Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

dust it off. But still I should have realized that the discussion had meant a lot more to him than it had to me.
    He thought I’d been flirting when I’d just been enjoying myself. And people like Tim, awkward and unlikable by most standards, don’t get flirted with much. They don’t know how to tell when to take it seriously or not.
    If I’d been beautiful, maybe I’d have noticed sooner or been more careful—or Tim would have been more guarded. But my mongrel mix hadn’t resulted as nicely for me as it had for Adam’s second Darryl, who was African (his father was a tribesman from Africa) and Chinese to my Anglo-Saxon and Native American. I have my mother’s features, which look a little wrong in the brown and darker brown color scheme of my father.
    Tim wasn’t dumb. Like most people who don’t quite fit in, he’d probably learned in middle school that if a beautiful person paid too much attention to you, like as not, there was another motive.
    I’m not bad looking, but I’m not beautiful. I can clean up pretty nice, but mostly I don’t bother. Tonight my clothes were clean, but I wasn’t wearing any makeup and hadn’t taken particular care when I braided my hair to keep it out of my face.
    And it had to have been obvious I’d been enjoying the conversation—to the point that I’d forgotten that I was supposed to be gathering information about Bright Future.
    All this went through my head in the time it took him to clear his face of the hurt and anger I’d seen. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t have a clue on how to get out of this without hurting him—which he didn’t deserve.
    I liked him, darn it. Once he got over himself (which took a little effort on my part), he was funny, smart, and willing to concede a point to me without arguing it into the ground—especially when I thought he was more right than wrong. Which made him a better person than I was.
    â€œA bit possessive, isn’t he?” he said. His voice was light, but his eyes were blank.
    There was a spill of dry cheese on the table and I played with it a little. “He’s usually not bad, but we’ve known each other a long time. He knows when I’m having fun.” There, I thought, a sop for his ego, if nothing else. “I haven’t had a debate like that since I got out of college.” I could hardly explain that I hadn’t flirted on purpose without embarrassing us both, so that was the closest I could come.
    He smiled a little, though it didn’t go to his eyes. “Most of my friends wouldn’t know de Troyes from Malory.”
    â€œActually, I’ve never read de Troyes.” Probably the most famous of the medieval authors of Arthurian tales. “I took a class in German medieval lit and de Troyes was French.”
    He shrugged…then shook his head and took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get all moody on you. There was this guy I know. We weren’t close or anything, but he was murdered yesterday. You don’t expect someone you know to be murdered like that. Austin brought me here because he thought we both needed to get out.”
    â€œYou knew that guy, the one who was a guard at the reservation?” I asked. I’d have to be careful now. I didn’t think that my connection to Zee would have been newsworthy, but I didn’t want to lie either. I didn’t want to hurt him any more than I already had.
    He nodded, “Even though he was pretty much a jerk, he didn’t deserve killing.”
    â€œI heard they caught some fae they think did it,” I said. “Pretty scary stuff. It would bother anyone.”
    He examined my face, then nodded. “Listen,” he said. “I probably ought to collect Austin and go—it’s almost eleven and he has to leave for work at six tomorrow. But if you are interested, some friends and I are having a meeting Wednesday night at six. Things are apt to be a bit odd this week—we usually met at O’Donnell’s. But we do a lot of discussion about history and folklore. I think you’d enjoy it.” He hesitated and then finished in a bit of a rush. “It’s the local Citizens for a Bright Future chapter.”
    I sat back, “I don’t know…”
    â€œWe don’t go out and bomb bars, or anything,” he said. “We just talk and write to our