"When he declared you his mate, he offered you an invitation to join us. He opened a place for you that you have not filled. That opening is a weakness. Adam mostly keeps it from us, but he only does it by absorbing all of the effects himself. His wolf knows there is a weakness, a place where harm might come to us, and it leaves him on alert, on edge, all the time. We can feel that, and respond to it." She gave me a tight smile. "That's why I was so unpleasant to you when he sent me to play bodyguard against the vampires. I thought you were playing games and leaving us to pay the price."
No. No game playing. Just a lot of panicking. Whomever I chose in the end, Adam or Samuel, I'd lose the other oneand that was more than I could bear.
"All of us depend upon our Alpha to help us live among the humans," Honey said. "Some of Adam's wolves have human women as mates. It is his willpower that allows us to control ourselves, particularly as the moon nears her zenith."
I put my aching head on my knees. "What was he thinking? Damn it."
She patted me on the shoulder, an awkward touch that managed to convey both comfort and sympathy. "I don't think he was thinking of anything except to place his claim on you before another wolf killed or claimed you."
I gave her a look of disbelief. "What is going on? Is everyone losing their minds? I haven't had so much as a date for ten years and now there's Adam and Samuel and" I'd have bitten off my tongue before I continued and mentioned Stefan. I hadn't seen the vampire since he and the Wizard had killed two innocents to take the blame for killing Andre so Marsilia didn't kill me. It was just as well as he wasn't my favorite person.
"I know why Samuel wants me," I told her.
"He thinks that the two of you could have childrenand you can't forgive him for wanting you for practical reasons." There was something in Honey's voice that told me that she liked Samueland maybe it hadn't been just my perceived "game playing" with Adam and her pack that she'd resented. But the expression on her face told me more. She understood Samuel's point from experience; she wanted children, too.
I don't know why I started talking to Honey. I didn't know her that welland had spent most of that time disliking her. Maybe it was because there was no one else I knew who was in a position to understand.
"I don't blame Samuel for realizing that a shapeshifter who changed into a coyote and was not bound by the moon might be a good mate," I told her, speaking very quietly. "But he let me love him without telling me exactly why he was so interested. If the Marrok hadn't interfered, I'd probably have been his mate when I was sixteen."
"Sixteen?" she said.
I nodded.
"Peter is a lot older than me," she said, speaking of her husband. "That was hard. But I wasn't sixteen and" She paused, thinking. Finally she shook her head. "I don't recall ever hearing how old Samuel is, but he's older than Charles, and Charles dates back to Lewis and Clark."
The outrage that filtered into her voice, still pitched not to carry to the other werewolves, was like a balm. It gave me the courage to tell her a bit more.
"I am happy with who I am," I told her. "The incident with Samuel let me break with the pack and join the human world. I'm independent and good at my job. It's not glamorous, but I like fixing things."
"And still," she said, voicing the thing I hadn't said.
I nodded. "Exactly. And stillwhat if I'd taken him up on his offer? I tell myself that I'd be a lesser person, but Samuel isn't the kind of man to iron all the personality out of his wife. Half the trouble I got into when I was a teen he got me intoand got me out of the other half."
"So you'd be a doctor's wife, and free to do as you pleasebecause Samuel's not the control freak that most of the dominant males are."
There it was. Oh, not Samuel. She, like most people, saw what he wanted them to see. Gentle, laid-back Samuel. Hah.
But, I'd always wondered why Honey had married her husband, who was so far down in the pack power structure when she was as dominant as all but the top two or three wolves. Since she took her rank from her husband, she was a lot lower than she'd been before she'd taken Peter as her mate. There weren't actually all that many submissive wolves out there. The kind of determination it takes to survive the Change isn't usually found in a person who isn't at least a little dominant.
"Samuel is as much a control freak as any of them. He just hides it better," I said. "The reality of it is that he'd have wrapped me in cotton wool and protected me from the world. I'd never have grown or become the person I am."
She raised an eyebrow. "Like what, a mechanic? You work for less than minimum wage. I saw Gabriel do the paycheckshe clears more than you do."
I'd been wrong. She'd never understand.
"Like owning my own business," I told her, though I knew it was futile to expect her to comprehend what I meant. I'd turned down everything that she'd wanted out of lifestatus, both in the werewolf world and the human one, and money. "Like being able to take something that doesn't work and fix it. Like being able to hold my own with Adam today instead of falling on my knees and looking at the ground. Like deciding what I'm going to do every dayincluding going after that demon-riding vampire who almost killed Warren. I'm not all that, especially not compared to the werewolves, but you have to admit that I was uniquely suited to taking him out. The werewolves couldn't. The vampires and fae wouldn't. What would have happened if I hadn't been able to kill him? Samuel would never let his wife risk her life to do something like that."
I realized something then. As scary as it had been (and I had the nightmares and the scars to prove it), as stupidly dangerous as it still wasand possibly deadlyI was proud of killing those two vampires. No one else would have been able to do it. Just me.
Samuel would never let me do something like that.
I could never have Samuel without giving up something I cherished about myself. It was the first time I'd let myself look at that because then I'd have to admit that Samuel could never be for me.
The question was, would Adam be any better? And if I took Adam, Samuel would leave. Part of me still loved Samuel, and I was not ready to give him up.
I was so screwed.
"You think that Adam would have let you go after that thing if you were his mate?" asked Honey in disbelief.
Maybe.
"I didn't mean to walk in on anything," said Jesse in a small voice.
I realized that I hadn't been hearing the water from the shower for a while. I hadn't heard her approach either.
She'd wrapped a towel around herself, but she was still quick at closing the door behind her. She gave Honey a wary look, but then dismissed her.
"I overheard that last part," she told me. "Dad told me to stay out of his affairs. But I thought you ought to know that he told me not too long ago that if you don't fall out of a plane now and then, you never learn to fly."
"He gave me bodyguards," I told her dryly. Honey had been one of them.
She rolled her eyes at me. "He's not stupid. But if there is something you have to do, he'll be at your back." I gave her an incredulous look and she rolled her eyes again. "Okay, okay, he'll lead the way. But he won't make you stay behind. He doesn't waste his resources that way."
When Jesse had been missing, and Adam too hurt to do anything about it, he'd all but recruited me to find her, knowing that the people who had her had almost killed him. For some reason that recollection let me breathe deeply again.
Knowing that I could not have Samuel hurt. I think giving up Adam might just break mewhich didn't mean that I might not have to anyway.
I hopped to my feet.
"I'll keep it in mind," I told her and then changed the subject. "How are you feeling?"
She smiled and held out a rock-steady hand. "I'm fine. You were right; a hot shower really helped. I'll have some bruises, but I'm all right. Gabriel helped, too. He's right. I did defend myself, better than they expected. I know to watch for them now and" Her smile widened just short of splitting her lip again. "Dad's given me bodyguards." She said it in the same exasperated tones I used.
CHAPTER 7
Sometimes it seems like the distance between Adam's house and mine changes. Just an hour or so earlier, it had taken me only a moment to get from my door to his. It took me a long time to walk back home and I mourned all the way.
I would not choose Samuel. Not because I didn't trust him, but because I could trust him absolutely. He would love me and care for me, until I chewed off my arm to be freeand I wouldn't be the only person I'd hurt. Samuel had been damaged enough without me adding to it.
When I told him how I felt, he would leave.
I hoped he would still be gone, but his car was parked next to my rust-colored Rabbit. I stopped in the driveway, but it was already too late. He'd know I was outside.
I didn't have to tell him today, I thought. I wouldn't have to lose him today. But soon. Very soon.
Warren and Honey were right. If I didn't do something soon, blood would flow. It was a testament to the control both Adam and Samuel had, that there had been no fighting up until now. I knew in my heart of hearts, if it ever came down to a real fight between them, one of them would die.
I could bear losing Samuel again if I had to, but I could not bear being the cause of his death. And I was certain that it was Samuel who would die in a fight with Adam. Not that Adam was a better fighter. I'd seen Samuel in a fight or ten, and he knew what he was doing. But Adam had an edge of ruthlessness that Samuel lacked. Adam was a soldier, a killer, and Samuel a healer. He would hold back until it was too late.
The screen door of the house creaked and I looked up into Samuel's gray eyes. He wasn't a handsome man, but there was a beauty to his long features and ash brown hair that went bone deep.
"What put that look on your face?" Samuel asked. "Something wrong at Adam's house?"
"A couple of bigoted kids beat up on Jesse," I told him. It wasn't a lie. He wouldn't know that I was just answering his second question, not his first.
For an instant anger flew across his facehe liked Jesse, too. Then his control reasserted itself, and Dr. Cornick was on the spot and ready for action.
"She's all right," I told him before he said anything. "Just bruises and hurt feelings. We were worried for a bit that Adam was going to do murder, but I think we've got him settled down."
He came down off the porch and touched my face. "Just a few rough minutes, eh? I'd better go check Jesse over anyway."
I nodded. "I'll get something on for supper."
"No," he said. "You look like you could use some cheering up. Adam in a rage and Zee locked up, both in one day, is a little much. Why don't you get cleaned up and I'll take you out for pizza and company."
The pizza place was stuffed full of people and musical instrument cases. I took my glass of pop and Samuel's beer and went looking for two empty seats while he paid for our food.
After Tumbleweed shut down on Sunday night, their last night, all the performers and all the people who'd put it on apparently gathered together for one last hurrahand they'd invited Samuel, who'd invited me. They made quite an impressive crowdand didn't leave very many empty seats.
I had to settle for an already occupied table with two empty chairs. I leaned down and put my lips near the ear of the man sitting with his back to me. It was too intimate for a stranger, but there was no choice. A human ear wouldn't have picked up my voice in this din from any farther away.
"Are those seats taken?" I asked.
The man looked up and I realized he wasn't as much of a stranger as I thoughton two levels. First, he was the one who had complained about Samuel's Welsh, Tim Someone with a last name that was Central European. Second, he had been one of the men in O'Donnell's house, Cologne Man, in fact.
"No problem," he said loudly.
It could be coincidence. There could be a thousand people in the Tri-Cities who wore that particular cologne; maybe it didn't smell as bad to someone who didn't have my nose.
This was a man who knew Tolkien's Elvish and Welsh (though not as well as he thought he did, if he was critical of Samuel's). Hardly qualifications for a fae-hating bigot. He was more likely one of the fae aficionados who made the owner of the little fae bar in Walla Walla so much money, and had turned the reservation in Nevada into another Las Vegas.
I thanked him and took the seat nearest the wall, leaving the outside one for Samuel. Maybe he wasn't one of O'Donnell's Bright Future crowd. Maybe he was the killeror a police officer.
I smiled politely and took a good look at him. He wasn't in bad shape, but he was certainly human. He couldn't possibly have beheaded a man without an ax.
So, not a Bright Futurean, nor a killer. He was either just a man who shared poor taste in cologne with someone who was in O'Donnell's house, or a police officer.
"I'm Tim Milanovich," he said, all but shouting to get his voice over the sound of all the other people talking, as he extended his arm carefully around his beer and over his pizza. "And this is my friend Austin. Austin Summers."
"Mercedes Thompson." I shook his handand the other young man's hand as well. The second man, Austin Summers, was more interesting than Tim Milanovich.
If he'd been a werewolf, he'd have been on the dominant side. He had the same subtle appeal of a really good politician. Not so handsome that people noticed it, but good-looking in a rugged football player way. Medium brown hair, several shades lighter than mine, and root beer brown eyes completed the picture. He was a few years younger than Tim, I thought, but I could see why Tim was hanging around him.
It was too crowded for me to get a good handle on Austin's scent when he was sitting across the table, but impulsively, I managed to move the hand I'd used to shake his against my nose as if I had an itchand abruptly the evening turned into something besides an outing to keep my mind off my worries.
This man had been at O'Donnell's houseand I knew why one of Jesse's attackers had smelled familiar.
Scent is a complicated thing. It is both a single identification marker and an amalgam of many scents. Most people use the same shampoo, deodorant, and toothpaste all the time. They clean their houses with the same cleaners; they wash their clothes with the same laundry soap and dry them with the same dryer sheets. All these scents combine with their own personal scent to make up their distinctive smell.
This Austin wasn't the man who'd attacked Jesse. He was too old, a couple of years out of high school at least, and not quite the right scentbut he lived in the same household. A lover or a brother, I thought, and put money on the brother.
Austin Summers. I would remember that name and see if I could come up with an address. Hadn't there been a Summers boy that Jesse had had a crush on last year? Before the werewolves had admitted to their existence. Back when Adam had just been a moderately wealthy businessman. John, Josephsomething biblicalJacob Summers. That was it. No wonder she was so upset.
I sipped my pop and glanced up at Tim, who was eating a slice of pizza. I'd have bet my last nickel that he wasn't a police officerhe had none of the usual tells that mark a cop and he wasn't in the habit of carrying a gun. Even if they are unarmed, police officers always smell a little of gunpowder.
The odds of Tim being Cologne Man had just made it near a hundred percent. So what was a man who loved Celtic folk songs and languages doing in the house of a man who hated the largely Celtic fae?
I smiled at Tim and said sincerely, "Actually, Mr. Milanovich, we sort of met this weekend. You were talking to Samuel after his performance."
There were places where my Native American skin and coloring made me memorable, but not in the Tri-Cities, where I blended in nicely with the Hispanic population.
"Call me Tim," he said, while trying frantically to place me.
Samuel saved him from continued embarrassment by his arrival.
"Here you are," he said to me after murmuring an apology to someone trying to walk through the narrow aisle in the opposite direction. "Sorry it took me so long, Mercy, but I took a minute to stop and talk." He set a little red plastic marker with a black 34 on top of the table next to Tim's pizza. "Mr. Milanovich," he said as he sat down next to me. "Good to see you."
Of course Samuel would remember his name; he was like that. Tim was flattered to be recognized; it was written all over his earnest face.
"And this is Austin Summers," I yelled pleasantly, louder than I needed to, since Samuel's hearing was at least as good as mine. "Austin, meet the folksinging physician, Dr. Samuel Cornick." Ever since I heard them introduce him as "the folksinging physician," I'd known he hated itand I'd known I had to use it.
Samuel gave me an irritated look before turning a blandly smiling expression to the men we shared the table with.
I kept a genial expression on my face to conceal my triumph at irritating him while Samuel and Tim fell into a discussion of common themes in English and Welsh folk songs; Samuel charming and Tim pedantic. Tim spoke less and less as they continued.
I noticed that Austin watched his friend and Samuel with the same pleasantly interested expression that I'd adopted, and I wondered what he was thinking about that he felt he had to conceal.
A tall man stood up on a chair and gave a whistle that would have cut through a bigger crowd than this one. When everyone was silent, he welcomed us, said a few words of thanks to various people responsible for the Tumbleweed.
"Now," he said, "I know that you all know the Scallywags" He bent down and picked up a bodhran. He sprayed the drumhead with a small water bottle and then spread the water around with a hand as he spoke with a studied casualness that drew attention. "Now the Scallywags have been singing here since the very first Tumbleweedand I happen to know something about them that you all don't."
"What's that?" someone shouted from the crowd.
"That their fair singer, Sandra Hennessy, has a birthday today. And it's not just any birthday."
"I'll get you for this," a woman's voice rang out. "You just see if I don't, John Martin."
"Sandra is turning forty today. I think she needs a birthday dirge, whatd' you all think?"
The crowd erupted into applause that quickly settled into anticipatory silence.
"Hap-py birthday." He sang the minor notes of the opening of the "Volga Boatmen" in a gloriously deep bass that needed no mike to carry over the crowd, then hit the bodhran once with a small double-headed mallet. THUMP.
"It's your birthday." THUMP.
"Gloom and doom and dark despair,
"People dying everywhere.
"Happy birthday." THUMP. "It's your birthday."
Then the rest of the room, including Samuel, started to sing the mournful tune with great cheer.
There were well over a hundred people in the room, and most of them were professional musicians. The whole restaurant vibrated like a tuning fork as they managed to turn the silly song into a choral piece.
Once the music started, it didn't stop. Instruments came out to join the bodhran: guitars, banjos, a violin, and a pair of Irish penny whistles. As soon as one song finished, someone stood up and started another, with the crowd falling in on the chorus.
Austin had a fine tenor. Tim couldn't sing on pitch if his life depended upon it, but there were enough people singing that it didn't matter. I sang until our pizza arrived, then I ate while everyone else sang.
Finally, I got up to refill my soda, and by the time I returned, Samuel had borrowed a guitar and was at the far end of the room leading a rousing chorus of a ribald drinking song.
The only one left at our table was Tim.
"We've been deserted," he said. "Your Dr. Cornick was summoned to play, and Austin's gone out to the car to get his guitar."
I nodded. "Once you get him singing" I waved vaguely to indicate Samuel"you're in for it for a while."
"Are the two of you dating?" he asked, rolling the Parmesan jar between his hands before setting it down.
I turned to look at Samuel, who was singing a verse alone. His fingers flew on the neck of the borrowed guitar and there was a wide grin on his face.
"Yes," I said, though we weren't really. And wouldn't now. It was less complicated just to say yes rather than explain our situation.
"He's a very good musician," Tim said. Then, his voice so quiet I knew I wasn't supposed to hear him, he murmured, "Some people have all the luck."
I turned back to him and said, "What was that?"
"Austin's a pretty good guitarist, too," he said quickly. "He tried to teach me, but I'm all thumbs." He smiled like it didn't matter, but the skin around his eyes was taut with bitterness and envy.
How interesting, I thought. How could I use this to pry information from him?
"I know how you feel," I confided, sipping my pop. "I was practically raised with Samuel." Except that Samuel had been an adult several times over. "I can plunk a bit on the piano if someone forces me. I can even sing on keybut no matter how hard I worked at it" not very"I could never sound as good as Samuel. And he never even had to practice." I let a sharp note linger in my voice, a twin to the jealousy he'd revealed. "Everything is so easy for that man."
Zee had told me not to help him.
Uncle Mike told me to stay out of it.
But then I'd never been very good at listening to ordersask anyone.
Tim looked at meand I saw him register me as a real person for the first time. "Exactly," he saidand he was mine.
I asked him where he'd learned Welsh, and he visibly expanded as he answered.
Like a lot of people who didn't have many friends, his social skills were a little lacking, but he was smartand under all that earnest geekiness, funny. Samuel's vast knowledge and charm had made Tim close up and turn into a jerk. With a little encouragement, and maybe the two glasses of beer he'd drunk, Tim relaxed and quit trying to impress me. Before I knew it, I found myself forgetting for a while that I had ulterior motives and got into a spirited argument about the tales of King Arthur.
"The stories came out of the courts of Eleanor of Aquitaine. They were to teach men how to behave in a civilized fashion," Tim said earnestly.
A caller with more volume than tone on the other side of the room called out, "King Louie was the king of France before the Revolu-shy-un!"
"Sure," I said. "Cheat on your husband and your best friend. The only way to find love is through adultery. All good civilized behavior."
Tim smiled at my quip, but had to wait as the whole room responded, "Weigh haul away, haul away Joe."
"Not that," he said, "but that people should strive to better themselves and to do the right thing."
"Then he got his head cut off, it spoiled his constitushy-un!"
I had to hurry to slip in before the chorus. "Like sleep with your sister and beget your downfall?"
"Weigh haul away, haul away Joe."
He gave a frustrated huff. "Arthur's story isn't the only one in the Arthurian cycle or even the most important. Parcival, Gawain, and half a dozen others were more popular."
"Okay," I said. We were getting our timing down now and I started to tune out the music completely. "I'll give you the urge to do heroic deeds, but the pictures they painted of women were right along the lines the Church held. Women lead men astray, and they will betray you as soon as you give them your trust." He started to say something but I was in the middle of a thought and didn't pause. "But it's not their faultthat's just what women do as a result of their weaker natures." I knew better actually, but it was fun to rant.
"That's a simplification," he said hotly. "Maybe the popular versions that were retold in the middle twentieth century ignore most of the women. But just go read some of the original authors like Hartman von Aue or Wolfram von Eschenbach. Their women are real people, not just reflections of the Church's ideals."
"I'll give you Eschenbach," I conceded. "But von Aue, no. His Iweine is about a knight who gave up adventuring because he loved his wifefor which he must atone. So he goes out and rescues women to regain his proper manly state. Ugh. You don't see any of his women rescuing themselves." I waved my hand. "And you can't escape that the central Arthurian story revolves around Arthur, who marries the most beautiful woman in the land. She sleeps with his best friendthereby ruining the two greatest knights who ever lived and bringing about the downfall of Camelot, just as Eve brought about the downfall of mankind. Robin Hood was much better. Maid Marian saves herself from Sir Guy of Gisbourne, then goes out and slays a deer and fools Robin when she disguises herself as a man."
He laughed, a low attractive sound that seemed to take him as much by surprise as it did me. "Okay. I give up. Guinevere was a loser." His smile slowly died as he looked behind me.
Samuel put his hand on my shoulder and leaned close. "Everything all right?"
There was a stiffness in his voice that had me turning a little warily to look at him.
"I came to rescue you from boredom," he said, but his eyes were on Tim.
"Not bored," I assured him with a pat. "Go play music."
Then he looked at me.
"Go," I said firmly. "Tim's keeping me entertained. I know you don't get much chance to play with other musicians. Go."
Samuel had never been the kind of person who put on graphic public displays of affection. So it took me by surprise when he bent over me and gave me an open-mouth kiss that started out purely for Tim's benefit. It didn't stay there for very long.
One thing about living a long time, Samuel told me once, it gave you a lot of time to practice.
He smelled like Samuel. Clean and fresh, and though he hadn't been back to Montana for a while, he still smelled of home. Much better than Tim's cologne.
And stilland still.
This afternoon, talking to Honey, I'd finally admitted that a relationship between Samuel and I would not work. That admission was making several other things clear.
I loved Samuel. Loved him with all my heart. But I had no desire to tie myself to him for the rest of my life. Even if there had been no Adam, I did not feel that way about him.
So why had it taken me so long to admit it?
Because Samuel needed me. In the fifteen years more or less between the day I'd run away from him and last winter when I'd finally seen him again, something in Samuel had broken.
Old werewolves are oddly fragile. Many of them go berserk and have to be killed. Others pine and starve themselves to deathand a starving werewolf is a very dangerous thing.
Samuel still said and did all the right things, but sometimes it seemed to me that he was following a script. As if he'd think, this should bother me or I should care about that and he'd react, but it was a little off or too late. And when I was coyote, her sharper instincts told me that he was not healthy.
I was deathly afraid that if I told him I would not take him for a mate and he believed me, he would go off someplace and die.
Despair and desperation made my response to his kiss a little wild.
I couldn't lose Samuel.
He pulled away from me, a hint of surprise in his eyes. He was a werewolf after all; doubtless he'd caught some of the grief I felt. I reached up and touched his cheek.
"Sam," I said.
He mattered to me, and I was going to lose him. Either now, or when I destroyed us both fighting the gentle, thorough care he would surround me with.
His expression had been triumphant despite his surprise, but it faded to something more tender when I said his name. "You know, you are the only one who calls me thatand only when you're feeling particularly mushy about me," he murmured. "What are you thinking?"
Samuel is way too smart sometimes.
"Go play, Sam." I pushed him away. "I'll be fine." I hoped that I was right.
"Okay," he said softly, then ruined it by tossing Tim a smug grin. "We can talk later." Marking his territory in front of another male.
I turned to Tim with an apologetic smile for Samuel's behavior that died as I saw the betrayed look on his face. He hid it quickly, but I knew what it was.
Damn it all.
I'd started out with an agenda, but the discussion had made me forget entirely what I was doing. Otherwise I'd have been more careful. It's not often I got a chance to pull out my history degree and dust it off. But still I should have realized that the discussion had meant a lot more to him than it had to me.
He thought I'd been flirting when I'd just been enjoying myself. And people like Tim, awkward and unlikable by most standards, don't get flirted with much. They don't know how to tell when to take it seriously or not.