Patricia Briggs: Bone Crossed

"Him?" asked Ben, extracting his wrist. "He's been dead for years."

Peter grunted. "You know what I mean."

Truthfully, it was difficult to tell. He wasn't breathing, but vampires didn't, not unless they needed to talk or pass for human. His heart wasn't beating, but again, that didn't mean much.

"We'll take him to my house," Adam said. "The…" He glanced at Mom. "My basement has a room without windows, where he'll be safer." He meant the cage where they locked up werewolves when they had control issues. He frowned. "Not that that will stop whoever dumped him in the middle of your living room, Mercy." He knew «whoever» all right.

Marsilia, I thought, though maybe it had been Stefan himself. Or maybe some other vampire. The one who'd explained that Marsilia and Stefan were the only ones who could teleport like that was Andre, the one I'd had to kill. Hard to trust his information too far.

"I'll be careful," I told Adam. "But you have to be careful, too. There was a vampire watching the back of the house when I was out talking to Amber."

"Who's Amber?" Adam's question was just a hair faster than my mother's "Amber? Charla's friend Amber from college?"

I nodded at Mom. "She read about… I've apparently made national news. She decided that she should look me up to check into her haunted house."

"That sounds like Amber," Mom said. Char and Amber had spent a number of weekends at my parents' house in Portland while I was in college. "She always was self-centered, and I don't suppose that would change. Though why would she think that you could help her with a haunted house?"

I had never told Mom about seeing ghosts. I hadn't really thought it was anything unusual until recently. I mean, people see ghosts all the time, right? They just don't talk about it much. Having a daughter who turned into a coyote was bad enough, so anything else I could keep quiet about, I had.

This didn't seem like the time to tell her about it either. I hadn't told her about last week. I hadn't told her about vampires. I had no intention of informing her of any other secrets I'd been keeping.

So I shrugged. "Maybe because I associate with werewolves and the fae."

"What did she expect you to do about it?" Adam asked. He'd have listened in on the whole conversation with Amber; werewolves have very good hearing.

"Beats me," I told him. "Do I look like an expert at laying ghosts?" Seeing them was a long way from sending them away. I wasn't even sure it was possible. I thought about what Amber had said. "Maybe she just wanted me to go tell her that her house really is haunted. Maybe she just needs someone to believe her."

Adam knelt on the floor and picked up Stefan. "I'll take him home now." Though Stefan was obviously taller than he was, Adam's supernatural strength wasn't apparent—he just looked like someone who could carry a great deal of weight without effort.

It should have been Darryl who picked up Stefan, not Adam. The Alpha just didn't do the heavy lifting when there were capable minions about. Ben and Peter had both fed the vampire, but Darryl didn't have that excuse. He must have a real thing about vampires.

Adam didn't seem to notice anything wrong with Darryl. "I'll send someone back to watch your house, tonight." He looked at my mom. "Do you need a place to stay? Mercy's" — he glanced around—"a little short on space."

"I'm staying at the Red Lion in Pasco," Mom said to Adam. To me she said, "We left in a hurry and I couldn't find anyone to watch Hotep. He's in the car." Hotep was her Doberman pinscher, who liked me even less than I liked him.

Adam nodded solemnly though I didn't remember telling him that my mom's dog hated me.

"Adam," I said. "Thank you. For saving Stefan."

"No thanks necessary. We didn't save him for you."

Ben gave me an expression that might have been a smile if his face hadn't been so tight. "You weren't there in the basement with that thing." Andre's demon-possessed vampire, he meant, the first vampire I'd killed. He had captured several of the wolves and Stefan and… played with them. Demons like causing pain.

"If it hadn't been for Stefan…" Ben shrugged, as if letting a memory die away unspoken. "We owe him."

Adam glanced at Darryl, who opened the door. I thought of something.

"Wait."

Adam stopped.

"If I talk to Mom… does that count?" He'd told me I had to talk to someone, and my mother wouldn't go away until I told her everything. It seemed like I should be able to kill two birds with one stone.

He handed Stefan to Ben and walked to me. He touched my jaw, just below my ear, and, as if our fascinated audience wasn't watching, he kissed me, touching me with nothing more than his fingertips and his mouth.

At first the heat flushed through me… followed by a horrible choking fear. I couldn't breathe, couldn't move…

When I came back to myself, I was sitting on the couch with my head between my knees, Adam crooning to me. But he wasn't touching me, and neither was anyone else.

I sat up and came face-to-face with Adam. His face was still, but I could see the wolf in his eyes and smell the wild on his skin.

"Panic attack," I said needlessly. "I haven't been having them as often." I lied and saw from the expression on his face that he knew it. This one made four today. Yesterday, I'd done better.

"Talking to your mother counts," he said. "We'll take things slowly… see how it goes. You talk to your mother or anyone else you'd like. But it'll all keep until kissing me doesn't cause a panic attack, all right?"

He didn't wait for an answer, just strode out of the house followed by his entourage. Darryl waited until both Ben and Peter were out the door before closing it gently behind them all.

"Mercy," said my mother thoughtfully, "you never told me your werewolf neighbor was quite that hot."

"Mmm," I said. I appreciated her effort, but now that the time was at hand, I just wanted to get it over with. "And you didn't get to see him rip Tim's corpse to pieces."

I heard Mom suck in a hard breath. "I wish I had. Tell me about Tim."

So I did. And she didn't say a word until I was finished. I hadn't meant to tell her everything. But she didn't say anything, didn't move, didn't look at me. So I talked. Just barely, I managed to keep Ben's name out of it—his secrets were his to reveal—but everything else roared in jagged bits or choked roughly out of someplace dark and vile. It took a while to get it all out.

"Tim reminded you of Samuel," she said when I was through.

I jerked my head off her lap.

"No, I'm not crazy." She handed me a wad of tissues from the box that sat on an arm of the couch.

"That's why you didn't see it coming. That's why you didn't see what he was. Samuel was always a bit of an outcast, and it left you with a soft spot for outcasts."

Samuel? Cheery, sweet-tempered (for a werewolf) Samuel an outcast?

"He was not." I grabbed a handful of tissues and wiped snot and salt water from my face. My nose runs when I cry.

She nodded. "Sure he was. He likes humans, Mercy—and most werewolves don't." She shivered at some memory or other. "He listened to heavy metal and watched Star Trek reruns."

"He was the Marrok's second before he came here to lone wolf it for a while. He wasn't an outcast."

She just looked at me.

"Lone wolf doesn't mean outcast." I set my jaw.

The door popped open, and Samuel, who'd been sitting out on the porch for a while, came in. "Yes, it does. Hey, Margi—why'd you bring that dog with you? He's creepy-looking."

Hotep was black with reddish brown eyes. He looked like Anubis. Samuel was right, he was

creepy-looking. "I couldn't find a sitter for him," she said, standing up to get hugged. "How have you been?"