River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(30)
Author: Patricia Briggs

"Janny?" A man interrupted her before she got the boys to the river, and she frowned at him. Her husband, that was who he was. "Janny, what happened to you? Are you all right?"

He wouldn’t let her take the boys, she knew, so she let them go until she understood what the new plan should be.

"Janny?" His voice was soft, gentle, and for some reason, that made her really mad. "Janny, you’re bleeding. Did you fall into the river?"

"I need to rinse off the blood," she told him. Her voice came out a little garbled, but she didn’t think it would matter. "Can you help me?"

He followed her into the river, though he wasn’t happy about it. "It’s probably not sanitary, Janny. There’s water in the car."

While he argued, she took him deeper and deeper. The monster took him a few feet from where she’d fallen, dragging him under so fast he had no time to cry out.

"Daddy?"

The boys stood on the shore, and when she took their hands again, they followed her in. The habit of obedience and trust stronger than their instincts.

"Mercy."

"Mommy, what happened?" the older one wanted to know.

"Mercy, wake up."

"Daddy went swimming," she told him with a peaceful smile. It wanted Janny, but she hadn’t been enough, so Janny had been sent back for more. But the monster was still hungry. "Why don’t we go swimming with Daddy?"

I OPENED MY EYES, CONSCIOUS THAT I WAS BREATHING too fast and that I was drooling on Adam’s leg.

"Sorry," I said groggily. "I didn’t mean to fall asleep."

"I kept you up too late," Adam said in a tone that was not at all apologetic. "Satisfied" might be a better word. Smug. We hadn’t been living celibate before we got married, but it was hard to get much privacy when Adam was pack Alpha and had a teenage daughter. Maybe we should buy a trailer of our own.

"Got to catch your sleep while you can," Adam continued. "I didn’t get the full effect this time, but it sounded like another nightmare."

"Oh yeah," I agreed. The sick feeling in my stomach wasn’t leaving very quickly. "Creepy in that slow-motion I-can’t-stop-this kind of way. I think that Gordon’s little talk about the cut on my leg has me thinking about old horror movies."

Coyotes don’t make good slaves, he’d said right about the same time he’d said I was river marked. I’d forgotten about it in the oddity of his visit, but it must have stuck in my subconscious and given me that chilling little episode. I wonder what he thought had marked my leg. Maybe someone would tell us more that afternoon.

"I’m assuming since we aren’t there yet, I wasn’t sleeping for long."

"About ten minutes," he said. "Here’s our park."

"It doesn’t say Horsethief Lake," I told Adam, as he turned off the highway toward the river, and we started down a long, gently bending road after passing a sign that said "Columbia Hills State Park."

"Name sanitized in 2003," Adam told me. "Both the states and the U.S. Geological Survey are PCing geographical names all over the place. Just ask Bran. He’ll go on for as long as you want to listen about Jackass Creek–he claims he knew the jackass it was named after."

"Good thing the USGS doesn’t speak French, or they’d rename the Grand Tetons," I said.

Adam laughed. "You just know those French trappers were missing home when they named them, don’t you?"

The drive through the park took us past an Indian graveyard that was still being used–I could tell from all the balloons and items left on the graves. It looked almost like a birthday party had gone on there, and all of the guests had departed without taking away their presents. There was a tall chain-link fence around the graveyard with "No Trespassing" signs on it.

I can see ghosts. But I’ve never actually seen one in a graveyard. Graveyards are for the living. In my experience, ghosts tend to hang out in the same places they did while they were alive.

So what had my father been doing in a campground beside the Columbia all the way out here when he was supposed to be from Browning, Montana?

Calvin Seeker was leaning against a chain-link fence when we parked the car on a gravel lot next to a boating dock. He looked tired and older than he’d appeared last night–like almost twenty. Without moving, he watched us lock up the car and cross the road.

The chain-link fence he was leaning on ran until it met up with the railroad that went along the edge of the water, then it followed the track of the railroad out of our sight around the bluffs. There was a sign behind Gordon, but I couldn’t read it.

"Uncle Jim told me to meet you here at noon," he said, a little more politely than his posture indicated. "I’m going to be your tour guide, apparently."

"Thank you," I said.

He shrugged. "No trouble. Sometimes I volunteer to guide people on tourist days during the summer."

He scuffed his shoe in the dirt and gave Adam a wary look. "How did you manage to get in touch with Uncle Jim? He told me while we were waiting in the hospital to see how Benny was doing, but I didn’t see him pick up his phone–and I know you didn’t get his phone number while we were waiting for the ambulance last night."

"We didn’t," said Adam. "We talked to your grandfather."

Calvin came off the fence and stood up straight, his eyes a little wide. "My grandfather?" he asked, sounding startled. "Which one?"

"He called himself Gordon Seeker," I said. "He came by last night, said your uncle had sent him. He gave me some stuff that really helped with my leg."

"Ah, that grandfather." He didn’t seem too happy about it, and I was pretty sure it was the thought of Gordon Seeker that had jolted him off the fence. "I should have known."

"Something wrong?" Adam asked.

"Something’s always wrong when Grandpa Gordon stirs up the water," Calvin said. He looked at me, then looked at Adam. "Werewolf, huh?"

Adam nodded.

"Okay. Well, if Grandpa Gordon sent you, I’m going to do this a little differently. Did he say why he sent you?" He shook his head before he answered. "What am I asking? Of course not. He’d rather watch us all run around like chickens when the fox comes calling. I guess he thinks it’s funny."

"You were at the hospital last night?" I asked. "Is Benny going to be all right? Did he tell you what happened?"

"Yes," Calvin said. He squinted against the sun, and the little gesture let me see the family resemblance between him and the old man who’d come to my trailer. "Benny’ll survive. I think . . . I think I should tell you his story after I’ve played guide if you don’t mind. I don’t know that it will make more sense that way, but at least you’ll know why he wanted you to come out here." He frowned at me and Adam. "I’m not sure why he thinks it’s important that you know anything. I might question Uncle Jim, but only a fool asks Grandpa Gordon anything: He just might answer."