Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

Mercedes, not entirely. Though all magic, I believe, finds you difficult prey. But blood magic has a power all of its own, as do very old things. That chair is a very old thing.”
    â€œI didn’t mean to distract you from the subject,” I said politely inviting her to get back to the point.
    She gave me a faint smile. “No. I don’t suppose you did. Walkers also speak to ghosts.”
    I blinked at her. “So what?” A lot of people, even otherwise perfectly normal humans, can speak to ghosts.
    She pushed back her chair. “I think that I have answered enough of your questions.” She gave Andre a look, so I knew that he wouldn’t clarify anything for me. “I believe that you ought to start by finding out where Stefan went last night.”
    â€œWarren won’t be talking, not for a while,” I told her. His throat had been crushed. Samuel thought it could take several days to heal.
    â€œStefan was in the habit of talking with his people,” she told me. “They are afraid. They won’t talk to me or mine. But I think they will talk to you. Andre will take you to Stefan’s house where you can speak with the menagerie.”
    Then she disappeared. I suppose she could have cloaked herself in shadows as some of the fae can, but I couldn’t smell her, couldn’t sense her anywhere.
    â€œI hate it when she does that,” said Andre taking a sip out of his glass. “Mostly envy, I expect. Stefan could do it, too—the only one of her get to receive that gift.”
    I stayed silent a while, contemplating Marsilia. She’d been making an effort to be human tonight—though she’d only been moderately successful. Tentatively, I decided that she’d been mostly honest about what she wanted from me and why. I was pretty sure that she thought I held the key to finding this sorcerer—either through my resistance to vampire magic or through my “ability” to speak to ghosts.
    It wasn’t like I saw ghosts all the time or anything.
    I was already a freak, a shapeshifter not tied to the moon who turned into a coyote. Neither human nor werewolf or fae. I didn’t like thinking I might be even odder than I’d thought.
    I looked up to see Andre watching me patiently. To my werewolf accustomed eyes, he didn’t look like someone who was one of Marsilia’s most capable warriors. There was no width in his shoulders, no substance to his muscles. She could have been flattering him, since he was in the room, but I didn’t think so.
    â€œDid she teleport?” I asked. I’d been told that will-o-wisps were the only creature who could really teleport.
    He smiled and shrugged. “I don’t know how it is done. But it is one of the reasons we are certain Stefan is gone. If he were still with us, he could not be easily imprisoned.”
    â€œYou don’t sound upset,” I said. I didn’t want to think about Stefan being dead—permanently dead, I mean.
    He gave me a shrug that might have meant anything. “I think Stefan is gone, Mercedes Thompson—I wear the white to honor him, as does the Mistress. But there is nothing I can do about his death except hunt his killer.” He paused and set his glass down very gently. “We do not know each other well enough for me to cry on your shoulder.”
    The shadow of anger in his voice made me like him better.
    â€œAll right,” I said. “Why don’t you show me how to find Stefan’s house.”
    We’d made it halfway to the door when the crowd quit letting us through. Andre was quicker than I was. He stopped where he was while I tried sliding around a particularly sizable woman who was standing in front of me.
    â€œHold up, ducks,” she said in a voice that was low enough to vibrate my sinuses. “I smell a human in a fae tavern.” On the tail of her words, the music stopped and the sounds of people talking and moving died down.
    Once I realized she was talking about me, though she spoke to the room at large, I thought of several clever, but stupid remarks about her sense of smell—I wasn’t human at all, not in the sense she meant. Stupid because only a very unwise person jumps up and down shouting on top of a beehive.
    Sometimes, when one of them have committed a terrible crime, the whole wolf pack enjoins in the punishment, tearing the violating wolf to bits. But before it starts, there is a