Gary was easier with her than he had been with me, once he’d figured out who she was. And when he was unwilling to move, she just picked him up and moved him. He didn’t fight her the way he had Adam. Eventually she got him up the stairs and into the kitchen.
He sat, his back to the bay of windows, with the table between him and the rest of the room. He was hollow-eyed and twitchy, but he ate whatever food we set before him—though only with one hand. With the other, he kept a fierce hold on Honey’s hand, as if to remind himself she was still there. Periodically he’d glance around the room, but hunger kept most of his attention on his food.
I couldn’t figure out why he was that hungry. He didn’t look like he’d been missing meals. When I shifted back and forth between human and coyote, I got hungry like that. Working magic was draining. I wondered if he’d been shifting a lot—or if he was using magic to try to resist whatever made him smell of foreign magic.
Jesse had put together a couple of steak sandwiches from leftovers while Honey got him into the kitchen. When he fell onto them with ravenous hunger, she and Tad set out to build an omelet of epic proportions full of whatever odd ingredients were in the fridge. In the midst of their chopping, the front door opened in a fierce whirl of wind and weather—evidently the fat snow had given way to wind and sleet while we were downstairs.
My brother in safe hands, I headed to the front door to find Zee, coatless and soaked to the skin, standing in the doorway with iridescent silver eyes. For a moment he looked like a stranger—as if the forces driving the storm drew out his magic. Even though I knew he still wore his everyday glamour, I saw the malevolent and powerful fae that his magic disguised. The familiar if rain-drenched T-shirt clinging to his skin appeared to me as though it was a finely worked chain mail shirt.
I blinked and he turned to push the door closed. When he turned back, he swiped his wet white hair out of his face with an impatient hand, and when I saw his eyes again, they were a more familiar color and intensity. Everything about him had toned down now that the storm was firmly sealed outside.
“Where’s your brother?”
He looked, now, as he had in the garage, wiry and tough—dried out by age to sinew and bone, a grumpy old mechanic feared only by people who didn’t change their oil regularly.
Wordlessly I waved him in the right direction. He carried authority in his wake with the same ease that my husband did. Familiar and safe.
But in the back of my head, I knew that was not really true. Or not always true.
Interlude
Jesse looked up from her textbook with an irritated frown when someone knocked on her door. Her irritation was not appeased when she saw Tad standing in the doorway. Being caught belly down on her unmade bed in her oldest set of sweats made her feel uncomfortably exposed.
“What?” she growled.
He pulled out his hand and showed her a rectangle of silver-embossed card stock he held between his fingers, fluttering it to draw her attention.
She sat up indignantly and grabbed her backpack, unzipping the front pocket. It was empty. Her best friend had stolen the invitation and given it to Tad. Another time she’d have understood how concerned Izzy must have been to call in Tad when their on-again, off-again romance was currently on pause.
“Tell your girlfriend she’s a traitor,” Jesse growled.
“Don’t go,” he told her.
“It’s a wedding invitation,” she said dryly, “not a summons to a duel. Really, Izzy is making too much of it. Gabriel and I were friends before we dated.”
“It’s an attack,” he said.
Gabriel had no reason to want to hurt her. He was the one who broke up with her. Even if he’d felt wronged, he wouldn’t have tried to hurt her. Gabriel wasn’t like that.
She stood up and made her bed, because the rumpled sheets were making her feel vulnerable. Tad waited patiently while she righted her bedding, then set the stuffed elephant in its proper place on top of her pillow.
Her emotions tucked away as effectively as her unicorn sheets, she turned back to him.
“If I don’t go,” she told him, “it will look like I’m still pining for him. It’s not an attack. Gabriel isn’t vindictive.”
“No,” Tad agreed. “He isn’t. But he and I were friends, too. And I didn’t get an invitation to his wedding.” He paused. “And neither did Mercy.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She couldn’t tell him he was right. Or that she’d rather rub her heart with sandpaper than go watch the man she’d loved marry someone he’d started dating as soon as he’d left the Tri-Cities to attend the UW in Seattle.
She walked to her closet and rummaged through her box of hair dyes. She grabbed a bottle at random and walked past him.
“I’m going to dye my hair,” she said airily. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Don’t go,” he said.
And because going to Gabriel’s wedding was the very last thing in the world she wanted to do, she said, her back to him, “You aren’t the boss of me, Tad Adelbertsmiter.”
Then she retreated to the bathroom and dyed her hair purple.
4
Mercy“I don’t mind snow and I don’t mind rain,” Zee growled as he stumped into the kitchen. “But this place likes to spit water that turns to ice.”
Tad, chopping vegetables, didn’t look up when his father entered. Zee glanced at him but quickly looked away.
Jesse exchanged a worried look with me. I had thought matters between father and son had improved. Apparently not.
When Tad started dating Jesse’s best friend, Izzy, Zee had taken an interest in her. Not in a creepy stalker way, but in a scarier “if you hurt my son, I will destroy you” way.
Tad was angry—and I think a little worried. Zee had a habit of dealing permanently with people who hurt his son. I thought Zee could probably tell the difference between an overstepping Gray Lord of the fae and a young human negotiating the confusing new adult version of romance. But Tad, like his father, was protective.
Fortunately, our kitchen was sized like one of those old-timey farm kitchens: fit for a family to gather in. There was more than enough room for the seven of us without forcing Tad and Zee into interacting with each other. For that matter, it was big enough to give Gary some space, too.
Honey looked up from tending to my brother as we approached the table, giving Zee a sharp appraisal. Honey was old, and old wolves tended to be more wary around the fae. At her increase in tension, my brother stiffened and set the last half sandwich back down on his plate. He saw us—I mean he knew there were people in the kitchen—but he plainly didn’t see anyone he recognized.
Zee stopped well short of the table, frowned for a bit, then stretched his right hand in front of him, fingers spread, palm out toward my brother. Like mine on most workdays, his hands were stained with burnt oil. Scars covered his knuckles, and he was missing half a nail on his thumb. His ring finger was crooked where it had broken and healed badly—I couldn’t remember if his fae form, his real form, had a broken finger or not. His hand looked old.
And powerful.
Zee closed his eyes and inhaled audibly. He mumbled in something that might have been German, except it didn’t hold any words I was familiar with. I’m not fluent in German, but as in English, the little common words tend to sprinkle through normal speech. He opened his eyes, put his hand down, and turned to me with a scowl.
“What?” I asked.
“This”—he waved in my brother’s direction—“is not something you should be able to feel. Tad told me that he couldn’t sense it.”