Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson #3)(21)
Author: Patricia Briggs

Other than that, it was like trying to pick up a trail in the Columbia Center Mall. There had simply been too many people in here. If I was trying to pick out a scent, I could do that – but trying to distinguish all the scents…it just wasn’t going to work.

Giving up, I went back to the corner where I’d scented Uncle Mike just to see if I could pick him up again – or figure out how he managed to leave only the barest trace for me to find.

I don’t know how long it was there before I finally looked up and saw the raven.

Chapter 5

It watched me from the hall doorway, as if it had simply found the open back door and flown in. But ravens are not night birds despite their color and reputation. If there had been nothing else, that alone would have told me that there was something off about this bird.

But that wasn’t the only thing. Or even the first.

As soon as I caught the glitter of the moon’s light in the shine of its feathers, I smelled it – as if it hadn’t been there until then.

Ravens smell of the carrion they eat overlaying a musty sharp scent they share with crows and magpies. This one smelled of rain, forest, and good black garden soil in the spring. Then there was its size.

The Tri-Cities has some awfully big ravens, but nothing like this bird. It was taller than the coyote I was; easily as big as a golden eagle.

And every hair on my body stood up to attention as a wave of magic swept through the room.

It took a sudden hop forward, which moved its head into the faint light that trickled through the windows. There was a spot of white on its head, like a drop of snow. But what caught most of my attention were its eyes: bloodred, like a white rabbit’s, they glittered eerily as it stared right at me…and through me, as if it were blind.

For the first time in my life I was afraid to drop my eyes. Werewolves put great value on eye contact – and I’d blithely used that all my life. I have no trouble dropping my eyes, acknowledging anyone’s superiority and then doing whatever I please. Among the werewolves, once dominance was acknowledged, the dominant werewolf could, by custom, do no more than cuff me out of his way…while I then ignored him or plotted how to get back at him as I chose.

But this wasn’t a werewolf, and I was consumed with the conviction that if I moved at all, it would destroy me – though it was not making any sign of aggression.

I value my instincts, so I stayed motionless.

It opened its mouth and gave a rattling cry, like old bones shaken roughly in a wooden box. Then it dismissed me from its notice. It strode to the corner and knocked the walking stick to the floor. The raven took the old thing into its mouth and without so much as a glance over its shoulder took flight through the wall.

Fifteen minutes later, I was well on the way back home – in human shape and driving my car.

Being not exactly human myself and raised by werewolves, I’d thought I’d seen just about everything: witches, vampires, ghosts, and a half dozen other things that aren’t supposed to exist. But that bird had been real, as solid as me – I’d seen its ribs rise and fall as it breathed and I’d touched that walking stick myself.

I’d never seen one solid object go through another solid object – not without some pretty impressive CGI graphics or David Copperfield.

Magic, despite Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, just doesn’t work like that. If the bird had faded, become immaterial or something before it hit the wall, I might have accepted that as magic.

Maybe, just maybe, I’d been like the rest of the world, accepting the fae at their face value. Acting like they were something familiar, that they were constrained by rules I could understand and feel comfortable with.

If anyone should have known better, it would be me. After all, I well understood that what the public knew about the werewolves was just the polished tip of a nasty iceberg. I knew that the fae were, if anything, worse about secrecy than the wolves. Though Zee had been my friend for a decade, I knew very little about the fae side of his life. I knew he was a Steelers fan, that his human wife had died of cancer shortly before I met him, and that he liked tartar sauce on his fries – but I didn’t know what he looked like beneath his glamour.

There were lights on at my house when I pulled the Rabbit into the driveway and parked it next to Samuel’s Mercedes and a strange Ford Explorer. I’d been hoping Samuel would be home and awake, so I could use him as a sounding board – but the SUV put paid to that idea.

I frowned at it. It was two in the morning, an odd time for visitors. Most visitors.

I took in a deep breath through my nose, but couldn’t catch a whiff of vampire – or anything else. Even the night air smelled duller than usual. Probably just a leftover from the shift from coyote to human. My human nose was better than most people’s but quite a bit less sensitive than the coyote’s, so changing to human was a little like taking out a hearing aid. Still…

Vampires could hide their scent from me if they chose to.

I shivered in the warm night air. I think I would have stayed out there all night, except that I heard the murmur of guitar. I couldn’t see Samuel playing for Marsilia, the mistress of the vampire seethe, so I climbed up the steps and went in.

Uncle Mike sat on the overstuffed chair Samuel had replaced my old flea-market find with. Samuel was half-stretched out on the couch like a mountain lion. He played idle bits of music on his guitar. He might look relaxed, but I knew him too well. The cat who was purring on the back of the couch, just behind Samuel’s head, was the only relaxed person in the room.

"There’s hot water for cocoa," said Samuel, without looking away from Uncle Mike. "Why don’t you get yourself some, then come tell us about Zee, who put you on the scent of their murderer so they could go kill him. Then tell me what you’ve been doing tonight that would leave you smelling of blood and magic?"

Yep, Samuel was ticked at Uncle Mike.

I riffled through the cupboards until I found the box of emergency cocoa. Not the milk chocolate with marshmallow kind, but the hard stuff, dark chocolate with a bit of jalapeno pepper for flavor. I wasn’t really upset enough now to need it, but it kept me busy while I thought about how I might keep matters peaceable. Real cocoa needs milk, so I put some in a sauce pan and began heating it up.

I’d left Samuel and the other werewolves this morning knowing only that Zee was in jail and needed a lawyer. Obviously, someone had filled Samuel in a bit since then. Almost certainly not Uncle Mike.

Probably not Warren, who would know everything from the lawyer’s meeting – I’d told Kyle to go ahead and tell him what I’d told the lawyer. Warren could keep secrets.

Ah. Warren wouldn’t keep secrets from his pack Alpha, Adam. Adam would see no reason not to tell Samuel the whole story if he asked.