Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson 9)

Zee smiled happily. Somehow it was worse than his usual tightly sour smile—even though the happy was real. Maybe it was because the happy was real. “I will keep my old enemy’s daughter safe. Sometime soon, I will deal with the fae who have offended me in such a way that others avoid annoying me for another century or two. That’s a good plan for the next few weeks, I think. Findest du nicht auch?”

He didn’t really expect an answer. “Don’t you find it so?” is usually a rhetorical question, especially with Zee, who seldom cares for other people’s opinions at the best of times.

We drove for a while longer, and I got restless again. Maybe if I started fidgeting, Adam would let me drive. Maybe someone could start a conversation so I would quit worrying about how wrong this night could go.

“Why so quiet?” I asked Adam.

“I’m planning my moves,” he said. “I think I’ll walk to the left of Thomas and Margaret. Studies show that right-handed people look right before they look left. That will give me a psychological advantage. Then I’ll walk at half speed—”

“I could smack you,” I said. “Just saying.”

“I’m driving,” he answered meekly. “And you shouldn’t hurt the one you love.”

“Flirt on your own time, Lieblings,” advised Zee. “I am too old for it—you could give me a heart attack.”

“You’d have to have a heart for that threat to work,” I said, and happily settled in for a game of insults with Zee.

—

We parked next to Thomas’s car. It was nearly full dark—close enough to it that the vampire had discarded his hoodie and stood, looking elegant, in his usual bright-colored silk shirt. This one was an iridescent pearly blue, with an embroidered dark blue or black dragon crawling over his shoulder and down his arm.

He opened the door for Margaret and stood watching her struggle to get out. He didn’t move a muscle, but I could feel the willpower it took not to help. Adam was right, Thomas was a goner. People who say that vampires don’t care about anyone except themselves are mostly right—but sometimes they are very and lethally wrong.

Margaret’s pain was too private to watch, so I looked up at the hotel.

In downtown Seattle, the Marcus Whitman Hotel wouldn’t stand out, but in Walla Walla, it was about a hundred feet taller than anything else around it. From the bones of the original structure, it had been built in the late nineteen twenties. Several colors of brick and the very modern entrance evidenced more than one renovation over the years.

“All right,” Margaret said, her voice a little husky from pain. “There are supposed to be three Gray Lords meeting with me, and I’m allowed to bring my people with me. I had intended it to be just Thomas, but they allowed me six. With your permission, I’m going to give you, Adam and Mercy, a little glamour, nothing fancy—just something that will help them dismiss you as thugs numbers one and two. If you do something to draw attention, the glamour won’t hold.” She looked at Zee. “You, I expect, can do your own and be thug number three.” She turned back to Adam and me. “It won’t hold if they really look at you, but it should give us the element of surprise. And any advantage is to your favor—they’ll respect you for it.”

“Fine,” said Adam. I nodded.

Her magic settled over me like a cool mist. Sometimes magic doesn’t stick to me, but this time it seemed to.

“Thomas?” I asked.

“He doesn’t need it,” she said. “He can do it without magic. When he doesn’t want people to notice him, they just don’t.”

I rubbed my pleasantly tingling skin, and said, “You’re just going in to tell them ‘no,’ right? Which you could do with just Thomas. The glamour is to help us?”

She smiled. “It’s fun. I don’t like them. Don’t like the games they are playing. I’m happy to help. Now hush, someone could be listening.”

“Probably not,” I said. “I would smell anyone close enough to listen.”

Thomas looked at me as though I were interesting. “Better than a werewolf?”

“For fae and magic, yes,” I told him. “To be fair, there is a lot of ambient noise right now. Someone would have to be very close to overhear us.” I didn’t tell them that fae glamour might be awesomely powerful, but it seldom worked on scent. Let them think I was special.

We walked into the hotel, following Margaret. She didn’t travel fast, but no one evinced even the slightest impatience. Adam took the left-rear position. I don’t know if he did it for the reasons he’d told me in the car, or if that was just where he happened to be. Zee took the right rear. Thomas walked in front of Adam, and I took the leftover spot next to Thomas.

Inside, the lobby was overflowing with beige tuxes and unflattering teal gowns. They were most densely clustered near the bride, recognizable as such by her thirties-style off-white lace gown. She was patting the back of a middle-aged woman in a bright green sparkly suit who was sobbing on the bride’s shoulder. The whole lobby was trying not to watch—and so no one noticed us at all.

As if she’d been in the hotel a hundred times, Margaret headed for one of the banks of elevators. We waited in silence for the doors to slide open. When they did, we stepped inside—it was a tight squeeze. The elevators weren’t built for a fairy princess and her guards. Fortunately, it was a fast elevator, and we got off on the second floor. Margaret headed down the hallway, and we spread out behind her like a wedding train.