The screen door of the house creaked and I looked up into Samuel's gray eyes. He wasn't a handsome man, but there was a beauty to his long features and ash brown hair that went bone deep.
"What put that look on your face?" Samuel asked. "Something wrong at Adam's house?"
"A couple of bigoted kids beat up on Jesse," I told him. It wasn't a lie. He wouldn't know that I was just answering his second question, not his first.
For an instant anger flew across his face—he liked Jesse, too. Then his control reasserted itself, and Dr. Cornick was on the spot and ready for action.
"She's all right," I told him before he said anything. "Just bruises and hurt feelings. We were worried for a bit that Adam was going to do murder, but I think we've got him settled down."
He came down off the porch and touched my face. "Just a few rough minutes, eh? I'd better go check Jesse over anyway."
I nodded. "I'll get something on for supper."
"No," he said. "You look like you could use some cheering up. Adam in a rage and Zee locked up, both in one day, is a little much. Why don't you get cleaned up and I'll take you out for pizza and company."
The pizza place was stuffed full of people and musical instrument cases. I took my glass of pop and Samuel's beer and went looking for two empty seats while he paid for our food.
After Tumbleweed shut down on Sunday night, their last night, all the performers and all the people who'd put it on apparently gathered together for one last hurrah—and they'd invited Samuel, who'd invited me. They made quite an impressive crowd—and didn't leave very many empty seats.
I had to settle for an already occupied table with two empty chairs. I leaned down and put my lips near the ear of the man sitting with his back to me. It was too intimate for a stranger, but there was no choice. A human ear wouldn't have picked up my voice in this din from any farther away.
"Are those seats taken?" I asked.
The man looked up and I realized he wasn't as much of a stranger as I thought…on two levels. First, he was the one who had complained about Samuel's Welsh, Tim Someone with a last name that was Central European. Second, he had been one of the men in O'Donnell's house, Cologne Man, in fact.
"No problem," he said loudly.
It could be coincidence. There could be a thousand people in the Tri-Cities who wore that particular cologne; maybe it didn't smell as bad to someone who didn't have my nose.
This was a man who knew Tolkien's Elvish and Welsh (though not as well as he thought he did, if he was critical of Samuel's). Hardly qualifications for a fae-hating bigot. He was more likely one of the fae aficionados who made the owner of the little fae bar in Walla Walla so much money, and had turned the reservation in Nevada into another Las Vegas.
I thanked him and took the seat nearest the wall, leaving the outside one for Samuel. Maybe he wasn't one of O'Donnell's Bright Future crowd. Maybe he was the killer—or a police officer.
I smiled politely and took a good look at him. He wasn't in bad shape, but he was certainly human. He couldn't possibly have beheaded a man without an ax.
So, not a Bright Futurean, nor a killer. He was either just a man who shared poor taste in cologne with someone who was in O'Donnell's house, or a police officer.
"I'm Tim Milanovich," he said, all but shouting to get his voice over the sound of all the other people talking, as he extended his arm carefully around his beer and over his pizza. "And this is my friend Austin. Austin Summers."
"Mercedes Thompson." I shook his hand—and the other young man's hand as well. The second man, Austin Summers, was more interesting than Tim Milanovich.
If he'd been a werewolf, he'd have been on the dominant side. He had the same subtle appeal of a really good politician. Not so handsome that people noticed it, but good-looking in a rugged football player way. Medium brown hair, several shades lighter than mine, and root beer brown eyes completed the picture. He was a few years younger than Tim, I thought, but I could see why Tim was hanging around him.
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.