Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

that they could come and go as they pleased, guarded gate or not.
    Zee drove through the gates and into Fairyland.
    I don’t know what I expected of the reservation; military housing of some sort, maybe, or English cottages. Instead, there were row after row of neat, well-kept ranch houses with attached one-car garages laid out in identical-sized yards with identical fences, chain link around the front yard, six-foot cedar around the backyard.
    The only difference from one house to the next was in color of paint and foliage in the yards. I knew the reservation had been here since the eighties, but it looked as though it might have been built a year ago.
    There were cars scattered here and there, mostly SUVs and trucks, but I didn’t see any people at all. The only sign of life, aside from Zee and me, was a big black dog that watched us with intelligent eyes from the front yard of a pale yellow house.
    The dog pushed the Stepford effect up to übercreepy.
    I turned to comment about it to Zee when I realized that my nose was telling me some odd things.
    â€œWhere’s the water?” I asked.
    â€œWhat water?” He raised an eyebrow.
    â€œI smell swamp: water and rot and growing things.”
    He gave me a look I couldn’t decipher. “That’s what I told Uncle Mike. Our glamour works best for sight and touch, very good for taste and hearing, but not as well for scent. Most people can’t smell well enough for scent to be a problem. You smelled that I was fae the first time you met me.”
    Actually he was wrong. I’ve never met two people who smell exactly alike—I’d thought that earthy scent that he and his son Tad shared was just part of their own individual essences. It wasn’t until a long time later that I learned to distinguish between fae and human. Unless you live within an hour’s drive of one of the four fae reservations in the U.S., the chances of running into one just weren’t that high. Until I’d moved to the Tri-Cities and started working for Zee, I’d never knowingly met a fae.
    â€œSo where is the swamp?” I asked.
    He shook his head. “I hope that you will be able to see through whatever means our murderer has used to disguise himself. But for your own sake, Liebling , I would hope that you would leave the reservation its secrets if you can.”
    He turned down a street that looked just like the first four we’d passed—except that there was a young girl of about eight or nine playing with a yo-yo in one of the yards. She watched the spinning, swinging toy with solemn attention that didn’t change when Zee parked the car in front of her house. When Zee opened the gate, she caught the yo-yo in one hand and looked at us with adult eyes.
    â€œNo one has entered,” she said.
    Zee nodded. “This is the latest murder scene,” he told me. “We found it this morning. There are six others. The rest have had a lot of people in and out, but except for this one”—he indicated the girl with a tip of his head—“who is a Council member, and Uncle Mike, there have been no other trespassers since his death.”
    I looked at the child who was one of the Council and she gave me a smile and popped her bubblegum.
    I decided it was safest to ignore her. “You want me to see if I can smell someone who was in all the houses?”
    â€œIf you can.”
    â€œThere’s not exactly a database where scents are stored like fingerprints. Even if I scent him out, I’ll have no idea who it is—unless it’s you, Uncle Mike, or your Council member here.” I nodded my head toward Yo-yo Girl.
    Zee smiled without humor. “If you can find one scent that is in every house, I will personally escort you around the reservation or the entire state of Washington until you find the murdering son of a bitch.”
    That’s when I knew this was personal. Zee didn’t swear much and never in English. Bitch , in particular, was a word he’d never used in my presence.
    â€œIt will be better if I do this alone then,” I told him. “So the scents you’re carrying don’t contaminate what is already there. Do you mind if I use the truck to change?”
    â€œNein, nein,” he said. “Go change.”
    I returned to the truck and felt the girl’s gaze on the back of my neck all the way. She looked too innocent and helpless to be anything but a serious