River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(28)
Author: Patricia Briggs

It didn’t matter that I knew quite well that the dream meant nothing. It didn’t take a Carl Jung to see where the otters had come from. And I suspected that the imprisoned feeling was the effect of the antihistamine itself, which left me sluggish. The hunger? That was even easier. I’d been hopping back and forth from human to coyote yesterday; it would make anyone hungry.

I almost matched Adam’s appetite when we sat down for breakfast–cooked in utter civilization on the quarter-sized stove.

"Bad dreams," he said matter-of-factly. The mating bond had clearly given him insight at an inappropriate time again.

"Are we ever going to be able to control the mating bond when it does that?" I asked, shoveling in hash browns as fast as I could without having them dribble out the side of my mouth. "Did you get the whole thing?"

He smiled and nodded. "Otters and all. At least you ate one of them." He ate almost as fast as I did, but he was better at it. Unless I really paid attention, I never noticed him getting the food from his plate to his mouth. It was not so much a matter of speed but of exquisite manners and distraction.

"How’s your leg and feet?" he asked as I washed up. He’d cooked, so I cleaned. I wiggled my bare toes and did a few deep knee bends. "The calf aches a little, but the feet are fine."

"ARE WE DOING THIS BECAUSE GORDON SEEKER TOLD us to?" I asked Adam, as he drove us the short distance to the Maryhill Museum of Art.

"I’d intended to take you this morning," he answered slowly. "But I have to admit that I’m curious."

I put my hand on his thigh, and said, "We could head home–or drive to Seattle, Portland, or even Yakima and find a nice hotel." I looked out from the highway and down onto the river. From where the highway was, the river looked small and relatively tamed. "I have the feeling that if we stay, things might get interesting."

He gave me a quick smile before looking back at the road. "Oh? What gave you that feeling? People getting their feet bitten off? The ghost of your father? A mysterious old Indian who disappears at the river without a sign of how he left? Maybe Yo-yo Girl’s prophecy of the apocalypse?" "Yo-yo Girl?" I yelped. "Edythe is Yo-yo Girl? Yo-yo Girl sent us here?"

He showed his teeth. "Feeling scared yet? Want to go somewhere safe?"

I couldn’t help myself. I set my cheek against his arm and laughed. "It won’t help, will it?" I said after a moment. "We’d just run into Godzilla or the Vampire from Hell. Trouble just follows you around."

He rubbed the top of my head. "Hey, Trouble. Let’s go find out what your mysterious Indian wanted us to know."

IN SEATTLE OR PORTLAND, THE MARYHILL MUSEUM would have been a nice museum. Out in the middle of nowhere, it was spectacular. The grounds were green and well tended. I didn’t see any of the peacocks as we walked from the parking lot to the entrance, but I could hear and smell them just fine. I’d seen it from the highway on the other side of the river while driving to and from Portland, but I’d never actually been in it before.

The first time someone tried to tell me about the museum, I thought they were crazy. In the middle of eastern Washington state, a hundred miles from Portland, a hundred and fifty miles from the Tri-Cities, the museum contained the furniture of the Victorian-era Queen of Romania and work by Auguste Rodin.

That was the first question answered by the slick brochure they handed us at the front door. Sam Hill, financier and builder of roads and towns –and this museum, which was meant to be his home–was a friend of Lo?e Fuller. Lo?e Fuller was a dancer of the early nineteen hundreds, famous in Europe for her innovative use of fabric and veils–and she was a friend of royalty and artists, notably Marie, Queen of Romania, (who designed furniture as a hobby) and the French sculptor Auguste Rodin.

Thus came the furniture of the Queen of Romania and a good-sized collection of Rodin’s sculptures to the middle of nowhere.

Given its isolation, I expected that Adam and I would be the only ones in the museum, but I was wrong. In the first room, where the furniture and assorted memorabilia of the Victorian age held court, there were several groups of people. A pair of older women, a family of five that included a stroller, and a middle-aged couple. The room was big enough that it didn’t seem crowded at all.

I found the heavily carved furniture beautiful, but stark and uncomfortable-looking–more suitable for a stage production than as something to have in your living room. Maybe a few cushions would have softened the square contours and made it more inviting.

The remainder of that floor was given over to a collection of paintings displayed in a series of interconnecting rooms.

Adam and I separated in the first room of paintings, taking different paths around the artwork. Most of it was very good, if not spectacular, until I came to an oil piece by a familiar painter. I must have made a noise because Adam slid up beside me and put his face against my neck.

"What?" Adam asked, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the other visitors.

"Do you see that?" I said, nudging him toward the painting I was looking at.

It wasn’t the most beautiful painting in the room, not by a long shot. There were also others more detailed, better executed even, but it spoke to me in a way the others did not. Here among English and Greek landscapes, portraits of maids and wildflowers, the cowboys looked a little out of place.

Adam leaned forward, which pressed him more tightly against me without being too flagrant, to read the display information. I snorted at him in mock dismay. "I can see that you are not a true Westerner, or you’d have recognized him right off."

"No, ma’am," he drawled mildly, though I could see a dimple peeping out. I loved his dimple–and I loved it even more when he dropped into the accent of his youth. I especially loved the warm strength of him against me. I was so easy. "I’m a Southerner."

"Just like most of the cowboys he painted," I told him. "The West was populated by Southerners who didn’t want to fight in the War Between the States–or who came here after they lost. That, my dear uncultured wolf, is a Charlie Russell–cowboy turned artist. Without him, Montana’s history would just be a footnote in a Zane Grey novel. Charlie drew what he saw–and he saw a lot. Not a romantic, but a true realist. Every once in a while, some old Montana rancher still finds a few of his watercolors rolled up and forgotten in the bunkhouse. Like winning the lottery, only better."

Adam’s shoulders shook. "I sense passion," he said, his voice soft with laughter, tickling my ear as he spoke into it. "But is it the art or the history that speaks to you?"