Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson 11)

We were met at the door by a smiling, middle-aged black woman who introduced herself as Ruth Gillman, Senator Campbell’s personal assistant.

“Come in,” she said. “The senator is on a conference call, but it should be finished up in the next few minutes. Can I get you something to drink?”

She led us through a sparsely furnished living room with worn patches on the carpet into a kitchen that was nearly as large as the living room and filled with cherry cabinets, marble countertops, and expensive everything else.

“I know,” she told us, “it looks like it belongs in a different house. It’s going to be Bob’s retirement house, and he and Sharon are redecorating one room at a time. This year, he told me, it will be the master bedroom.”

“Bob?” I asked.

“The senator’s younger brother,” she said. “He’s an engineer and worked for twenty years in Richland at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He was transferred to Virginia, but he fell in love with this country.”

“Huh,” I said. The Tri-Cities were my home, but I’d grown up in the mountains of Montana. It had taken me a long while to appreciate the barren hills and rolling landscape.

She laughed. “His wife thinks he’s crazy, too. But she loves him. I think they still have a lot of friends here.”

“Are you making fun of Bob again?” asked Senator Campbell.

“No, sir,” she said. “I wouldn’t do that.” She lied when she said it, and he laughed because she intended him to.

He was a big man, maybe half a foot taller than Adam and fifty pounds heavier—not much of that was fat. His hair was light brown fading to gray around the edges. There were laugh lines at the corners of his eyes.

His eyes were hard and predatory. Hawk’s eyes.

He gripped Adam’s hand firmly—and mine less so.

“Welcome to my brother’s home,” he said. “Why don’t we all go into the study—you, too, Ruth. If you and Ms. Hauptman are going to be working together, you might as well start now.”

The study had probably been a bedroom when the house was built, but like the kitchen, it had been changed into a better version of itself. The floor was some exotic hardwood, and the whole room had a masculine feel.

There was a mahogany desk, but there were four comfortable-looking leather chairs, too. He took one of them and left it to the three of us to take the others.

“So that our cards are on the table before we begin,” he said. “You know that I want to keep the fae and the werewolves and everything else that goes bump in the night as far away from the citizens whom I represent as I possibly can. If we could come up with something that could keep the werewolves from walking around with regular people, I would. If I could hit a button right now and kill all of your kind, all of the fae, I would.”

“Fair enough,” said Adam. “I know a few werewolves who feel the same about you.”

Campbell leaned back in his seat, his eyes steady on Adam. “So why the hell did you warn my team last fall that there was going to be an attempt on my life—that one of my security people was an assassin? I trusted him with my wife and daughters. I’d have sworn he was loyal. I told Spielman that. But he talked me into setting up a sting anyway, and damned if you weren’t right.”

“I said,” my husband said gently, “that I knew werewolves who felt the world would be a better place without you. But I didn’t say I was one of them. You are the honorable enemy, I suppose. But we, my kind, need you where you are. Giving voice to the fear, but also to reason. If you weren’t where you are, it would be that idiot from Alabama who wanted to make it legal to hunt werewolves.”

Campbell winced. “Right, her. It’s like when I played dodgeball in my high school gym class. The Republicans and the Democrats both get some good players—and to make things even, we both get some idiots. We have the Honorable Ms. Pepperidge from Alabama. The Democrats get the Honorable Mr. Rankin from California.”

He paused. “You should know that the reason that I’m here—that we are coming down from Washington”—he snorted— “Washington, D.C., I mean, is because of that. That you warned me when it would probably have made your life a lot easier if he’d managed to kill me.”

“To be fair,” Adam said, “I also did it to spite the people who tried to make me assassinate you.”

Campbell laughed. “I didn’t expect to like you.”

“Funny what happens when you talk to people,” I said.

Campbell nodded. “Fair enough.” He spread his hands out, palms up. I think they teach politicians to use their hands when they talk in politician school. “So talk, Ms. Hauptman. Tell me about the witches who spooked you.”

They also teach them to lie. Campbell had expected to like Adam and he wouldn’t push a button to eliminate all the werewolves and fae in the world—though he’d been honest enough about keeping the werewolves away from the general population.

“There are at least two witches who entered our territory a few weeks ago. We became aware of them last week. From their actions and what one of them told me directly, they intend to stop the talks between the fae and the government,” I said.

“I’ve been reading the Herald,” he said. The Tri-City Herald is our local newspaper. “Are the witches responsible for the zombies?”

“The zombie cow made Facebook sit up and beg,” said Ruth. “That cowboy is fine.”

“His boyfriend thinks so, too,” I said.

“Honey, I am married,” she told me. “And my wife was the one who pointed out what a hunk your zombie-roping man is. There is something about a man with a lasso.”

I grinned at her. “I’ll tell him you said so.”

“When you are through flirting with the enemy, Ruth, we could get back on topic.” There was irony in the senator’s tone, but no bite.

I told him about the witches, beginning with the difference between a white witch, a gray witch, and a black witch. None of that, I saw, was news to either Ruth or the senator. I began with the zombie miniature goats all the way through the poppet at my garage yesterday. I brushed over Elizaveta’s fourteen dead with “a forceful attack on our local witches.” After a moment’s thought, I included what my nose had told me about Abbot.

“Oh no, honey,” Ruth said. “Tory Abbot is a good man. He goes to church every Sunday.”

“Abbot,” said Campbell slowly. “Abbot changed a few months ago.”

“He got married,” said Ruth. “That kind of thing changes a man a little.” But there was no conviction in her voice. Something about that change had bothered her, too.