Frost Burned

Kyle’s pristine driveway. When Kyle opened his door to let Ben and me in, he did a double take.
    “Holy Hummer, Batgirl, where did you get a Mercedes AMG?” Kyle had changed out of his sweats and wore a black-and-red button-up shirt that complemented his dark hair and went with the black slacks that were so casual I knew they must have cost him a pretty penny. We all found our refuges where we could: I baked cookies, and Kyle wore expensive clothes.
    “It’s not my car,” I told him. “Marsilia left it for an oil change, and I couldn’t resist.” Kyle knew who Marsilia was. So I added, “Ben’s been bleeding all over the back seat. Do you think we can clean the blood out of the leather well enough that she’ll keep it? Who do you think should pay for the damage? Ben for bleeding on it; the bad guys for shooting Ben so he was bleeding in the first place; or me for stealing it?”
    “That is
Marsilia’s
car, and you stuck a bleeding werewolf in the back seat?” Kyle said, ignoring my attempted humor. “I shouldn’t have sent Loren—you’d have been safer stuck in the black hole of the justice system for a few months until something distracts the Queen of the Damned from killing you.”
    He’d picked up my name for Marsilia. I hoped he never used it around her. I noticed that the earlier red marks on his face had darkened to bruises to go with the other bruises he had. His nose had been reset, but both of his eyes were black and puffed up. I might have won the disreputable award last night, but with Kyle’s new bruises, for the first time in a long time, someone looked more beat-up than I did.
    He limped when he stepped back to let me in.
    “It’s a good thing for the guy who beat on you that Stefan killed him,” I said soberly as I walked into the entryway. Ben also limped, and I found that since my knee decided to hurt, I was limping, too. That made three of us. Kyle’s house smelled like gun oil and strangers. “Or he’d have to face Warren.”
    Kyle flinched, closing the door behind Ben. “I know. It’s going to be months before I’m not explaining my face to everyone I meet. Hello. No, I was beaten by an army of muscle-bound men who didn’t even have the courtesy to be cute. No, don’t worry about it. I’m fine now. The nose just has a little bump—like Marilyn’s mole, it emphasizes the perfection of the rest of my face.”
    He glanced down at Ben. “Both of you come into the kitchen. Ben, I’ve pulled out the remains of last night’s turkey. There’s also four pounds of roast I was going to cook tomorrow. I’ll cook Warren another turkey so he can have turkey hash. It’s on a platter on the table.”
    Ben rubbed his muzzle over Kyle’s shoulder in a way that I think was supposed to be reassuring. Kyle sucked in a breath. Either it hurt, or the reminder that the werewolf was big enough to rub his shoulder without much effort wasn’t exactly reassuring.
    “Ben, when was the last time you brushed your teeth?” asked Kyle.
    Or else Ben’s breath was really bad.
    Ben showed his teeth in a mannerly grin and started eating the food Kyle had left on the table with enthusiastic concentration.
    I slumped in one of the breakfast-bar stools and blew out a loud breath. “Did you find out if they found out anything about them?” I asked.
    Kyle gave me a look, then busied himself making me a peanut butter and huckleberry jelly sandwich. “What really bothers me is that I understood that question. You will eat this and go to sleep, so your pronouns get their antecedents back. The
police
haven’t gotten very far yet investigating the men who invaded my house. The bad guys have good lawyers, very good lawyers. Not as good as Loren and nowhere near as good as I am, of course, but top-notch, expensive, out-of-town lawyers. Loren tells me that he thinks the lot of them will be out on bail by tomorrow because of all the money floating around. Tough to keep them when the only dead body is one of theirs—and by my own testimony he was the only one guilty of assault.”
    I stared at him over the sandwich he put in front of me. “You’re kidding, right?”
    Kyle shook his head. “Eat that, Mercy, don’t just stare at it. Dickens has it that ‘the law is a ass,’ and a lot of the times he is right. We have them on criminal trespass. Tony is incensed, he told me, but they can’t get them for terrorist activity. Somehow, the two men downstairs were unarmed when they were