Frost Burned mt-7 Read online

  “She won’t,” he said.

  I smiled at him. “If I’m right, you get to clean the bathroom at the shop next. If you are, I’ll do it.”

  He closed his eyes, shook his head.

  “She loves you,” I told him, getting out of the car. “Or she wouldn’t be so stubborn about being mad.”

  I didn’t need to tell him about the conversation Sylvia and I had had right before he finished high school. This was different—this time it wasn’t Sylvia versus the werewolves. This time I would be more diplomatic and wouldn’t leave yelling, “Fine. If you’re too proud to say you’re sorry—I’ll keep him!” at the top of my lungs.

  I had sent her graduation announcements. She’d been there, in the back. She’d waited until she was sure he’d seen her—then she left. She hadn’t, her eldest daughter told me, wanted Gabriel to graduate without his mother in the audience. That was why I knew she’d take the kids in now.

  “I don’t want to cause trouble,” Jesse said. “Why don’t you leave me with Kyle or … I could stay with Carla.”

  Jesse didn’t have a lot of close friends once the werewolves came out, and everyone learned whose daughter she was. There were rumors that some kids’ parents had pulled them out of the local high school and were trucking them all the way to Richland because of Jesse. There were other teens who followed her around just to talk about the werewolves. Carla belonged to that group, and Jesse generally tried to avoid her even though they’d known each other since grade school.

  “Kyle’s house is the first place they’d look,” I told her. And I was going to have to make sure Kyle was okay, too. “We don’t have anyone strong enough to protect you from the government here—the best thing is to stay somewhere no one will look for you.” I didn’t even mention Carla.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Gabriel said. He got out of the car and started for his mother’s apartment with all the enthusiasm of a sailor walking a plank. Jesse forgot all about herself and the discomfort of staying where she wasn’t wanted. She scrambled out of the car and hurried over to Gabriel and caught his hand.

  I glanced at Ben. He lay down on the back seat with a sigh. He was right. Having a werewolf in her apartment wouldn’t make Sylvia more cooperative. I shut him in before following the kids.

  Gabriel stood at the door for a moment before knocking quietly. Nothing happened—it was still dark out, so presumably everyone was asleep. He knocked again, a little louder.

  A light turned on, the door cracked open, and a teenage girl’s head peeked out. It had been a year since I’d seen any of the girls except for Tia, the oldest, who snuck out once in a while to visit. Tia looked like her mother, but this one was a female version of Gabriel, which told me that it was Rosalinda, even if she’d gotten taller and sharper featured since I’d last seen her. She froze a moment, then the door was thrown open, and she launched herself at him. He hugged her, hard, until she squeaked.

  Sylvia’s apartment was clean and well cared for beneath the clutter that accumulates in a household that has children living in it. The furniture was mismatched and worn—Sylvia was supporting her family by herself as a police dispatcher. Her salary didn’t leave a lot of room for luxuries, but her children grew up rich in love. They’d been a happy family until she and Gabriel had come to a place where neither could compromise.

  “Who is knocking on the door at this hour?” Sylvia’s voice emerged from somewhere in the depths of the apartment.

  “It’s mi hermano,” the girl said, her voice muffled by her brother’s shoulder. “Oh Mami, it’s Gabriel.” She pulled back, but latched onto his hand and hauled him into the living room. “Come in, come in. Don’t be stupid. Hi, Jesse. Hi, Mercy. I didn’t see you lurking behind Gabriel, come on in.” Then she muttered something low in Spanish. I think she was talking to herself.

  I didn’t understand what she said, but Gabriel scowled fiercely at her. “Mind your tongue. Don’t talk about Mamá like that. She deserves your respect, chica.”

  “Does she?” asked Sylvia. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her with a hair out of place, and even at this unholy hour of the morning, her hair was smooth and shining. Her only concession to the time was a dark blue bathrobe. She folded her arms, her face was grim, and she ignored Jesse and me.

  “Of course, Mamá,” Gabriel said softly.

  Her chin was raised and her mouth tight as she stared at her son. Rosa bounced a little and looked back and forth at the two of them before grabbing Gabriel’s hand.

  “You chose strangers over your family,” Sylvia said at last. “I said, you pick. You stay here and work for Mercedes Thompson, or you come home right now. You chose her. Where is the respect in that?”

  He snorted, a bitter half laugh. “I told you this wouldn’t work, Mercy.”

  Rosa made a soft sound as Gabriel turned and took two quick strides away from Sylvia. At the door, he turned back around, and said, “Mamá, everything is black-and-white for you, but the world is gray. You asked me to abandon my friends because you thought they were dangerous. Life is dangerous, Mamá. I won’t run away from my friends, who are good people, because I am afraid. Because you are afraid.”

  “She put my children in danger,” Sylvia said, jerking her chin in my direction. She lost the cool anger she’d come into the room with and replaced it with heat. “She lied to me. And you chose her.”

  “Mercy can’t tell other people’s secrets, Mamá. And that wolf was more likely to dive off a cliff into the ocean than he was to hurt one of the girls. She was raised with him, she knows him.” Gabriel’s voice was soft, but his chin looked a lot like his mother’s—which didn’t make a reconciliation look likely, not if they kept talking about the incident that left Gabriel living in my house not talking to his mother, anyway.

  “You were right,” I broke in blandly. “Hanging around us is dangerous. Someone is after Jesse.” I don’t know why I said it that way, I had no real reason to believe they would go after Jesse—they already had their hands full, but my instincts were certain, and I always listened to my instincts. “They have already kidnapped her father and killed one of his werewolves.”

  “See, hijo? That’s what happens when you associate with the werewolves,” Sylvia said—but I saw her eyes linger on Jesse. Sylvia talked tough, but she had a heart as big as the Columbia. She also had four daughters, the oldest of whom was only a little younger than Jesse.

  “Her father is a werewolf,” Gabriel snapped, not seeing Sylvia’s softening. “She can hardly avoid them.”

  I put a hand on his arm to get him to stop antagonizing her, but it was a mistake. Sylvia looked at my hand, and her face hardened again.

  “The people after Jesse are human,” I told her before she could say something she couldn’t take back. “Not werewolves, fae, or anything other. They are human—and they will hurt her. And you raised a man who cannot leave someone he cares about to face that danger alone, any more than he could desert his friends just because it was the safer, smarter thing to do. Not even if his mother asked him to—because it was she who taught him how to love other people in the first place. So he is in danger, too. Won’t you hide them for a couple of days so that they will be safe?”

  Sylvia looked at me, straight in the eyes. Then she shook her head and gave a little laugh as her expression softened. “A compliment slipped inside a reprimand inside a request I cannot possibly turn down. Leave a child in danger? Leave my child …” And when Gabriel made a protesting noise, “You’ll be my child when you are fifty and I am seventy, hijo, so it is better that you accept it early. I am not going to leave my son, whom I love, to face danger alone for pride’s sake. Even I am not such a fool. Oof.”

  The “oof” was because Gabriel was hugging her hard, tears in his eyes that he wouldn’t shed because he was not a man who cried in front of others if he could help it. About that time there was a squeal from one of the other bedrooms. My ears had told me that the girls were all awake and listening. They had
apparently just been awaiting their mother’s decision before exploding into action because the room filled with Sandovals.

  I told them the whole story. If they were going to protect Jesse, they deserved to know everything.

  When we were done, Sylvia shook her head. “What is this country coming to?” she asked. “Mi papá, your abuelo, is rolling in his grave. He died for this country, for good and right and freedom. He would be so sad.”

  “If it’s the government,” said Tia, Gabriel’s oldest sister, “then you’d better get rid of your phones. They can trace those, you know.”

  “Done,” said Gabriel. “Mine’s back at my home, but we trashed Jesse’s and Mercy’s before we came here.”

  “Adam didn’t think they were government agents,” I explained again. “Even though they had proper ID.”

  Rosalinda got up off the floor and ran into one of the bedrooms, emerging with a cell phone encased in pink sparkly things. “Here, Mercy. You’ll need a phone. No one will think to trace mine.”

  “Thank you, Rosa,” I said.

  “Thank you for taking care of my brother and giving him a place to live,” she said solemnly.

  “You only say that because when I moved out, the little girls moved into my room,” said Gabriel. “So you don’t want me to move back in.”

  “Well, yes,” she agreed. “That was very thoughtful of Mercy.”

  He ruffled her hair and looked at me. “Ben’s going to be getting restless.”

  “I need to go,” I agreed.

  “Be careful,” Jesse said.

  “I will,” I said.

  I got in the Mercedes and headed out to West Richland and Kyle’s house. Ben stayed in the back seat, where the leather was covered. The car was an awkward fit for him. The seat was too narrow, and the floor was not big enough, either. His wound had quit bleeding, but he couldn’t brace with that leg.

  Warren should have been home with Kyle. Adam had smelled Warren on the men who had taken the pack. So they had taken Warren, but Kyle hadn’t called Adam or me. That meant that either something was wrong with Kyle, or they had taken Warren in some way that had not alarmed his lover. Unhappily, the first was more likely.

  I turned on the radio to listen for the news. It was pretty late—or rather, early in the morning—to get real news, but Mary Jo had been taken while on duty as a firefighter. If the enemy had done something to the people she worked with, doubtless we’d hear about it. It would be stupid of them, but people who attack a full pack of werewolves are either very stupid or very strong. I was betting that if someone had kidnapped a firefighter—or killed a bunch of them—there would be some sort of special report on the radio even at this hour.

  While I was driving, I used Rosa’s bling-covered phone and tried Elizaveta the witch’s number to no avail. Then I tried Stefan’s.

  It said something about how ambivalent I was feeling about Stefan that I’d tried the witch, who didn’t like me, first. If Stefan had still been part of the local seethe, I’d have had a good excuse to hesitate. But Marsilia had screwed him over to save her position as Mistress of the seethe. Vampire politics make the very complicated dance of manners that is werewolf protocol look like the Hokey Pokey.

  She’d tortured him and his menagerie on trumped-up charges so that the rebels would approach him and reveal themselves. He’d served her for centuries, so she knew he wouldn’t join the cuckoos who’d been foisted upon her by a vampire whose name had never been given to me—I called him Gauntlet Boy. Gauntlet, because the only time I’d seen him, he’d been wearing gauntlets. Boy—because vampires scared me spitless.

  She’d been partially successful. He hadn’t joined the rebellion—which Marsilia quashed with his help. But he also hadn’t looked upon the deaths of the people he protected as justifiable. Vampires vary a lot in how much they care for the humans who they feed from. Stefan’s menagerie were his friends, or at least dear pets he cared for.

  So he wasn’t part of the seethe, and, vampire or not, Stefan had been my friend since I’d come to the Tri-Cities. However, thanks to Marsilia’s ungentle machinations, I’d been seeing more of the vampire and less of my friend in him lately, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it enough that I seriously considered not contacting him for help.

  The enemy was powerful, and we needed our allies. I was getting tired, and the weariness tamped down the anger and left me scared and alone, even with Ben stretched out in the seat behind me.

  So I called Stefan.

  It rang three times, and a voice (not Stefan’s) said, “Leave a message.” There was a beep.

  I almost just hung up. But it was unlikely anyone had Stefan’s phone under surveillance, and I wasn’t calling from a number he would know. So I said, “Could you call me at this number? My phone is dead.”

  A police car had someone pulled over on the side of the road. My speed had crept up, and I slowed. The coast was not clear to speed just because one police car was occupied.

  My phone rang as I passed the cop car, but the Mercedes’s windows were very dark. It was unlikely that anyone could see into the interior even if Rosa’s phone was so encrusted with plastic gems it ought to emit its own light. Risking a ticket, I answered the phone. “Yes?”

  “Mercy?” said Stefan. “What do you need? And why are you calling me on someone else’s phone?”

  By the time I finished verbally reliving Peter’s death, I was shaking with anger and … terror. So much rode on my playing the game right, and I didn’t even know the rules.

  At least with that much adrenaline flowing, I wasn’t tired anymore—but I also wasn’t paying attention to driving. Part of me, the part that remembered I’d totaled the Rabbit a few hours and a lifetime ago, tried to remind me that wrecking Marsilia’s car would only make a bad situation worse. But the rest of me was focused on more immediate matters.

  “Peter was a good man,” said Stefan when I was finished. “I will meet you at Kyle’s house.”

  I glanced at the sky. It was still dark, but the clock in Marsilia’s car said it was five thirty in the morning. “You’ll be cutting the daylight thing pretty close.”

  “There is time,” he said, his voice as gentle as I’d ever heard it. “I can get home in very short order should I need to. Do not worry about me. We will worry about the others, yes? Hang up now and drive.”

  I hung up and hoped I’d done the right thing. Exposing the pack’s vulnerability to the local vampires wasn’t a smart thing to do. Marsilia would happily dance on our graves if the pack and I, especially I, were utterly destroyed. I trusted Stefan. I did. But Stefan was a vampire and I could never forget that.

  Kyle’s house in West Richland was a generous half-hour drive from Sylvia’s apartment in Kennewick. I’d spent a lot of time this night traveling back and forth along the same stretch of highway. To my right, the Columbia was a murky presence as the houses of Kennewick passed by the window to mark my progress.

  Had I done the right thing leaving Gabriel and Jesse? It had felt like I was getting them out of harm’s way when I’d done it. But what if whoever had taken Adam did think of Sylvia? Gabriel was strong and smart, but he was also an unarmed teenage human. Had I just given our enemies more victims? I thought of the bullet that hit Peter and was pretty sure that the person who had fired it at a helpless man could shoot one of Gabriel’s little sisters, too.

  Somewhere nearby, Adam was being held. I had no real reason to think that they would be hunting Jesse. Not one. But I was uneasy leaving them without protection.

  I called Zee. He hadn’t said good-bye when he’d retreated to the fae reservation, just left a note telling me to be patient and not contact him. But he liked Gabriel and Jesse—and adored, though he’d never have admitted it out loud, the little hellions who were Gabriel’s sisters.

  His cell phone rang and rang as the interstate carried me past Richland. My finger was on the button to end the call when Zee said, grumpily, “Liebling, this is not a good idea.” />
  “Zee,” I told him, “I am completely out of good ideas and am doing my best with the bad ones I have left.” I explained the whole thing again. When I finished, I said, “The fae owe us, Adam and me, they owe us for the otterkin and for the fairy queen. Is there some way you could keep a watch over Gabriel’s mom’s house? You probably won’t have to do anything at all. I’m probably being paranoid—it’s that kind of night. But all they have keeping them safe is my hope that no one would think to look there—and that reasoning gets weaker and weaker the farther away I get.”

  “I agree that you are owed a debt,” Zee said heavily, at last. “There might be some who would argue that the otterkin’s deaths were a tragedy. I am not one of those people. No one can argue that you were sent on an errand for us that put you in danger, and where you took much harm. And no one, not even the most anti-human of us”—the way he said it made me think that he had a specific fae in mind—“can argue you are owed for the downfall of the fairy queen, who caught so many of us in her web and might have taken us all, unaware as we were.”

  He made a clicking noise with his tongue that I recognized as the sound he made when confronted with a particularly difficult fix on a car. “It brings me sorrow, but at this time it would wipe the slate clean of favors owed to you if they knew that I had even answered this phone—which phone I am not supposed to have at all because it is corrupt human technology.” He bit out the last part of the sentence as if he found it annoying. “If I left the reservation to help you, I would bring trouble down upon both of us.” His laugh was distinctly unamused. “And if I left the reservation at this point, it might be disastrous on a much larger scale because I am trying to bring reason to chaos, which I cannot do from a distance and may not be able to do even with a sword to someone’s throat. I cannot even give you advice without creating issues.” He sighed but didn’t hang up, so I kept the phone to my ear.

  After a long pause, he said, carefully, “I could not tell you to call my house and speak to the one there. I could not tell you to think about the kinds of places that could be fortified to hold a pack of werewolves, which would not be easy. A place where people in pseudo-military garb might not be remarked upon or where they could get in and out unnoticed carrying bodies. There are not many places like that around here, Mercy. There are no peasants who are too afraid of the powers that be to speak out when men carrying guns walk where they should not be.”