Frost Burned

“Adam is not here at the moment,” I told him. And he wouldn’t be for hours.

Hao’s mouth tightened. “That is regrettable.”

I was having to rely on body language instead of my nose, but either he was very good at lying with his body (and very few people, vampire or not, are aware enough to do that) or he was dismayed that Adam would not be coming.

“It would still be a good idea,” Hao told me. “If you came, Mercy who is a walker.”

A walker is the name given to those of us who are descendants of Coyote, Raven, Hawk, or any of the other archetypes who once walked this land. Vampires do not like us. First, I see ghosts, and ghosts congregate around the daytime resting places of vampires, betraying the presence of the monster who killed them. I am also resistant to a lot of magic—and almost entirely resistant to the standard magic of vampires. When vampires came to the New World, they were met by my kind and nearly destroyed. I think that if disease and war had not decimated the Indians—and thus the walkers—there would be no vampires in the Americas.

Of course, being resistant to vampire magic didn’t mean I was a match for a vampire in any way, shape, or form.

This vampire stared at me with black eyes and waited. Marsilia wasn’t going to hurt me—she couldn’t afford to because the werewolves would destroy her if she did. She was just playing games. If I didn’t accept her invitation, by werewolf rules, which weren’t so different, really, from vampire rules because both are predators, it would be a coup for Marsilia and a black eye of cowardice for the pack.

Being seen as strong and scary kept the monsters at bay. If I showed the world that I was afraid of Marsilia, it made those wolves who belonged to the pack that much less safe.

I could insist on waiting until Adam got back. That might make me look weak, but it wouldn’t reflect, much, on the pack. Adam had had less than an hour’s worth of sleep since he escaped, and I was pretty sure he hadn’t slept otherwise since before the pack was taken.

I was tired, too, and wanted nothing more than to go back upstairs and read about giant squishy fruit with the Sandoval girls. We had lost Peter, and I didn’t want to lose anyone else, no matter how much the vampires scared me. Waiting for Adam, when Iknew Marsilia wouldn’t hurt me, really was cowardice. Adam was exhausted, and this was something I could do for him and for the pack.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll come. I have matters to arrange first if I’m going to go. I can find my way to the seethe.”

Hao shook his head.“The Mistress asked me to make sure that you made it there safely. I will wait here.”

“It might take me a while,” I warned him.

He bowed again.“I am used to waiting.”

“Your decision,” I told him, then closed the door. I looked at the werewolves and waited for their reactions.

Asil gave Dick and Jane—the nude statues that adorned Kyle’s foyer—an amused look.

“I like the hat,” he said.

“Which one?” I asked.

Jane had a new hat this month, a straw cowboy hat with an ostrich feather pointing jauntily up, just like the first ten inches or so of the ski hat Dick wore somewhere south of his belly button. The long tail of Dick’s hat drooped down until its pompom end hung just below Dick’s knees.

Asil’s amusement turned into a real smile, an open and beautiful smile that made him look twenty-five instead of how-many-hundreds of years old.

“Kyle has Christmas wear for them,” I told him. “He usually dresses them up the day after Thanksgiving. But he’s been a little too busy to get them rigged out.”

“You aren’t really going to go, right?” asked Ben.

“Marsilia isn’t going to hurt me,” I told him.

He rolled his eyes.“Have you seen what you did to her car?”

“Peter died,” I told Ben. “Go find Tad, and tell him that you two will be watching this house tonight.”

His chin rose.

“I’m not taking Tad into the vampire den,” I told him. “And Honey

Honey should not be left guarding the kids, not tonight.” Not when Peter had just died and she might lose control of her wolf.

Honey padded into the foyer, graceful, golden, and beautiful. She snarled at me.

“Iam the boss of you,” I told her as I headed for the stairs. “You’re coming with Asil and me, so put a sock in it.”

“Does the whole pack follow your orders so well, little coyote?” Asil asked, amused.

“Yes.”

He laughed again.

I gave him a cool look.“Or they regret it for a long time.”

We hadn’t had a chance to resupply on cell phones yet, and that left me with no direct way to contact Adam. The first rule of being married is to communicate where you are going and why. I called Tony, and Sylvia answered—Tony had left his cell phone with her. Kyle’s phone went straight to voice mail. I left a message on it and stopped to think. Armstrong probably had a cell, but I didn’t have his number.

I called Kyle’s office from the landline and told the recording that I was “going to meet with Marsilia” but didn’t dare to get more specific than that. I called Stefan. He didn’t answer his cell phone, and no one answered his home phone. I left more-detailed messages both places. When I set the phoneon the counter, Asil and Tad were both in the kitchen.

Tad looked at Asil.“Mercy needs clothes to wear if she’s going to face Marsilia. Stay here because I want to talk to her.” Asil gave me an amused glance, Tad a less amused glance, but didn’t protest waiting while Tad escorted me up the stairs and into the bedroom that he’d been sleeping in. He took out the odd chunk of metal from his pocket and invoked the sword his father had made.

“I already destroyed the cuffs,” he told me, holding it out. “So I don’t need it. I’m not a swordsman, and you’re going into enemy territory dangerously unarmed. I don’t know Asil, and Honey doesn’t like you. You may need something.”

“Asil is Bran’s, he will defend me,” I told him. I didn’t take the sword. I’ve had some weapons training in karate classes, but I’ve also read the stories about the Dark Smith of Dronheim.

“Which is more than you can say about Honey,” Tad groused. “Maybe you should take me.”

I shook my head.“I don’t want to leave either Honey or Asil with the kids. Honey might lose it and kill someone—I’d rather it be the vampires than the kids. Asil

is not entirely stable. If something does happen here and he had to kill someone, it could be worse than Honey losing it. This visit with Marsilia shouldn’t be dangerous.” If Hao was not lying. “Can you discern lies?” Some fae could, some couldn’t—though they themselves could not lie.

“Not with vampires,” he admitted.

“Vampires are tricky,” I agreed instead of saying, “Me either.” “But I think Hao was serious about Marsilia taking action—which makes me suspect that we are dealing with something that directly threatens the vampires after all. She wouldn’t stir herself on our behalf unless there was something big in it for her.” That “I think” kept it from being a lie. If he thought I could read Hao’s truth, he’d be less likely to argue. But I was pretty sure Hao had not been lying.

Who gains, Asil had asked me, if the pack is gone from the TriCities? Not Marsilia, I’d assured him. Because Marsilia benefited from our pack. No one wanted to take on Adam—and because Marsilia and Adam had cooperated a time or two, people thought that we cooperated more with the vampires than we really did. Adam didn’t object because he felt it kept the riffraff out.

But that meant one of her enemies might come after the pack in order to weakenher. She’d already withstood one attempt to take over her territory—and we of the Columbia Basin Pack had supported her. “I should be safe enough,” I told Tad. “Honey might not like me much, but she is loyal to Adam, and she is impressive. And of the werewolves we have here, she’s the single best fighter. I need you here—you’ll take care of the children, first and foremost. Ben is good for defense if you need it, but I don’t know how he’ll be around kids.” With his four-letter vocabulary and his anger problems, I’d have normally avoided leaving him with children or undefended women. But he was loyal to Adam, and I was confident that he wouldn’t hurt any of the kids even if he might expand their vocabulary in unfortunate directions.