Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

paying him the same amount as before?”
    â€œUncle Mike came up with it, and it made Zee happy.” Amused him was more like it. All the fae have a strange sense of humor.
    Stefan was sitting on my stool by the cash register. He’d spent two nights unmoving in Adam’s basement, then disappeared without a word to either Adam or me.
    â€œHey, Stefan,” I said.
    â€œI came to tell you that we no longer share a bond,” he told me stiffly. “Blackwood broke it.”
    â€œWhen?” I asked. “He didn’t have time. You answered my call—and it wasn’t very long after that when Blackwood died.”
    â€œI imagine when he fed from you again,” Stefan said. “Because when Adam called me to tell me you’d disappeared, I couldn’t find you at all.”
    â€œThen how did you manage to find me?” I asked.
    â€œMarsilia.”
    I looked at his face, but I couldn’t read how much it had cost him to ask for her help. Or what she’d demanded in return.
    â€œYou didn’t tell me,” Adam said. “I’d have gone with you.”
    The vampire smiled grimly. “Then she would have told me nothing.”
    â€œShe knew where Blackwood denned?” Adam asked.
    â€œThat’s what I hoped.” Stefan picked up a pen and played with it. I must have used it last because his fingers acquired a little black grease for his trouble. “But no. What she did know was that Mercy had a message for me with a blood-and-wax seal. Her blood. She could track the message. Since it was just outside of Spokane, we were both pretty sure Mercy still had it with her.”
    That reminded me. I pulled the battered missive out of my back pocket. It hadn’t gone through the wash with my jeans—but only because Samuel had a habit of checking pockets before he did laundry. Something about nuts and bolts in the dryer being irritatingly noisy—I thought that was directed at me, but I could have been paranoid.
    Stefan took the letter like I was handing him a bottle of nitroglycerine. He opened it and read. When he was through, he balled it up in a fist and stared at the counter.
    â€œShe says,” he told us in a low, controlled voice, “that my people are safe. She and Wulfe took them and convinced me that they had died—so I would believe it. It was necessary that I believe they were dead, that Marsilia no longer wanted me in the seethe. She has them safe.” He paused. “She wants me to come home.”
    â€œWhat are you going to do?” Adam asked.
    I was pretty sure I knew. But I hoped that he made her work like hell for it. She might not have killed his people, but she’d hurt them—Stefan had felt it.
    â€œI’m going to take the matter under advisement,” he said. But he straightened out the note and read it again.
    â€œHey, Stefan,” I said.
    He looked up.
    â€œYou’re pretty terrific, you know? I appreciate all the chances you took for me.”
    He smiled, folded the letter carefully. “Yeah, well you’re pretty terrific yourself. If you ever want to be dinner again sometime ...” He popped out of the office without saying good-bye.
    â€œBetter collect your purse,” said Adam. “We don’t want to be late.”
    Adam was taking me to Richland, where the local light opera company was performing The Pirates of Penzance. Gilbert and Sullivan, pirates and no vampires, he’d promised me.
    It was a great production. I laughed until I was hoarse and came out humming the final number. “Yes,” I told him. “I think the guy playing the Pirate King was awesome.”
    He stopped where he was.
    â€œWhat?” I asked, frowning at the big smile on his face.
    â€œI didn’t say I liked the Pirate King,” he told me.
    â€œOh.” I closed my eyes—and there he was. A warm, edgy presence right on the edge of my perception. When I opened my eyes, he was standing right in front of me. “Cool,” I told him. “You’re back.”
    He kissed me leisurely. When he was finished, I was more than ready to head home. Fast.
    â€œYou make me laugh,” he told me seriously.
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    I WENT BACK TO MY HOUSE TO SLEEP SAMUEL WAS working until the early-morning hours, and I wanted to be there when he got home.
    I stopped before I went in because something was different. I took a deep breath but didn’t smell any