I saw a flash when Warren almost reacted to the sharp note in Zee’s voice, then he controlled it and tossed Zee the key fob. Zee was gone about ten minutes, and when he got out of the car, there was something softer than usual in his face.
“Kyle bought you that car,” he said.
Warren nodded.
“He picked it out and drove it home—you didn’t go with him.”
“It was a gift from Kyle,” Warren said. “I wanted it to be the gift he wanted to give me.”
Zee smiled, a real smile, one of the ones he only shared with people he likes. “He wanted you to be safe,” Zee said. “So he bought you a car that would keep you safe. And he thought about it all the way to your house—like a wish. And sometimes, if you happen to be around a lot of magic—like maybe your mate is a werewolf—a little magic happens.”
I thought about the girdle—that hadn’t felt especially magic to me until Wulfe had been nearby.
He gave Warren back the key fob. “It should behave itself now. If it starts up again, bring it to me.” He paused. “I think you got a keeper,” he said, and went back into the office.
I was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about the car.
—
Adam and I went to the special showing of The Harvester at the pumpkin patch on Saturday night. I had tried to stay home. I liked horror films, especially bad horror films—but I had no desire to revisit the Soul Taker. However, Adam had a plan, and it was a good plan. I dressed up a little more than I usually would for a movie showing held in a barn.
Waiting for the show to start, Adam put his lips against my ear to murmur, “Marsilia called with thanks. She also told me that Zee has been spreading the story about how we took down Bonarata and gave the Soul Taker to him instead of Underhill because he would destroy it and free the people, our people, that it had killed. She said that our credit with the supernatural residents of the Tri-Cities is getting a pretty good boost from that.”
“Zee is spreading that?” I asked. Zee didn’t gossip.
“Uncle Mike,” Adam said. “But he wouldn’t be doing it if Zee hadn’t asked him to.”
“Damage control,” I said. “And we’re in better with the vampires than we have ever been.”
Wulfe, Marsilia, and Stefan had taken most of the torture Bonarata had meted out on his visit. But it had been a lot of damage. The rest of their people were mostly newly made or weak, and Bonarata had scared them badly.
They’d been in pretty bad shape by the time the pack found them. Our pack had gotten them fed and transported back to the seethe before daylight. Physically, Marsilia had assured Adam, they’d be okay in a few weeks.
“Marsilia intends to move the seethe,” Adam murmured.
I blinked. “To the house in Benton City?”
“No,” Adam said. “She’s going to build a new house. She asked me for the name of our contractor.” He paused. “I don’t know what to think about it—but she’s bought Elizaveta’s property in Finley.”
I didn’t know what to think about that, either. “I wouldn’t live there.”
“She says it has power.”
“Yikes,” I said.
His shoulders shook with silent laughter. We were in a movie-theater barn. Good manners said we had to be quiet.
I don’t know if anyone else thought the movie was scary, but I spent a great deal of it with my face pressed against Adam’s shoulder. Adam seemed to spend a lot of the movie trying not to laugh and saying things like “That’s not what arterial spurting looks like” and “Heads don’t roll like that. They aren’t round, they’re rounded.” But he said them quietly, so we only got a few odd looks.
People knew who he was, of course, so we got some of those looks, too. But mostly Tri-Citians were respectful of our privacy. As long as there weren’t scary monsters mucking about (werewolves were respectable monsters), people mostly left us alone.
After the movie was done, the writer came out. He looked nervous, proud, and nervous again by turns—but was a pretty interesting speaker. I had not expected that, considering the lines in the movie. He talked for about fifteen minutes and then took questions. The fourth question was about the two bodies found earlier this week in what looked like a copycat crime.
Adam had anticipated that question.
He stood up and introduced himself for the benefit of anyone who didn’t know who he was. Then, with permission from the writer, he told the story of the Soul Taker. He didn’t tell them everything—all the people in this room thought they knew what the Soul Taker was from the movie they had just watched—and if it had been scarier than that, they didn’t need to know it. He touched on the killings of four decades ago and then credited an unknown evildoer with releasing the sickle into the wild because of the movie.
By the time he was finished, there was a hush in the room, and several local reporters Adam had called earlier today asked a few good questions.