Iron Kissed

I frowned at it. It was two in the morning, an odd time for visitors. Most visitors.

I took in a deep breath through my nose, but couldn't catch a whiff of vampire—or anything else. Even the night air smelled duller than usual. Probably just a leftover from the shift from coyote to human. My human nose was better than most people's but quite a bit less sensitive than the coyote's, so changing to human was a little like taking out a hearing aid. Still…

Vampires could hide their scent from me if they chose to.

I shivered in the warm night air. I think I would have stayed out there all night, except that I heard the murmur of guitar. I couldn't see Samuel playing for Marsilia, the mistress of the vampire seethe, so I climbed up the steps and went in.

Uncle Mike sat on the overstuffed chair Samuel had replaced my old flea-market find with. Samuel was half-stretched out on the couch like a mountain lion. He played idle bits of music on his guitar. He might look relaxed, but I knew him too well. The cat who was purring on the back of the couch, just behind Samuel's head, was the only relaxed person in the room.

"There's hot water for cocoa," said Samuel, without looking away from Uncle Mike. "Why don't you get yourself some, then come tell us about Zee, who put you on the scent of their murderer so they could go kill him. Then tell me what you've been doing tonight that would leave you smelling of blood and magic?"

Yep, Samuel was ticked at Uncle Mike.

I riffled through the cupboards until I found the box of emergency cocoa. Not the milk chocolate with marshmallow kind, but the hard stuff, dark chocolate with a bit of jalapeño pepper for flavor. I wasn't really upset enough now to need it, but it kept me busy while I thought about how I might keep matters peaceable. Real cocoa needs milk, so I put some in a sauce pan and began heating it up.

I'd left Samuel and the other werewolves this morning knowing only that Zee was in jail and needed a lawyer. Obviously, someone had filled Samuel in a bit since then. Almost certainly not Uncle Mike.

Probably not Warren, who would know everything from the lawyer's meeting—I'd told Kyle to go ahead and tell him what I'd told the lawyer. Warren could keep secrets.

Ah. Warren wouldn't keep secrets from his pack Alpha, Adam. Adam would see no reason not to tell Samuel the whole story if he asked.

See that's the thing about secrets. All you have to do is tell one person—and suddenly everyone knows. Still, if I disappeared, I'd like to know that the werewolves would come looking for me. Hopefully the fae (in the person of Uncle Mike) understood that, and I wasn't likely to just disappear: if the Gray Lords would arrange a suicide for Zee, one of their own who was of some value, they certainly wouldn't hesitate to arrange something to happen to me as well. The pack would make that a little more difficult.

A cup of liquid doesn't take long to heat. I poured it into a mug; took the first sip, bittersweet and biting; then rejoined the men. My deliberations in the kitchen led me to the couch, where I sat with a whole cushion between me and Samuel so I wouldn't be assumed (by Samuel) to be taking a side in the antagonism that was stirring in my living room like the inky surface of Loch Ness just before the monster erupts. I didn't want any eruptions in my living room, thank you. Eruptions meant repair bills and blood. Growing up with werewolves had left me hyperaware of power struggles and things unspoken.

With another werewolf, a show of support might put the likelihood of violence down a few notches, because he would feel more confident. Samuel didn't need more confidence. He needed to know that I felt that Uncle Mike had done the right thing by calling me in, no matter what Samuel's opinion on the matter was.

"I found a good lawyer for Zee," I told Uncle Mike.

"She is a member of the John Lauren Society." Uncle Mike seemed much more himself than he'd sounded on the phone. That meant that his "cheerful i

"Kyle—" I stopped myself and backed up. "I have a friend who is among the best divorce attorneys in the state. When I called him, he suggested this Jean Ryan from Spokane. He told me she was a barracuda in the courtroom, and says that her membership in a fae hate group will actually help. People will think that she must be absolutely convinced of Zee's i

"Is that true? She believes him i

I shrugged. "I don't know, but both Kyle and she say it won't matter. I did my best to convince her." I took a sip of cocoa and told them everything Ms. Ryan had told me, including her warning that I keep my nose out of police business.

Samuel's lips quirked at that. "So how long did you wait before going to O'Do

I gave him an indignant look. "I wouldn't have done it before dark. Too many people would have been calling Animal Control if they saw a coyote that far into town, collar or not. I can't do much investigating from the animal shelter, and they've already picked me up once this summer."

I looked at Uncle Mike and wondered how to get him to tell me all the things I needed to know. "Did you know that O'Do

He sat up straighter. "I'd have thought he would be smarter than that. If the BFA had known, he'd have lost his job."

He didn't say that he'd been unaware of it, I noticed.

"He didn't seem too worried about anyone finding out," I told him. "There were Bright Future posters all over the walls of one of his rooms."

"The BFA doesn't exactly make a habit of searching their employees' houses. Their funding just got cut again and the moneys diverted to that mess in the Middle East." He didn't sound too upset about the BFA's troubles.

I rubbed my tired face. "The search wasn't as much help as I'd hoped. I didn't find a scent, except for O'Do

"So your visit was uneventful." That was Samuel, his voice just a little more intense than the soft, harplike notes he was calling from the guitar. If he kept playing like that, I was going to be asleep before I finished. "Why then do you smell like blood and magic?"

"I didn't say it was uneventful. The blood is because the living room of O'Do

Uncle Mike gave a faint grimace, which I didn't believe at all. My experience with immortals might be with werewolves, but the fae aren't a kind and gentle people either. He might have been thrown off his game when Zee was taken into custody, but blood and gore never really bother the old ones.

"The magic…" I shrugged. "It could have been a number of things. I saw the murder take place."

"Magic?" Uncle Mike frowned. "I didn't know you were a farseer. I thought that magic didn't work around you."

"That would be terrific," I said. "But no, magic works around me for the most part. I just have some kind of partial immunity to it. Usually the way it works is that the less harmful the magic is, the better the chance it won't work. The really bad stuff usually does just fine."

"She sees ghosts," said Samuel, impatient with my whining.

"I see dead people," I deadpa

"So did these ghosts tell you anything?"