Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson 9)

“As long as Mercy has that way to torment you,” she’d told her father, “you’ll know where it’s coming from. If you get rid of that now, you’ll never know what to watch out for.”

“She just wants to save it because she likes the bunny she painted on the trunk last week,” I’d said.

Adam had laughed, and the wreck stayed where it was, with “For a Good Time Call” followed by Adam’s phone number scrawled across it for anyone (in our backyard) to see.

“I am not mad at you,” I told him. “But you should be aware that if you try to keep me away from you when you are hurt again, I will take you down when you least expect it.”

“Seriously,” he said, “I didn’t expect it to work.”

I lifted my head and looked at him. Maybe I hadn’t been the only one I disappointed when I hadn’t hunted him down in the infirmary. “I thought you were mad at me,” I said. “I mean—look what I did when you couldn’t defend the pack. I agreed to protect a boy that the fae had sent a troll after, and to cap it off, I told the world that we would protect the whole Tri-Cities from whomever and whatever. I figured that you needed time to cool down. I didn’t realize how bad it was—though I knew it was bad enough—until I talked to Warren later. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have let your anger, however righteous, keep me away.”

“You stayed away because you thought I was mad?” he said, sounding . . . smug. Which was better than hurt.

“I stayed away because you wanted me to stay away,” I growled at him. “That’s not going to happen again.”

He hugged me hard. “Good,” he said, his voice muffled in my hair. “Don’t let it happen again.”

“We’ll be okay, right?” I said. If I’d been sitting on anyone else’s lap, I’d have been embarrassed by how little my voice was.

“You and I,” he said, “will always be okay. I can’t promise anything more.”

“Me, either,” I told him. “So what do we do about Aiden?”

—

What we could do, evidently, was let him sleep.

Tad was sitting on the floor in the rec room directly in front of the lockup-room door (which was shut, not locked). Cookie was curled up next to him, asleep. His legs were crossed in front of him, and they held a battered laptop. He had earphones in, and his fingers made castanet sounds on the keyboard. His mouth was moving silently. Reading his lips and making some educated guesses, he was saying, “Come on, come on, come on. I’ve got this, see? And boom, boom, boom. Like that, suckers. Just like that.”

“Success?” Adam asked.

Tad looked up. For a moment his face was somber and . . . old. Then his mask came back up. “You betcha. I have really missed”—he raised his voice—“playing with you guys.” There was a universal, but friendly, groan that echoed through the room where people, intent on their own laptops, were draped over various seats and couches like cats in a dry sauna, limp and happy.

“And they all died before me greatness, the scabbied old lot of ’em,” he said. “Who is the greatest pirate of all?”

“Me,” declared Paul. “The king of CAGCTDPBT. The ruler of ISTDPBF.” CAGCTDPBT and ISTDPBF were the pack’s favorite computer games. Codpieces and Golden Corsets: The Dread Pirate’s Booty Three, and Instant Spoils: The Dread Pirate’s Booty Four, respectively. “You talk too much—and now you are dead, you lowly deck scrubber. Nothing but a landlubber with salty aspirations. Yarr harr and yohoho.”

“Argh, verily, argh!” chorused the rec-room occupants obediently, though none of them raised their gazes off their monitors. Cookie woke up and barked a couple of times.

Tad looked at his laptop and scowled. “Now, that’s not right. No one should die buried in fish eggs.”

He looked back at us. “Jesse’s in her room—she said something about ‘homework waits for no woman,’ and barred the door. I decided keeping an eye on Aiden would be useful. But after the barbecue, he wandered around the house, then retreated down here. I think he’s asleep now.” He frowned at his keyboard, debating with himself. Then he said, “He locked the window bars and came out ten minutes later and locked the door from the inside. He looked pretty spooked, and the locks make him feel safer.” Tad glanced at the door to Aiden’s room and shivered. “I don’t know how long he was in Underhill, but a week would be enough to make me sleep in the closet with the door shut. It’s not a place that feels like it could ever be safe.”

I’d been there once, by accident. It hadn’t lasted long, but it had not felt safe. I crouched, balancing on my heels, so my head was more on a level with Tad’s. “What can you tell us about him?”

Tad shook his head. “Not much. Your buddy who broke us out brought him to us.” He waited.

“What buddy?” I asked.

Tad raised his eyebrows and waited.

“You know which buddy,” said Adam. “Think about it.”

There was a certain Gray Lord who’d promised to help Tad and Zee in return for my giving him back the walking stick. But the walking stick hadn’t stayed with Beauclaire, so I’d figured that he would count that bargain null and void. “Buddy” wasn’t a word I would ever apply to Beauclaire.

“Okay,” I said. “I know what buddy you’re talking about. Though I’m a little surprised because—” Because I still had the walking stick. I swallowed my words. If Tad didn’t think it was a good idea to talk about Beauclaire, then I would go along with his judgment. The whole pack knew that Beauclaire had come to me to get the walking stick, so I couldn’t mention the stick or the reason I was surprised Beauclaire had helped them.