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

Kyle grimaced.

"Don’t start the conversation if you don’t want an honest answer," I told him, hopping out of the chair and perusing one of the bookcases stuffed with Blu-rays, DVDs, and VHS tapes.

When Warren and Stefan came upstairs, it was obvious to me that Stefan had fed again. He was moving with something close to his usual grace.

"Don’t you have Bride of Frankenstein?" he asked, when Kyle held up The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra as our pick for the second movie. "Or Father of the Bride? Four Weddings and a Funeral?" He glanced at me. "Maybe The Butterfly Effect?" Yep, he was feeling better.

I threw a pillow at him. "Just shut up. Shut. Up."

Stefan caught the pillow, tossed it back to me, and laughed.

"What’s up?" asked Kyle.

I buried my head in the pillow. "My mother has given up on doves for the wedding and–though I didn’t know they were in contention–apparently pigeons. She wants to release butterflies and balloons instead."

Warren looked properly appalled, but Kyle laughed.

"It’s a new trend, Mercy," he said. "Right up your alley because it’s supposed to be based on an Indian legend. The story is that if you catch a butterfly and whisper your wish to it, then let it go, that the butterfly will take your request to the Great Spirit. Since you released the butterfly, when you could have killed or captured it, the Great Spirit will be inclined to view your request favorably."

"I am doomed," I told the pillow. "Doomed to butterflies and balloons."

"At least it isn’t pigeons," observed Warren practically.

Chapter 2

"SO WHAT DID YOU DO TO DARRYL?" ADAM ASKED AS he shut the driver’s-side door of my Rabbit.

Usually I drove the Rabbit, but Alpha wolves don’t deal well with commercial airline travel. Having to trust some stranger to fly the plane had left Adam with a need for control, so when his daughter Jesse and I picked him up from the airport, he got to drive.

"I didn’t do anything to Darryl," I protested.

Adam gave me a long look before he backed out of the parking spot and drove toward the exit of the airport parking lot.

"I stopped by Stefan’s on the way to movie night," I said. "Adam, Stefan is in real trouble. He’s lost a lot of his menagerie, and he hasn’t replaced them. They’re dying; he was dying."

Adam reached out for my arm and turned it so he could see the inside of my elbow. I looked at the flawless skin with interest, too. "Mercy," Adam said, as Jesse snickered in the backseat. "Quit screwing around."

"It’s on the other arm," I told him. "Just a couple of marks. In a day or so, they’ll be gone. You know it won’t hurt me. Our mate bond and the pack keeps him from connecting to me the way he would a human."

"No wonder Darryl was upset," Adam told me as he pulled up to the ticket booth behind another car. "He doesn’t like vampires."

"Stefan needs to gather more people into his menagerie," I said. "He knows it, I know it–but I can’t tell him so."

"Why not?" asked Jesse.

"Because a vampire’s menagerie is made up of victims," Adam answered. "Most of them die very slowly. Stefan’s better than the average vampire, but they are still victims. If Mercy encourages him to go out hunting, she’s telling him that she approves of what he’s doing."

"Which I don’t," I said staunchly. The driver of the car in front of us was arguing with the ticket lady. I picked at the seam of my jeans.

"Except that it’s Stefan," Adam said. "Who’s not such a bad guy for a vampire."

"Yeah," I agreed soberly. "But he’s still a vampire."

The lady in the ticket booth apparently won the argument because the driver handed her his credit card. I noticed that the ticket lady had a bouquet of helium balloons beside her; in the center was a Mylar balloon that said, "Happy Birthday, Grandma!"

"I have a request," I told Adam, as he handed the parking ticket to the lady in the booth.

"What’s that?" He looked exhausted. This was his second trip this month to the other Washington on the opposite side of the country, and it was wearing on him. I hesitated. Maybe I should wait until he’d gotten a good night’s sleep.

In the backseat of the Rabbit, Jesse giggled. She was a good kid, and we liked each other. Today, her hair was the same dark brown as her father’s. Yesterday, it had been green. Green is not a good hair color on anyone. After three weeks of hair that looked like rotting spinach, I think she finally agreed with me. When I got up this morning to go to work, she was in the process of dyeing it. The brown was somewhat more unexpected than the green had been.

"Hush, you," I told her with mock sternness. "No cracks from the peanut gallery."

"What do you need?" Adam asked me.

I already felt better with him home–the restless anxiety that was my constant companion when he was away had left and taken with it my panicky trapped feeling, too.

The lady in the parking booth nodded and waved us on because we’d timed Adam’s flight right and had only been there fifteen minutes– still in the free-parking time allotment.

The balloons beside her made my stomach clench, especially the gold ones.

"I want to get married," I told him, as Adam put the Rabbit in gear, and we put the balloons behind us.

He tilted his head and eyed me briefly before turning his attention back to the road. Likely his nose was giving him a taste of what I was feeling. Most strong feelings are vulnerable to detection when you live with werewolves. My nose was good, too, but all it told me was that he’d had a woman sitting next to him on the flight home, because her scent clung to his sleeve. Often our mating bond allowed us to know what the other was feeling or, more rarely, thinking, but it wasn’t working that way right now.

"I was under the impression that we are getting married," he said cautiously.

"Now, Dad." Jesse stuck her head between the bucket seats of my Rabbit. "She wants to get married now. Her mom called on Friday and has given up on the doves–"

"I thought you’d already told her no doves?" Adam asked me.

"–and the pigeons," his daughter continued on blithely.

"Pigeons?" said Adam thoughtfully. "Pigeons are pretty. And they taste pretty good, too."

I hit him in the shoulder. Not hard, just enough to acknowledge his teasing.

"–but finally decided that butterflies would be better," continued Jesse.

"Butterflies and balloons," I told Adam. "She wants to release butterflies and balloons. Two hundred balloons. Gold ones."