Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

with her background—she’s half-Blackfoot ... or is that Blackfeet? ... Anyway, she never studied Native American history, just the European stuff.”
    â€œI don’t like wallowing in tragedy,” I told her, trying desperately to sound uninteresting. “And that’s what Native American history is mostly. But now I just fix cars.”
    â€œBlondi,” said Corban, “was the name of the dog.”
    â€œSomeone told me she was named after the comic strip Blondie,” I added. That supposition had led to many arguments among the Nazi trivia buffs I knew. I was hoping the conversation would devolve to Hitler. He was dead and could do no more harm—unlike the dead man in the room.
    â€œYou are Native American?” asked the vampire. Had he tried to catch my eyes?
    I was very good at keeping my gaze from meeting other people’s unless it was on purpose—a useful skill around the wolves. I looked at his jaw, and said, “Half. My father. I never knew him, though.”
    He shook his head. “I’m very sorry.”
    â€œOld news,” I said. Deciding that if Hitler wasn’t going to distract him from me, maybe business would. It always worked with my stepfather. “I take it Corban is keeping your company safely out of the courts?”
    â€œHe’s very good at his job,” said the vampire with a pleased and possessive smile. “With him beside me, Blackwood Industries will stay afloat for a few more months, eh?”
    Corban gave a hearty, and heartfelt, laugh. “Oh, I think a few months at the least.”
    â€œTo making money,” said Amber, holding up her glass. “Lots of it.”
    I pretended to sip the wine with the rest of them and was pretty sure that my idea of making money was several orders of magnitude less than theirs.
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    HE LEFT AT LAST IT HADN’T BEEN AS HORRIBLE AS I’D feared. The Monster was charming and, I hoped, unaware that I was anything except a not-very-interesting VW mechanic. Except for that one moment, I’d mostly avoided notice.
    Almost euphoric at my near escape, I didn’t worry about ghosts at all while I changed. Then I went back downstairs to help Amber with the cleanup.
    She must have been worried or something, too, because she was nearly as giddy as I was. We had an impromptu water fight in the kitchen that ended in a draw when her husband stuck his head in the doorway to see what the noise was all about, and nearly got a sponge in the face for his trouble.
    Discretion suggested that having escaped detection once, I should head home in the morning. But Amber was a little drunk, so I decided that conversation could wait until later. Dishes clean, clothes wet and soapy, I left Amber necking with her husband in the kitchen.
    I opened the bedroom door to find Chad in the middle of my bed, his arms crossed over his chest. I could smell his fear from the doorway.
    I closed the door behind me and took a good look around the room. “Ghost?” I mouthed.
    He glanced around the room, too, then shook his head.
    â€œNot here? In your room?”
    He gave me a cautious nod.
    â€œHow about we go in your room, then.”
    Terror breathing out of every pore, he slipped off the bed and followed me to his room: brave kid. He opened his bedroom door cautiously—and then pushed it open, being very careful to keep his feet in the hallway.
    â€œI assume you don’t usually keep that bookcase facedown on the floor,” I told him.
    He gave me a dirty look, but he lost some of his fear.
    I shrugged. “Hey, my boyfriend has a daughter”— boyfriend was such an inadequate word—“and I had a pair of little sisters. None of them keeps a clean room. I had to ask.”
    Except for the bookcase, it was hard to tell what part of the mess was a normal boy’s habitat and how much the ghost had caused. But the bookcase, one of those half-sized things people put in kids’ rooms, was easy to fix. I squeezed past Chad and into the room. The bookcase was even lighter than I’d thought.
    When I started reshelving his books, he knelt beside me and helped. He read a little of everything—and not entirely limited to things I’d think a kid would read: Jurassic Park, Interview with the Vampire, and H. P. Lovecraft sat next to Harry Potter and Naruto manga numbers one through fifteen. We worked for about twenty minutes to put everything to