Fire Touched (Mercy Thompson 9)

“That’s not it,” said Adam in a low voice. “Let’s get to the cars.”

“I don’t scent anyone,” I said after finishing with my shoe. “But I’m with you. There’s someone.”

“They’re around,” agreed Thomas.

Margaret leaned her head against him. “This would be a perfect time for an ambush,” she said, sounding delighted. “Maybe there’s a troll or ogre around.”

“How about a witch?” asked a woman’s voice.

As soon as she spoke, I saw her, a young, muscular woman wearing a summer dress with brown army boots, walking beside Margaret and Thomas as if she’d been beside us all along.

9

As soon as she appeared, I could smell her. Her scent held a mix of cinnamon, brimstone, and honey, but no witchcraft. She smelled like a fae, but with overtones of earth and water rather than a clear allegiance to either, which was unusual in my experience.

Thomas jumped ten feet sideways, Margaret in his arms. Adam moved in front of them like a trained bodyguard. I recognized her scent and stopped my instinctive move to draw my carry gun. Instead, like Adam, I put myself in front of Thomas and Margaret. Zee stood where he was but put a hand on his hip, where I knew he kept one of his bladed weapons. He didn’t just use magicked swords—he made them.

“Dangerous to surprise us like that,” he said coolly, because he, of course, knew who it was.

I did, too. It’s not that I remember everyone I scent. It’s just that some people make a definite impression. Though some of the fae have favorite glamours they wear, visual impressions are not a definitive way to recognize a fae. Scent is much more difficult for them to change.

“What’s life without a little danger?” The woman looked at me, and said, “And didn’t I tell them to keep an eye on you? No one who carries Coyote so strongly is going to be resting on the sidelines. But they never listen to me.”

Thomas set Margaret on her feet.

“You aren’t a witch,” I said. I’d been as surprised as anyone when I met Baba Yaga the first time. The most famous witch in the world—wasn’t.

She shrugged. “You say tomato, and I say tomato.” She used the phrase backward, the second “tomato” carrying the long “a.” “A million people and a hundred tales can’t be wrong. You say fae, I say witch, and I am bigger than you—so I can call myself what I want.” She leaned toward me and sniffed and twitched her nose in a very unhumanlike way. “There’s a Russian here,” she said to me. “I can always tell. And it’s not you.”

She took a wide, awkward sideways step until she was in front of Zee. She frowned at Zee a moment. “I remember you as better-looking.”

“I remember you as an old Topfgucker, who sticks her long nose where it doesn’t belong,” said Zee, unimpressed.

She dropped her head and cackled, a real witch’s cackle—as if she’d watched too many cartoons. “There’s my Loan, darling. Oops, I forgot. You are calling yourself Siebold Adelbertsmiter now, aren’t you? Adelbert was such an old stick-in-the-mud—he deserved what he got, but he was a wimp, no one I’d brag about smiting. Siebold, darling, have you missed me? You never call, you never write. A person would be forgiven for thinking you didn’t like them. You certainly aren’t my Russian.”

She looked at Thomas, put a hand on Zee’s shoulder so she could lean past him to sniff the air. “Not you,” she told Margaret. She looked at Thomas, and said, “Obviously not you. Too much Earth Dragon, too little air of the steppe.” She took that odd sidestep again; this time it put her directly in front of Adam. She leaned too close to him and inhaled.

“So it is you!” she exclaimed, with the air of a vaudeville cop finding the villain. She waited a moment, relaxed, and said, “You smell of my home. True russkiy dukh. I should take you home for supper—I would have just a few centuries ago. Sharpened my brass tooth in your honor . . . silver would be more appropriate, but I broke that one in 1916.” The brass tooth threw me for a moment, then I remembered that Baba Yaga was supposed to eat people with metal teeth that she would take out of her mouth and sharpen in front of her victims. In the stories I’d heard, the teeth were supposed to be iron, not brass.

Baba Yaga had not slowed down her patter, though. “More to the point,” she said, then giggled. “Point—tooth, do you get it? I am so funny. But as I was saying, I am civilized now. Tamed for the sake of the others, you know. A fine handsome man as you? Now I take him home for other things.” She licked her lips hungrily.

Adam growled at her.

“Stop it,” I said to her, because I was afraid that if she kept talking, someone would make a stupid move and get themselves killed. “Everyone’s on edge, there’s no use pushing them over. What do you want?”

“Who are you?” asked Margaret.

The witch, who was a Gray Lord, took the sides of her sundress, one side in each hand, and curtsied. “Baba Yaga, at your . . . well, not at your service. That would be a lie. Say rather I’m not opposed to you—or not as opposed to you as I am to some others who were in the hotel tonight.” She dropped her skirt and held up a hand, displaying a business card with a cartoon Baba Yaga figure on it and a phone number. “For if they bother you, dearling. Just give us a ring. They being the other Gray Lords, of course.” She dropped the silliness for a moment. “Margaret, I owed your father, and he cannot collect. Take the card. Put it in the bottom of a drawer somewhere, but remember it. When you need me, you can call the number or rip the card in half, and I will come to your aid, once.”