Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)

Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5) Page 15

AFTER STRUGGLING AND STRUGGLING, I FOUND MYself alone, standing on a great barren field of snow. The cold was so great that it froze my nose when I breathed in, but, although I was naked, I wasn't uncomfortable.

"Mercedes," Bran's voice was breathless. "Here you are! Finally."

I turned all around and couldn't see him.

"Mercedes," he told me, "I can talk to you because you are part of Adam's pack and his pack is mine, too. But you need to listen because I can't hear you. All I can do is show you what I think you need."

"All right," I told him. It felt lonely knowing he couldn't hear me. Lonely because it wasn't Adam who'd found me there in the snow. I shivered though I still wasn't feeling the cold.

"The biggest weapon in the arsenal of a fairy queen is enthrallment. As a member of a pack, you should be all but immune to that. But yours is a special case, and I am told that no one thought to teach you how the pack magic should work for you. Apparently my son and Adam, who should know better, assumed that it would all be instinctive because that's how it works for a wolf. When Adam found that it was not the case, he chose to wait so he could find out who had been messing with you - instead of making you safe."

"There were complications," I told him sharply. I didn't like to hear him being critical of Adam. I'd known what he was doing and approved of the way his mind worked.

A pause followed, and I had the distinct impression of surprise.

"I'm sorry for offending you," he said slowly. "That I know you are offended is . . . interesting." I got the impression of a shrug, and he continued with his message. "You should know that thrall magic is not so different from the pack bonds, Mercedes. The pack bonds are not built to subdue individuality to the Alpha or enforce behavior of any kind. A pack needs all its differences, and we find strength in that: a lot more strength than one stupid fairy queen who is stealing magic and using a witch. You understand me? " His fury shook my whole being, he was so angry.

He wasn't angry with me, though, so it wasn't my concern.

"I understand," I told him, even though he couldn't hear me. Or mostly couldn't hear me.

"I'm going to show you something," he said. And suddenly in the white snow there was a silver garland. "This is one of your pack bonds," he told me. I couldn't see him, but I could feel him walking beside me as we followed the garland. We stopped by the end, and there was a rock tied . . . enveloped in a soft cage of silver. The rock glowed a warm yellow that was very welcome in this cold place.

"Christmas garlands and a rock?" he said, a smile in his voice. "Why not an ornament?"

"Wolves aren't fragile," I told him. "And they're . . . stubborn and hard to move."

"I guess that imagery works as well as anything," he allowed. "Do you know who this is? Can you feel how worried she is for you?"

"Mary Jo," I said. And once he'd pointed it out to me, I could feel it, too. Could feel that she was looking for me, running on four feet to use her nose to its best advantage. She wasn't hot on the trail - and I had the impression of miles traveled and miles to go stretching out both ways in weary infinity.

"It is not usually so clear," Bran said, pulling me out of Mary Jo. "Partially it is because I am with you - and I am the Marrok. Another part is that the fairy has locked you into your own head - I can tell that by the quality of my contact with you. That she has done this is an unforgivable offense" - once more I felt him try to contain his anger - "but that will give you strength here you would not otherwise have had." He paused. "The connection between you and me is stronger than it should be, too. I'm not getting words back, but there is something . . . No use getting distracted with the why of that now. We have other tasks."

He took me to another silver garland and had me tell him whom it belonged to. After the third, I could find the strands myself without his guidance. The fourth was Paul's. He was running with Mary Jo - and just as anxious to find me. He still didn't like Warren, though. I could see that his garland and Mary Jo's were intertwined and connected to all the other garlands, too. One by one we walked by the rocks that were the wolves in the pack.

Bran held me at Darryl's, when I would have hurried on because I wanted to find Adam.

"No," he said. "I want you to look here for a bit. Can you find Darryl's connection to Auriele? It's different from the pack bonds."

I looked and looked. I found Auriele's rock nearby, but I couldn't see anything. Finally, in desperation, I picked up Darryl's rock and saw that it moved Auriele's, too - as if they were tied together . . . and then I couldn't understand how I'd missed the blazing gold rope between them, it was so obvious. Maybe I'd been looking too hard for a silver garland and instead their bond was very different - softer, stronger, and deeper. Unlike the pack bond, it wasn't tied onto the rocks; it originated in one and ended in the other.

Bran took me by the elbow. "Okay, quit playing with them. You're making Darryl unhappy. I have another one to show you."

He led me to the center of all the strands of silver.

All but buried in the pack magic was a very, very black rock. It radiated anger and fear and sorrow so strongly it was hard to go near it.

"Don't be frightened," Bran said, and there was a rough affection in his voice. "Adam has been frightening quite enough people lately. Look and tell me what you see."

This was Adam? I ran up to the rock and put both hands on it. "He's hurt," I said, then corrected myself. "He's hurting."

"Where is your mate bond?"

It lay in the snow, a fragile and worn thing. There were a lot of places where it had been roughly knotted, just to keep it together.

"Hastily made in need, which isn't necessarily a bad thing," the Marrok said, "but that was compounded by rough handling by a bunch of idiots. Most of whom should have known better."

I could see that around the knotted places, the rope was worn, as if a dog . . . or a wolf had chewed on it until someone had tied it to keep it from breaking.

"Henry isn't in the pack anymore," said Bran. "Just in case you hadn't noticed. I've brought him to my pack for a little one-on-one. In a few months, I might let him go out on his own again. Most of that mess is his doing."

But I wasn't worried about the chewed sections anymore.

"It's broken," I said, kneeling in the deep snow. In front of me the rope came to an abrupt ending, as if sliced by a sharp knife. I'd thought that the reason I hadn't been able to feel Adam was still the overload from when he'd thought I was dead. Though it had been recovering from that, hadn't it? When had I lost the connection?

It hurt to know that it was broken.

"Now, that," Bran growled, "was cut by black magic."

His voice was so strong in my right ear that I turned - and got a glimpse of something huge and awful that didn't look anything at all like Bran in any form I'd ever seen.

"I couldn't see how it would be possible until Samuel told me there was a witch involved. Between the witch and the queen, they found a weakness and broke it," he told me. And then, in a curiously amused tone, he said, "And I don't scare you a bit, do I?"

"Why would I be afraid of you?" I asked - but my focus was on the broken rope. Would I hurt Adam if I touched it?

"Go ahead," said Bran. "He would give anything for you to touch it again."

"Mine," I said. "Mine."

But I still didn't touch it.

With that superior humor he occasionally used, which made me want to hit him every time, Bran said, "I'm sure he can find someone else who wants it."

I grabbed it with both hands - and not because I was worried there would be someone else, no matter what Bran thought. But because we belonged together, Adam bound to me, me to him. I loved it when he let me make him laugh - he was a serious man by nature and weighed down by the responsibility he held. I knew he would never leave me, never let me down - because the man had never abandoned anything in his long life. If I hadn't taken the gold rope of our bond, I knew Adam would have sat on me and hog-tied me with it. I liked that. A lot.

"Mercy!" This voice wasn't Bran's. This voice was demanding and half-crazed. A short pause, then much more controlled, Adam said, "About damned time. Found you. Mercy, we're coming to get you. Just sit tight."

I wrapped his voice around me and held on tighter to the rope between us until it settled into my bones, and I didn't have to hold on anymore. "Adam," I said, happily. And then added, because he'd know I was teasing, "Took you long enough. You were waiting for me to get myself out?"

I looked around my field of snow, by then littered with cheery garland and glowing rocks. I closed my eyes and wrapped the feel of pack around me like a warm cloak. I felt the fairy queen's magic touch the golden rope I shared with Adam - and this time it was the queen's magic that shattered.

MY GAZE WAS LOCKED WITH THAT OF THE TRAPPED forest lord. He blinked, and I jerked my eyes down - and saw that my arm was still dripping blood. From the amount I'd lost, I hadn't been out of it for more than a few seconds.

"There," said the fairy queen. "Now you are mine."

I blinked at her and tried to mold my features into the stupid expression I'd seen on the other thralls as she cut the ropes that held me to the chair.

"Go to the kitchens and get something to wipe the blood off the floor," she told me.

I stood up and started walking. She quit paying attention to me, because I wasn't interesting anymore. I started walking a little faster because I saw my gun on the floor by one of the benches, where someone must have kicked it. I suppose that made sense. There weren't many fae who could have picked it up without hurting themselves. None of the thralls would dream of using it - but I could see that the fae might hesitate to have a thrall dispose of it.

I picked it up and turned around. Slowly, so as not to attract the attention of the fae in the room - who were all looking at the fairy queen and not at her new thrall. The queen was leaning over the arm of her throne, talking to her witch. I shot the queen three times in the heart. The witch was watching me and smiled as I pulled the trigger.

"Huh," said a voice right next to me. I turned my head and had to look down at a human-seeming child who appeared to be no more than eight or nine years old.

She smiled at me. "And they were afraid something would happen to you if we waited until everyone could come to the party. Just like a coyote to spoil the fun for everyone."

The last time I'd seen this fae, she'd been playing with a yo-yo in the front yard of a murder scene she was guarding. I didn't know her name, just that she was plenty powerful, people were scared of her, and she was a lot older than she looked.

For an instant I almost saw something completely different standing beside me, then she smiled at me, and said, "Not my glamour you don't, Mercedes."

The other fae in the room didn't move, frozen in the moment of the fairy queen's death.

Yo-yo Girl walked forward to the dead queen, and I followed her. The witch had grabbed the body and was taking handfuls of the queen's blood and painting it over the silver thrall necklace around her neck.

"I don't think so," said Yo-yo Girl. She bent and touched the remains, and said something that might have been a word. The queen's body turned to dust.

Yo-yo Girl started to back away - and then saw the forest lord in his chains beyond the throne. Somehow I don't think that she'd seen him before reducing the queen to so many ashes.

The silver ring popped off the witch's neck - only to be replaced by small fingers. I heard only the echo of a whisper, then the witch was dust, too. Yo-yo Girl took a handful of the resultant gray mass, lifted it to her mouth, and licked it like an ice-cream cone.

"Yum," she said to me. Her hands, her clothes, and her mouth were covered with ashes. "I love witches."

"I'll take chocolate, if it is all the same to you," I told her.

"Mercy!" roared Adam from somewhere beyond the hall.

"Uh-oh," said Yo-yo Girl. "Someone missed out on all the killing."

"Here!" I called. "We're okay."

And then it was true. Because Adam was there and he had his arms around me and that made everything all right.

I KICKED THE SNOW AND STUBBED MY TOE ON THE kitchen sink. It was the night of the big rescue, and everyone was partying over at Adam's house. I'd been hugged and fussed over until I decided that it was a good time to go check out the remains of my home.

The snow hid a lot, and the pack had cleaned it up. They'd had the whole month that I'd been missing to do it. I suppose I was lucky it hadn't been a year or a century.

They hadn't been able to find the Elphame after Zee had been forced to let his door close. Apparently, as Zee explained it to me, the Elphame moved in relation to the reservation, and Ariana hadn't been able to find me.

It was only when the bond between Adam and me reconnected that they were able to locate the Elphame. While Zee worked to make another entrance, they'd sent Yo-yo Girl ahead to make sure I was safe. She apparently didn't need anything as crude as an entrance to find her way to the Elphame. She probably had a name besides Yo-yo Girl, but the fae are funny about names, and no one wanted to give her a real one.

The fae who had belonged to the fairy queen were being housed in the reservation temporarily. Some of them had no memory of how they'd come to follow the fairy queen. Some of them were angry that I'd killed her, but not so angry they'd made any move against me. Zee said that the Gray Lords were torn between anger at the way the fairy queen had used a forest lord and a black witch, and triumph at the proof that Underhill was returning some power to all of the fae.

There wasn't much left of my trailer except for a small pile of things that might be reused. I hadn't lost the pole barn with my Vanagon inside. I hadn't lost Medea or Samuel.

The first time I'd seen the place, there had been a coyote hiding under the porch, and I'd taken it as an omen. When I'd finally bought it, I'd felt like I had a home for the first time in my life. A home no one could take away from me.

"Saying good-bye?"

I hadn't heard the Marrok, but Bran was like that.

"Yeah." I smiled at him so he'd know I didn't mind his presence.

"I meant to thank you for Samuel," Bran said.

I shook my head. "It wasn't me. It was Ariana - have you seen them together? Aren't they cute?" Ariana wasn't at Adam's house, though Samuel was. She wasn't quite up to bearing a pack of werewolves celebrating madly. Samuel had talked about her for twenty minutes, though.

Ariana hadn't managed to touch Samuel when he was a wolf - yet, Samuel had told me. But she didn't have any trouble with Samuel the man, and she didn't have panic attacks around any of the werewolves - as long as they were calm and approached her one at a time in human form. She'd just needed a reason to work on her phobias, he'd explained with great pride. Bran had smiled when Samuel said that, the smile that said the Marrok had been up to something. So he might have had something to do with her finding her way among the wolves. Or maybe he just wanted me to think that. I've found that I do better when I don't worry too hard about what Bran can and can't do.

"Ariana is a gift," said Bran. "But if it hadn't been for what you did, Samuel wouldn't have been around to receive it."

"That's what friends are for," I told him. "Lift you when you're down - and kick you in the rump when you need it. Adam helped. Speaking of friends, thank you for the Pack Magic 101 that kept me from being Zombie Mercy."

He smiled, an expression that made him look about sixteen. If you didn't know him, it would be hard to believe that this young man with the diffident expression was the Marrok.

"Did you get all of that?" he asked. "I wasn't sure how much made it through."

I looked at his innocent expression. "How much did you get back?"

He gave me wide eyes, then grinned. "I think that we both were getting a bit of a boost from an interested party."

"Who?"

"Zee had no trouble freeing the forest lord from his chains. He's a charming fellow, by the way, very gracious as well as powerful. She kidnapped him from his own place in northern California about a year, year and a half ago. His wife and family were very glad to hear that he'll be coming home soon. Daphne, the fairy queen, apparently visited the reservation and decided this would be a good place to roost. She enthralled a nasty witch and used her to grab the forest lord - because she didn't have enough power to enthrall him."

"You think he helped us?"

"Someone did. I'd just about given up." He looked around at the remnants of my home. "I have a more probable answer, but I'm having a little trouble wrapping my head around it. Have you decided what you are going to do with this yet?"

"It was insured," I told him. "I might as well replace it." Gabriel might need to live somewhere.

He and Zee had kept the shop going for the month I'd been missing. His mother wasn't happy with his doing that, so he was living at Adam's house. In the basement - as far from Jesse's bedroom as Adam could manage.

"Look," said Bran. "Your oak tree didn't burn down."

"Yeah," I said, pleased. "Scorched a bit, but I think it'll be okay." I took a step toward it, and my foot caught something and moved it. I thought at first it was a broom handle, but when I bent down to retrieve it, it turned out to be my old friend the walking stick.

"Ah," said Bran. "I wondered where that had gotten off to."

I gave it a thoughtful look. "You've seen it?"

"It was sitting on the couch in Adam's basement," he said. "When I picked it up - suddenly all my efforts bore fruit at last, and I found you among the pack bonds as if you had never been missing."

I gave him a wry smile. "It does seem to show up at interesting moments."

"So," he said, "have you given any thought to raising sheep?"

"Not at the present time," I replied dryly. "No."

We walked a little more in companionable silence.

"I have some photos," Bran said abruptly. "Of Bryan and Evelyn." My werewolf foster family. "Some of your old school pictures, too, if you want them."

"I'd like that," I said.

He looked back toward Adam's house, and I saw that someone else was headed over.

"Looks like you've been missed. I'll leave you alone." He kissed my forehead and jogged off.

He met Adam at the barbed-wire fence, and Adam said something I couldn't quite hear that made Bran laugh.

"Hey," I said, as Adam approached me. His response was a blast of warmth that had me blushing.

"Do you have keys to your van?" he asked, his voice a dark caress that gave me goose bumps. He smelled of need and impatience.

"They're in the van."

"Good," he said, taking my arm and walking briskly toward the pole barn that had survived the fire without a scorch mark. "If I had to go get my truck, someone might notice us leaving. I have keys to Warren's apartment. He said the guest room has clean sheets."

He stopped at the van. "I need to drive."

Normally, I'd have argued with him just on general principle, but sometimes, especially with Adam so intense that he was ready to explode, it was just better to give Alpha males their way. Without a word, I headed toward the passenger side of the van.

He didn't speed and he didn't talk. We made it to Richland without hitting a red light, but there our luck ran out.

"Adam," I said gently, "if you break my steering wheel, we'll have to walk the rest of the way to Warren's house."

He loosened his hands but didn't look at me. I put a hand on his thigh, and it vibrated under my palm.

"If you want to make it to Warren's," he said, his voice almost guttural, "you'll have to keep your hands to yourself."

There is something incredibly arousing about being wanted. I pulled my hand back and sucked in a deep breath. "Adam," I said.

The light turned green at last. I had the whimsical thought that my time in Elphame had completely skewed my internal clock, because I could have sworn we were there for hours instead of seconds.

Warren lived in an A house, one of a group of "Alphabet Houses" built during World War II to accommodate the exploding population of nuclear-industry workers in Richland. The one he lived in was still a duplex. Both sides were dark - and the other duplex had a FOR RENT sign on the window.

Adam parked the van and slid out without looking at me. He closed the door with exquisite gentleness that said a lot about his state of mind. I got out and didn't even bother to worry about whether my prized Vanagon Syncro was locked - which I suppose said equally as much about my state of mind.

Adam unlocked the door of Warren's apartment and held it open for me. As soon as we were both inside, he closed the door and locked it.

When he turned to face me, his eyes were bright gold and his cheeks were flushed. "If you don't want this," he told me, as he had since the . . . incident with Tim, "you can say no."

"Race you to the bedroom," I said, and started for the stairs.

He caught my arm in a very careful grip before I took more than two steps. "Running . . . would not be a good idea right now." He was ashamed of his lack of control; maybe someone else would have missed it in his voice. Maybe I would have, too, if it weren't for the bond between us.

I put my hand over his and patted it. "Okay," I said. "Why don't you take me to bed?"

I hadn't been ready for him to grab me and pick me up that fast or I wouldn't have squeaked.

He froze.

"Sorry," I said. "I'm fine."

He took me at my word and carried me to the stairs. I halfway expected him to run, but instead his pace was deliberate, his step almost heavy. The stairs were narrow and steep, and he was careful not to bang my head or feet.

He set me down just inside the guest bedroom and closed the door. He stood there, his back to me, breathing heavily.

"A month," he said. "And neither Zee nor any of the fae we knew could tell us if we'd ever get you back. Samuel's woman couldn't find you - everything you had burned up in the fire. Neither the van nor the Rabbit worked as a close enough tie. She tried to approach me to see if she could use me, but she couldn't even walk into the same room as me - not half-crazed as I was. Touching me was out of the question. I thought I had lost you."

I remembered feeling Mary Jo and Paul hunting me. "You looked for me."

"We did," he agreed. Abruptly he turned and hauled me against him. He was shaking, and he hid his face in my hair. It was useless, if he was trying to prevent me from understanding what he was feeling. I had a Technicolor view through our bond.

I hugged him as hard as I could so he'd know I was real, that I didn't mind him holding me hard. "I'm here," I said.

"I couldn't find you either," he told me, his voice a bare whisper. "Our bond was broken, and I couldn't tell if you'd done it on purpose, if the queen had managed it - or if you were dead. We could feel you in the pack bonds, but that's been known to happen when people die. Bran came and he couldn't find you either. Then yesterday, Darryl was feeding us lunch and dropped the pan on the floor."

I'd heard about that already, from various people, but I didn't interrupt.

"Darryl thought someone was messing with Auriele, and stormed halfway up the stairs - only to be met by Auriele, who was worried about him for the same reason. That's when Bran came up from the basement and said . . ." He stopped speaking.

"He said, 'I've done the hard part, Alpha. Now tell us where your mate is,' " I said. "And he was holding the walking stick in his hand."

"And there you were," Adam told me. "Inside of me, just where you belonged."

He drew back, moving his hands to my cheeks. The heat of his skin felt precious to me, his hot amber eyes feeding the fires in my heart - and my body.

His nostrils flared, like a stallion scenting a mare. His hands dropped to my coat, and he ripped it down the back and threw it on the floor before backing away from me.

"Damn it," he said gruffly, his head against the door. "Damn it . . . I can't do this."

I pulled my shirt over my head and stripped off my jeans and underwear. Warren didn't keep his house at seventy degrees - since he was mostly sleeping at Kyle's these days. But I didn't feel the cold, not while I could feel the force of Adam's need roaring like a welding torch.

"What can't you do?" I asked gently, pulling back the bedding and lying down on the sheets.

"I can't be gentle. I know . . . I know you need care, and I can't do that right now." He pulled open the door. "I've got to go. I'll send - "

"If you leave me naked and waiting on the bed without making love to me, I'll - "

I didn't get to finish the threat. I think it was the word "naked," though maybe it was "bed," but before I finished my sentence, he was on me.

He was right; he wasn't gentle. Up until that point in our relationship, our lovemaking had been passion tempered with humor and sweetness. I'd been hurt and he'd been so careful of me.

In the darkness of Warren's guest bedroom, sweetness and humor had no place in him. And though there was care in his touch, he was anything but careful. Not that he hurt me - quite the contrary. But he was fire and need that went so far beyond simple desire that it consumed me - and like the phoenix, I found myself reborn in the crucible.

I met his urgency with my own, digging my fingers into the silk-covered stone of his arms as his sinful mouth tasted my skin wherever it fell. He was hot and hard, his need forcing me to rise to meet his fire with my own. Sweat dripped onto my skin, and the scent of it was an aphrodisiac because it was all Adam. If he needed me, I needed him every bit as much.

He rose over me, closing his golden eyes as he pushed through me, into me, became a part of me with one heavy thrust. Only when he was all the way in did he look at me again, and in that look was triumph and a claiming so basic that it should have scared me.

"Mine," he said, rocking his hips against my own in a move that was more about possession than passion.

I raised my chin and held his eyes in a challenge only I could make without consequences. I tightened my belly and dug my heels into the mattress to give my own thrust power. "Mine," I said.

Adam's wolf smiled at me and nipped my shoulder. "I can live with that," he said. And then he demonstrated what that possession would mean when it involved an Alpha werewolf who knew how to be patient and thorough when hunting coyotes.

I DREAMED I WALKED IN THE SNOW, BUT I WASN'T AFRAID. There was a thick golden rope wrapped securely around me. It was free of fray or knot and led me into the forest, lighting my way with its bright warmth. I followed it with a light heart and the humming anticipation of finding something wonderful. At last I came to the end of the rope and a blue-gray wolf with golden eyes.

"Hello, Adam," I told him.

"SHH," SAID ADAM SLEEPILY. HE PULLED ME TIGHTER against him and rolled over the top of me as if that would make me be quiet. "Sleep."

My body was tired. I was warm and safe. A return to sleep should have come easily, especially since I'd awakened from such a good dream. But it had reminded me of what it had felt like to be lost.

"I couldn't find you either," I told Adam, burrowing against him. He was thinner than he'd been the last time I'd been in bed with him. The fire had left no scars, and he kept his hair short anyway, but the ribs I could feel told me I had cost him.

"I quit trying," I admitted. "I was so afraid she was going to use me to enthrall the whole pack. I didn't understand that she couldn't do that, that she didn't have the power." I closed my eyes and let myself remember how terrified I had been. I opened them again, almost immediately, needing to see him to feel safe. "In that place, it felt like she had all the power to do anything."

He was so still that I thought he might have gone back to sleep, until he spoke. "She hurt you." It wasn't a question.

"She did." I wouldn't lie to him. "But it was just pain, not real damage. I knew you would come for me if I could just hold out." I let him hear the sureness of that in my voice.

He rolled over until I was on top of him. His hands moved to my shoulders, and he gave me a little shake. "Don't ever make me go through that again. I couldn't bear it."

"I won't," I promised him rashly. "Never again."

He laughed then, and hugged me tight. "Didn't Bran teach you not to make promises you can't keep?" He sighed. "I suppose if you won't shut up so I can sleep, I might as well find something to do with the time."

When he was through, we both slept.

ADAM WENT WITH ME TO RETURN THE BOOK TO PHIN the next morning, an hour before the store opened. The book was still wrapped in Kyle's towel and had apparently traveled from Kyle's linen closet to Adam's with no fuss. Darryl and Auriele had brought it to us, along with a new coat for me and clothes for Adam, since his hadn't survived. Darryl didn't crack a smile, though it would have been obvious to him what we'd been doing, even if he'd been a human and didn't have the nose of a wolf. Instead, both he and Auriele had observed us with a satisfaction I found a little disconcerting. I was glad when they'd left us.

Phin was at his desk in the bookstore, looking very much as he had the first time I'd seen him, except that he'd lost a little weight: a man of indeterminate age with fading golden hair and good-humored eyes. There were a few new bookcases, but otherwise the bookstore looked much as it had the first time I'd seen it.

"Hey, Mercy. Adam," Phin said with a friendly smile.

"Hey. I have something for you." I unrolled the towel carefully and set the book on the counter.

When I touched it, the leather was butter soft under my fingertips.

"Ariana has a fine sense of irony," observed Adam, reading the title for the first time - Magic Made was embossed on the cover and spine in gold. "Hard to believe that is glamour."

"It isn't, quite," said Ariana, coming around the end of a bookshelf.

She'd changed her appearance. She didn't look like a middle-aged woman anymore; instead, she'd altered her real appearance just enough that she looked human. Her skin was tanned and human-smooth, her eyes gray, and her hair as blond as Phin's must have been when he was a young man.

She looked at Adam for a moment, and he stayed still with the coaxing quietness of a man trying not to startle a wild creature.

"You've changed," she told him, relaxing a little. "She contents your wolf."

"I'm sorry I frightened you." Adam's voice was carefully gentle, and I remembered that he'd said she hadn't been able to stay in the same room with him.

She shook her head. "Not your fault - neither the old fear or the new. But still, you are not so terrifying now." With a resolute breath and raised chin, she strode across the store to us.

She looked at the book and shook her head. "You cause me more trouble." To Adam and me, she said, almost shyly, "Would you like to see what it really looks like?"

"Please," I said.

She put both of her hands on the book, and I felt a wave of magic. She picked up the book, and when she moved it, a small silver statue of a bird was left behind. A lark, I thought, though I was no expert. It was no bigger than the palm of my hand and amazingly realistic. I looked at the book sitting next to it.

"The best disguises are real," she said. "I just used the book to hide the artifact."

Adam put his hand on my shoulder, bent down, and said, "Such a small thing to cause so much trouble." And he kissed the top of my ear.