WHEN THE PACK ESCORTED ADAM IN A TRIUMPHANT procession into the house, I hung back with Jesse and Sam - both of whom looked pretty wrung out.

Paul had left the dojo the same way Mary Jo had, in the stretcher - and he should be resting beside her in one of the downstairs bedrooms that were considered pack property rather than Adam's. Any member of the pack could and did claim one for sleeping or reading or whatever they needed. With Adam in the house, neither Paul nor Mary Jo would have a problem with control while they healed - their wolves knew their Alpha was in residence to keep them safe.

There were some awful things about being a werewolf. Lots of them. But there were some okay parts, too - and some that were nice. One of those was knowing that as long as the Alpha was around, you had a safe place to be.

Henry hadn't died from the blood loss, so far as I knew, and had probably already healed. A bullet is a small thing, and the hole it cuts is clean if it doesn't hit anything hard on the way through - like bone. He'd be up before either Mary Jo or Paul. Of course, what happened to him after that was in question. I suppose it would be Adam's decision.

Warren hung back until everyone else except for me, Sam, and Jesse were gone. And then he shut the door.

"Adam will miss you in about five minutes," he told me. "And in six minutes you're going to need to get him upstairs and in bed without letting the whole pack know that in ten minutes that man is going to be unconscious on the floor."

"I know," I told him.

The big cowboy smiled tiredly, though, like me, all he'd done was watch the challenge. "That was a nice bit of fighting. I suspect he could have taken Paul without Mary Jo stepping in."

I nodded. "But now Paul is back in the pack again, happier than before. And I don't think that could have happened without Mary Jo."

"I hate this part," said Jesse shakily.

"The part where everyone is safe, and you want to find a quiet corner and bawl like a newborn?" Warren glanced at me. "I reckon it's better than when people aren't safe - but it's not my favorite, either." He wrapped his arm around Adam's daughter's shoulder and she snuggled into him.

"There you go," he said. "You go ahead and cry, baby. Ain't no one going to say you don't have the right. Get it over with and cry some for me - 'cause if Kyle catches me crying, he's gonna think I turned into one of those sissy boys."

Jesse laughed, but left her head where it was.

Warren looked at me. "You go on. You got someone else's shoulder to cry on. You tell him I got Jesse's back. And, Samuel, you stay with me, too. We don't need any more drama, and I doubt that Adam is up to showing his weakness to someone who could be his rival until the adrenaline eases a bit."

Sam stretched, yawned, and lay down.

"Thanks, Warren," I said.

He smiled and tipped the front of his imaginary cowboy hat. "Shucks, ma'am, I'm only doin' my job. Darryl's gonna feed the masses again, and I'm riding herd on the stragglers."

Jesse pulled back and wiped her eyes, a smile on her face. "Have I ever told you that you're my favorite cowboy?"

"Of course I am," he said smugly.

"You're the only cowboy she knows," I informed him.

He glanced at his watch. "You got about two minutes left."

"Mercy?" Jesse asked, catching my arm before I could go. "What about Gabriel?"

"We'll find him," Warren said, before I could respond. He smiled at me. "I have good hearing, and the house was plenty quiet enough last night to hear a phone call in the kitchen." He bent down so he could look Jesse in the eye. "Running around when we don't know anything won't help him. Zee's looking into it, and waiting for him is our best option at the moment."

"If Zee couldn't help us, he'd have told us by now," I said, looking only at Jesse. I wasn't talking to Warren; I was talking to Jesse. No oath breaking here. "We'll get Gabriel out of this."

"Maybe we'll sic Sylvia on them," said Warren.

"You heard?" Of course he had. News travels fast in the pack.

"Heard what?" Jesse was coming back online, I thought. Warren's hug had been exactly what she needed.

"Sylvia threatened to set the police on me if I darkened their doorstep again. Gabriel isn't working for me anymore." I frowned. I hadn't thought about it, but it might affect Jesse, too. "I don't know if you're considered one of the prohibited people - but since she got mad because I didn't warn her that Sam was a werewolf before Maia adopted him as her new pony, I expect that werewolves of any kind are going to be a hot button for a little while. Once we get him home, you need to talk it over with Gabriel."

She nodded. "If we get him home, I'll be happy to fight with Sylvia about my right to hang out with Gabriel."

"Good for you," said Warren.

She stepped back from him and almost fell over Sam. "Hey," she said to him. "How come you let Warren and Dad take care of Mary Jo?"

"He's not himself," I said. "It wouldn't have been a good idea."

Sam gave me a look full of guilt and turned his head away.

I thought about that guilty look all the way in the house and into the living room where the pack was scattered all over the furniture and the floor. There were more wolves - latecomers receiving the blow-by-blow account of the fight. And I hadn't seen Adam's pack this relaxed since . . . ever. I hadn't hung out with the werewolves much until this last year - and it hadn't been a peaceful one for the pack.

Honey caught me on my way to get Adam, who was sitting on one end of the leather couch. I hadn't noticed her in the garage - and I would have because Honey doesn't go unnoticed, partly because she is very dominant and partly because she is very beautiful - so she must have been one of the latecomers.

"Mary Jo was recognized as more dominant than Alec?" she asked. She didn't sound happy, which was odd. Because her mate, Peter, was a submissive wolf, Honey was considered the lowest member of the pack except for Mary Jo, though by personality and fighting power she was actually closer to the top. Maybe the idea that they might rank her where she belonged offended her idea of what a lady should be. Maybe she worried it would cause trouble in the pack, or between her and her mate. Maybe she was afraid that she was going to get targeted in the dominance fights. Whatever it was, her trouble ranked way down in my priorities at the moment - Adam was listing to the right. In a few moments, someone else was bound to notice.

"Yes," I said, sliding by her and stepping over someone who was lying on their side on the floor. "Don't ask me what it means long-term; I don't think anyone knows. Adam?"

He looked up, and I wondered if Warren should have knocked a minute off his countdown to the crash; he looked that bad.

"You should come with me. We need to call the Marrok." Invoking the Marrok's name should make it unlikely that anyone would follow us. I ensured that by adding, "He's not going to be happy about being left out of this. The sooner he hears, the better."

There was a twinkle in Adam's eyes, though he kept the rest of his face stoic. "Better be in my bedroom, if I'm going to get chewed on. Give me a hand up, would you? Paul gave me a few good ones."

He held up one of his poor, sore hands, and I took it without wincing for the pain that closing his hand over mine must have given him. It was a show to reassure the pack he was as strong as ever. The twinkle left his eyes though his mouth turned up in a smile as he stood up easily, without pulling on my hand at all.

When we got to the moron who was sitting in the only path to the stairway, Adam caught my waist and lifted me over before stepping over the man himself.

"Scott?" Adam said as we headed upstairs.

"Yeah?"

"Unless someone shoots you, skins you, and throws the results on the floor, I don't want to see you lying in the walkway again."

"Yessir!"

When we reached the top of the stairway, his hand was heavy on my shoulder, and he leaned harder on me all the way to the bedroom.

Someone - and I was betting it was Darryl - had left three huge roast beef sandwiches, a cup of hot coffee, and a glass of ice water on the table by the side of the bed. Medea was sleeping on the pillow in the middle of the bed. She looked up at us and, when I didn't make any move to oust her, closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

"Crumbs on the sheets," muttered Adam, watching the sandwiches intently as I pushed him down on the bed.

"Bet there are clean sheets in this mausoleum somewhere," I told him. "We can find them tonight and remake the bed. Presto, no more crumbs." I took half a sandwich and held it up to his face. "Eat."

He smiled and bit my finger with a playfulness I'd have thought beyond him, as beat as he was.

"Eat," I said sternly. "Food, then sleep. Rescue - " I bit my lip. Adam was a wolf. I couldn't talk to him about Gabriel, no matter how wrong that felt. "Food, then sleep. Everything else can wait."

But it was too late. He'd never let that word go by without a challenge. He accepted the sandwich from me, took a bite, and swallowed it. "Rescue?"

"I can't talk about it. Talk to Jesse or Darryl."

Mercy?

His voice wrapped around my head like a bracing winter wind, fresh and sweet to my taste. Here was a way I could communicate without speech - if I could just figure out how. I stared at him intently.

Finally, he smiled. "You can't talk about it. You promised . . . someone. I got that much. I keep a notebook in my briefcase in the closet. Why don't you get that and spend some time writing a letter to me about whatever it is you can't say."

I kissed his nose. "You've been hanging out with the fae again, haven't you? Wolves are usually a little better about keeping the spirit as well as the letter of the law."

"Good thing you aren't a werewolf, then." His voice was gravelly with fatigue and smoke damage.

"You really think so?" I asked. When I was growing up, I'd wanted to be a werewolf so I could really belong to the Marrok's pack. I'd always wondered whether, if I had been a werewolf instead of a coyote, my foster father would have reconsidered his decision to follow his mate in death. But when Adam said he was glad I wasn't a werewolf, it sounded like he meant it.

"I wouldn't change a hair on your head," he told me. "Now, go get the notebook and write it all down before I die of curiosity."

"I will if you eat."

He obligingly took another bite, so I rummaged through his closet until I found the briefcase. He scooted over, making Medea protest until he scooped her into his lap so I could sit on the edge of the bed. While I sat beside him and wrote down everything I could think of, he finished all but half a sandwich ("Yours," he said. "Eat.") and fell asleep while I was still writing.

I finished. "Adam?"

He didn't move, but I noticed that his hands were looking better. His pack was behind him again - for the moment at least. Or maybe it was just the way his magic chose to work this time. People who try too hard to explain how magic works end up in funny farms.

I added "Sweet Dreams" at the bottom of the last page and left the notebook beside him. I slipped out of the bedroom and closed the door. I hadn't taken two steps before my phone rang. It was Zee.

"Get somewhere you won't be overheard," he said.

I stepped through the open door of Jesse's room - which was empty - shut the door, and turned on the music again. Adam was sleeping like the dead; it might last five minutes or several hours. No one else would hear anything.

"Okay."

"I know you can't talk to me about the woman who took our Gabriel," Zee said. "So you'll just have to hear me out."

"I'm listening."

"I have Phin's grandmother here, and we need to talk. But no werewolves."

"Why is that?" It wasn't about the kidnapping, so I figured it was a safe thing to say without ticking off the fairy queen.

"Because she's scared to death of them, was nearly killed by them. She can't even look at one without a panic attack. And you don't want to be around this lady when she has a panic attack."

I wondered if I'd have been as sympathetic if I didn't have my own panic attacks. "Fine. Where?"

"Good question. Your house is no more," he said. "She doesn't live here, so she doesn't have a place. My house is no good. She won't go where there are so many fae."

"What about the garage?"

"In fifteen," he agreed. "Do you have anything that belongs to Gabriel?"

I opened my mouth and closed it again. How specific would the spell be? Better to play it safe. "I can't answer that question."

"Get something."

A woman's voice said, "Something that is his. Something he is connected to, that matters to him or that has belonged to him for a long time."

"You heard her?" Zee asked.

I didn't say anything.

"Good."

He hung up.

I didn't have anything like that. Gabriel was incredibly organized; he didn't just leave stuff lying around.

I looked around the room. Jesse would have something. It was either that or go face down Sylvia.

Thinking of Sylvia made me realize that I should have called her as soon as I found out about Gabriel. I would rather be stripped naked and walked through the mall with a pink feather boa. I would rather be boiled in oil. Rancid oil.

I could call her on the way to the garage. First I needed to find Jesse, in the hope that she had something of Gabriel's I could use.

Conveniently, Jesse walked into her room just when I was about to leave and hunt her down. "I'm looking for Samuel," she said. "He went walkabout. Ben says he ought to be fed because he didn't eat anything this morning, and for some reason Ben's pretty frantic about it. I didn't expect to find Samuel here - but I didn't expect to find you here, either."

"I was just coming to find you."

She looked at me, then at her stereo. "You like Bullet for My Valentine?" she asked. "Just like you were sharing my Eyes Set to Kill CD with Mary Jo earlier?"

"Sarcasm isn't lost on me," I told her. "You could tone it down and I'd still get the point. I was having a private conversation."

She gave me a tight smile. "Let me guess. Stuff I shouldn't know because I'm a girl. I'm only human. I can't be risked."

"You know how to use a gun?" I hadn't meant to ask that. I'd meant to just ask her for something of Gabriel's. But I knew what it was like to sit around while people were in trouble, and you couldn't do anything about it.

At my question, she stilled - just like her father did when something important was going on. "I have a sweet forty-cal 1911 Dad got me for my last birthday," she said. "Tell me you found Gabriel?"

And the intensity of her voice made my decision for me. They were young - he was trying not to be serious because he was aiming for college; she was trying not to be serious because she knew he felt that way. Nothing might ever come out of it, but she cared a lot for him. That gave her a great big stake in this mess - and if she could shoot, she could protect herself.

Jesse was her father's daughter. Smart, quick-witted, and tough. And yet I already had one of my fragile humans in danger, and I was considering another.

But I couldn't talk to the fae or the werewolves about Gabriel, and writing, as my attempt to write down everything for Adam had demonstrated, was too time-consuming. I needed Jesse.

I pulled Jesse all the way into the room and shut the door. "Zee called and wants me to meet him at the garage in fifteen minutes. He has a fae who is terrified of werewolves who can help us. We need to find something that belongs to Gabriel that he's pretty attached to. I don't think she intends to hunt for him by scent, so it can be something hard like a ring instead of just things that carry smell, like a sock or shirt."

"I get to come?"

"You get to come to this meeting," I told her. "I need you. But you need to understand that I will not be exchanging Gabriel for you. I'm not going to get you hurt." I gave her the best smile I could manage because the fae scare the pants off me. "I need you. But I need you to listen to me when I send you home, too."

She watched me with her father's eyes, and I saw the moment when she decided. "Okay. Shall we tell them we're going out to get you stuff that you need because your house burned down yesterday?"

"Secret girl stuff," I said. "Remember they can tell if you lie. So when this is all done, I'm going to go get a gallon of chocolate mint chip ice cream."

"Secret girl stuff," she said. "And if they try to send Warren with us because for some reason they think he ought to be interested in girlie things - which really makes no sense, since Kyle likes men, after all, the more manly the better - what do we do?"

"Preemptive strike," I told her. "Let's find Warren first and send him up to keep an eye on your father, who is sleeping."

And then Sam crawled out from under the bed.
* * *

IT WORKED. WE MADE IT ALL THE WAY OUT TO MY CAR with only Sam beside us. All the wolves in the house were fine with Jesse and me going out together - because we had Sam.

"You have to stay here, Sam," I said. And then stopped. Looked at him. Really looked at him.

Sam the wolf wouldn't have turned his back while everyone was trying to fix Mary Jo - and he wouldn't have looked like he felt guilty about it. Because Sam the wolf wasn't a doctor - he was a wolf. This morning, Darryl had recognized pretty quickly that Samuel was in trouble. But in the garage, not one of the wolves even looked funny at Sam. Because it had been Samuel.

"Welcome back," I said, trying to act like it was no big thing. I didn't know why he'd decided to take charge again - or if it was a good thing - but I figured the less drama about it, the happier Samuel would be. But . . .

"You can't come with us," I told him. "You heard Zee. We're going to see a lady who - " I stopped. "How do the fae manage this lying-without-lying stuff? It really sucks. Look, Samuel, we're going to see the lady who is scared to death of wolves. You have to stay here. You can't come as a wolf, and you don't have any clothes."

He just stood there looking at me.

"Stubborn," I said.

"We're going to be late," said Jesse. "And Darryl is looking out the window and frowning at us."

I grabbed my purse out of my car and held the back door of Adam's truck open for Samuel. "There should be jeans and sweats and stuff in a pack in the backseat if you want to dress," I told Samuel. "And when we get to the garage, you need to stay outside and leave her to us. Hopefully, we'll find out . . . what we need to find out . . . and I expect that we'll be really glad we have you with us then."
* * *

ON THE WAY TO THE GARAGE, I CALLED SYLVIA. SHE might insist on bringing the police into it - but I hoped I could talk her out of that. Her phone rang until the answering machine picked up.

"Sylvia, this is Mercy - I have news about Gabriel. You need to call me as soon - "

"I told you," she said, coming on the line. "My family doesn't want to talk to you. And if Gabriel chooses you over his family - "

"He's been kidnapped," I told her, before she could say something that would break her heart later. She wasn't as tough as she liked to pretend - I knew, because I pretended to be tougher than I was a lot, too.

Into the silence that followed, I said, "Apparently he walked to the garage last night and tried to take one of the cars - which he has my permanent permission to do. You'd know better than I why he'd do that and where he was going. I have a friend who is in trouble and that trouble crashed down on Gabriel."

"Your kind of trouble, right?" she asked. "Let me guess. Werewolf trouble."

"Not werewolf trouble," I said, abruptly irritated with her assumption that all werewolves were horrible. Me, she could be mad at, but she would have to hold her tongue around me about the wolves.

"Tell Maia that her werewolf buddy is going to put his neck in the noose trying to save her big brother, who got himself kidnapped by the bad guys." Because I knew that Samuel - my Samuel who was at that very moment dressing in the backseat - would never stand by and watch a human get hurt. He was the only werewolf I knew who cared that much about mundane humans, just because they were mundane humans. Most werewolves, even the ones who liked being werewolves, actively resented, if not hated, normal people for being what they could no longer be.

Sylvia was silent. I supposed the information that Gabriel was in trouble was finally catching up to her.

"Gabriel is alive," I told her. "And we've managed to make sure his kidnappers know that his continued health is important to their goals. Police wouldn't help, Sylvia. They just don't have the tools to deal with these people. All that bringing the police into it will do is make things worse and get someone killed." Like Phin. "My werewolf friend is a little better equipped. I promise I'll let you know when I find out something more - or if you or the police can help." And I hung up.

"Wow," said Jesse. "I've never heard anyone hand Sylvia her head like that. Even Gabriel is a little afraid of her, I think." She settled back into her seat. "Good for you. Maybe it'll make her think. I mean, werewolves are scary, they are dangerous - but . . ."

"They're our scary-dangerous werewolves, and they only eat people they don't like."

She flashed a quick smile at me. "I guess that's what I meant. Maybe, when you put it that way, I can understand how she got so upset. But it seems to me that what she was saying when she made Gabriel quit working with you was that she didn't trust Gabriel's judgement. As if he were stupid and would work someplace that was dangerous."

"Someplace he might get kidnapped by a band of nasty fae?" I asked dryly, but then I went on. "As if he were her son whose diapers she'd changed. You have to forgive parents for acting like parents even though their children aren't four years old anymore. As a not-unrelated example, when your dad finds out I took you to meet a strange fae, he's going to have my hide."

She did grin then. "All you have to do is let him yell at you, then sleep with him. Men will forgive you anything for sex."

"Jessica Tamarind Hauptman, who taught you that?" I said in mock horror. Funny how she made me feel better at snapping at a mother whose son had just been kidnapped by a fairy queen . . . It sounded like "The Snow Queen" when I put it that way. I hoped that we didn't find Gabriel like poor Gerda found her Kai in the story - with a shard of ice in his heart.
* * *

ZEE'S TRUCK WAS ALREADY AT THE GARAGE WHEN I got there. The Bug I'd loaned Sylvia was parked where she'd left it, but it was trashed. Someone had pulled the driver's side door off its hinges, the front window was smashed, and there was blood on the seat of the car.

Samuel wasn't through changing.

"Stay here," I told him, and got out of Adam's truck.

"He's not a dog," Jesse said on the way to the shop.

"I know." I sighed. "And he's not going to listen to me anyway. Let's get this done as fast as possible."

Zee had moved the chairs around in the office, pulling them out of their usual line so that three of them were facing one another - all that was missing was a kitchen table. When he saw Jesse with me, he looked a little surprised but pulled out another chair.

"I'm the facilitator," Jesse explained. "She can talk to me instead of you."

I wasn't surprised to see that Zee's companion was the older woman from the bookstore - though I wouldn't have been surprised to see a complete stranger either. She was subtly different from the grandmotherly woman I'd met earlier. The kind of difference that made Little Red Riding Hood say, "What big teeth you have, Grandmother."

"Mercy," Zee said, "you may call this woman Alicia Brewster. Alicia, this is Mercedes Thompson and" - he paused - "Jesse."

He gave me a look. "I hope you know what you're doing," he said.

"Having her here will speed things up," I said. "When we're finished, she's going home."

"All right," he said, and sat down next to Alicia.

"You came to my grandson's store looking for him," the fae woman said to me without acknowledging the introductions. "And to return what you'd borrowed."

I looked at Jesse. "When I saw Alicia at Phin's store, I was trying to bring Phin's book back to him. He'd called Tad - Zee's son - to have him ask me to take care of it. It was odd, that phone call, and the fae who'd moved in next door to Phin was odder. By the time I got to the bookstore, I was ready to believe that there was a problem. When I saw Alicia at the counter, and she couldn't tell me anything about where Phin was or when he was coming back, I decided that I wasn't going to give her the book to return to him. I also decided that someone needed to see if they could figure out where Phin was."

"So you came back at night and looked for him at the store?"

"I thought," I said to Jesse, "that we were coming here to find out where Gabriel is and how to rescue him."

"And I choose to ask questions of you first so that I may decide how much I want to tell you," Alicia said.

That implied heavily that if I chose not to answer her questions, she'd tell us nothing. If she knew anything. I looked at Zee, who shrugged and lifted his hands an inch off his lap - he had no influence with her.

My other option was to wait for the fairy queen's call.

"All right," I told Jesse. "You already know that Sam and I went to check out the bookstore at night to find out if something happened to Phin. We found that his store had been trashed by a water fae and two forest fae of some sort."

"There was a glamour in the store," said Alicia. "A strong glamour that I couldn't penetrate, though I knew it was there. I was so afraid that my grandson's body was lying next to me, and I could not sense it."

"There's a cost for magic," said Zee, folding his age-spotted hands over his little potbelly. "Glamour has less than most now, but there is still a cost for sight and sound, a cost for physical dimensions. There are few fae with good noses, so less effort is spent there and more on the other senses. Magic works . . ." He glanced my way.

" 'Oddly' is what I usually say," I told him.

"Oddly on Mercedes. Some works fine, some not so well. But she has a keen nose, and that allows her to penetrate glamours. I've seen her break through a glamour set by a Gray Lord. This one we are after is no Gray Lord."

"Phin bled on that floor, Jesse," I said. "I don't have much hope that he survived his encounter. But we didn't find his body. We went down to the basement - which was also trashed - and while we were down there, one of the fae who had destroyed the store turned up on the stairs."

"That's the one who was dead in the basement," Alicia said in an odd tone. "The one someone started to eat."

"Sam's not been himself lately," I told Jesse. "The fae knocked me cold, and when I woke up Sam had killed him and . . ."

"Sam," the fae said softly - and her hands clenched on her lap. "You have friends who are werewolves, Zee tells me. This Sam is a werewolf?"

"Sam is a werewolf and my friend," I told her. Maybe my tone was a little sharp, but I was getting tired of people attacking Samuel. "Who saved my life by killing the not-so-jolly green giant. I'm okay with it if he helped himself to a little snack." If it squicked my thou-shalt-not-be-a-cannibal button, that was a button my mother gave me, not the werewolves. He hadn't violated any werewolf taboos - eating your prey is better than leaving the bodies lying around.

Alicia didn't seem to be too upset about my snapping at her, though.

"Samuel Cornick," she said, her eyes catching mine. "Samuel Marrokson, Samuel Branson, Samuel Whitewolf, Samuel Swift-foot, Samuel Deathbringer, Samuel Avenger." I couldn't remember what color her eyes had been in the bookstore, but I knew it hadn't been green. Not hazel, not a human color at all, but a brilliant grass green that darkened to blue and brightened.

"That would be me," said Samuel, standing in the doorway. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt and had managed to find a pair of jeans that were only a little baggy. "Hello, Ari. It's been a few centuries." His voice was soft. "I didn't know you had a talent for true naming."

She looked at him, and I saw the pupils of her eyes widen past her changeable irises until her eyes were as black as a starless night. And then her glamour went all funky.

I've seen fae drop their glamour before. Sometimes it's cool, with colors sliding and mixing; sometimes it's like when I shapeshift - just blink and the man in front of you suddenly has antennae and six-inch-long hair growing from his hands.

But this was different. It reminded me of an electrical appliance shorting out, complete with quiet fizzling noises. A patch of skin appeared on her arm that had been covered by the sweater she wore, and on the patch of skin was a little scar. Then there was a sound and the sweater reappeared and there was a six-inch-by-four-inch section of skin revealed on her thigh, but most of that space was taken up by a horrendous scar that looked deep and stiff - a wound that healed badly enough that it probably interfered with her ability to use her leg. After an instant it disappeared, and three scarred areas appeared on her face, hand, and neck. Her skin tone around the scars was darker than the one she wore to hide from the world. The color was nothing outlandish, a few shades darker than mine or lighter than Darryl's, but to my eyes the texture was softer than human skin. It appeared as if the old wounds were presenting themselves to us - or rather to Samuel, because she never took her attention off him.

Jesse reached out and grabbed my knee, but her face didn't change as the fae woman slowly stood up. She began to breathe hard as she took several steps back, sliding her chair behind her until it bumped into the shelving in back of her, and she couldn't retreat anymore. Her mouth opened and she began panting, and I realized what I was seeing was a full-blown panic attack done fae-style.

Zee had said her panic attacks were dangerous.

"Ariana," Samuel said, in a voice like Medea's gentlest purr.

He didn't move from the door, giving her space. "Ari. Your father is dead and so are his beasts. I promise you are safe."

"Don't move," Zee told Jesse and me in a low voice, his eyes on the fae woman. "This could go very badly. I told you not to bring any of the wolves."

"I brought myself, old man," said Samuel. "And I told Ariana that if she ever needed me, I would come. It was a promise and a threat, though I didn't mean it that way at the time."

Alicia Brewster - whom Samuel had apparently known as Ariana - hummed three notes and started to talk.

"A long time past in a land far from this one," said Alicia in a storyteller's voice, "there was a fae daughter who could work magic in silver and so she was named. In a time where fae were dying from cold iron, their magics fading as the One God's ignorant followers built their churches in our places of power, the metals loved her touch, her magic flourished, and her father grew envious."

"He was a nasty piece of work," said Samuel, his eyes on the woman's wrinkled face that sometimes wore scars on her cheek or at the corner of her eye. "Mercy would call him a real rat-bastard. He was a forest lord whose greatest magic was to command beasts. When the last of the giants - who were beasts controlled by his magic - died, it left him a forest lord with no great power, and he resented it as Ariana's power grew. When the fae lost their ability to imprint their magic on things - like your walking staff, Mercy - she could still manage it. People found out."

"A great lord of the fae came," continued Ariana. She didn't seem to be listening to Samuel, but she waited for him to quit speaking before she started. "He required that she build an abomination - an artifact that would consume the fae magic of his enemies and give it back to him. She refused, but her father accepted and sealed the bargain in blood."

She stopped talking, and after a moment Samuel picked up the story. "He beat her, and she still refused. His was a magic sort of like the fairy queen's, in that he could influence others. It might have been more useful, but he could only influence beasts."

"So he turned her into a beast." Ariana's voice echoed even though my office was full enough that a gunshot shouldn't echo, and it was eerie enough that Jesse scooted nearer to me.

Ariana wasn't looking at Samuel anymore, but I couldn't tell where she was looking instead. I don't think it was a happy place.

"In those days, the fae's magic was still strong enough that it was harder to kill them unless you had iron or steel," said Samuel.

He didn't seem worried about Ariana, but Zee was. Zee had gradually moved off his chair until he was crouched between Jesse and the scarred fae woman.

"He used his powers to torture her," Samuel said. "He had a pair of hounds who were fae hounds. Their howls would drop a stag in its path, and their gaze could scare a man to death. He set them at her every morning for an hour, knowing that as long as he went not one moment more than an hour, she could not die - because that was part of these fear hounds' magic."

"She broke," Ariana said hoarsely. "She broke and followed his will as faithfully as his hounds. She knew nothing but his commands, and she built as he desired, forged it of silver and magic and her blood."

"You didn't break," said Samuel confidently. "You fought him every day."

Ariana's voice changed, and she snapped, "She couldn't fight him."

"You fought him," Samuel said again. "You fought, and he called his hounds until his magic failed him because he used it one time too often. I had this story from someone who was there, Ariana. You fought him and stopped, leaving the artifact incomplete."

"It is my story," she growled, and she turned those black eyes on Samuel. "She failed. She built it."

"Truth belongs to no one," Samuel told her. "Ariana's father visited a witch because his magic was insufficient to work his will." There was something in his voice that made me think that he knew and hated that witch. "He paid the price she demanded for a spell that combined witchcraft with his magic."

"His right hand," said Ariana.

Samuel waited for her, but she just stared at him.

"I think he wanted to call his hounds," Samuel said. "But they had strayed too far for him to influence. He got something quite different."

"Werewolves," said Ariana, then she turned her back to us, hunching her shoulders. I saw that there were scars on her back, too.

"We attacked because we had to," Samuel said gently. "But my father was stronger than we were, and resisted. He killed her father. We stopped, but she was so badly hurt. A human would have died or been reborn as one of us. She only suffered."

"You doctored her," I said. "You helped her heal. You saved her."

Ariana crumpled - and Samuel leaped over all of us and caught her before she hit the floor. Her body was limp, her eyes closed, and the scars were hidden safely behind her glamour again.

"Did I?" Samuel asked, looking down at her with his heart in his eyes. "The scar on the top of her shoulder was one I gave her."

Hot damn, I thought, watching him. Hot damn, Charles. I found something for Samuel to live for.

Samuel had been upstairs with Adam when the fairy queen called to tell us what she was looking for. Silver Borne. The mention of the artifact alone was enough to make it impossible for him to yield to his wolf. But it had been when Zee had called me and Ariana spoke that he'd come back to us.

"You saved her," I told him. "And you loved her."

"She didn't know, did she?" said Jesse, sounding as caught up in the story as Ariana had been. "You doctored her up, and she fell for you - and you couldn't tell her what you were. That's really romantic, Doc."

"And tragic," said Zee sourly.

"How do you know it's tragic?" sputtered Jesse.

The old fae scowled and gestured toward Samuel. "I'm not seeing a happy-ever-after ending here, are you?"

Samuel pulled the fae woman against him. It looked odd, a young man holding a woman who could have been his grandmother indeed. But fae don't age, they fade. Her grandmotherly appearance was a glamour. The scars were real - but I saw his face and knew that he only cared about the pain they represented.

"Endings are relative," I said, and Samuel jerked his head up. "I mean, as long as no one is dead, they get the chance to rewrite their endings, don't you think? Take it from me, Samuel, a little time can heal some awfully big wounds."

"Did she look healed to you?" he said, and his eyes were the color of winter ice.

"We're all alive," said Zee dryly. "And she didn't disappear on us - which she still has the magic to do. I'd say you have a chance."

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