“Mercy,” he said reprovingly.
“Okay,” I told him, “we don’t have to go to Mom’s. Montana would work, too.”
“Mercy,” he repeated. “We’ve been in tough places before. It will be okay. You’re just tired, or you wouldn’t be so upset.” He pulled me all the way over on top of him and patiently waited while I wiggled until I was comfortable.
“Go to sleep,” he said. “Things will look better in the morning.” I was almost asleep when he murmured, “And if it doesn’t, we’ll invite your mom down to deal with Guayota andBeauclaire.”
At some point in the night, I rolled off Adam, off the air mattress, and onto the floor. Maybe it was the rolling that woke me up. Maybe it was dreaming of Guayota eating at my kitchen table with Christy and my mom. They’d been talking about the flower garden and eating an avocado salad, so I don’t know why I was so scared, but even awake my heart was pounding, and I’d broken into a light sweat.
I sat up and rubbed the back of my neck to dispel the tension of the dream–and to rub away the lingering sting of my head hitting the hardwood floor.
“Mercy?” Adam’s voice settled me more than my rubbing hand had, wrapped around me like a warm coat on a cold night.
“Bad dreams.” My throat was dry.
“Do you want to talk about them?”
I rolled to my hands and knees, leaned over and down to kiss him. I pulled back and decided to revisit the kiss. Adam’s kisses were always worth a second pass. If we had had a door between us and Christy …
Even so, I was more than a little breathless when I answered his question. “Not necessary. I’m going to get a glass of water, then I’ll be right back.” I kept my voice to a whisper, so I wouldn’t wake anyone else.
He nodded, wrapped a hand around my hair, and pulled me down for a third kiss. Then he smiled, let me go, and closed his eyes. I really, really wished there was a door–or that I was more of an exhibitionist.
I was still dressed from earlier–without privacy I wasn’t going to strip and give Christy a chance to say something we might both regret. All I had to do was zip up my jeans, and I was ready to face anyone who might be wandering around the house at this hour.
In the kitchen, I drank some water and glanced out the window–and froze. A man sat on the roof of Adam’s SUV with his head thrown back, a bottle upended over his head as he drank. He wore scruffy jeans, boots of some sort, and a white t‑shirt.
He was too far away for me to see him swallow, but the bottle stayed there for a while. I could tell by the way he pulled the bottle down that he’d drunk it dry. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then, glancing my way, casually saluted me with the bottle.
With the moon at his back, he should have had no way to see me tucked safely behind glass in the dark kitchen. I dumped the rest of the water out of the glass and set it quietly in the sink. My shoes were still in the mudroom where I’d left them. I slipped them on and walked out to talk with Coyote.
10
“Gary Laughingdog said that I should try to be interesting if I wanted to see you,” I told Coyote as soon as I was reasonably close to the SUV.
Coyote laughed. “That one has been trying to avoid me for most of his life.” His white t‑shirt set off his long black braid, tied with a pink scrunchie.
“Maybe if you didn’t get him sent to prison when you visited, he’d be more interested in seeing you,” I suggested, trying not to stare at the scrunchie. It had a white lamb dangling from a chain, and I was pretty sure he’d worn it just for me. I didn’t reach up to touch the lamb on the necklace around my neck.
“Gary needs his life shaken up,” Coyote told me, then he belched with more sound and fury than a thirteen‑year‑old boy with a roomful of girls to impress.
“If you get me or mine sent to prison, I’ll hunt you down,” I told him seriously.
He grinned at me and half slid, half scrambled down the back of the SUV to end up standing on his own feet. He left the bottle on the vehicle’s roof. He began moving off down the driveway at a brisk walk. When I didn’t immediately follow, he turned around and began walking backward and waving his hands for me to join him.
His braid swung around when he did, the little lamb flapping with his movements. I was not going to say anything about the stupid lamb if only because I was certain he wanted me to say something about the stupid lamb.
“Come. Come,” he said. “Come take a walk with me.”
If I hadn’t needed a favor from him, I might have stayed behind. But I did–and I wasn’t opposed to some exercise to get rid of the miasma of fear and despair my nightmare had left me with. Our feet crunched on the dry dirt and gravel.
“I don’t understand why you are so determined to hang around with werewolves. They are all about rules. And you”–he slanted a laughing glance at me–“like me, are all about breaking them.”
There was something about walking down a deserted road in the dark that made for thoughtful silences. Especially when the deserted road was too long, too unfamiliar, and even at this hour of the night, too deserted. Coyote probably had something to do with that.
Finally, I said, “I don’t know about that. The werewolves’ rules are all designed to keep people safe.”
“Safe.” He tested the word. “Safe.” His nose wrinkled. “Who wants to be safe? I haven’t noticed you running to safety.”
I bit my tongue. I liked being safe. Being in Adam’s arms was safe. Talking to Coyote was anything but–and where was I? I supposed he had a point.
“Safe is good,” I told him. “Not all the time, no. Sometimes, though, it is better than water in the desert.”
He made a rude noise.
I thought more about rules and werewolves. I glanced over my shoulder, but I couldn’t see Honey’s house–or any other house for that matter. Coyote was definitely doing something. I hoped that Adam went right back to sleep and hadn’t heard me open the back door. He’d be worried.
“Rules keep the people I love safe,” I said, thinking about Adam. “It is important to me that theyare safe.”
He nodded like I had said something smart. Then he said, “And when rules don’t keep them safe, we break the rules.”
I could agree with that–and almost did. If it weren’t for that little bit of smugness on his face, I would have. I wonder what rules he was contemplating breaking.
“Admit it,” he said when I didn’t say anything more. “Admit it. Keeping all the rules is boring. Tell me you don’t want to short‑sheet Christy’s bed–or put ipecac syrup in some of that too‑delicious food she is always cooking.”
“I’m not childish,” I told him. “And I’m not petty.”
“No,” he agreed sadly. “More’s the pity.”
“And how do you know how good her food is?”
He just smiled and kept walking.
I took a deep breath. Time to ask him about the walking stick. I’d given it to him as a gift, and he’d taken it as a favor. I wasn’t sure how he’d react when I asked for it back.
“There he is,” Coyote said, sounding delighted, and he broke into a sprint, the stupid lamb bouncing with his stride.
I ran as fast as I could, but Coyote stayed ahead of me. I couldn’t see who it was, but I wasn’t surprised when, after a minute or two, the path turned, and there was Gary Laughingdog sitting in the middle of the road with his back to us. I stopped beside him, but Coyote had walked around so Gary couldn’t avoid looking at him.
“I hate you,” Gary said with feeling. He threw a small rock and nailed a T‑post on the side of the road. He picked up another, tossed it into the air, and caught it on the way back down.
Coyote threw his head back and laughed. “I wondered how much longer you’d stay locked up in the gray box. You didn’t used to let them hold you for so long.”
“Knowing I was safe from you there,” Gary said, throwing the rock in his hand with barely controlled violence, “I planned on staying inside as long as I could. My conscience drove me out before then.”