Текст книги "Night Broken"

Автор книги: Patricia Briggs

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Honey cleared her throat. “You do know you are one of his wives, right?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Happily, he doesn’t know how bad off he is with me–and I intend that he never will.”

Life came back into Adam’s eyes with a wicked glint, and I saw a hint of his dimple. Better,I thought, better.

Christy knew she’d lost control of the scene. Her eyes narrowed at me, and she lost the tears. “Juan came after me because of Adam.”

“You slept with a complete stranger,” I said. “Not Adam’s fault you”–Jesse had come down the stairs, with Ben and Darryl trailing behind her, so I didn’t call Christy a slut–“made a poor choice.”

“He was a friend of my best friend,” she said. “Rich, charming, and handsome, he wasn’t a ‘complete stranger.’ I had no way to tell that he was a monster.”

“You didn’t know enough about him for Warren to find him. You didn’t know where he lived, what country he was from. I bet you didn’t even check to see if he was married or not before you chased after him. How long did you know him before you hopped into bed with him? An hour?”

It probably wasn’t fair to use what Jesse had told me about her mother’s dating habits against Christy, but she hadn’t been playing fair, either. The tears had been cheating, and when she’d realized just how many of the pack had started to filter into the kitchen behind her, she would doubtless use them again.

“He approached me,” she said defensively–not to mention falsely.

“Are you stupid? How long did you live with the wolves?” I asked her incredulously. “You do know that most of the people in this room can tell that you are lying, right?”

Stupid. She wasn’t stupid, just self‑absorbed and unwise. She didn’t like people thinking badly of her, so she lied.

I stalked away from her, incensed that most of me wanted to play fair instead of just ripping her to shreds the way she’d ripped into Adam. It felt disloyal to Adam. It felt like I might be letting her manipulate me into feeling sorry for her.

As I turned back toward Christy, I saw Jesse standing a little behind her. Jesse was Christy’s daughter, and I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Jesse. With a good reason not to destroy my enemy, I paced back until I was face‑to‑face with Christy again.

“Look.” I tried to keep my voice gentle. “No one cares if you sleep with a football team, none of whom you know and all of whom are half your age.” I repeated it so she could hear the truth in my words. “We don’t care.”

Christy went pale in genuine hurt, making me reexamine what I’d just said.

“That doesn’t mean that we don’t care if one of them hurts you. That’s another matter entirely. Call us, and we’ll go take care of it. But you have to quit flinging blame around.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” she said, quietly, believing it. But then she aimed her venom at me and increased the volume. “Not my fault. It wasn’t.”

“Juan came after you because you slept with him, then you ran,” I told her, but then I started thinking about what that meant. “If you had waited and told him you weren’t interested, he might have left you alone.” I worked through the germ of the idea. “If he’d been leaving bodies everywhere he went, Warren would have figured it out. But there weren’t bodies, there weren’t fires until you ran.” I knew there hadn’t been bodies, because Warren had looked for bodies left the same way as his victims here in the Tri‑Cities. Why hadn’t there been any other bodies? “That’s not your fault,” I told her, “but it is interesting.”

She stared at me, her fists clenched.

“Had your friend slept with him before?” I asked.

Christy was competitive. I knew, because Jesse talked to me, that Christy had slept with her best friend’s husband just to prove that she could. Maybe she’d done the same thing with her best friend’s lover, assuming that Flores had been her friend’s lover. I didn’t care. I just needed to know if Flores had slept with women other than Christy.

Christy didn’t answer, but her clear skin flushed pink, telling me I’d hit the mark. All the marks.

“He didn’t stalk her?”

“No,” she whispered. “He didn’t stalk her. One night, and he was done with her. She was pretty bitter about it. But she doesn’t have an ex‑husband who is a werewolf.”

Guayota hadn’t sounded like he cared if Adam was a werewolf, he sounded like he wanted Christy back. Why stalk Christy and not her friend? What was different about Christy?

The question rang in my head while I answered the nasty venom in her last sentence. “The only thing Adam has to do with this is that you bragged about being an Alpha werewolf’s ex‑wife to catch Juan’s attention.” Juan had known that Adam was a werewolf and that he was Christy’s ex‑husband. Could have been that he’d researched it, but there was a hint of competitiveness in the way he’d confronted Adam. The kind of competitiveness that happens when a man’s lover brags about a previous lover.

She didn’t answer me, so I knew that my shot in the dark was right that time, too.

“This guy has nothing to do with werewolves,” I told her. Guayota hadn’t cared that Adam was a werewolf, hadn’t cared about Adam, really, except that he stood between Christy and Guayota and that he had been Christy’s husband. “Congratulations, Christy. You just met one of the weird things in the world that don’t fit neatly into the fae or werewolf category.”

“Weird like you,” said Christy.

“Well, yes,” I agreed. “I thought that went without saying. Weird things like me.”

“What are you, exactly?”

I hadn’t realized she didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to let her change the direction of the conversation. Not when I’d been getting some interesting information about Guayota, and not while Christy was still trying to make the situation be someone else’s, be Adam’s, fault.

“This isn’t about me,” I said. “Ask me some other time, and I’ll tell you. So you got Juan’s attention, and maybe because you know to look for odd things and don’t discount them the way someone who hadn’t been married to a werewolf might, you realized he wasn’t just some rich guy on the make, not just some guy at all. He scared you–but not because he was so possessive. He scared you the same way Adam scared you. If Juan Flores had been exactly what he presented himself as–a bored young businessman not opposed to sleeping with any pretty woman who threw herself in his path–it would have been okay. Instead, you got a man who was a lot more than he appeared to be on the surface. It scared you, and you ran.”

“He cut his hand,” she said, in a low voice. “And it healed like Adam’s cuts and bruises healed.”

I closed my eyes. She’d known he wasn’t human, she’d known, and hadn’t warned any of us.

“Why didn’t you tell me that?” asked Adam, sounding, of all things, hurt. “Did you think that we wouldn’t help you?”

I wasn’t hurt. My hands curled with the effort of not smacking her because she’d put everyone in danger–and hadn’t told us everything she knew.

“I didn’t know there was anything else out there,” she said. “The fae are locked up where they belong. He wasn’t a vampire. I thought he was a werewolf.”

“Then why not tell us?” asked Mary Jo from the doorway of the kitchen.

Christy looked around and realized it wasn’t just Adam, Honey, and me who had been listening. Jesse, Ben, Darryl, and Auriele were in the kitchen, but behind them, in the doorway, in the little hallway beyond, and standing in the stairwell, the rest of the wolves had been a silent audience until Mary Jo had spoken.

“Because that would have meant that she put her foot in it,” I told Mary Jo, and everyone else. “Because, until she saw the video, she really did think he was a werewolf and that the reason he was coming after her was because she told him that Adam was her ex‑husband, Adam the famous werewolf. She believed that knowing about Adam was why he came after her–as a strike at the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack. She thought that if she hadn’t told him about Adam, he wouldn’t have come after her. She thought it was her fault he knew her connection to Adam, and she didn’t want anyone to know that.” And she’d thought that if it hadn’t been for Adam, Juan Flores would have just let her run away–which made it Adam’s fault again. She believed it was Adam’s fault because otherwise she’d have to admit her guilt.

“But he wasn’t a werewolf,” Christy said. “So it wasn’tmy fault he killed Troy, burned down my building, and killed all those women here.”

“No,” I said, tiredly. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault, Christy.

“Between your looks and running, you triggered some sort of psychotic episode. He fixated on you and gave chase. Not your fault.” I looked at her until she dropped her eyes. “Not Adam’s fault, either.”

Auriele bustled over and put her arm around Christy’s shoulders. “It was a good thing that you had us to run to,” she said. “Another woman might not have.”

“It ismy fault,” said Christy, believing it because that was the attitude that would win over the most people. That was one of Christy’s gifts, her ability to shift her worldview whenever it was to her advantage. She turned her head into Auriele’s shoulder and burst into heavy sobs. “I was so stupid to trust him.”

Shoot me now,I thought. I’d known that she’d turn on the tears once she had the right audience. Jesse gave me a tense smile, then turned and slipped out of the kitchen and away from her mother’s theatrics.

I found Adam.

“ Iblame her,” I muttered grumpily, if softly. My voice hadn’t been quiet enough to escape wolf ears, but none of the people gathered around Christy looked my way–even with very good hearing you have to be listening first.

Adam kissed my head and dragged me closer until my back was tight against his front. He dropped his mouth to my ear. “Okay. As long as you keep in mind that just because you blame her doesn’t mean it isher fault.” Though he’d put his mouth to my ear, he didn’t bother whispering.

“Only if you remember that while she is drumming up sympathy for her heaping helping of guilt–she doesn’t really feel responsible,” I said. “Just for now responsible.”

“Sounds like you know our Christy as well as those of us who lived with her,” said Honey, leaning a shoulder lightly against both of us in a gesture of solidarity. She looked at the pack, and said, “Some of us, anyway.”

On the far side of the werewolf pack trying to comfort Christy, Ben shared a cynical smile with us. He wasn’t petting Christy, either.

The pizza guy came after that and broke up the comfort‑poor‑Christy party. Pizza places don’t usually deliver that far out in the boonies, but Honey, it turned out, had an arrangement with a place in Kennewick–an arrangement that included a huge tip for the driver and a surcharge on the pizza.

The food was a signal, and as soon as the last scrap of pizza was gone, everyone retreated to their Honey‑assigned sleeping places. Adam and I got the formal living room. Jesse opted into the giant upstairs room with her mother, where they’d decided to watch some disaster film from the seventies that had just made it to video.

“The upside of this,” Adam told me as we stood next to the air mattress, which had a fitted sheet already stretched over it, a pair of pillows, and a blanket, “is that we get this room to ourselves.”

I dropped down to sit on the mattress and gave him a look. “No door, no fun.” The sounds of the movie filtered down the stairs and into the room. Everyone in that room, everyone who was something other than human, at least, would hear whatever we said–or did–in here.

Adam smiled and plopped down beside me. The air mattress bucked under his sudden weight and tried to toss me off, so I lay down for more stability.

“I’m too tired to do anything anyway,” he said, lying back beside me. He reached over and took my hand. “If it’s any consolation, we’re not going to get a whole lot of sleep before we have to head to the lawyer’s.”

“I’d forgotten about the lawyer,” I said. “Somehow, that seems a long time ago.”

His hand clenched on mine, hard enough to hurt before his grip gentled. “I thought he’d kill you before I got there,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed, trying to sound like it hadn’t bothered me. “Me, too.”

“Don’t do that again.”

“Okay,” I said agreeably. “How often can I get attacked by a volcano god in my shop?” I groaned. “Not that there is a shop.”

“You have insurance,” Adam said.

I sighed. “I’m not covered for acts of God,” I told him. “I wonder if they’ll try to find a way to make that mean volcano gods as well as God God.”

“God God,” Adam said, sounding amused. “I’ll remember that. Speaking of things to remember”–and now he didn’t sound amused at all–“I like it when you defend me. I haven’t gotten a lot of that.”

“That voice,” I said, and he laughed happily, though even his laugh held that rough sexual overtone. He rolled until he was on top of me, and he nibbled along my jawline.

“You like my body,” he told me, “you like me sweaty, and watching my belly when I do sit‑ups.”

“Hey,” I said, trying for indignation, “I never told you that.”

He laughed again. “Sweetheart, you tell me that every time you can’t look away, and you know it. But”–he laughed again, then said, in that deep growly voice that was his own personal secret weapon–“you really like it when I talk to you, like this.”

“No door,” I squeaked. “She’ll walk in on us and make sure Jesse is with her.”

Adam froze and growled for real. “You’re right. You’re right. And I almost don’t care.”

“Jesse,” I said.

“Jesse,” he agreed with a groan, then rolled up–abdomen flexing nicely–and onto his feet. He began to strip, not bothering to hide his arousal. If Christy walked in, she’d get quite a show of what she’d thrown away.

“You might as well get ready for sleeping,” he told me in grumpy tones. “Morning is going to come early.”

“I’m keeping my clothes on,” I told him, equally grumpily. “Without doors, everyone will feel pretty free and easy stopping in to bring you their complaints.” Everyone being Christy. “I’m not taking chances.”

“They come in, they deserve what they get,” Adam told me and, naked, spread the blanket over the mattress and me.

I wiggled until I was right way around. Then I pulled the blanket off my face while he climbed under the covers. He planted himself right next to me, and his scent spread over both of us.

I was well on my way to sleep when a thought occurred to me. “He’s broken,” I told Adam.

Adam grunted. Then, when I didn’t say anything more, he laughed once. “Okay, Mercy. Who is broken?”

“Guayota, Flores, whoever,” I told him. “He was doing okay in the modern world before he ran into Christy. Before she reminded him of someone he lost a long time ago.”

Adam was thoughtful for a moment. “Because there weren’t any other bodies.”

“Warren would have found them if there were, right?” I asked.

“Warren or my buddies in the DEA,” he agreed.

“The women he killed, the ones Tony brought me in to look at, they all looked like Christy,” I told him. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

Adam reached over and pulled me closer. “I believe that Guayota is very old and that Christy was his trigger. You know better than most how it is with the very old wolves. They’ll do fine–until suddenly they snap.”

“I still think we should give him Christy,” I said.

“No, you don’t,” he told me firmly. “I was there for your speech in the kitchen, remember?”

“If we gave him Christy,” I said persuasively, “we could visit them in the Canary Islands.”

“Like Lucia wants to visit Joel’s mother?” he asked. “Giving him Christy won’t fix him, Mercy. There’s no reasoning with the old ones once they are broken. He’s started killing and he’ll keep killing. And then there is Joel.”

I sighed. “I suppose you’re right. I think we’re going to wish that we’d had Tad come over here instead of going to Fairyland.”

“Tad didn’t have much of a choice,” Adam said. “We’ll figure something out.”

That meant he didn’t know how to kill Guayota, either, but that wasn’t going to stop him. I’d known that Christy was going to try to break us up, but I hadn’t considered that she might get Adam killed to do it. I lay tense and miserable beside him. Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t place the blame on Christy. It was just bad luck.

“So,” Adam said brightly, changing the subject, “have you planned what you’re going to tell Beauclaire when he comes looking for his walking stick two nights from now?”

“Yes,” I told him. “I’ll tell him to go ahead and take out the Tri‑Cities, as long as he makes certain he takes out Guayota when he does. Then you, Jesse, and I can drive to my mom’s house in Portland for a surprise visit.”

“Mercy,” he said reprovingly.

“Okay,” I told him, “we don’t have to go to Mom’s. Montana would work, too.”

“Mercy,” he repeated. “We’ve been in tough places before. It will be okay. You’re just tired, or you wouldn’t be so upset.” He pulled me all the way over on top of him and patiently waited while I wiggled until I was comfortable.

“Go to sleep,” he said. “Things will look better in the morning.” I was almost asleep when he murmured, “And if it doesn’t, we’ll invite your mom down to deal with Guayota andBeauclaire.”

At some point in the night, I rolled off Adam, off the air mattress, and onto the floor. Maybe it was the rolling that woke me up. Maybe it was dreaming of Guayota eating at my kitchen table with Christy and my mom. They’d been talking about the flower garden and eating an avocado salad, so I don’t know why I was so scared, but even awake my heart was pounding, and I’d broken into a light sweat.

I sat up and rubbed the back of my neck to dispel the tension of the dream–and to rub away the lingering sting of my head hitting the hardwood floor.

“Mercy?” Adam’s voice settled me more than my rubbing hand had, wrapped around me like a warm coat on a cold night.

“Bad dreams.” My throat was dry.

“Do you want to talk about them?”

I rolled to my hands and knees, leaned over and down to kiss him. I pulled back and decided to revisit the kiss. Adam’s kisses were always worth a second pass. If we had had a door between us and Christy …

Even so, I was more than a little breathless when I answered his question. “Not necessary. I’m going to get a glass of water, then I’ll be right back.” I kept my voice to a whisper, so I wouldn’t wake anyone else.

He nodded, wrapped a hand around my hair, and pulled me down for a third kiss. Then he smiled, let me go, and closed his eyes. I really, really wished there was a door–or that I was more of an exhibitionist.

I was still dressed from earlier–without privacy I wasn’t going to strip and give Christy a chance to say something we might both regret. All I had to do was zip up my jeans, and I was ready to face anyone who might be wandering around the house at this hour.

In the kitchen, I drank some water and glanced out the window–and froze. A man sat on the roof of Adam’s SUV with his head thrown back, a bottle upended over his head as he drank. He wore scruffy jeans, boots of some sort, and a white t‑shirt.

He was too far away for me to see him swallow, but the bottle stayed there for a while. I could tell by the way he pulled the bottle down that he’d drunk it dry. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then, glancing my way, casually saluted me with the bottle.

With the moon at his back, he should have had no way to see me tucked safely behind glass in the dark kitchen. I dumped the rest of the water out of the glass and set it quietly in the sink. My shoes were still in the mudroom where I’d left them. I slipped them on and walked out to talk with Coyote.

10

“Gary Laughingdog said that I should try to be interesting if I wanted to see you,” I told Coyote as soon as I was reasonably close to the SUV.

Coyote laughed. “That one has been trying to avoid me for most of his life.” His white t‑shirt set off his long black braid, tied with a pink scrunchie.

“Maybe if you didn’t get him sent to prison when you visited, he’d be more interested in seeing you,” I suggested, trying not to stare at the scrunchie. It had a white lamb dangling from a chain, and I was pretty sure he’d worn it just for me. I didn’t reach up to touch the lamb on the necklace around my neck.

“Gary needs his life shaken up,” Coyote told me, then he belched with more sound and fury than a thirteen‑year‑old boy with a roomful of girls to impress.

“If you get me or mine sent to prison, I’ll hunt you down,” I told him seriously.

He grinned at me and half slid, half scrambled down the back of the SUV to end up standing on his own feet. He left the bottle on the vehicle’s roof. He began moving off down the driveway at a brisk walk. When I didn’t immediately follow, he turned around and began walking backward and waving his hands for me to join him.

His braid swung around when he did, the little lamb flapping with his movements. I was not going to say anything about the stupid lamb if only because I was certain he wanted me to say something about the stupid lamb.

“Come. Come,” he said. “Come take a walk with me.”

If I hadn’t needed a favor from him, I might have stayed behind. But I did–and I wasn’t opposed to some exercise to get rid of the miasma of fear and despair my nightmare had left me with. Our feet crunched on the dry dirt and gravel.

“I don’t understand why you are so determined to hang around with werewolves. They are all about rules. And you”–he slanted a laughing glance at me–“like me, are all about breaking them.”

There was something about walking down a deserted road in the dark that made for thoughtful silences. Especially when the deserted road was too long, too unfamiliar, and even at this hour of the night, too deserted. Coyote probably had something to do with that.

Finally, I said, “I don’t know about that. The werewolves’ rules are all designed to keep people safe.”

“Safe.” He tested the word. “Safe.” His nose wrinkled. “Who wants to be safe? I haven’t noticed you running to safety.”

I bit my tongue. I liked being safe. Being in Adam’s arms was safe. Talking to Coyote was anything but–and where was I? I supposed he had a point.

“Safe is good,” I told him. “Not all the time, no. Sometimes, though, it is better than water in the desert.”

He made a rude noise.

I thought more about rules and werewolves. I glanced over my shoulder, but I couldn’t see Honey’s house–or any other house for that matter. Coyote was definitely doing something. I hoped that Adam went right back to sleep and hadn’t heard me open the back door. He’d be worried.

“Rules keep the people I love safe,” I said, thinking about Adam. “It is important to me that theyare safe.”

He nodded like I had said something smart. Then he said, “And when rules don’t keep them safe, we break the rules.”

I could agree with that–and almost did. If it weren’t for that little bit of smugness on his face, I would have. I wonder what rules he was contemplating breaking.

“Admit it,” he said when I didn’t say anything more. “Admit it. Keeping all the rules is boring. Tell me you don’t want to short‑sheet Christy’s bed–or put ipecac syrup in some of that too‑delicious food she is always cooking.”

“I’m not childish,” I told him. “And I’m not petty.”

“No,” he agreed sadly. “More’s the pity.”

“And how do you know how good her food is?”

He just smiled and kept walking.

I took a deep breath. Time to ask him about the walking stick. I’d given it to him as a gift, and he’d taken it as a favor. I wasn’t sure how he’d react when I asked for it back.

“There he is,” Coyote said, sounding delighted, and he broke into a sprint, the stupid lamb bouncing with his stride.

I ran as fast as I could, but Coyote stayed ahead of me. I couldn’t see who it was, but I wasn’t surprised when, after a minute or two, the path turned, and there was Gary Laughingdog sitting in the middle of the road with his back to us. I stopped beside him, but Coyote had walked around so Gary couldn’t avoid looking at him.

“I hate you,” Gary said with feeling. He threw a small rock and nailed a T‑post on the side of the road. He picked up another, tossed it into the air, and caught it on the way back down.

Coyote threw his head back and laughed. “I wondered how much longer you’d stay locked up in the gray box. You didn’t used to let them hold you for so long.”

“Knowing I was safe from you there,” Gary said, throwing the rock in his hand with barely controlled violence, “I planned on staying inside as long as I could. My conscience drove me out before then.”

“Conscience,” mused Coyote. They looked alike, he and Gary Laughingdog. “I wonder where you got that?”

“Quit tormenting him,” I said sternly.

Gary twisted half‑around to look at me. “Go tell the sun not to rise.” He stood up and dusted off the back of his jeans. “Looks like you got too interesting, Mercy. But did you have to let him include me?”

“I have a gift for you both,” said Coyote grandly. “Come along, children.” He started off down the road.

“We might as well,” said Gary in the voice of experience. “If we don’t, something horrible will come out of the night and chase us. We’ll end up dead, or doing exactly what he wanted anyway. Cooperation saves all of us a lot of trouble.”

Coyote snickered.

“What?” Gary said, sounding aggravated.

Coyote turned around and walked backward. He held up a hand. “You.” He held up another hand as far from the first as he could. “Cooperation.”

Gary sneered at him. Coyote sneered back, and I saw that Coyote’s eyes and Gary’s were the same shape. Then the moment was over, and Coyote turned around and faced the way he was going.

Gary started to follow, but I stepped in front of him and stopped, shaking my head. I waited until Coyote was far enough ahead of us so we could talk in relative privacy before starting down the road. Relative, because I was certain Coyote could still hear us; he wasn’t thatfar ahead.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” I asked Gary.

“Because I’m a fugitive from the law, and there was a lawyer sleeping in the same room with me,” he said with feeling.

“Kyle wouldn’t have turned you in.”

Gary shook his head. “Eventually, he’ll realize who I am, and, if he doesn’t want to lose his license to practice, he’ll haveto turn me in.” We walked a little while, and he said, “I don’t really want to get any of you in trouble for harboring an escaped prisoner. I’ve done what I needed to do, told you what I knew, and it is time to make myself scarce. It isn’t the first time I’ve been on the run from the law.”

He looked down at his feet, then gave me a rueful smile. “Though most of the time I’ve deserved it more. I can head over to one of the Montana reservations, and they’ll let me stay until the state of Washington decides it isn’t so concerned with some idiot held on a nonviolent crime. If I’d walked while on parole, they might not even look for me. Once the fire dies down, I’ll get a fake ID and show up somewhere else as someone else. About time to do that anyway.”

“All that was true earlier when you said you’d spend the night,” I said.

He looked at me, then away. “One of your wolves saw me looking at Honey and told me about her husband. That’s who she’s got following her around, right? She’s not going to be able to see anyone else until she lets him go.”

I’d had the thought that it was Honey’s fault that Peter’s shade was still hanging around, too. “Probably not, no,” I agreed. “He died not very long ago.”

“She’s interested in me,” he said. He flashed me that grin again, but I saw behind it to how alone he was. “I’m not just being vain, though I own that as well. But it hurts her that she’s interested, and I think she’s been hurt enough. It was time for me to leave.”

Coyote began whistling a song that sounded suspiciously like “London Bridge Is Falling Down.”

“Screw you and the horse you rode in on,” Gary yelled, and Coyote laughed. To me Gary said, “So I’ll leave. I’ll become someone else and maybe stop by in a few years.” He didn’t mean that last sentence, I could tell, and he knew it–so the lie was for himself and not me.

“Fingerprints?” I said. “DNA? Facial‑recognition software? Hard to lose yourself in this day and age.” That had been the main reason that the werewolves had finally come out to the public.

He raised an eyebrow. “You mean you don’t know how to fix those?” Then he shrugged, gestured with his chin toward Coyote. “He taught me a trick or two. He can teach you, too. Gary Laughingdog is no more. I’ll pick a different name and be someone else.”

“Sounds lonely,” I said.

He shrugged again.

I saw a beer can that looked like one I’d passed earlier. I kicked it gently and sent it rolling to the side of the road. “If you’d gotten me up, I could have taken you to the bus station and bought you a ticket.”

“Hitchhiking is safer.” He looked at Coyote. “Usually. If Honey didn’t live out in the middle of freaking nowhere. I had to go looking for a less rural area that might have someone who’d pick up a hitchhiker–”

Coyote briefly interrupted his whistling to say, “Or a car to hot‑wire.”

Gary clenched his jaw. “Or a car to hot‑wire,” he agreed. The clenched jaw told me it bothered him to steal a car–and that he’d have done it if necessary. Oddly, both of them made me like him a little more. I’ve done some hard things in the name of necessity.

“If I had started earlier or not had to walk so far, maybe I could have just gotten a ride instead of walking the same half mile over and over again until I finally realized that the reason the road looked the same wasn’t just because around here a lot of roads look the same. I probably hiked two hours before I noticed. I have a little experience with odd happenings; mostly it means that matters are out of my control. Again. So I sat down and waited for Coyote to show up.”

Sympathy didn’t seem the right response, so I just kept walking.

Eventually, the stiffness left his shoulders, and he seemed to mellow a bit. He asked me, “Did you get a chance to ask him about the fae artifact you need from him?”

“No,” I said.

“Shh,” said Coyote, trotting back to us. “Time to be quiet now. This way. Come with me.” He stepped off the road into the darkness.

We climbed a little hill–a hill I hadn’t noticed until Coyote took us off the road. It was, like most uninhabited places around the Tri‑Cities, covered with rock and sagebrush. We crested the hill, then followed a trail down a steep gorge. At the bottom of the drop, a thicket of brush grew, the kind that occasionally flourishes around water seeps that are sometimes at the center of ravines around here. The brush covered the faint trail we’d been following. Coyote dropped to his hands and knees to crawl through. After a deep breath, as if he planned on diving underwater instead of under a bunch of leaves, Gary did the same.