Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)(42)
Author: Patricia Briggs

Mary Jo’s lip curled. "Suck-up."

"You have some nerve throwing stones," he told her, "when you just sat there and watched them set fire to Mercy’s house."

"What?" said Darryl in a very, very soft voice.

But Mary Jo wasn’t listening to Darryl. Instead, she half rose to her feet and leaned on the table, threatening Ben. "So what? You think I should have taken on a bunch of unknown fae for her?"

Auriele stood up and gave the table a hard shove, pinning Mary Jo against the wall behind her with a bang that must have hurt. If someone didn’t know her very well, I suppose it might be possible to underestimate Auriele. She was delicately built, as some Hispanic women are, and looked as though she’d never gotten her beautifully manicured hands dirty.

Most of the pack would rather have Darryl mad at them than Auriele.

Darryl’s mate’s voice was frozen as she asked, "You just watched a bunch of fae burn down the house of a pack member?"

I’d picked my cocoa up off the table when it moved and managed to save Jesse’s, too. With my hip, I altered the trajectory of the table just enough to make certain that it didn’t hit Jesse. Darryl caught Ben’s cup – he’d finished his own. So it was only Mary Jo’s and Auriele’s cocoa that spilled across the table and down on the floor.

Into the tense silence of that moment, the interruption of my ringing phone seemed decidedly welcome. I thumped the two mugs I held down onto the table and pulled the phone out of my pocket.

I didn’t recognize either the number or the area code. Usually, I recognize the number of people who call me in the middle of the night.

"Hello?"

"Mercedes Thompson, you have something that belongs to me. I have something that belongs to you. Shall we play?"

I hit the speaker button and set the phone in the middle of the table. Of course, everyone except for Jesse could have overheard the call anyway – but with all of us listening full volume, maybe someone would hear something different. My cell was relatively new, and I’d paid extra to get one with good sound quality.

Darryl pulled out his phone – one of those miniature computers with every gadget known to man – hit the screen a couple of times, and set it next to mine. "Recording," he mouthed.

"Everything I have went up in flames last night," I told my unknown caller, and after I said it, the truth of that hit me again. Poor Medea. I set my jaw with determination that this person – who sounded female to me, though a female with a deep smoker’s voice – would never hear the pain she’d caused me. Assuming that this was one of the fae who set the fire.

"It wasn’t there," she said – and I was growing more confident it was a "she." Her next words made me certain that she was one of the fae, too. "It would have revealed itself in fire or in death. We watched it burn, watched the fire eat your life, and what you took from Phineas Brewster wasn’t in the coals or in the ashes."

Fae often say things that sound odd to human ears. I’ve found myself spouting Zee’s sayings and having people stop to look at me.

"In fire or in death," I said, repeating the phrase that had sounded like a quote of some kind.

"It reveals itself when the one who holds it dies or if it burns," she clarified impatiently.

"Your bounty hunter seemed like the kind of man who gets things done," I said. "Why didn’t you have him kill me instead of relying on backup?" Growing up with werewolves has taught me several ways of controlling the situation without being too aggressive. Asking a question a little off topic is one way of doing it – and if the question is hidden as another question, my chances of getting information are even better.

"Kelly?" she said, her voice incredulous. But she knew who I was talking about. She must be the fae who’d created the incident that had almost gotten Maia hurt. "Kelly would never hurt a woman. But the police wouldn’t have believed it."

There was a tone to the woman’s voice that told me she knew Kelly Heart personally – and felt a veiled contempt for something in him that she thought was a weakness.

"I take it I am speaking to the one who calls herself Daphne Rondo?" I’d remembered the missing producer’s name because she shared the first with Scooby Doo’s token cute girl and it had caught my attention. I phrased the question carefully because the fae cannot lie – and it probably wasn’t her real name. Mostly the fae don’t give their true names to anyone.

"Sometimes," she said, but she didn’t like it that I’d figured her out. She could have refused to answer, of course, but that would have been as good as an answer anyway. A fae who wasn’t Kelly Heart’s missing producer would take great pleasure in informing me I was mistaken.

"Mr. Heart is worried about you," I told her. And then could have bitten my tongue. This woman did not deserve to know about his concern – she’d sent him here to die. If Adam had believed that Kelly had killed me, he would have personally seen to Heart’s death. Anyone who knew I was dating the local Alpha would understand that much – it was why she had contrived to set the bounty hunter up. "He’d feel differently if he knew what you planned for him."

"If he knew what I was after, he would support me with his whole heart," she said with sudden passion that told me she had her doubts, and they bothered her. "He is my soldier, and he follows my orders."

I’d heard that kind of talk before and felt my lips curl in anger – on behalf of a stranger who’d mainly just ticked me off . . . but mostly for a friend of mine, Stefan, another soldier who’d been used too hard and had finally broken.

"You are overburdened with self-importance," I told her. "But that is a common condition with the fae." I was tired, and it was hard to keep to the fine line that kept her from taking the upper hand without enraging her. Who did she have? Stefan? I hadn’t seen the vampire for weeks. Zee? I hadn’t called him as I’d planned to before my house burned down.

"You are overburdened with stupidity," she replied with icy contempt. I’d pricked her about Kelly . . . not that she’d hurt him, but that he might not do her bidding if he’d known what she wanted. "But that is a common problem with humans. Especially humans who involve themselves in matters that are none of their business." There was a pause as if she was weighing some matter. Then she said, "You would be wise not to irk me when I hold something you value."

There were two distinct sounds right as she finished. The first was something striking flesh, the second a muffled cry. We all stilled, listening for a hint of identity.

"Male," mouthed Darryl.

I nodded. I’d caught that as well. The cry was followed by a third sound: someone who was gagged trying to talk. He was furious. There was something about the sound . . . not Stefan, not Zee.