Frost Burned

“I did.” I half turned to look at him as I stopped, too.

“The world,” he said, “is a very strange place, and just when I thought I’d witnessed all the wonders it had to teach—here is another one. This ‘vampire friend’ of yours did it for a price?”

“He did it because he is my friend and Kyle’s friend,” I said.

“Impossible.”

There was something in his voice that sent Ben surging up against my legs, which wasn’t so bad—but then he bounced away like a ping-pong ball, and I almost lost my balance because I’d braced for his impact. I did lose my temper.

“Maybe for you,” I snapped at Asil, turning to finish the last four-or-five-stair climb to the second floor. “Me? I have friends.”

There was another of those speaking silences, then he laughed.“Please tell me I won’t end up with eggs in my pillowcase or peanut butter on my car seat.”

I threw up my hands involuntarily and turned to him to face him again. Walking backward, I said,“I was twelve. Don’t you wolves have anything better to gossip about than things that happened twenty years ago?”

“Mi princesa,” he told me, his voice deep and flirty,“I was inSpain and I heard about the peanut butter. Two decades are nothing, I assure you—we will speak of it a hundred years from now in hushed voices. There are big bad wolves all over the world who tremble at the sound of his name, yet a little puny coyote girl peanutbuttered the seat of Bran Cornick’s car because he told her that she should wear a dress to perform for the pack.”

“No,” I said, getting hot about it again. I turned and stalked down the hall. “He said Evelyn—my foster mother—should know better, that she should have made sure I had a dress to wear. He made her cry.” And that was the last time I consented to play the piano.

I opened the guest room door, and Asil paused until I looked at his face.“Yes,” he said sincerely. “Such a one deserves peanut butter on the seat of his pants.”

And that sincerity was the last straw. I put my hand over my mouth and leaned against the door and laughed. I was worried, tired, and it felt like every muscle in my body ached—and all I could see was the peanut butter on the back of the Marrok’s elegant beige slacks and the expression on his face when he realized what had happened. I’d been hiding under bushes in my coyote shape downwind and everything—but he’d seen me anyway. Bran could always find me wherever I was hiding. He’d raised an eyebrow at me, and I’d run all the way home.

“He always knew when it was me,” I said when I could speak.

Asil smiled; it was a warm and friendly smile.“He told me that gave you sorrow. You would scheme and plan so no one would know—and never realized that he didn’t even have to investigate such an incident. ‘Who else could it be?’ he told me when I called him to

discuss the incident. ‘Can you imagine any of the pack putting peanutbutter on the seat of my car to teach me a lesson?’”

“Huh.” Such simple logic had been beyond me—and it just seemed right and proper that the Marrok would know everything, like Santa Claus with big sharp teeth. “He made me clean the whole car. It was worth it, though. He apologized to Evelyn, brought her flowers, too.”

“He apologized,” Asil said slowly, and I laughed, again, because Asil said it like he was storing up information to use to torment Bran.

“I needed that.” I waved him into the room. “Thank you.”

He glanced around the bedroom and took in the unmade bed and, his eyebrow rising ever higher, the puddle of now-solid silver on the floor. Then he said,“One thing I have always wondered is how Bran did not notice the smell of peanut butter on his so-expensive car’s lovely brown leather upholstery.”

“I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I put it on a paper plate with a little note that said, ‘For the Marrok,’ and set that on the dash of the passenger seat,” I told him. “He was so busy looking at it that he didn’t notice the seat until it was too late.” I looked at the silver on Kyle’s floor, too. They were probably going to have to replace the stone tile under it. “The eggs, though,” I continued absently. “The eggs were a failure. They don’t break when you want them to—the pillow cushions them too much, and they leave your victim with ammunition to use against you.”

“Mercedes, tell me—” Asil walked around the end of the bed, which brought him closer to me, and Ben growled.

Asil stopped where he was.“Very well. Let’s release your wolf from his predicament before we say those things that cannot be said in front of the government man.” He looked at me and pointed back at the door. “Go stand in the hall so we avoid the situation where he is torn between what his instincts say and his needto protect you.”

It sounded okay, so I did it, standing in the doorway so I could keep my eyes on them. That left Ben and about ten feet between me and Asil. Had he meant me any harm, the distance wasn’t enough, but because he did not, it was enough to assuage Ben’s need to see me safe.

Asil put his hand on Ben’s nose and pushed down until the red werewolf’s head was all the way on the floor. Ben gave a half groan, half growl.

“I pledge to you,” Asil said, meeting Ben’s eyes, “that I mean you and yours no harm. I recognize that you belong to Adam Hauptman, and I have no need for you to belong to me. I am an ally while Adam cannot be here, standing in for the Marrok, who has sent me to serve in his stead as lord over all the wolves as we are all his vassals. Do you accept me as such?”

Ben pulled his nose out from under Asil’s hand and stood up without crouching for the first time since he’d laid eyes on the other wolf. His tail and ears were up for a moment until he deliberately ducked his head and dropped his tail to a more neutral position.

Asil smiled at him.“Good. We understand each other. Now Mercedes ThompsondeHauptman, I need you to tell me exactly what has happened and what you know. Quickly, please, we haven’t much time.”

So I told him everything I knew.

When I was done, he got up off the bed where he’d been sitting and looked at the metal on the floor again. It had lost its bright color while we were talking, and now had a faint patina of black.

“How is your stomach feeling now?” he asked after a moment.

“Raw,” I admitted. “But it’s been that way since I wrecked my car and Adam and our pack were taken. I have no idea if it is from the silver or not.”

Asil crouched on his heels in silence of thought, and I considered reminding him that he’d been in a hurry. At last he said, “You are certain that Peter is the only fatality?”

“So far,” I said.

“I find that very interesting in light of the murders of your attackers.” His eyes were bright and merry as he looked at me. Apparently, murders were good fun. “The one who killed the hired men would not bother keeping all of the pack alive. Such a man would say, ‘One werewolf is enough to keep Adam on the hook, and this many hostages are expensive and dangerous to keep.’ Which would be right. They were bloody stupid to take down a whole pack—any commander who ever had charge of a host of enemy soldiers would have been happy to explain it to them.” He lost himself for a moment, presumably in happy contemplation of the troubles our enemies had gotten themselves into.

“Two different people?” I said.

Asil nodded.“So it seems to me. Moreover, a man who knew to hire these men, a man they would work for, would not have killed these mercenaries out of fear of what they know. These are very well-trained, sought-after mercenaries often hired by governments friendly to the US, Charles tells me. The kind of men who stay bought and don’t take kindly to being betrayed.”

“The Cantrip agents had the contacts but not the money to hire them,” I said slowly. “Federal agents are well paid—but not that well paid.”

“Can you contact Adam right now?”

“I can try.”

“Please do so. We need to let him know what we know—and see if there is any new information he can offer us about his location or the people who have taken him.”