he started killing people.”

“People?” George asked with a frown.

Zee nodded. “But the victims were carefully chosen. Magic in their blood, but not too much. No one tied with a larger group—no vampires, no black witches, no greater fae. A few lesser fae, goblins, white witches, a weak gray witch, half-bloods of any of the preternatural folk.”

“Are you saying that this sickle is sentient enough to make those kinds of calculations?” Adam asked.