Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson 12)

Once the insurance policy kicked in, they finally hired Adam’s go-to contractor to fix their house. Until Joel had better control of his fiery half, they would have to stay with us at pack central because Aiden was able to stop it when Joel’s spirit decided to lose its cool. But they had options. They could rent the house out, sell it and buy another later, or just keep maintaining it empty and let it wait for Joel to recover.

Medea yowled at me and stropped my leg, broadcasting the information that no one had fed her. Cats lie, and I was pretty sure she was lying. But feeding her made me happy and made her happy.

Tad called as I was putting away her kibble.

“Nice to hear that you got some” was the first thing that he said.

I disconnected. My cheeks might be bright red, but I had a grin on my face. I had indeed. But that didn’t mean that I’d accept teasing without fighting back.

He called again and the first thing he said was “Jesse said her dad looked like the cat who ate the canary.” A pause.

I decided he was waiting for me to hang up again, so I didn’t.

“If you ask me if I’m a canary, you’d better sleep with your lights on,” I warned him.

He laughed. “Okay. So if you are coming to the shop anyway—the parts we’ve been waiting on are in, but they dropped them off at another garage over in Pasco by mistake. They can redeliver but it will take them two days. The other shop offered to drop them by tonight when they close down.”

“No worries,” I said. “I’ll pick them up.” I wrote down the address of the other shop. It would take me out of the way, but someone had to pick them up. And I was pretty hungry; I could stop at a fast-food place on the trip. “Do you want me to bring some food?”

“Mercy, it’s three in the afternoon,” he responded with stentorian disapproval.

I had been trying not to pay attention to the time.

“Okay,” I said. I would not apologize for being late, I thought, all but squirming in fresh embarrassment. I own the shop. If I don’t come in, no one will fire me. Which was sometimes hard to remember, since I’d worked for Zee for years before I bought the garage from him—and both he and Tad (more rarely) gave me orders instead of the other way around.

I locked the house and headed out to my car.

“Sorry,” I said despite myself.

Tad laughed. “Dad dropped by with an early lunch and stayed. If you get the parts here by four, we should be able to knock out those two cars that are waiting for them and we’ll be all caught up until the next disaster strikes.”

“Super,” I said. I paused by the door of my car and turned in a slow circle, inhaling slowly to give myself time to process the scents around me. No strange wolves. No jackrabbits. The scent of Wulfe lingered a bit, but it was an old scent. It was coming from the hood of my car. He’d spent some time sitting on it last night.

I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t have done anything to it. “Mercy?”

“Sorry, got distracted.”

“Are you all right?” he asked. “I got your warning—thank you, by the way, for being vague. I always appreciate vague warnings.” More seriously he said, “Jesse also said that something went down last night, but I’d have to ask you about it because she wasn’t sure what was top secret hush-hush and what wasn’t.”

“You talked to Jesse a lot today,” I said, suddenly struck.

“She stopped by with some friends—including that poor girl who can’t do anything but look at me, blush, and giggle. Unless Jesse just wanted to pass on her version of vague warnings, I don’t actually know why they stopped. I am very much afraid it was so the silly girl could giggle at me.”

He sounded exasperated. Yes, I thought, Jesse’s friend’s crush was doomed.

“I’ll fill you in when I get to the garage,” I said.

He growled at me.

“I have to go,” I told him. “The most advanced technology my car has is a tape deck and it doesn’t work. So I can’t talk and drive.”

“Mercy,” said Tad. “I have been really patient.”

I took another deep breath—still no strange werewolves, no jackrabbits, no fresh vampire scent. Yes, it was still daytime. Yes, vampires do not go out in the daytime. But as I’d told Adam, I wouldn’t trust the light of day to stop Wulfe. The wind was breezy—if there had been something around, I’d have smelled it. I popped open the car door and stuck my head in. No scents that shouldn’t be there.

So I told Tad, succinctly, about the werewolves and the possible escapee from Underhill. I left out Wulfe because it was as embarrassing as it was terrifying—and because I couldn’t see how it would impact Tad’s or Zee’s safety.

“Underhill put a gate to the Fair Lands in your backyard?” said Tad, sounding nonplussed. Behind him, I heard Zee say something in German about Underhill. I didn’t catch it all but it didn’t sound complimentary.

“Has to stay for a year and a day,” I told them—because Zee could hear what I was saying. His ears were nearly as good as mine, maybe better. “I don’t know how she managed it—or why she agreed to take it down at all.”

“Aiden is a member of your household,” said Tad.

“Yes?” I inquired. Aiden would never have allowed a door to Underhill so close to him if he could have prevented it. I believed that the same way I believed the sun would rise in the sky tomorrow.

“Oh, I don’t think he did anything on purpose,” Tad said. “She just used him to gain permission somehow. A polite ‘I wish I could see you more often’ might have done it. I’m a little surprised it didn’t happen sooner—but Aiden survived her reign for a long time. It probably took her a while to elicit exactly the right response.”

I thought about Aiden’s guilt. No doubt Tad was right.

“Well,” I said, “we knew he was dangerous when we invited him to stay.”

Zee said something. I could hear it quite clearly, but it was in German and I wasn’t up to translating anything that complex.

“Dad says he doesn’t remember a creature that fits your description or that was called a smoke demon or smoke beast— other than a Japanese spirit. And he can’t see what a Japanese demon—as in a being from a different plane of existence, not a Christian demon …” He paused and asked, “Sag mal Dad, hatte die alte katholische Kirche eigentlich Recht mit dem, was sie über Dämonen sagte?”

“Ja,” answered Zee. “Mehr oder weniger. Aber nicht auf die Weise, wie sie glaubten.”

“Huh,” said Tad. “That’s interesting.”

“Did he just confirm the existence of demons as espoused by the medieval Catholic church?” I asked.

They had it right, Zee had said. More or less. But not in the way they believed.

Those demons weren’t only the property of the medieval church—there were churches now that believed in them. Demon stories had appeared in the Bible and various apocrypha, too. But it had been the medieval church that had built castes and characters based upon the biblical references, cataloging and defining demons. And using the existence of demons to cement the church’s power.