Mercy Thompson 06 - River Marked

me”—he drove back out on the highway toward our campground—“was that woman at the table next to us, who looked like she bought the whole act, even after everyone else was laughing.”
    Ah, Creepy Lady. She’d watched us both with her eyes wide and her jaw open, and still her expression managed to be blank. I was betting she was either a total psychopath—or fae, which was sometimes the same thing. I could have gone closer for a good sniff—I’ve learned what fae smell like—but it was my honeymoon. I didn’t want to know.
    “I’m never going to be bored with you around,” Adam told me. The funny thing was that he sounded happy about it.

    “WANT TO GO FOR A RUN?” ADAM ASKED, HOPPING OUT of bed a few hours later.
    We’d lain down to rest after our travels. Not much resting had taken place, but I wasn’t going to complain. Still, every bone in my body was Jell-O, and he wanted to go run?
    “Ungh,” I said. That was the best I could do.
    He grinned at me. “You can drop the act.”
    I waved a weak hand at him.
    “I bet I catch a rabbit before you do,” he said.
    Oh. He meant a run . We’d gotten back to the campground about dusk, so it was full dark. Full dark meant that in the unlikely event that someone saw Adam as werewolf, they’d think he was a dog—helped along by pack magic that let people see what they expected to see. The magic works in broad daylight, too, but darkness helps.
    “Well, why didn’t you say so,” I grumped at him as I vaulted off the bed. I was wearing half a T-shirt—the left half—and my socks. The other half of my shirt was on the far side of the trailer. I was going to take an hour and clean the trailer really well before we returned it to its owner or I’d risk being embarrassed.
    Which reminded me. “Hey, Adam?” I dropped the half shirt on the floor and stood on one foot to take off a sock. “Who loaned us the trailer? The only people I know who could have afforded it are you, Kyle, or Samuel. Samuel would not be caught dead with something this ... bulky. You told me it isn’t yours. Did Kyle buy it in an attempt to compromise with Warren’s desire to go camping?”
    “Uncle Mike.”
    I froze, one foot in the air. “What?” He’d borrowed something from a fae?
    Adam steadied me with a hand on my shoulder. “I’m not wet behind the ears,” he told me, a little bite in his voice. “Uncle Mike called me and told me he’d heard I was planning on taking you camping and didn’t he have the sweetest little trailer we could take with us.”
    “You borrowed from Uncle Mike?”
    “Uncle Mike offered it ... Now, how did he phrase that? For services already rendered. You need to either get the sock off, Mercy, or put that foot down before you fall over.”
    I pulled the sock off and stood on my own two feet. “Fae never give you anything for nothing,” I said urgently. “Not even Zee, and he’s my friend.”
    The fae do things like make you pledge your firstborn child or your life’s blood for a piece of bubble gum, and make it sound like a good deal at the time.
    “When the fae who owns this campground called to offer it up about an hour before Uncle Mike called, I was pretty suspicious,” Adam told me.
    His voice had regained its usual relaxed tone, but he was irritated. I could tell by the way he stripped off his shirt. I could leave it alone ... but he didn’t know the fae the way I’d come to know them.
    “After Uncle Mike called,” he continued blandly, “I knew they wanted us here for some reason. I could have refused—I had reservations in San Diego—but I thought you’d enjoy this more than a hotel, and I knew I would.”
    I frowned at him.
    “I didn’t promise him anything,” Adam said with exaggerated patience. “You need to remember who you are now. They can’t just f—” He stopped speaking for a moment, then swallowed his temper with an effort—and not as much effect as he probably wanted because the bland tone deserted him entirely.
    “Mercy, they can’t mess with you without messing with me and the whole pack—and Samuel—and Bran—and Zee—and Stefan probably, for that matter. I don’t know what they want. Maybe they needed us to not go to San Diego—Uncle Mike mentioned San Diego specifically though I hadn’t told anyone where I was taking you. Maybe they needed us to stick closer to home. We werewolves are a potential ally against political attacks now since we are the only other supernatural group