Fire Touched (18 page)

Silence fell.

“We were talking about bargaining room,” Zee said, sounding almost kindly. “You probably won't know what you have until you talk to them.”

“I won't hand Aiden over to them,” Adam said. “Nor stand by while you or Tad are taken.”

“There's some room between what we will do and what we won't,” I said. “Should I call Thomas?” I didn't have his phone number, but I could call the hotel.

“Your justification for escorting the Flanagan and her vampire
is that they are in your territory?” Zee asked. “How big is your territory, Adam?”

“As big as I can defend,” Adam said, his eyes hooded. “If there is a war, I will take it right to the door of Underhill, should it be necessary. They will not find us an easy enemy to defeat.”

“Cost them so much in the winning that they never do it again,” said Zee thoughtfully. “That is a tactic. Not a good one, but a tactic. Usually, the result is a Pyrrhic victory.”

Adam nodded. “Let's just hope that someone other than you remembers that, and they don't force us to go to war.”

“Or we can just refer to the guesting laws,” I said. “Guests can request help in their journey without us claiming Walla Walla as our territory. It's stretching the rules a little, but not changing the letter of the law.”

“Guesting laws aside”—Adam took a deep breath and gave a decisive nod—“the first thing we really need is information. And I have one place we can get more without risking anyone.” He hitched his hip up off the chair and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “So I vote that we see what our note writers want first.” He dialed, then set the phone on the table with the speaker on—apparently done with his nod to democracy.

It rang three times and stopped. I could hear breathing on the other side of the connection. They waited for us to speak—but that's not how an Alpha plays the game.

Eventually, a voice that could have been a high-pitched man's or a low-pitched female's said, tentatively, “Who calls?”

Aiden jerked awake at the sound of the voice and dug his hands into Adam's arms, then slid off his lap and backed into a corner of the kitchen. Zee knew the voice on the phone, too. His eyes narrowed, and he pursed his lips, but he nodded at Adam.

“You give this number to a lot of people?” Adam asked.

“Mr. Hauptman,” said the voice, the tentative quality disappearing, buried in cold confidence. It was a woman's voice, I decided. “We do not desire a war with you.”

“Could have fooled me,” he growled. “You set a troll on my city.”

There was a pause. “Your city?” she said. “I believe you are the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack, not the mayor of Richland, Pasco, or Kent-Kenta-Ken . . .”

Adam smiled in satisfaction. “Kennewick,” he said, “is the name you're looking for. And my territory is where I say it is.”

“What your woman says it is,” she snapped, implying, I thought, that the power in the pack was not Adam, but me.

“Exactly so,” agreed Adam to my surprise. I wasn't the only one. Tad looked at me with an odd expression. “She is my mate and speaks with my voice. It doesn't sound as though we can work together. You are wasting my time.” He reached out and hit
END
, cutting off the call.

Aiden said, “It is dangerous to play games with them.” His shoulders were hunched, and he did not look at any of us. “Especially dangerous with that one.”

Tad murmured, “Listen to Captain Obvious.” That earned him a quelling glance from Adam.

I started to ask Aiden—or Zee—just who we were dealing with, but Adam spoke first.

“We are dangerous, too,” my husband told Aiden, not unkindly. “They need to remember that.” He looked at Zee. “How long do you think she'll wait before calling back?”

Zee pursed his lips. “It depends upon how much she wants—”

The phone buzzed, and Adam glanced at the screen. “Apparently quite a lot,” he said. He hit the green button on the screen and set it back down on the table.

“You have something I want,” she said.

I frowned at Adam, and he nodded. He'd caught her change from the “we” of the note to “I.”

“You've said that before,” Adam said. “I probably have several things you want, pick one.”

“The boy,” she said.

“No dice.” Adam hit the red button, and we all waited. Aiden stared at the floor and wrapped his arms around himself.

“Adam offered you indefinite protection,” Tad told Aiden. “You probably missed it in the middle of your panic attack. But he won't allow you to be given to the fae against your will. Not ever. Nicely played.”

Aiden opened his mouth.

The phone rang again.

Adam touched the green button, and said, “You bore me.”

“I need the boy,” she said.

“And you offer?”

“The note told you we are willing to allow you your territory.”

His body relaxing like a cat's, Adam smiled, his teeth white and even. “So the note said.” His voice was very soft. “No one
allows
me anything.” He paused and continued in a more normal tone. “That doesn't mean we can't negotiate. What are you, yourself, willing to offer me, and why are you answering this phone instead of whoever wrote those notes?”

The Fideal was male—and I would have recognized his voice. The woman might have been working with him, or some group of fae—but she was trying to work out a deal alone. Adam had just let her know that he understood that.

She responded with silence. Hard to tell if she was panicking or just thinking.

“Fae can lie,” Adam told her conversationally. “But I understand that they are punished for it. Removed from all that is and was and could be. A curse of rare power levied against your race by those who went before.”

I raised my eyebrows. I didn't know that. Zee focused intently on Adam. I assumed that Zee knew that fae could lie but wanted to know where Adam had gotten his information.

“You will regret—” she spat, but Adam had already disconnected his phone.

“Well, that one wants you, Aiden,” Adam said. “But as entertaining as that phone call was, we didn't learn what the fae as a whole want. Who was she, Zee?”

“The Widow Queen,” he said. “Neuth. She has other names. The Black Queen.”

“A fairy queen?” I asked. I'd met one of them.

But Zee shook his head. “No. She's sidhe fae—a Gray Lord. She likes to play with the humans, though, causing misery—which she can feed upon. She made her way into more than one folktale. I'd heard that she was at the one in Nevada. I did not see her while I was at our local reservation.”

Aiden shook his head. “No. She is here. She—” He took a deep breath. “No. She was one of the ones who came here when I escaped Underhill and was recaptured by the fae.”

“Tell me about her,” said Adam.

Zee frowned.

It was Tad who said, “In the far past, the Widow Queen was known for seducing men, men powerful in the human world, but also good and beloved men. Gradually, she would separate them from everything they loved until they were obsessed with her. She could use magic to accomplish this—but preferred not. It was
better when they followed her of their own will. Then she would destroy the man, the people he once loved—physically, mentally, in all ways at her disposal—then move on to the lands he ruled. The stories of Snow White and Cinderella probably were first conceived as a result of incidents involving her. When Underhill closed, she lost a great deal of that kind of magic, and more to the point, she lost her ability to feed off human misery. That wasn't her greatest power—she is a Gray Lord—but she enjoyed it the most.”

“So why would she want Aiden?” I asked. Then answered myself, “Beloved of Underhill, right? Possessed of magic she bestowed upon him. And the Widow Queen wants her abilities back.”

Tad shrugged. Zee grunted. Good enough supposition, I read from the vague noises.

“At least she doesn't prey upon children,” Adam murmured with a sigh. “So now we know that one fae wants Aiden. We need a plan for tonight. Will the Gray Lords meeting with Thomas's fae be of sufficient status to bargain?”

He looked at Zee, who sighed. “Probably. The Flanagan was a Power, and his daughter showed signs of being the same.” He tapped on the table. “You should bargain with them that they respect the boundaries of your territory—and be very clear what your territory is. Too big, and they will not believe you can hold it; too small, and you tell them that you are weak.”

“What do we have to bargain with?” Adam asked. “I won't turn the boy over to them.” He looked at Tad. “Or you or your father. Bran has made it clear that we are on our own.”

“There is the walking stick,” I said.

“That's a nonstarter,” said Adam. “It won't stay with them in the first place. And in the second place . . .”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It's changed, hasn't it? It's not just an artifact anymore. It has a mind of its own—which makes it . . . not something I'm willing to bargain with if I can help
it.”

Thomas had been suspiciously amiable about my request to include us in his fae lady's meeting.

“I am,” he'd said when I'd called him, “very happy to have more security for Margaret.”

I cleared my throat. “You might not be so happy when I explain exactly why we'd like to come along.” He'd listened as I expanded on the tale of the trouble I'd caused with my little speech on the bridge.

“So,” he said when I'd finished. “You wish to come in the hopes of taking the Gray Lords by surprise—and are fairly sure that those fae you will corner are people who know the situation and have the power to make bargains.”

“Yes,” I said.

There was a little pause. “You don't think that the Gray Lords are responsible for the threatening message sent to Hauptman's ex-wife. Worse, you don't think that the person, this Widow Queen,
you talked to on the phone was the person responsible for the message, either.”

“She may have been one of them,” I said, “but there are others—who may or may not have a different agenda than she does. Or they want our refugee, too, but not for the same purpose. You see our problem.”

“You don't know who wants what—and where they sit in the halls of power.” Margaret Flanagan had taken the phone. “Too many possibilities and not enough information.”

“Exactly,” I told her. “We don't want war with the fae—and I don't think they want war with us, either. But we won't give them the boy, who has been a victim of the fae for a very long time. We won't give them”—I paused, because in this instance I probably couldn't speak for the pack—“
I
won't give them Zee or his son. Ideally, the Gray Lords will decide we are too much trouble or not important enough to screw with, and they will take over and police their own. Otherwise, we'll try to bargain with them to get them to respect our territorial boundaries.”

“Zee?” Margaret asked. “You said his name to Thomas, too, as if he were someone we should know?”

“Siebold Adelbertsmiter,” I said. “He's had a lot of names over the years. You might know him better as the Dark Smith of Drontheim.”

There was a long pause. “You are a friend of the Dark Smith?”

“Zee is a grumpy old fae,” I said. “But he is my friend.”

She drew in a breath. “He was my father's much-admired enemy.”

“If it helps,” I said, “when I told him your father was dead, it hit him pretty hard. I'd say the admiration went both ways.”

She laughed.

Thomas said, “Margaret is what is important.”

“We will protect her,” I said.

“All right,” he said. “But you come. You and your mate. I've met you, and I'll have you at my back, but no strangers.”

“Deal,” I said.

Which is how I came to be riding shotgun instead of someone more useful like Warren or Honey—but we were hoping this wouldn't turn into an actual battle.

Zee came, too.

I hadn't asked him. Adam hadn't asked him. Zee hadn't said anything, he'd just been sitting in the backseat of Adam's car when we were ready to leave. He wouldn't say anything, and he wouldn't get out. None of the other cars parked at the house would start. So, instead of being late, we drove to the hotel with him in the backseat.

Thomas and Margaret came out to meet us. The sky wasn't quite dark, and Thomas wore gloves and a black hoodie with the hood pulled over his head. The hoodie made him look . . . smaller, and less dangerous—more like a gang member and less like a vampire.

Adam started to explain our stowaway to Thomas, but Zee got out of the car and looked at Margaret.

He frowned at the crutches and the scars on her wrists. “Your father was an honorable enemy,” he told her. “He deserved better followers. Are you as tough as your father?”

She raised her chin, but it was Thomas who said, “Tougher. They were both trapped underground in mining tunnels for decades. He died, and she survived.”

“My father was injured,” she said sharply. “I was not.”

“I did not know about this imprisonment,” Zee said. “Or I would have put a stop to it. I heard only afterward how it happened that you were trapped by those who should have cared for you.” He raised his eyes to her. “I would have broken my old enemy out of a prison
he did not deserve—if only to ensure that a worthy opponent still walked the earth. For the error of my ignorance, I will do my best to make sure that his daughter walks away unharmed today.”

She looked at him. “That's not why you came here,” she said.

“It is,” he said. “But it isn't the only reason, nor the most important, until I saw your face. The Dragon Under the Hill lives in your face. You have his eyes. Your father was one of the few enemies I had who was capable of giving as good as he got. He fought with cunning, skill, and honor; those three qualities are seldom found together. I disagreed with him, and he annoyed me—but he was a worthy opponent. I have other reasons to speak to the Gray Lords, but your safety will be my primary concern.”

They faced off with each other, the delicate woman with her scars and her crutches, and the wiry old man with his bald patch and his potbelly.

“Say no,” said Thomas. “Sunshine, he is dangerous.”

“So am I,” she said, but gently. “So are we all, isn't that the truth? But he is more dangerous to our enemies.” She frowned at Zee. “You aren't what I expected from the stories.”

He glanced around the parking lot, then back at her. “This is a different time.” He shrugged—the movement a little shallower than his usual shrug, but she wouldn't know that.

“I see,” said Margaret. “I agree to your unexpected proposal, Smith.”

“You aren't riding in the car with him,” Thomas said.

She smiled at Thomas. “All right. We'll take both cars.” She looked at me. “I'd like some time to talk with you.” She glanced at her vampire guardian, then at Adam. “I think we have a lot in common, and I'd like to compare notes. I had hoped we'd all have a chance to talk on the way to Walla Walla.”

“Maybe we can get together before you leave?” I asked.

She nodded gravely. “I hope so.”

—

“Walla Walla” was a term the Nez Percé used for a place where a stream flowed into a larger stream—or so I was told, though probably the pronunciation had changed quite a bit from the original. The most common translation was “many waters,” probably because it was both shorter and more lyrical than “where a stream flows into a bigger stream.”

Walla Walla was a town of a little over thirty thousand people, though it felt smaller than that somehow. I think it was the old-fashioned feel of the downtown district, an atmosphere invoking the days of horse and buggy or Model T cars. It was the kind of town that got voted “most friendly,” “most picturesque,” or “best place to live” on a regular basis.

Despite its many fine qualities, before the Ronald Wilson Reagan Fae Reservation was plunked down west of the town, Walla Walla was most famous for the nearby site of the Whitman Mission. There, the Protestant missionary Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and twelve other white people living at the mission were killed by Cayuse Indians in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Whitman was a doctor and a missionary, and he gained a reputation in the local tribes (Walla Walla, Nez Percé, and Cayuse mostly) as a spiritual leader and a man of powerful medicine. When measles swept through the Cayuse tribe, they turned to him for help he could not provide. The disaster that ensued was not, strictly speaking, the fault of either the Cayuse or the Whitmans, who were all doing what they believed to be right.

The symbolic irony of this meeting between werewolf, vampire,
and fae at a hotel named after Marcus Whitman did not go over my head. I hoped our results were better than those Whitman and the Cayuse achieved.

The road to Walla Walla was one of those winding highways that meandered through small towns along the way instead of speeding right past them with nothing more than an exit to mark their place. As I rode shotgun next to Adam, following Thomas Hao's white Subaru down the narrow highway to Walla Walla, we passed the road that used to lead to the fae reservation. “How do you want to play this?” I asked Adam, abruptly tired of the quiet in the car. I felt itchy with readiness, and the quiet, centered calm in both men irritated me.

“Nothing to plan,” he said.

When I snorted, he grinned at me. It wasn't a lighthearted grin, but there was amusement in it. “There is no reason to overthink things, Mercy. We don't know who we're going to see or what they are going to say. We can't plan except in the most general of fashions. We'll let Margaret get her say in first—that's courtesy. We'll work our business in as we can. Probably that will be very short and sweet for our part. We'll let them tell us what they are looking for if it gets that far. That part is up to them as well. It may be that we all just snap threats at each other and go home. I won't know how to play it until we at least know who we're playing with.”

He was right. I knew he was right. But I needed something to do, something to think about, so I could quit scaring myself with what-ifs, even if that meant talking about what-ifs. Adam was very good at making them less scary than my imagination did.

“There are only a few things we know for certain,” he said, as if he could hear my restlessness. “Zee isn't going to let anything happen
to Margaret. Thomas can take care of himself.” Then his voice dropped into a low, dangerous tone that was nothing like the easy, relaxed attitude he'd been portraying. “And
nothing
is getting past me to you.”

I absorbed that—the tone, not the words or intent behind it; those I already knew. Part of the magic of his voice was the Southern softness that blurred his consonants even when his accent wasn't strong. Part of it was the reliable confidence behind every word—I just
knew
there was no guile, give, or hesitation in this man the first time I heard him speak. At the time, it had been frustrating and annoying.

But mostly, when he dropped his voice that way, it caressed something inside me—like he'd stroked the back of my neck without touching me. It made me want to melt into a puddle at his feet and settled my restlessness right down.

He knew it, too. He smiled a little and turned his attention back to driving. I glanced at Zee. “How about you? Are you planning or running by the seat of your pants, too?”

Zee smiled happily. Somehow it was worse than his usual tightly sour smile—even though the happy was real. Maybe it was
because
the happy was real. “I will keep my old enemy's daughter safe. Sometime soon, I will deal with the fae who have offended me in such a way that others avoid annoying me for another century or two. That's a good plan for the next few weeks, I think.
Findest du nicht auch?
”

He didn't really expect an answer. “Don't you find it so?” is usually a rhetorical question, especially with Zee, who seldom cares for other people's opinions at the best of times.

We drove for a while longer, and I got restless again. Maybe if
I started fidgeting, Adam would let me drive. Maybe someone could start a conversation so I would quit worrying about how wrong this night could go.

“Why so quiet?” I asked Adam.

“I'm planning my moves,” he said. “I think I'll walk to the left of Thomas and Margaret. Studies show that right-handed people look right before they look left. That will give me a psychological advantage. Then I'll walk at half speed—”

“I
could
smack you,” I said. “Just saying.”

“I'm driving,” he answered meekly. “And you shouldn't hurt the one you love.”

“Flirt on your own time,
Lieblings
,” advised Zee. “I am too old for it—you could give me a heart attack.”

“You'd have to have a heart for that threat to work,” I said, and happily settled in for a game of insults with Zee.

—

We parked next to Thomas's car. It was nearly full dark—close enough to it that the vampire had discarded his hoodie and stood, looking elegant, in his usual bright-colored silk shirt. This one was an iridescent pearly blue, with an embroidered dark blue or black dragon crawling over his shoulder and down his arm.

He opened the door for Margaret and stood watching her struggle to get out. He didn't move a muscle, but I could feel the willpower it took not to help. Adam was right, Thomas was a goner. People who say that vampires don't care about anyone except themselves are mostly right—but sometimes they are very and lethally wrong.

Margaret's pain was too private to watch, so I looked up at the hotel.

In downtown Seattle, the Marcus Whitman Hotel wouldn't stand out, but in Walla Walla, it was about a hundred feet taller than anything else around it. From the bones of the original structure, it had been built in the late nineteen twenties. Several colors of brick and the very modern entrance evidenced more than one renovation over the years.