Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson #3)(10)
Author: Patricia Briggs

He rubbed his shoulder ruefully and said, "I will." I gave him a dirty look. I hadn’t hurt him – even if he’d been human, I wouldn’t have done any real hurt.

He stopped faking and grinned. "Okay. Okay. I heard you drive up and wanted to make sure everything was all right."

"And you couldn’t resist sneaking up on me."

He shook his head. "I wasn’t sneaking. You need to be more alert. What was up?"

"No demon-possessed vampires this time," I told him. "Just a little sleuthing." And a trip to the seashore.

A second-floor window opened, and Kyle stuck his head and shoulders out so he could look down at us. "If you two are finished playing Cowboy and Indian out there, some of us would like to get their beauty sleep."

I looked at Warren. "You heard ‘um, Kemo Sabe. Me go to my little wigwam and get ‘um shut-eye."

"How come you always get to play the Indian?" whined Warren, deadpan.

"’Cause she’s the Indian, white boy," said Kyle. He pushed the window up all the way and set a hip on the casement. He was wearing little more than most of the men in the movie we’d been watching, and it looked better on him.

Warren snorted and ruffled my hair. "She’s only half – and I’ve known more Indians than she has."

Kyle grinned wickedly and said, in his best Mae West voice, "Just how many Indians have you known, big boy?"

"Stop right there." I made a play at plugging my ears. "Lalalala. Wait until I hop in my faithful Rabbit and ride off into the sunrise." I stood on my tiptoes and kissed Warren somewhere in the region of his chin.

"It is pretty late," Warren said. "Do you still want to meet us at Tumbleweed tomorrow?"

Tumbleweed was the yearly folk music festival held on Labor Day weekend. The Tri-Cities were close enough to the coast that the cream of the Seattle and Portland music scene usually showed up in force: blues singers, jazz, Celtic, and everything in between. Cheap, good entertainment.

"I wouldn’t miss it. Samuel still hasn’t managed to wiggle out of performing and I have to be there to heckle him."

"Ten A.M. by the River Stage, then," Warren said.

"I’ll be there."

Chapter 3

Tumbleweed was held in Howard Amon Park, right off the Columbia River in Richland. The stages were scattered as far apart as could be managed to minimize interference between performances. The River Stage, where Samuel was to perform, was about as far from available parking as it was possible to get. Normally that wouldn’t have bothered me, but karate practice this morning hadn’t gone so well. Grumbling to myself, I limped slowly across the grass.

The park was still mostly empty of anyone except musicians toting various instrument cases as they trudged across the vast green fields on their way to whatever stage they were performing on. Okay, the park isn’t really that huge, but when your leg hurts – or when you’re hauling a string bass from one end to the other – it’s big enough.

The bassist in question and I exchanged weary nods of mutual misery as we passed each other.

Warren and Kyle were already seated on the grass in front of the stage and Samuel was arranging his instruments on various stands, when I finally made it.

"Something wrong?" Kyle asked with a frown as I sat down next to him. "You weren’t limping last night."

I wiggled on the lumpy, dew-dampened grass until I was comfortable. "Nothing important. Someone caught me a good one on my thigh at karate practice this morning. It’ll settle down in a bit. I see the button men found you already."

Tumbleweed was nominally free, but you could show your support by purchasing a button for two dollars…and the button men were relentless.

"We got one for you, too." Warren reached across Kyle and handed a button to me.

I pinned it on my shoe, where it wouldn’t be immediately obvious. "I bet I can attract four button men before lunch," I told Kyle.

He laughed. "Do I look like a newbie? Four before lunch is too easy."

More people gathered in front of Samuel’s stage than I’d expected, given that his was one of the first performances.

I recognized some of the emergency room personnel who Samuel worked with near the center of the audience with a larger group. They were setting up lawn chairs and chattering together in such a fashion that I was pretty sure they all worked at Samuel’s hospital.

Then there were the werewolves.

Unlike the medical personnel, they didn’t sit together, but scattered themselves here and there around the fringes. All of the Tri-City werewolves, except for Adam, the Alpha, were still pretending to be human – so they mostly avoided hanging out together in public. They’d all have heard Samuel sing before, but probably not at a real performance because he didn’t do them often.

A cool breeze came off the Columbia River, just a hop, skip, and a jump over a narrow footpath away – which was why the stage was the River Stage. The morning was warm, as early fall mornings in the Tri-Cities often are, so the slight edge to the wind was more welcome than not.

One of the festival volunteers, wearing a painter’s apron covered with Tumbleweed buttons from this and previous years, welcomed us to this year’s festival and thanked us all for coming. He spent a few minutes talking about sponsors and raffles while the audience shifted restlessly before he introduced Samuel as the Tri-Cities’ own folksinging physician.

We clapped and whistled as the announcer bounced down the stairs and back to the sound station where he would keep the speakers behaving properly. Someone settled in behind me, but I didn’t look around, because Samuel walked to center stage with his violin dangling almost carelessly from one hand.

He was wearing a cobalt blue dress shirt that set off his eyes, tipping the balance from gray to blue. He’d tucked the shirt into new black jeans that were tight enough to show off the muscle in his legs.

I had seen him just this morning as he drank his coffee and I ran out the door. There was no reason that he should still affect me like this.

Most werewolves are attractive; it goes with the permanently young-and-muscled look. Samuel had more, though. And it wasn’t only that extra zap that the more dominant wolves have.

Samuel looked like a person you could trust – something about the hint of humor that lurked in the back of his deep-set eyes and the corner of his mouth. It was part of what made him such a good doctor. When he told his patients they were going to be fine, they believed him.

His eyes locked on mine for a moment and the quirk of his mouth powered up to a smile.

It warmed me to my toes, that smile: reminded me of a time when Samuel was my whole world, a time when I believed in a knight in shining armor who could make me happy and safe.