Bone Crossed

I looked at him. He was watching the road, and both hands were on the wheel… but once I paid attention, I could see what I'd done to him. Me. With remnants of grease under my fingernails and stitches in my chin.

Maybe I hadn't screwed up the date as badly as all of that. I smoothed the skirt back down, successfully resisting the urge to pull it up farther only because I wasn't sure I could handle what might happen. I thought Adam was joking, but… I turned my head toward my side window and tried to keep the grin off my face.

He drove us to a restaurant that had just opened in the boom-town that was forming in West Pasco. Just a couple of years ago it had been barren desert, but now there were restaurants, a theater, a Lowe's and… a hugeyenormous (Jesse's word) giant-sized Wal-Mart.

"I hope you like Thai." He parked us out in the middle of west nowhere in the parking lot. Paranoia has odd manifestations. It gave me panic attacks and made him park where he could manage a quick getaway. Shared paranoia—could a happily-ever-after be far off for us?

I hopped out of the front seat and said in suitably resolute tones, "I'm sure they have hamburgers."

I shut the door on his appalled face. The locks clicked, and there he was, one arm on either side of me… gri

"You like Thai," he said. "Admit it."

I folded my arms and ignored the gibbering idiot who kept shrieking "he's got me trapped, trapped" in the back of my head. It helped that Adam up close is even better than half a car away. And Adam with a grin… well. He has a dimple, just one. That's all he needs.

"Jesse told you, didn't she?" I said grumpily. "Next time I see her, I'm going to expose her for the secret-sharing kid she is. See if I don't."

He laughed… and dropped his arms and backed away, proving he'd seen my erstwhile panic. I grabbed his arm to prove I wasn't scared and towed him around the Explorer toward the restaurant.

The food was excellent. As I pointed out to Adam, they did have hamburgers. Neither of us ordered them, though doubtless they would have been good, too. I could have been eating seaweed and dust, though, and I still would have enjoyed it.

We talked about cars—and how I thought his Explorer was a pile of junk and he thought I was stuck in the seventies in my preference for cars. I pointed out that my Rabbit was a respectable eighties model, as was my Vanagon—and the chances of his SUV being around in thirty years was nil. Especially if his wolves kept getting thrown at it.

We talked about movies and books. He liked biographies, of all things. The only biography I'd ever liked was Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, which I'd read in seventh grade. He didn't read fiction.

We got in an argument about Yeats. Not about his poetry, but about his obsession with the occult. Adam thought it was ridiculous… I thought it was fu

"Mercy," he said—and his phone rang.

I drank a sip of water and prepared to listen in to his conversation. But, as it turned out, it was very short.

"Hauptman," he answered shortly.

"You'd better get over here, wolf," said an unfamiliar voice and hung up.

He looked down at the number and frowned. I got up and walked around the table so I could look over his shoulder.

"It's someone from Uncle Mike's," I told him, having memorized the number.

Adam threw some money on the table and we trotted out the door. Grim-faced, he threaded the Explorer through the traffic at something more than the speed limit. We had just gotten on the interstate when something happened…. I felt a flash of rage and horror, and someone died. One of the pack.

I put my hand on Adam's leg, digging in with my nails at the roiling sorrow and rage that spun through the pack. He put his foot down and slid through the evening traffic like an eel. Neither of us said a word during the five minutes it took us to reach Uncle Mike's.

The parking lot was full of big SUVs and trucks, the kind most of the fae drive. Adam didn't bother parking, just drove right up until he was near the door and stopped. He didn't wait for me—but he didn't have to. I was right behind him when he brushed by the bouncer who guarded the door.

The bouncer didn't even protest.

Uncle Mike's smelled like beer, hot wings, and popcorn, which would have made it smell like every other bar in the Tri-Cities except that it also smelled like fae. I don't know that they organize themselves that way, but fae usually smell to me like the four elements that the old philosophers proposed: earth, air, fire, and water, with a healthy dose of magic.

None of those smells bothered me… only the blood.

Uncle Mike's commanding voice was backing people up and tightening the crowd until Adam and I were blocked in. That's when Adam lost it and began tossing people around.

Not really a safe thing to do at Uncle Mike's. Most of the fae I've met are no match for a werewolf… but there are ogres and other things that look just like everyone else until they get ticked off.

Even so, it wasn't until Adam began to change, ripping his charcoal suit, that I realized something more was happening than him losing his temper.

"Adam!" It was no use, my voice was lost in the noise of the crowd. I put a hand on his back so I didn't lose him, and I felt it.

Magic.

I jerked my hand back. It didn't feel like fae magic. I looked around for someone who was concentrating just a little too much on Adam but couldn't spot anyone over the crowd.

I did, however, see a little canvas bag hanging from the rafters just behind us. About the same place Adam started using physical force to move through the crowd. The ceilings in Uncle Mike's are about fourteen feet in the air. I wasn't going to reach that bag without a ladder—and I wasn't going to be able to find a ladder anytime soon.

A slender, almost effeminate man walked under the bag as I watched. He jerked to a halt, then threw back his head and roared. A sound so huge that it drowned out all of the noise in the building, shaking the rafters. His glamour, the illusion that made him look human, shattered, and I swear I could almost see a pile of sparkling dust spread out from him.

He was huge, an unearthly mass of gray and blue, still vaguely human-shaped, but his face looked like it had melted, leaving only vague bumps where his nose should have been. His mouth was pretty easy to spot—it would be hard to miss all those big teeth. Silvery eyes, too small for that huge face, glared out from under sparkly blue eyebrows. He shook himself, and the sparkly dust scattered again, melting as it touched warmer surfaces. He was shedding snow.

In the silence that followed, a small cranky voice said, "Freakin' snow elf." I couldn't see the speaker, but it sounded like it was coming from somewhere right next to the newly emerged monster.

He roared again and reached down, hauling a woman up by the hair. She was more angry than scared and pulled a weapon out of somewhere and cut her own hair, dropping down and out of my sight again.

The thing—I'd never heard of a snow elf—shook the hair he held and threw it behind him.

I glanced back at Adam, but in the short moments since I'd last looked, he'd disappeared, leaving behind only a trail of bloody bodies, most of them still standing and ticked off. I looked at the snow elf and the bag above his head.

No one was watching me, not with a rampaging werewolf and an abominable snowman in the room. I stripped off the dress and bra, stepped out of my shoes and underwear as fast as I could. I'm not a werewolf; my coyote shape comes between one breath and the next, and brings exhilaration and not pain. The snow elf was still standing underneath the bag when I jumped up, landed on someone's shoulders, and looked for him.