Mercedes Thompson 03: Iron Kissed Read online

  It was too crowded for me to get a good handle on Austin’s scent when he was sitting across the table, but impulsively, I managed to move the hand I’d used to shake his against my nose as if I had an itch—and abruptly the evening turned into something besides an outing to keep my mind off my worries.

  This man had been at O’Donnell’s house—and I knew why one of Jesse’s attackers had smelled familiar.

  Scent is a complicated thing. It is both a single identification marker and an amalgam of many scents. Most people use the same shampoo, deodorant, and toothpaste all the time. They clean their houses with the same cleaners; they wash their clothes with the same laundry soap and dry them with the same dryer sheets. All these scents combine with their own personal scent to make up their distinctive smell.

  This Austin wasn’t the man who’d attacked Jesse. He was too old, a couple of years out of high school at least, and not quite the right scent—but he lived in the same household. A lover or a brother, I thought, and put money on the brother.

  Austin Summers. I would remember that name and see if I could come up with an address. Hadn’t there been a Summers boy that Jesse had had a crush on last year? Before the werewolves had admitted to their existence. Back when Adam had just been a moderately wealthy businessman. John, Joseph…something biblical…Jacob Summers. That was it. No wonder she was so upset.

  I sipped my pop and glanced up at Tim, who was eating a slice of pizza. I’d have bet my last nickel that he wasn’t a police officer—he had none of the usual tells that mark a cop and he wasn’t in the habit of carrying a gun. Even if they are unarmed, police officers always smell a little of gunpowder.

  The odds of Tim being Cologne Man had just made it near a hundred percent. So what was a man who loved Celtic folk songs and languages doing in the house of a man who hated the largely Celtic fae?

  I smiled at Tim and said sincerely, “Actually, Mr. Milanovich, we sort of met this weekend. You were talking to Samuel after his performance.”

  There were places where my Native American skin and coloring made me memorable, but not in the Tri-Cities, where I blended in nicely with the Hispanic population.

  “Call me Tim,” he said, while trying frantically to place me.

  Samuel saved him from continued embarrassment by his arrival.

  “Here you are,” he said to me after murmuring an apology to someone trying to walk through the narrow aisle in the opposite direction. “Sorry it took me so long, Mercy, but I took a minute to stop and talk.” He set a little red plastic marker with a black 34 on top of the table next to Tim’s pizza. “Mr. Milanovich,” he said as he sat down next to me. “Good to see you.”

  Of course Samuel would remember his name; he was like that. Tim was flattered to be recognized; it was written all over his earnest face.

  “And this is Austin Summers,” I yelled pleasantly, louder than I needed to, since Samuel’s hearing was at least as good as mine. “Austin, meet the folksinging physician, Dr. Samuel Cornick.” Ever since I heard them introduce him as “the folksinging physician,” I’d known he hated it—and I’d known I had to use it.

  Samuel gave me an irritated look before turning a blandly smiling expression to the men we shared the table with.

  I kept a genial expression on my face to conceal my triumph at irritating him while Samuel and Tim fell into a discussion of common themes in English and Welsh folk songs; Samuel charming and Tim pedantic. Tim spoke less and less as they continued.

  I noticed that Austin watched his friend and Samuel with the same pleasantly interested expression that I’d adopted, and I wondered what he was thinking about that he felt he had to conceal.

  A tall man stood up on a chair and gave a whistle that would have cut through a bigger crowd than this one. When everyone was silent, he welcomed us, said a few words of thanks to various people responsible for the Tumbleweed.

  “Now,” he said, “I know that you all know the Scallywags…” He bent down and picked up a bodhran. He sprayed the drumhead with a small water bottle and then spread the water around with a hand as he spoke with a studied casualness that drew attention. “Now the Scallywags have been singing here since the very first Tumbleweed—and I happen to know something about them that you all don’t.”

  “What’s that?” someone shouted from the crowd.

  “That their fair singer, Sandra Hennessy, has a birthday today. And it’s not just any birthday.”

  “I’ll get you for this,” a woman’s voice rang out. “You just see if I don’t, John Martin.”

  “Sandra is turning forty today. I think she needs a birthday dirge, whatd’ you all think?”

  The crowd erupted into applause that quickly settled into anticipatory silence.

  “Hap-py birthday.” He sang the minor notes of the opening of the “Volga Boatmen” in a gloriously deep bass that needed no mike to carry over the crowd, then hit the bodhran once with a small double-headed mallet. THUMP.

  “It’s your birthday.” THUMP.

  “Gloom and doom and dark despair,

  “People dying everywhere.

  “Happy birthday.” THUMP. “It’s your birthday.”

  Then the rest of the room, including Samuel, started to sing the mournful tune with great cheer.

  There were well over a hundred people in the room, and most of them were professional musicians. The whole restaurant vibrated like a tuning fork as they managed to turn the silly song into a choral piece.

  Once the music started, it didn’t stop. Instruments came out to join the bodhran: guitars, banjos, a violin, and a pair of Irish penny whistles. As soon as one song finished, someone stood up and started another, with the crowd falling in on the chorus.

  Austin had a fine tenor. Tim couldn’t sing on pitch if his life depended upon it, but there were enough people singing that it didn’t matter. I sang until our pizza arrived, then I ate while everyone else sang.

  Finally, I got up to refill my soda, and by the time I returned, Samuel had borrowed a guitar and was at the far end of the room leading a rousing chorus of a ribald drinking song.

  The only one left at our table was Tim.

  “We’ve been deserted,” he said. “Your Dr. Cornick was summoned to play, and Austin’s gone out to the car to get his guitar.”

  I nodded. “Once you get him singing”—I waved vaguely to indicate Samuel—“you’re in for it for a while.”

  “Are the two of you dating?” he asked, rolling the Parmesan jar between his hands before setting it down.

  I turned to look at Samuel, who was singing a verse alone. His fingers flew on the neck of the borrowed guitar and there was a wide grin on his face.

  “Yes,” I said, though we weren’t really. And wouldn’t now. It was less complicated just to say yes rather than explain our situation.

  “He’s a very good musician,” Tim said. Then, his voice so quiet I knew I wasn’t supposed to hear him, he murmured, “Some people have all the luck.”

  I turned back to him and said, “What was that?”

  “Austin’s a pretty good guitarist, too,” he said quickly. “He tried to teach me, but I’m all thumbs.” He smiled like it didn’t matter, but the skin around his eyes was taut with bitterness and envy.

  How interesting, I thought. How could I use this to pry information from him?

  “I know how you feel,” I confided, sipping my pop. “I was practically raised with Samuel.” Except that Samuel had been an adult several times over. “I can plunk a bit on the piano if someone forces me. I can even sing on key—but no matter how hard I worked at it”—not very—“I could never sound as good as Samuel. And he never even had to practice.” I let a sharp note linger in my voice, a twin to the jealousy he’d revealed. “Everything is so easy for that man.”

  Zee had told me not to help him.

  Uncle Mike told me to stay out of it.

  But then I’d never been very good at listening to orders—ask anyone.

  Tim looked at
me—and I saw him register me as a real person for the first time. “Exactly,” he said—and he was mine.

  I asked him where he’d learned Welsh, and he visibly expanded as he answered.

  Like a lot of people who didn’t have many friends, his social skills were a little lacking, but he was smart—and under all that earnest geekiness, funny. Samuel’s vast knowledge and charm had made Tim close up and turn into a jerk. With a little encouragement, and maybe the two glasses of beer he’d drunk, Tim relaxed and quit trying to impress me. Before I knew it, I found myself forgetting for a while that I had ulterior motives and got into a spirited argument about the tales of King Arthur.

  “The stories came out of the courts of Eleanor of Aquitaine. They were to teach men how to behave in a civilized fashion,” Tim said earnestly.

  A caller with more volume than tone on the other side of the room called out, “King Louie was the king of France before the Revolu-shy-un!”

  “Sure,” I said. “Cheat on your husband and your best friend. The only way to find love is through adultery. All good civilized behavior.”

  Tim smiled at my quip, but had to wait as the whole room responded, “Weigh haul away, haul away Joe.”

  “Not that,” he said, “but that people should strive to better themselves and to do the right thing.”

  “Then he got his head cut off, it spoiled his constitushy-un!”

  I had to hurry to slip in before the chorus. “Like sleep with your sister and beget your downfall?”

  “Weigh haul away, haul away Joe.”

  He gave a frustrated huff. “Arthur’s story isn’t the only one in the Arthurian cycle or even the most important. Parcival, Gawain, and half a dozen others were more popular.”

  “Okay,” I said. We were getting our timing down now and I started to tune out the music completely. “I’ll give you the urge to do heroic deeds, but the pictures they painted of women were right along the lines the Church held. Women lead men astray, and they will betray you as soon as you give them your trust.” He started to say something but I was in the middle of a thought and didn’t pause. “But it’s not their fault—that’s just what women do as a result of their weaker natures.” I knew better actually, but it was fun to rant.

  “That’s a simplification,” he said hotly. “Maybe the popular versions that were retold in the middle twentieth century ignore most of the women. But just go read some of the original authors like Hartman von Aue or Wolfram von Eschenbach. Their women are real people, not just reflections of the Church’s ideals.”

  “I’ll give you Eschenbach,” I conceded. “But von Aue, no. His Iweine is about a knight who gave up adventuring because he loved his wife—for which he must atone. So he goes out and rescues women to regain his proper manly state. Ugh. You don’t see any of his women rescuing themselves.” I waved my hand. “And you can’t escape that the central Arthurian story revolves around Arthur, who marries the most beautiful woman in the land. She sleeps with his best friend—thereby ruining the two greatest knights who ever lived and bringing about the downfall of Camelot, just as Eve brought about the downfall of mankind. Robin Hood was much better. Maid Marian saves herself from Sir Guy of Gisbourne, then goes out and slays a deer and fools Robin when she disguises herself as a man.”

  He laughed, a low attractive sound that seemed to take him as much by surprise as it did me. “Okay. I give up. Guinevere was a loser.” His smile slowly died as he looked behind me.

  Samuel put his hand on my shoulder and leaned close. “Everything all right?”

  There was a stiffness in his voice that had me turning a little warily to look at him.

  “I came to rescue you from boredom,” he said, but his eyes were on Tim.

  “Not bored,” I assured him with a pat. “Go play music.”

  Then he looked at me.

  “Go,” I said firmly. “Tim’s keeping me entertained. I know you don’t get much chance to play with other musicians. Go.”

  Samuel had never been the kind of person who put on graphic public displays of affection. So it took me by surprise when he bent over me and gave me an open-mouth kiss that started out purely for Tim’s benefit. It didn’t stay there for very long.

  One thing about living a long time, Samuel told me once, it gave you a lot of time to practice.

  He smelled like Samuel. Clean and fresh, and though he hadn’t been back to Montana for a while, he still smelled of home. Much better than Tim’s cologne.

  And still…and still.

  This afternoon, talking to Honey, I’d finally admitted that a relationship between Samuel and I would not work. That admission was making several other things clear.

  I loved Samuel. Loved him with all my heart. But I had no desire to tie myself to him for the rest of my life. Even if there had been no Adam, I did not feel that way about him.

  So why had it taken me so long to admit it?

  Because Samuel needed me. In the fifteen years more or less between the day I’d run away from him and last winter when I’d finally seen him again, something in Samuel had broken.

  Old werewolves are oddly fragile. Many of them go berserk and have to be killed. Others pine and starve themselves to death—and a starving werewolf is a very dangerous thing.

  Samuel still said and did all the right things, but sometimes it seemed to me that he was following a script. As if he’d think, this should bother me or I should care about that and he’d react, but it was a little off or too late. And when I was coyote, her sharper instincts told me that he was not healthy.

  I was deathly afraid that if I told him I would not take him for a mate and he believed me, he would go off someplace and die.

  Despair and desperation made my response to his kiss a little wild.

  I couldn’t lose Samuel.

  He pulled away from me, a hint of surprise in his eyes. He was a werewolf after all; doubtless he’d caught some of the grief I felt. I reached up and touched his cheek.

  “Sam,” I said.

  He mattered to me, and I was going to lose him. Either now, or when I destroyed us both fighting the gentle, thorough care he would surround me with.

  His expression had been triumphant despite his surprise, but it faded to something more tender when I said his name. “You know, you are the only one who calls me that—and only when you’re feeling particularly mushy about me,” he murmured. “What are you thinking?”

  Samuel is way too smart sometimes.

  “Go play, Sam.” I pushed him away. “I’ll be fine.” I hoped that I was right.

  “Okay,” he said softly, then ruined it by tossing Tim a smug grin. “We can talk later.” Marking his territory in front of another male.

  I turned to Tim with an apologetic smile for Samuel’s behavior that died as I saw the betrayed look on his face. He hid it quickly, but I knew what it was.

  Damn it all.

  I’d started out with an agenda, but the discussion had made me forget entirely what I was doing. Otherwise I’d have been more careful. It’s not often I got a chance to pull out my history degree and dust it off. But still I should have realized that the discussion had meant a lot more to him than it had to me.

  He thought I’d been flirting when I’d just been enjoying myself. And people like Tim, awkward and unlikable by most standards, don’t get flirted with much. They don’t know how to tell when to take it seriously or not.

  If I’d been beautiful, maybe I’d have noticed sooner or been more careful—or Tim would have been more guarded. But my mongrel mix hadn’t resulted as nicely for me as it had for Adam’s second Darryl, who was African (his father was a tribesman from Africa) and Chinese to my Anglo-Saxon and Native American. I have my mother’s features, which look a little wrong in the brown and darker brown color scheme of my father.

  Tim wasn’t dumb. Like most people who don’t quite fit in, he’d probably learned in middle school that if a beautiful person paid too much attention to you, like as not, there was another
motive.

  I’m not bad looking, but I’m not beautiful. I can clean up pretty nice, but mostly I don’t bother. Tonight my clothes were clean, but I wasn’t wearing any makeup and hadn’t taken particular care when I braided my hair to keep it out of my face.

  And it had to have been obvious I’d been enjoying the conversation—to the point that I’d forgotten that I was supposed to be gathering information about Bright Future.

  All this went through my head in the time it took him to clear his face of the hurt and anger I’d seen. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t have a clue on how to get out of this without hurting him—which he didn’t deserve.

  I liked him, darn it. Once he got over himself (which took a little effort on my part), he was funny, smart, and willing to concede a point to me without arguing it into the ground—especially when I thought he was more right than wrong. Which made him a better person than I was.

  “A bit possessive, isn’t he?” he said. His voice was light, but his eyes were blank.

  There was a spill of dry cheese on the table and I played with it a little. “He’s usually not bad, but we’ve known each other a long time. He knows when I’m having fun.” There, I thought, a sop for his ego, if nothing else. “I haven’t had a debate like that since I got out of college.” I could hardly explain that I hadn’t flirted on purpose without embarrassing us both, so that was the closest I could come.

  He smiled a little, though it didn’t go to his eyes. “Most of my friends wouldn’t know de Troyes from Malory.”

  “Actually, I’ve never read de Troyes.” Probably the most famous of the medieval authors of Arthurian tales. “I took a class in German medieval lit and de Troyes was French.”

  He shrugged…then shook his head and took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get all moody on you. There was this guy I know. We weren’t close or anything, but he was murdered yesterday. You don’t expect someone you know to be murdered like that. Austin brought me here because he thought we both needed to get out.”