Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

the fae you might be dealing with.
    Samuel, though, knew something about Zee.
    Zee saw the look in my eye and laughed again. “Don’t you start, girl. We live in the present and let the past take care of itself.”
    I have a degree in history, which is one of the reasons I’m an auto mechanic. Most of the time, I satisfy my craving for the past by reading historical novels and romances. I’d tried to get Zee to tell me stories before, but like the werewolves, he would not say much. The past holds too many shadows. But armed with a name, I was going to hit the Internet as soon as I finally got to go home.
    Zee looked at Stefan, and the laughter faded from his eyes. “The dagger probably won’t help a great deal against vampires, but I’ll feel better if she has something to defend herself.”
    Stefan nodded. “It will be allowed.”
    The dagger lay on my lap just like any other blade, but I remembered the caress of power and slid it carefully into its sheath.
    â€œDon’t look them in the eyes,” Zee told me abruptly. “That means you, too, Dr. Cornick.”
    â€œDon’t play dominance games with vampires,” said Samuel. “I remember.”
    The second half of that old wolf aphorism is “just kill them.” I was happy that he’d left it out.
    â€œDo you have any other warnings, vampire who is Mercy’s friend?” Zee asked Stefan.
    He shrugged. “I wouldn’t have agreed to this if I truly thought the Mistress had harm in mind. Mostly she just grows bored. Mercy is very good at soft answers that don’t promise anything. If the wolf can manage the same, we should all be safe in our beds before dawn.”

chapter 10
    I don’t know where I expected the vampires to live. I suppose I’d been influenced by all those late night flicks and imagined a large Victorian mansion in a disreputable part of town. There are a few along the downtown area in Kennewick, most of them polished and painted like old opera stars. And, while there are a few run-down neighborhoods around, they tend to be populated with houses too small to house even a small seethe.
    It shouldn’t have surprised me to be driving along a street with Mercedes, Porsches, and BMWs in every elegant cobbled driveway. The road had been cut into the side of a hill that overlooked the town, and for thirty years, doctors, lawyers, and CEOs had been building their four-thousand-square-foot homes on the steeply sloped lots. But, as Stefan told us, the vampires had been there first.
    At the end of the main street, a smaller gravel road broke off and cut between a pair of two-story brick edifices. It looked almost like it might be a driveway, butcontinued past the houses and into the undeveloped area behind them.
    We drove through about a quarter mile of the usual eastern Washington scrub—cheat grass, sagebrush, and tackweed mostly—and then up over a small ridge that was just large enough to hide a two-story, sprawling hacienda surrounded by an eight-foot wall. As the road came down the hill our view of the house was limited to what we could see through the double, wrought-iron gates. I thought the sweeping Spanish arches that graced the sides of the building did a wonderful job of disguising the scarcity of windows.
    At Stefan’s direction, I parked just outside the walls, where the ground had been leveled. The vampire jumped out and was around to open my door before Samuel got out of the van.
    â€œShould I leave this?” I asked Stefan, holding up Zee’s dagger. On the way, I’d decided that since it was too big to be hidden without fae glamour—which I don’t have—it might be a good thing not to take it in at all.
    Stefan shrugged, his hands patting lightly on his thighs as if he heard music I didn’t. It was a habitual thing with him; he was seldom absolutely still.
    â€œCarrying an artifact this old could make them respect you more,” said Samuel, who’d come around the van. “Wear it.”
    â€œI was worried about setting the wrong tone,” I explained.
    â€œI don’t expect things to get violent tonight,” said Stefan. “The dagger is not going to start anything.” He grinned at me. “It is illegal in this state, though. You’ll have to remember to take it off when you leave.”
    So I wrapped the leather belt around my hips a few times. There was a handmade buckle