Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)(27)
Author: Patricia Briggs

He shook himself, gave me a look I couldn’t fathom, and hopped back into the Rabbit. He flattened himself on the seat, stretching across the gap between and lowered his muzzle to the driver’s side seat.

"You’re staying here, I take it?" I asked. It must not be anything dangerous, or he wouldn’t let me go on my own – Sam with his wolf ascendant had always been even more protective of me than Samuel himself had.

Maybe one of the other werewolves was nearby. It would make sense for Sam to avoid them. I took another deep breath. I still didn’t scent anyone I recognized, but Samuel’s nose was better than mine outside of coyote shape.

I moved his tail out of danger and shut his car door. I opened the back door to get the book – and reconsidered. Phin’s neighbor might have been fae and faintly creepy, but that didn’t mean there was anything wrong. But there could be, and with Sam in the car, the book was just as safe here. If Phin was at the bookstore, I’d just come back and get it. If his neighbor or someone other than Phin was around instead, I’d regroup.

"I’m going to leave the book in the backseat," I told Sam. "I should be right back."

In the short time since we’d left the park, the temperature had dropped, and the wind had picked up. My light jacket wasn’t quite up to the wind and the damp. I gave the gray skies a good look – if it rained tonight and the temperature dropped much from here, we might have a good, hard freezing rain. Montana may have steep, windy roads that are nasty when covered with snow and ice, but those are nothing compared to the Tri-Cities when the freezing rain turns the pavement into a polished ice-skating rink.

I trotted through the parking lot and narrowly avoided getting run over by a Subaru that was backing out without looking. I kept an eye out for other idiots, and so it wasn’t until I stepped onto the sidewalk and looked up into the window of the bookstore that I saw a gray-haired woman behind the counter. I felt a frizzle of relief: she wasn’t the creepy neighbor.

I reached for the door and saw that the closed sign was still up – with an addition. Someone had taped a piece of white paper with UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE printed in thick black Sharpie.

While I hesitated, the woman inside gave me a cheery smile and walked up to the door, turning the dead bolt so she could open it. Her movements were surprisingly brisk and sprightly for a woman of her grandmotherly roundness and wrinkles.

"Hello, dear," she said. "I’m afraid we’re closed today. Did you need something?"

She was fae. I could smell it on her – earth and forest and magic with a touch of something burning, air and salt water. I’d never smelled the like, and I’ve met two of the Gray Lords who rule the fae.

Most fae smell to me like one of the elements the old alchemists claimed made up the universe – earth, air, fire, and water. Never more than one. Not until this woman.

Her faded hazel eyes smiled into mine.

"Is Phin around?" I said. "Who are you? I haven’t seen you here before." I wasn’t a regular customer; maybe she worked with Phin all the time. But I was betting she didn’t. If she’d helped often, I’d have smelled her in the store the first time I’d come here. I would have remembered if I’d caught her scent.

Lots of things scare me – like vampires, for instance. Since I’ve become more intimately acquainted with them, they scare me even more than they used to. I know that they can kill me. But I’ve killed one and helped to kill two others.

The fae . . .

In the most terrifying horror films, you never see what is killing people. I know that’s because the unknown is far scarier than anything some makeup or special-effects person can come up with. The fae are like that, their true faces concealed behind other forms – and designed to blend in with the human race and hide what they truly are.

This sweet-faced person who looked like someone’s grandmother might be one of those who ate children who were lost in the woods, or drowned young men who trespassed in her forest. Of course, it was possible that she might be one of the lesser or gentler fae – just as she looked. But I didn’t think so.

I’m smarter than Snow White: I wouldn’t be eating any apples she gave me.

She ignored my questions – fae don’t give out their true names – and said, "Are you a friend of his? You’re shivering. I don’t suppose it would hurt anything if you came in and sat down a bit to warm up. I’m just helping straighten out the books while Phin is gone."

"Gone?" I wasn’t going into that shop alone with her. Instead, I pounded her with the kind of questions any customer . . . okay, any obsessive customer would ask. "Where is he? Do you know how I can get in touch with him? Why isn’t the store open?"

She smiled. "I don’t know where he is at the moment." Another evasion. She might know that he was in the basement, for instance, but not exactly where he was standing. "He’ll probably let me know when he gets a chance to call me. Who should I tell him came asking after him?"

I looked into her guileless eyes and knew that Tad had been right to be worried. All I had was Phin’s unresponsive phone, a nasty neighbor, and the store closed – but my instincts were clamoring. Something had happened to Phin, something bad.

I didn’t know him well, but I liked him. And, going by the phone call Tad had received, whatever had happened to him was tied to the book he’d loaned to me. Which made it my fault. Maybe if I hadn’t kept it to read this past month, he’d still be safe in his store.

I smiled back at her, a polite smile. "Don’t worry about it. I’ll stop in another time."

She snapped her fingers. "Wait just a minute. My grandson told me that he’d loaned a nice young woman a rather valuable book that she should be returning soon."

I raised my eyebrows. "Right now I’m interested in a first British edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone." Not really a lie. It would be interesting, and I didn’t tell her I was trying to buy one. I don’t know if the fae can figure out if someone is lying as well as the werewolves can, but any group that has a prohibition against lying that is as stringent as the fae’s probably has a method to detect when it happens.

"He didn’t tell me about anything like that," she said suspiciously, as if he would have normally.

But she had lost the chance to convince me that she was Phin’s assistant when she allowed my comment that she was a stranger to his store to stand.

"I suspect it’ll take him a while," I told her. "I just stopped by to check in with him. I’ll come back another time." I stopped the "thanks" that was on the tip of my tongue and substituted "Bye, now" and a casual wave.

I felt her eyes on my back until I was hidden behind rows of cars, and I was glad I’d parked the car a long way from the mall. Sam moved his head off my seat without raising any part of his body enough that he might be seen through the windows. He was hiding.