Bone Crossed

STEFAN WASN'T AMENABLE TO CHANGING DONORS, SO Peter and Darryl knelt, one on either side, and began to pry his grip loose. When I approached to help, Adam snarled at me.



If he hadn't snarled, I'd probably have let the wolves take care of it. After all, they all have awesome werewolf superstrength. But if Adam and I were going to have a relationship, something that was giving me butterflies already, it was going to be on an equal footing. I couldn't afford to back down when Adam growled.



Besides, I despised the cowardly part of me that flinched at his anger. Even if I was pretty sure it was the smart part.



Peter and Darryl were working on Stefan's hands, so I went to his head. I slipped my fingers into one side of his mouth, hoping that vampires had the same reaction to pressure points as the rest of us. But I didn't need to use any nerve pinches, because as soon as my fingers touched his mouth, he shuddered and released Adam, his arms going limp at the same time as he pulled his fangs out.



"Won't," Stefan said as I pulled my fingers out of his mouth. "Won't." It came out a whisper and faded eerily as he ran out of air.



His head moved until he rested against my shoulder, his eyes closed. His face almost looked like his now, filled out and healing. The broken places on his skin, hands, and lips looked like wounds now. It said something about how bad he'd been that oozing wounds were an improvement.



If his body hadn't shook against me as if he were having an epileptic fit, I'd have been happier.



"Do you know what's wrong with him?" I asked Adam helplessly.



"I do," Peter said. He casually pulled a huge pocketknife out of its belt sheath and made a small cut in his wrist.



He moved me out from under Stefan and moved him around until Stefan was lying down with his head on Peter's lap, held steady by the werewolf's unwounded hand. Peter held his bloody wrist in front of the vampire, who clamped his lips together and turned his head away.



Adam, who had wrapped his hand around his own wrist to staunch the bleeding, leaned forward.



"Stefan. It's all right. It's not Mercy. It's not Mercy."



Red eyes slitted open, and the vampire made a sound I'd never heard before... and wished I could still say that. It raised every hair on the back of my neck, high-pitched and thin like a dog whistle but harsher somehow. He struck and Peter jerked, gritting his teeth and hissing.



I didn't notice when my mother left us, but she must have at some point because she had Samuel's big first-aid kit from the main bathroom open on the couch. She knelt by Adam, but he surged to his feet.



Alpha werewolves don't admit to any pain in public, and seldom in private. His wrist might look like it had been savaged, but he'd never let my mother do anything about it. I stood up, too.



"Here," I said, before he could say something to offend her or vice versa. "Let me see."



I tugged and pulled until I could see the wounds. "He'll be all right," I told Mom with satisfaction. "It's scabbed over already. A half hour from now it'll just be a few red marks."



That was good.



My mother raised her eyebrow, and murmured, "And to think I was always worried that you didn't have any friends. I suppose I should have been counting my blessings."



I gave her a sharp look, and she smiled past the worry in her eyes. "Vampires, Mercy? I thought they were made-up."



She had always been good at making me feel guilty, which was more than Bran had ever managed. "I couldn't tell you," I said. "They don't like it when humans know about them. It would have put you in danger." She narrowed her eyes at me. "Besides, Mom, I've never actually seen any in Portland." And had been very careful not to look when I smelled them. Vampires like Portland - lots of rainy days.



"Can all of them just pop in wherever they want to?"



I shook my head, then reconsidered. "I only know of two, and Stefan's one of them."



Adam was watching Stefan feed; he looked worried. I hadn't realized he and Stefan were more than casual acquaintances.



"Is he going to be all right?" Mom asked.



Adam was pale but healing just fine. Other wolves would have taken longer, but Adam was an Alpha, and his pack gave him more power than other wolves had. But if Stefan gnawed on Peter the way he'd chewed up Adam, it would take Peter a while longer to heal.



She looked at me, and her dimples peeped out. "I was speaking of the vampire. You do have it bad, don't you?"



I'd been trying not to dwell on Stefan's condition and why it was so bad - and how it was my fault. "I don't know, Mom," I leaned against her, just a little, before straightening to stand on my own. "I don't know that much about vampires. They're hard to kill, but I've never seen one as bad as this who survived." Daniel, Stefan's... what? Friend hadn't quite covered it. Maybe just Stefan's. Daniel had quit feeding because he believed he had run crazy and killed a whole bunch of people. He'd looked bad, but not as bad as Stefan.



"You care about him, too."



She didn't sound surprised, but she would have been if she knew as much as I did about vampires.



I knew Stefan kept a bunch of people virtual prisoners to feed from - though none of them had seemed to mind. I'd had my rose-colored glasses ripped off when he'd killed two helpless people, people I'd rescued, in order to protect me. It might have been the enigmatic vampire Wulfe who'd twisted their necks, but Stefan had been the director of that macabre little conspiracy.



But it hurt to see him like this.



"Yes," I told Mom.



"You can let him go now," Adam told Darryl. "He's feeding."



Darryl dropped Stefan's arm and stepped back as if fearing contamination. There wasn't a lot of room left in my living room, but he bumped his back up to the counter that separated the larger room from the kitchen and curled his lip. Adam gave him a considering look before turning his attention to the other wolf.



"Are you all right, Peter?" Adam asked.



I looked at the werewolf and saw that there was sweat gathering on his forehead and he'd closed his eyes and turned them away from the vampire, who was sprawled across his lap and fastened to his arm.



Judging from the difference between his reaction and Adam's, it might have been better to find a more dominant wolf to feed to Stefan.



Peter didn't answer, and Adam walked behind him so he could put a hand on the skin of his neck.



Almost immediately I could see the impact of that touch as Peter relaxed against his Alpha with a sigh of relief.



"I'm sorry," Adam said. "If there'd been someone else... Ben should be here soon."



There had been Darryl, who was staring at his shoes. Adam's remark hadn't been pointed, but Darryl looked like he'd been slapped.



Peter shook his head. "No problem. It was bad for a minute, though. I thought it was supposed to be a myth that vampires could trap your mind."



That was one of the problems with the vamps. Like the fae, there was so much misinformation out there it was hard to sift truth from fact.



"He's not himself," I found myself saying. "He wouldn't do it on purpose." I wasn't entirely sure that was truthful, but it sounded good. He'd taken me over once. It had all worked out just fine, but I'd rather it never happened again.



My mother looked at me. "Do you have orange juice or something else with sugar in it for the blood donors?"



I should have thought of that. I hopped over Stefan's legs so I could go to the kitchen and look. Once my roommate had declared me completely unadventurous in my food choices, he'd taken over shopping.



I had no idea what he'd managed to stuff into the fridge.



I found a half-full bottle of low-pulp orange juice and poured two glasses. I handed the first to Adam and held the second in front of Peter.



"Do you need help?"



Peter gave me a half smile, shook his head, and took the glass, downing it in quick time and handing me back the glass.



"More?"



"Not now," he said. "Maybe when it's over."



MOM AND I SAT ON THE COUCH, ADAM TOOK A CHAIR, and Darryl stayed where he was, pointedly not looking at the vampire.



There was a sharp knock on the door, and Darryl said, "Ben."



He made no move to answer it, but it popped open anyway and Ben stuck his head in. His blond hair looked almost white illuminated by the porch light. He glanced at Stefan and said in his nifty British accent, "Bloody hell. He's in bad shape."



But his attention was all for my mother.



"She's married," I warned him. "And if you call her a rude name, she'll shoot you with her pretty pink gun and I'll spit on your grave."



He considered me a moment and started to open his mouth.



Adam said, "Ben. Meet Mercy's mother, Margi."



Ben paled, closed his mouth, and opened it again. But nothing came out. I didn't think Ben was used to meeting mothers.



"I know." I sighed. "She looks like my younger, better-looking sister. Mom, this is Ben. Ben is a werewolf from England, and he has a foul mouth when Adam's not around to ride herd on him. He's saved my life a couple of times. Against the wall is Darryl, werewolf, genius, Ph.D., and Adam's second.



Peter, also a werewolf, is the nice man feeding Stefan."



And after that, the awkwardness set in. Darryl wasn't talking. Ben, after one more bemused look at Mom, kept his head down and his mouth shut. Peter was obviously distracted by the feeding vampire.



Adam was staring at Stefan with a worried frown.



He knew what Stefan's first words had meant, too. But he couldn't talk to me about it in front of my mom until I did. And I wasn't going to let her know that Marsilia and her vampires were after me. Not unless I had to.



Mom wanted to ask me about... about the incident last week. About Tim and how he died. But she wouldn't ask me about anything until everyone else was gone.



Me? I'd just as soon not talk about any of it. I wondered how long I could keep everyone together, awkwardness being better than the stomach-churning panic that conversation with Adam or my mother was going to cause.



"I'm done in," Peter said.



Stefan wasn't any happier about changing donors this time. But having an additional wolf did the trick and, with only minor damage done to my end table, he was soon feeding off Ben. But only a few minutes later, Stefan went limp, his mouth falling away.



"Is he dead?" Peter asked and took a sip of his second glass of orange juice.



"Him?" asked Ben, extracting his wrist. "He's been dead for years."



Peter grunted. "You know what I mean."



Truthfully, it was difficult to tell. He wasn't breathing, but vampires didn't, not unless they needed to talk or pass for human. His heart wasn't beating, but again, that didn't mean much.



"We'll take him to my house," Adam said. "The..." He glanced at Mom. "My basement has a room without windows, where he'll be safer." He meant the cage where they locked up werewolves when they had control issues. He frowned. "Not that that will stop whoever dumped him in the middle of your living room, Mercy." He knew "whoever" all right.



Marsilia, I thought, though maybe it had been Stefan himself. Or maybe some other vampire. The one who'd explained that Marsilia and Stefan were the only ones who could teleport like that was Andre, the one I'd had to kill. Hard to trust his information too far.



"I'll be careful," I told Adam. "But you have to be careful, too. There was a vampire watching the back of the house when I was out talking to Amber."



"Who's Amber?" Adam's question was just a hair faster than my mother's "Amber? Charla's friend Amber from college?"



I nodded at Mom. "She read about... I've apparently made national news. She decided that she should look me up to check into her haunted house."



"That sounds like Amber," Mom said. Char and Amber had spent a number of weekends at my parents' house in Portland while I was in college. "She always was self-centered, and I don't suppose that would change. Though why would she think that you could help her with a haunted house?"



I had never told Mom about seeing ghosts. I hadn't really thought it was anything unusual until recently. I mean, people see ghosts all the time, right? They just don't talk about it much. Having a daughter who turned into a coyote was bad enough, so anything else I could keep quiet about, I had.



This didn't seem like the time to tell her about it either. I hadn't told her about last week. I hadn't told her about vampires. I had no intention of informing her of any other secrets I'd been keeping.



So I shrugged. "Maybe because I associate with werewolves and the fae."



"What did she expect you to do about it?" Adam asked. He'd have listened in on the whole conversation with Amber; werewolves have very good hearing.



"Beats me," I told him. "Do I look like an expert at laying ghosts?" Seeing them was a long way from sending them away. I wasn't even sure it was possible. I thought about what Amber had said. "Maybe she just wanted me to go tell her that her house really is haunted. Maybe she just needs someone to believe her."



Adam knelt on the floor and picked up Stefan. "I'll take him home now." Though Stefan was obviously taller than he was, Adam's supernatural strength wasn't apparent - he just looked like someone who could carry a great deal of weight without effort.



It should have been Darryl who picked up Stefan, not Adam. The Alpha just didn't do the heavy lifting when there were capable minions about. Ben and Peter had both fed the vampire, but Darryl didn't have that excuse. He must have a real thing about vampires.



Adam didn't seem to notice anything wrong with Darryl. "I'll send someone back to watch your house, tonight." He looked at my mom. "Do you need a place to stay? Mercy's"  -  he glanced around - "a little short on space."



"I'm staying at the Red Lion in Pasco," Mom said to Adam. To me she said, "We left in a hurry and I couldn't find anyone to watch Hotep. He's in the car." Hotep was her Doberman pinscher, who liked me even less than I liked him.



Adam nodded solemnly though I didn't remember telling him that my mom's dog hated me.



"Adam," I said. "Thank you. For saving Stefan."



"No thanks necessary. We didn't save him for you."



Ben gave me an expression that might have been a smile if his face hadn't been so tight. "You weren't there in the basement with that thing." Andre's demon-possessed vampire, he meant, the first vampire I'd killed. He had captured several of the wolves and Stefan and... played with them. Demons like causing pain.



"If it hadn't been for Stefan..." Ben shrugged, as if letting a memory die away unspoken. "We owe him."



Adam glanced at Darryl, who opened the door. I thought of something.



"Wait."



Adam stopped.



"If I talk to Mom... does that count?" He'd told me I had to talk to someone, and my mother wouldn't go away until I told her everything. It seemed like I should be able to kill two birds with one stone.



He handed Stefan to Ben and walked to me. He touched my jaw, just below my ear, and, as if our fascinated audience wasn't watching, he kissed me, touching me with nothing more than his fingertips and his mouth.



At first the heat flushed through me... followed by a horrible choking fear. I couldn't breathe, couldn't move...



When I came back to myself, I was sitting on the couch with my head between my knees, Adam crooning to me. But he wasn't touching me, and neither was anyone else.



I sat up and came face-to-face with Adam. His face was still, but I could see the wolf in his eyes and smell the wild on his skin.



"Panic attack," I said needlessly. "I haven't been having them as often." I lied and saw from the expression on his face that he knew it. This one made four today. Yesterday, I'd done better.



"Talking to your mother counts," he said. "We'll take things slowly... see how it goes. You talk to your mother or anyone else you'd like. But it'll all keep until kissing me doesn't cause a panic attack, all right?"



He didn't wait for an answer, just strode out of the house followed by his entourage. Darryl waited until both Ben and Peter were out the door before closing it gently behind them all.



"Mercy," said my mother thoughtfully, "you never told me your werewolf neighbor was quite that hot."



"Mmm," I said. I appreciated her effort, but now that the time was at hand, I just wanted to get it over with. "And you didn't get to see him rip Tim's corpse to pieces."



I heard Mom suck in a hard breath. "I wish I had. Tell me about Tim."



So I did. And she didn't say a word until I was finished. I hadn't meant to tell her everything. But she didn't say anything, didn't move, didn't look at me. So I talked. Just barely, I managed to keep Ben's name out of it - his secrets were his to reveal - but everything else roared in jagged bits or choked roughly out of someplace dark and vile. It took a while to get it all out.



"Tim reminded you of Samuel," she said when I was through.



I jerked my head off her lap.



"No, I'm not crazy." She handed me a wad of tissues from the box that sat on an arm of the couch.



"That's why you didn't see it coming. That's why you didn't see what he was. Samuel was always a bit of an outcast, and it left you with a soft spot for outcasts."



Samuel? Cheery, sweet-tempered (for a werewolf) Samuel an outcast?



"He was not." I grabbed a handful of tissues and wiped snot and salt water from my face. My nose runs when I cry.



She nodded. "Sure he was. He likes humans, Mercy - and most werewolves don't." She shivered at some memory or other. "He listened to heavy metal and watched Star Trek reruns."



"He was the Marrok's second before he came here to lone wolf it for a while. He wasn't an outcast."



She just looked at me.



"Lone wolf doesn't mean outcast." I set my jaw.



The door popped open, and Samuel, who'd been sitting out on the porch for a while, came in. "Yes, it does. Hey, Margi - why'd you bring that dog with you? He's creepy-looking."



Hotep was black with reddish brown eyes. He looked like Anubis. Samuel was right, he was



creepy-looking. "I couldn't find a sitter for him," she said, standing up to get hugged. "How have you been?"



He started to say fine... then looked at me. "We've been taking our knocks, Mercy and I. But, so far, we've gotten back into the ring."



"That's all you can do," said Mom. "I need to go. Hotep will be fit to burst by now, and I need to get some sleep." She looked at me. "I can stay for a few days - and Curt wanted me to tell you that you're welcome to come home for a while." Curt was my stepfather, the dentist.



"Thank you, Mom," I told her, and meant it. Horrible as it had been, I thought spilling it all might have helped. But I had to get her out of town before Marsilia made her next move. "That was exactly what I needed." I took a deep breath. "Mom, I need you to go back to Portland. I worked today. It was better, doing what I always do. I think if I just stick to my normal routine, I'll put it behind me."



My mother narrowed her eyes at me and started to say something, but Samuel had reached into his pocket and handed her a card.



"Here," he said. "Call me. I'll tell you how she's doing."



Mom raised her chin. "How is she doing?"



"Fair to middling," he told her. "Some of it's an act, but not all of it. She's tough - good genes. She'll make it fine, but I think she's right. She'll make it better after folks quit running around with sympathy and pity and staring at her. And the best way to do that is to get back to work, back to normal until other people forget about it."



Bless Samuel.



"All right," Mom said. She gave Samuel a stern look. "Now, I don't know what's going on between you and my daughter and Adam Hauptman - "



"Neither do we," I muttered.



Samuel grinned. "We have it pretty well worked out as far as the sex goes - Adam gets it - someday - and I don't. But the rest is still up for negotiation."



"Samuel Cornick," I sputtered in disbelief. "That is my mother."



Mom grinned back at him and pulled him down so she could kiss his cheek. "That's how I was reading it as well. But I just wanted to check." She sobered, and, after a glance at me, said to Samuel, "You take care of her for me."



He nodded solemnly. "I will. And Adam has his whole pack on it. Let me walk you to your car."



He came back in the house, and I heard my mother's car drive off. He looked as tired as I felt.



"Adam has a couple of wolves on stakeout at the Red Lion, just waiting for your mother to get there. She'll be all right."



"How was the emergency?" I asked.



He lit up. "Some poor fool took his pregnant wife across the country to visit her mother two weeks from her delivery date. I got there just in time to play catcher."



Samuel loved babies. "Girl or boy?"



"Boy. Jacob Daniel Arlington, six pounds four ounces."



"Did you go to Adam's and see Stefan?" I asked.



He nodded. "I stopped by his house before I came home. Much good as I did. Mostly I help people before they die. I'm not so helpful afterward."



"So what do you think?"



He shrugged. "He's doing whatever it is that vampires do during the day. Not sleeping, but something close to it. I expect he'll rest tonight and through tomorrow day. Which is what anyone of common sense would tell you - and so Adam said. He declared me tired and useless, then sent me back over here to keep an eye on you in case Marsilia decides to try something else."



"'Tired and useless, " I said in mock sympathy. "And even that didn't get you out of a job."



He grinned. "Adam seems to think you've declared yourself his. But, given his record of doing that without consulting you, I thought I'd ask you myself."



I raised my hands in helpless surrender. "What can I say. My mother thinks he's hot. I have no choice but to take him. Besides, it's a terrible thing to see a man crawling... begging."



He laughed. "I bet. Go to bed, Mercy. Morning comes early." He started down the hallway to his bedroom, then turned, walking backward. "I'm going to tell Adam that you said he begged you."



I raised an eyebrow. "Then I'll tell him that you accused him of lying."



He laughed. "Good night, Mercy."



I'd taken Adam for mine, chosen with my eyes and heart open. But Samuel's laugh still made me smile. I loved Samuel, too.



He worried me. Sometimes he seemed just like the old Samuel, funny and lighthearted. But I was pretty sure that a lot of the time he was just going through the motions, like an actor given a cue - "Enter downstage left and smile happily."



He'd come here, to stay with me, to try to get better - which was a good sign, like an alcoholic who goes to his first A.A. meeting. But I wasn't sure if being here was helping him or not. He was old. Older than I'd known when I'd grown up in his father's pack. And though werewolves don't die of old age the



way humans do, it can kill them just as effectively.



Maybe if I could have loved Samuel differently. Maybe if Adam hadn't been there. If I had taken Samuel as my mate as he'd wanted me to when he'd moved himself into my home, maybe it would have fixed him.



He frowned at me. "What's wrong?"



But you can't marry someone to fix him, even if you love them. And I didn't love Samuel the way a woman should love her mate, the way I loved Adam. Samuel didn't love me that way either. Close, but not quite. And except in horseshoes and hand grenades, close doesn't count.



"I love you, you know," I told him.



His face went blank for a moment. He said, "Yes. I do know." His pupils contracted, and his gray eyes lightened to icy winter. Then he smiled, a sweet, warm thing. "I love you, too."



I went to bed with the distinct feeling that, this time, close might really be just enough to do the trick.



SAMUEL WAS RIGHT - MORNING DID COME TOO EARLY I yawned as I turned my van onto the street where my shop was - and stopped dead in the middle of the road, all thoughts of sleep gone.



Someone had taken spray paint and had fun last night all over my place of business.



I took it all in, then drove slowly into the parking lot and parked next to Zee's old truck. He came out of the office and walked up to me as I got out and shut the van's door, a tallish, thinnish, graying man. He looked like he was in his late fifties or early sixties, but he was a lot older than that: never judge one of the fae by their outward appearance.



"Wow," I said. "You've got to admire their dedication. They must have been here for hours."



"And no one drove by?" Zee snapped. "No one called the polizei?"



"Umm, probably not. There's not a lot of traffic here at night." Reading the graffiti made me realize that there were themes and insights to be gained from the canvas that someone had made of my garage.



Green Paint, I was almost sure, was a young man whose thought patterns paralleled Ben's if the words he used were any indication.



"Look, he misspelled whore. I wonder if he did it on purpose? He spelled it right on the front window. I wonder which one he did first?"



"I have called your police friend Tony," Zee said, so angry his teeth clicked together as he spoke. "He was sleeping, but he will be here in a half hour." He might have been upset on my account, but mostly, I thought, it was the state of the garage. It had been his business long before I bought it from him. Last week I'd have been angry, too. But so much had happened since then that this ranked pretty low on my list of worries.



Red Paint had a more pressing agenda than Green Paint. Red had painted only two words: liar and murderer, over and over. Adam had installed security cameras so we'd know for sure, but I was betting Red Paint was Tim's cousin Courtney. Tim had killed his best friend before he attacked me, and there just weren't all that many people left who'd have gotten this worked up over his death.



I could hear a car approaching. An hour later, when traffic started to build up with people headed to work, I wouldn't have noticed. But it was quiet this early in the morning, so I heard my mother's approach.



"Zee," I said urgently. "Is there any way you could hide this"  -  I waved my hands at the shop - "for a few minutes?"



I didn't know much about what he could and couldn't do - outside of fixing cars and playing with metal, he didn't use magic much in front of me. But I'd seen his real face once, so I knew his personal glamour was good. If he could mask his face, surely he could hide a bunch of green and red paint.



He frowned at me in deep displeasure. You didn't ask for favors from the fae - not only was it dangerous, but they tended to take offense. Zee might love me, might owe me for freeing him from a tight spot, but that would only take me so far.



"My mother is coming," I told him. "The vampires are after me, and I have to get her to leave. She won't do it if she knows I'm in danger." Then, because I was desperate, I played dirty. "Not after what happened with Tim."



His face stilled. Then he grabbed my wrist and pulled me with him so we were both standing closer to the garage.



He put his hand on the wall next to the door. "If it works, I won't be able to remove my hand without breaking the spell."



When Mom turned the corner, the graffiti was gone.



"You're the best," I told him.



"Make her leave soon," he said with a grimace. "This is not my sort of magic."



I nodded and had started to walk to where Mom was parking her car when I saw the door clearly.



Covered by red and green paint, it hadn't been as noticeable. Someone with some artistic skill had painted an X on the door. In case I didn't get the right idea, instead of two mere lines, the shape was formed by two bones. They were ivory with grayish shadows and just a faint blush of pink - not painted by a couple of self-righteous and irate kids with spray paint. All it was missing to keep it from Jolly Rogerhood was a skull.



"You'd better hide that," Zee said. "Magic won't."



I put my back against the door and folded my arms.



"So why don't you think it's running right?" I asked him as my mother walked over from her car, with Hotep on a leash.



"Because it is old," Zee told me, taking the cue I had given him. "Because it was not well designed in the first place. Because air-cooled engines need constant tinkering."



"I was - Hey, Mom."



"Margaret," Zee said coolly.



"Mr. Adelbertsmiter." My mom didn't like Zee. She blamed him for my decision to stay in the Tri-Cities and fix cars instead of finding a teaching job, something much more in line with the kind of work she thought I should be doing. Politeness done, she turned back to me. "I thought I'd stop by before heading home." She couldn't get too close though, because as soon as he caught my scent, Hotep growled and lowered his head aggressively: protecting my mom from the bad coyote.



"I'll be fine," I told her, curling my lip at the Doberman. I actually like dogs, but not this one. "Give my love to Curt and the girls."



"Don't forget to work things out so you can come to Nan's wedding." Nan was my younger half sister, and she was getting married in six weeks. Luckily, I wasn't part of the wedding party, so all I had to do was sit and watch.



"I have it on the calendar," I promised. "Zee's going to take care of the shop for me."



She glanced at him, then back at me. "Fine, then." She started to give me a hug, then gave Hotep a rueful look. "You need to teach him to behave like you did Ringo."



"Ringo was a poodle, Mom. A fight between Hotep and me wouldn't end well for either of us. It's all right. Not his fault."



She sighed. "All right. You take care of yourself."



"Love you. Drive carefully," I told her.



"I always do. Love you."



Zee was sweating by the time the car was out of sight. He took his hand off the building and the paint returned. "I didn't do it for you," he grouched. "I just didn't want her hanging around longer than necessary."



We both stepped away from the door to look at the painting that was now mostly covered by a big, fat-lettered red "LIAR." The paint of the crossed bones was thicker than the spray paint, so even though I couldn't see most of the color, I could see the outline of it.



"The vampires dropped Stefan in my living room last night," I told him. "He was in pretty rough shape.



Peter... one of Adam's wolves, thinks whoever did it was hoping Stefan would attack me and we'd both be out of the way. Stefan wasn't in any shape to talk much, but what he did manage to convey was that Marsilia found out I killed Andre."



Zee traced his fingers over the bones and shook his head. "This might be vampire work. But, Mercy, you've been putting your little nose so many places it doesn't belong; it could almost be anyone. I'll talk to Uncle Mike - but I expect your best bet for information about it is Stefan, because it doesn't feel like fae magic. How badly is Stefan hurt?"



"If he were a werewolf, I think he'd be dead. You think this is magic?" It felt like that to me, but I was hoping I was wrong.



Zee frowned. "For an evil bloodsucker, he's not a bad sort." High praise from Zee. "And yes, there is magic here, but nothing I'm familiar with."



"Samuel thinks Stefan will be all right."



Tony turned the corner in his unmarked car, which was discreetly police modified with extra mirrors, a few extra antennae, and a bar of lights along the back window, hidden from the casual eye by extra-dark glass. He slowed when he caught sight of the damage. He pulled up next to us and opened the door.



"You decorating for Christmas early, Mercy?" Tony could blend in even better than I did. Today he looked like a Hispanic cop... like the poster child for Hispanic cops, handsome and clean-cut. When he was playing drug dealer, he did it better than the real thing. I'd first met him playing a homeless man.



There was nothing magic or supernatural about him, but the man was a chameleon.



I glanced at the building again. He was right. If you didn't pay any attention to the words, it had a sort of Christmasy look to it. The green paint tended to be short top to bottom but long front side to side. The red paint was fat and closed up. It looked sort of like garlands with red balls hanging down.



There was even "Ho, ho, ho," if you skipped around a little and deleted an "e" on the last "ho." Our green painter had a limited vocabulary and occasionally mixed up a professional working woman with a garden implement.



"Not really Christmasy thoughts," I told Tony. "But the colors are right. Actually, if the white wasn't so dingy, it would almost look festive - like that little Mexican restaurant in Pasco - the one with the really hot salsa." The fresh colors made the original paint job look tired.



"Your boyfriend still got surveillance video going?"



"Yes, but I don't know how to run it."



"I do," said Zee. "Let's go take a look."



I glanced at him. Vampires, remember? We don't want the nice human cops to see the vampires.



He gave me a bland look that clearly said, If the vampires were clumsy enough to get caught by thecameras, that was their problem. I couldn't object out loud, but if the vampires made themselves obvious, it would be Tony who was in danger.



Well, I thought as I led the way into the office, at least vampires looked like everyone else. As long as they didn't display their fangs for the camera - or throw a car around - it was unlikely they'd be spotted for what they were. And if it was obvious... Tony wasn't stupid. He knew a lot about how the fae and the werewolves worked, and I knew he suspected that there were a lot more nasties still keeping quiet about themselves.



While Zee played with the electronics, Tony looked at me.



"How are you?" He smelled of worry, with a little of the metallic scent of protective anger.



"Really tired of answering that question," I replied blandly. "How about you?"



He flashed his pearly whites at me. "Good for you. Do you think Bright Future did this?"



If our minds kept working this much in sync, I'd pity poor Tony.



"Sort of. I think this is Tim's cousin's work," I told him. "She's a member of Bright Future, but she didn't do this under their banner. Everything was directed at me - not the fae."



"You want to press charges?"



I sighed. "I'll call my insurance company. I'm afraid they might force me to press charges in order to be reimbursed. I can't afford to hire someone to repaint it unless I use my insurance, and I can't take the time off work to repaint it myself." I still had other things to pay for - the damage a fae who wanted to eat me had done to Adam's house and car, for instance. And Zee had told me he was collecting the rest of what I owed him on the business. Fae cannot lie, and we hadn't had time to work that out.



"How about Gabriel's family," Tony suggested. "There are enough of them, and they could work after school. It would be cheaper than hiring professionals and... I think they need the money."



Gabriel Sandoval was my man Friday, a high school student who came in weekends and late afternoons to do paperwork, answer phones, and do whatever else needed doing.



I had a sudden vision of the shop being overrun with little Sandovals hanging from ladders and ropes. I'd let them loose in the office for cleaning, and it was almost hard to recognize the place - for a bunch of kids they were amazingly industrious. "That's a good idea. I'll have Gabriel call his mom as soon as he gets here."



"Here," said Zee. He turned on the little security monitor and flipped a switch. The system that Adam had installed was slick and expensive. It ran on motion sensors, so we only had to watch it when there was something moving. Something first moved at 10:15; we watched a half-grown rabbit bop unhurriedly across the pavement out of sight. At midnight someone appeared at the door of the garage. It wasn't two people with spray paint, so I was pretty sure it was whoever painted a pair of crossed bones on my door.



His image was oddly shadowed, unrecognizable. The miscreant kept his face out of camera range - impressive since there was a camera placed just in front of the door to catch the face of anyone breaking in.



The only thing the camera got a clear shot of was the gloves he wore - the old-fashioned kind: white with little buttons on the wrist. There were odd glitches in the pictures, jumps where the camera turned off because there was no movement for it to follow. By the timers, it took him forty-five minutes to paint the bones on my door - of which the cameras caught about ten minutes. Part of the missing time covered how the painter got there and how he left.



I didn't think he knew the cameras were there, and he still avoided them. Some supernatural creatures just don't film well: by tradition, vampires are among them. The height was right for Wulfe, who would be my first choice in any vampire magicking. Since Wulfe was the vampire who knew for certain that I'd killed Andre, he was also my top suspect for the informer who had told Marsilia about my crimes.



The camera caught movement again.



"Stop it," Tony said.



Two figures, still indistinct, froze on the edge of the lights of my parking lot, and the little numbers on the lower right of the screen read 2:08 A.M. Time had jumped almost a half hour from when the bone painter had last been there.



"What was that all about?" he asked. "The person at your door?"



"I don't know," I told him. I almost said that his guess was as good as mine, but it wasn't. "Maybe someone was trying to break in, but didn't make it." Impossible to tell what he'd been doing from the camera shot. "It doesn't matter, though, because he obviously wasn't the one who graffitied all over."



Tony stared at me. Cops were almost as good as werewolves at sensing lies. He turned abruptly and opened the door to examine it. Like Zee, he traced the crossed bones with a light finger.



"Who have you been ticking off besides Bright Future? This looks almost like something the old Mob might do - classy, but designed to frighten the hell out of whoever received it."



I sighed, shrugged. "No one wanted me to get Zee out of the murder rap. But it's not the kind of thing a fae would do - too visible. And a werewolf who was ticked off that badly would just attack. I've got some people who'll look into it for me better than the police can."



Frowning, Tony made an irritated noise. "Is this another one of your 'It's too dangerous for you mere human cops? "



I rubbed my arms, but I wasn't cold, just chilled. I was under no illusions. Marsilia could have just killed me, but she was playing. But no matter how playful the cat is, the mouse is just as dead in the end. And the end would be whenever she decided. The only question was how many people - how many of my friends - she decided to take down with me.



Maybe I was panicking prematurely. Maybe she would settle for a punishment. Stefan was hers, there was no reason for the gut-deep feeling that he wouldn't be the last to suffer for my sins. I didn't know Marsilia well enough to make that kind of prediction.



"Mercy?"



"I don't know what the crossed bones mean." Other than bad news. "Zee tells me it is magical but probably not fae magic." Zee was out, anyone who cared to would know that he was fae, which was the reason that the garage was mine now, instead of his. There was a lot of prejudice against the fae. "He has a few contacts who'll take a look at it for me. I know a few other people I can ask, too." Adam had a witch on the pack's payroll for cleanup. She was good, but it would cost me a lot to hire her if Uncle Mike and Stefan didn't know what it was. This was shaping up into a real macaroni-and-cheese month.



"However, none of them will come within a hundred miles of a police investigation. Do you have anyone on the KPD who is an expert in magic?"



Tony held my gaze for a minute before giving up with a sigh. "Hell no, Mercy. You should have seen the brass's faces when they watched that video - " He stopped and gave me a guilty look. It was a video of me killing Tim... and all the stuff before that. He shrugged nervously and looked away. "There are a few who know something about fae or werewolves, but... if they know anything more, they keep it quiet for fear of losing their jobs."



He sighed and came back into the shop. "Go ahead," he told Zee. "Let's watch Tim's cousin paint the shop."



Once the two shadowy people moved fully onto the parking lot, Courtney was unmistakable. Instead of watching the whole process, Zee fast-forwarded it until the pair walked off with bags of empty spray-paint cans almost two hours later. He stopped the images when Courtney was close to the camera and impossible to mistake, her pretty, rounded face hard and angry. Zee flipped back and forth a little until we got a clear view of her companion's face, too.



The security system hadn't been in place long, but Zee loved gadgets. He must have spent some time playing with this one.



"It's Courtney all right... I don't remember her last name," I told Tony. "I don't recognize the man at all.



If it were Bright Future, there'd have been more people."



"It's personal," Tony agreed grimly. "You are going to want to give me those disks and file charges so we can give her some time to cool off. She's not going to stop harassing you anytime soon unless someone heads her off at the pass. It's safer for everyone if it's the police and not the werewolves or the fae."



Zee ejected the disk and handed it to Tony.



Tony frowned at it a moment. "I'm not worried about the kids, Mercy. But there's something about those bones and that guy that is sending my old radar into fits. If that's not a death threat, I'll be a monkey's uncle. You stick close to that werewolf boyfriend of yours for a while."



I gave him a martyred sigh. "Why do you think Zee is still here? I suspect I'm not going to get a moment to myself for the next year, at least."



"Yeah," he said, a smile lighting his eyes. "It's tough when people care about you."



Zee made a sound that might have been a laugh. He covered it by saying sourly, "Not that she makes it easy on them to watch over her. You just wait. All she's going to do for the next few weeks is complain, complain, complain."