River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(71)
Author: Patricia Briggs

I was still feeling a little muddled, so I’m not sure if my sudden insight came from our mating bond or from the fact that he sounded a little too much like my mother did when she told my little sister that she’d found her diary and read it. Since I’d told Nan that she shouldn’t write anything down she didn’t want someone to read, I’d been surprised by how upset my mother was. Turned out that Nan figured that if someone was going to sneak and read her diary, they deserved what they got. It took her about ten minutes to convince Mom she wasn’t dealing drugs to pay for her abortion.

"You read the letters," I said, doing my best to sound offended.

"I read the letter you wrote to me."

I yawned, and it sort of ruined my pretense of indignation. I patted whatever part of him I could reach. "That’s okay," I told him. "It had your name on it."

We drove for a while more before he spoke again. "I love you, too."

I smiled at him without opening my eyes. "I know you do."

I dozed a little, and, before I knew it, we’d pulled into Adam’s driveway. Someone would have to back the thing out, but it wouldn’t be me, so I decided not to worry about it.

The screen door opened, and Jesse bubbled out.

"Dad. Hey, Dad. Why’re you home early? Someone from your office came and left a big package that says it’s a wheelchair in the garage. Is that what it is? Why did we get a wheelchair?"

I opened my door and contemplated the difficulties of making it down to the ground while Adam hugged Jesse. If we’d been in my Rabbit, I could have gotten out on my own, because my Rabbit doesn’t have a three-and-a-half-foot drop to the ground. Not that it would have done me much good, though. I wasn’t going anywhere on my own anyway.

Jesse looked up, and her jaw dropped. "Dad," she said in a horrified voice, "what did you do to Mercy?"

UNCLE MIKE WAS NOT HAPPY WHEN I CALLED HIM THE next morning and told him we killed all the otterkin. He did listen when I told him what they had done, though. I gave him an inventory of the damage to my person (I’d quit taking anything but over-the-counter painkillers and was feeling whiny).

"How many stitches?" he asked when I was through.

"One hundred and forty-two," I told him. "And four staples. And all of them itch."

It wasn’t so bad when I had a distraction. Since I couldn’t do anything, that meant talking to people. I was home alone right now–which was why I’d decided to call Uncle Mike and fill him in.

"And do you know, when you have a broken hand and a giant cut under your arm, crutches don’t work, and neither does a wheelchair unless you have a minion to wheel you around. My good hand is burnt, so I can’t even turn circles."

"I think I’ll pitch it to the Gray Lords as suicide by werewolf," he said after a long moment of silence. "Anyone who hurts you in front of Adam is too stupid to live anyway."

"Adam only killed five of them. I killed the other one." I paused. "Okay, not quite. I was holding the walking stick when it killed him."

There was a long pause. "Oh?"

I told him about using the walking stick to kill the river devil, what the otterkin had told me afterward, and how the walking stick had killed him.

"You quenched Lugh’s walking stick in the blood of an ancient Native American monster?"

"I screwed up?" He sighed. "What else was there to be doing? If you hadn’t used it, you’d be dead–and there would be a monster loose eating people. But there’s no denying that it’s not a good thing. Violence begets violence–especially when there’s magic involved."

"What should I do with it?"

"What can you do? Try not to kill anyone else with it."

"Can I give it to you?" It wasn’t that I was afraid of it–I didn’t even know what was wrong with it. It was that I had failed to keep it safe. It should go to someone who would take better care of it.

"We tried that before, remember?" Uncle Mike said. "It didn’t work."

"The oakman used it to kill a vampire. Why didn’t that do anything to it?"

"I don’t know," Uncle Mike said. "But if I were to guess, it would be because it wasn’t the oakman’s walking stick–it was yours. Intent and ownership are pretty powerful magic."

"Oh." I remembered the last thing I needed to talk to him about. "About your trailer. Do you have a favorite body shop? If not, I know a few people." SIX DAYS LATER I WAS CHANNEL SURFING IN THE BASEMENT TV room when I heard someone set foot on the top of the stairs.

"Go away," I said.

I was tired of everyone, which was ungracious of me. But I don’t like being dependent–it makes me cranky. I needed someone to carry me upstairs and downstairs. I needed someone to help me outside and inside. I even needed someone to help me into the bathroom because none of the bathroom doors were big enough for a wheelchair. It hadn’t been so bad when Adam was here, but he’d had to leave two days ago and tend to some disaster in Texas. He wouldn’t have gone, except that it had something to do with some hush-hush government installation, and he was the only one in the company with high enough clearance to deal with it.

Today was particularly grim as I’d gone to a doctor’s appointment where I’d hoped to get a walking cast–and instead had been told I had to stay off the leg entirely for at least two weeks. Warren had carried me and my wheelchair down the stairs and then proceeded to hover. I finally asked him to leave me alone in a manner that I’d have to apologize for when I was through feeling sorry for myself–and when Jesse got home from her date, because I’d left my cell phone in my coat, which was upstairs in the kitchen. The only phone in the basement was down three stairs. To top it off, my leg had objected to all the abuse and now wouldn’t quit throbbing. The acetaminophen wasn’t cutting it. So I was sitting in front of the TV with my eyes leaking, and I didn’t want any witnesses.

The feet on the stairs just kept coming. I was supposed to be alone in the house, but Adam’s house generally had pack members showing up at all hours anyway.

"I said–"

"Go away," said Stefan. "I heard you."

He didn’t increase his speed, which was kind of him because it let me wipe my eyes before he could see me.

"I’d turn around," I said with some bitterness, "but my doctor tells me that I’ve been damaging my hands, and I’ll have scarring if I keep it up. So I can’t even make the damned thing go in circles anymore."

Stefan stepped around in front of me and turned off the TV so the room was shrouded in darkness. He crouched so he was eye to eye with me.