Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

watching me for a while, long enough to get used to the idea—but, still, he hadn’t said anything, and that won him points. But not enough points for what I was about to do.
    He rubbed his hands together and blew on them to warm up his fingers, which were red with chill.
    â€œAll right,” I said, slowly. It was not the wisest answer, but, watching his slow shivers, it was the only one I could give. “We’ll see how it works.”
    â€œThere’s a laundry room and a shower back through that door.” I pointed to the door at the back of the shop. “My last assistant left some of his old work coveralls. You’ll find them hanging on the hooks in the laundry room. If you want to shower and put those on, you can run the clothesyou’re wearing through the washer. There’s a fridge in the laundry room with a ham sandwich and some pop. Eat, then come back out when you’re ready.”
    I put a little force behind the “eat”: I wasn’t going to work with a hungry werewolf, not even almost two weeks from full moon. Some people will tell you werewolves can only shapechange under a full moon, but people also say there’s no such things as ghosts. He heard the command and stiffened, raising his eyes to meet mine.
    After a moment he mumbled a thank-you and walked through the door, shutting it gently behind him. I let out the breath I’d been holding. I knew better than to give orders to a werewolf—it’s that whole dominance reflex thing.
    Werewolves’ instincts are inconvenient—that’s why they don’t tend to live long. Those same instincts are the reason their wild brothers lost to civilization while the coyotes were thriving, even in urban areas like Los Angeles.
    The coyotes are my brothers. Oh, I’m not a werecoyote—if there even is such a thing. I am a walker.
    The term is derived from “skinwalker,” a witch of the Southwest Indian tribes who uses a skin to turn into a coyote or some other animal and goes around causing disease and death. The white settlers incorrectly used the term for all the native shapechangers and the name stuck. We are hardly in a position to object—even if we came out in public like the lesser of the fae did, there aren’t enough of us to be worth a fuss.
    I didn’t think the boy had known what I was, or he’d never have been able to turn his back on me, another predator, and go through the door to shower and change. Wolves may have a very good sense of smell, but the garage was full of odd odors, and I doubted he’d ever smelled someone like me in his life.
    â€œYou just hire a replacement for Tad?”
    I turned and watched Tony come in from outside through the open bay doors, where he’d evidently been lurking and watching the byplay between the boy and me. Tony was good at that—it was his job.
    His black hair was slicked back and tied into a short ponytail and he was clean-shaven. His right ear, I noticed, was pierced four times and held three small hoops and a diamond stud. He’d added two since last time I’d seen him. In a hooded sweatshirt unzipped to display a thin tee that showed the results of all the hours he spent in a gym, he looked like a recruitment poster for one of the local Hispanic gangs.
    â€œWe’re negotiating,” I said. “Just temporary so far. Are you working?”
    â€œNope. They gave me the day off for good behavior.” He was still focused on my new employee, though, because he said, “I’ve seen him around the past few days. He seems okay—runaway maybe.” Okay meant no drugs or violence, the last was reassuring.
    When I started working at the garage about nine years ago, Tony had been running a little pawnshop around the corner. Since it had the nearest soft drink machine, I saw him fairly often. After a while the pawnshop passed on to different hands. I didn’t think much of it until I smelled him standing on a street corner with a sign that said WILL WORK FOR FOOD .
    I say smelled him, because the hollow-eyed kid holding the sign didn’t look much like the low-key, cheerful, middle-aged man who had run the pawnshop. Startled, I’d greeted him by the name I’d known him by. The kid just looked at me like I was crazy, but the next morning Tony was waiting at my shop. That’s when he told me what he did for a living—I hadn’t even known a place the size of