Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

Samuel’s music. When he finished, the sound of the leaves was the only noise for a few heartbeats. Then the jerk on the stupid Jet Ski came buzzing by, breaking the spell. The crowd rose to their feet and broke into thunderous applause.
    My cell phone had been vibrating in my pocket off and on for most of the song, so I slipped away while Samuel packed away his instruments and vacated the stage for the next performer.
    When I found a relatively quiet place, I pulled out the phone to find that I had missed five calls—all of them from a number I wasn’t familiar with. I dialed it anyway. Anyone who called five times in as many minutes was in quite a lather.
    It was answered on the first ring.
    â€œMercy, there is trouble.”
    â€œUncle Mike?” It was his voice, and I didn’t know anyone else who spoke with such a thick Irish accent. But I’d never heard him sound like this.
    â€œThe human police have Zee,” he said.
    â€œWhat?” But I knew. I had known what would happen to someone who was killing fae. Old creatures revert to older laws when push comes to shove. I’d known when I told them who the killer was that I was signing O’Donnell’s death warrant—but I had been pretty sure that they would do it in such a way that blame would not have fallen anywhere. Something that looked accidental or like a suicide.
    I hadn’t expected them to be clumsy enough to attract the attention of the police.
    My phone buzzed, telling me that there was another call coming in, but I ignored it. Zee had murdered a man and gotten caught. “How did it happen?”
    â€œWe were surprised,” Uncle Mike said. “He and I went to talk to O’Donnell.”
    â€œTalk?” Disbelief was sharp in my voice. They had not gone to his house to talk.
    He gave a short laugh. “We would have talked first, whatever you think of us. We drove to O’Donnell’s house after you left. We rang the bell, but no one came to the door, though there was a light on. After we rang a third time, Zee opened the door and we entered. We found O’Donnell in the living room. Someone had beaten us to him, ripped his head from his body, a wounding such as I have not seen since the giants roamed the earth, Mercedes.”
    â€œYou didn’t kill him.” I could breathe again. If Zee hadn’t killed O’Donnell, there was still a chance for him.
    â€œNo. And as we stood there dumb and still, the police came with their lights and bean sí cries.” He paused and I heard a noise. I recognized the sound from my karate. He’d hit something wooden and it had broken.
    â€œHe told me to hide myself. His talents aren’t up to hiding from the police. So I watched as they put him into their car and drove away.”
    There was a pause. “I could have stopped them,” he said in a guttural voice. “I could have stopped them all, but I let the humans take Siebold Adelbertskrieger (the German version of the name, Adelbertsmiter, Zee was using), the Dark Smith, to jail .” Outrage didn’t completely mask the fear in his voice.
    â€œNo, no,” I told him. “Killing police officers is always a bad plan.”
    I don’t think he heard me; he just kept talking. “I did as he said and now I find that no matter how I look at it, my help will only make his position worse. This is not a good time to be fae, Mercy. If we rally to Zee’s defense, it could turn into a blood bath.”
    He was right. A rash of deaths and violence not a month past had left the Tri-Cities raw and bleeding. The tide of escalated crime had stopped with the breaking of a heat wave that had been tormenting us all at the same time. The cooler weather was a fine reason for the cessation of the pall of anger that had hung in the air. Driving the demon that was causing the violence back to the outer limits by killing its host vampire was an even better one, though not for the consumption of the public. They only knew about a few werewolves and the nicer side of the fae. Everyone was safer as long as the general population didn’t know about things like vampires and demons—especially the general population.
    However, there was a strong minority who were murmuring that there had been too much violence to be explained by a heat wave. After all, heat came every summer, and we’d never had a rash of murders and assaults like that. Some of those people