"That's right," I took his hand, and he shook mine with a firm grip that would have done credit to a politician.
"Tom Black." He smiled, showing pearly white teeth. "I've heard a lot about you. Mercedes the Volkswagen mechanic."
Like I hadn't heard that one before. Still, he didn't sound obnoxious, just mildly flirtatious.
"Nice to meet you." I wasn't interested in flirtation so I turned my attention back to Gabriel. "Any problems this morning?"
He smiled. "With Zee here? Listen, Mercy, my mother asked me to ask if you want the girls here this weekend to clean again."
Gabriel had a generous handful of siblings, all girls-the youngest in preschool and the oldest just entering high school-and all supported by their widowed mother who worked as a dispatcher for the Kennewick Police Department, not a high paying career. The two oldest girls had been coming in on a semi-regular basis and cleaning the office.
They did a good job, too. I hadn't realized that the film on my front window had been grease-I thought Zee had had some sort of treatment done to it to block out the sun.
"Sounds fine to me," I told him. "If I'm not here, they can use your key."
"I'll tell her."
"Good. I'm going to head into the garage and stay out of sight today-don't want to scare away customers."
I gave Tom Black a brisk nod, that was friendly but aloof. Then stopped to say a few words to the other man who was waiting. He was an old customer who liked to chat. Then I slipped into the garage before someone new could come in.
I found Zee lying on his back under a car, so all I could see of him was from the belly down.
Siebold Adelbertsmiter, my former boss, is an old fae, a metalworker, which is unusual for the fae who mostly can't handle cold iron. He calls himself a gremlin, though he is a lot older than the name, coined by flyboys in WWI. I have a degree in history, so I know useless things like that.
He looked like a fiftyish, thinish (with a little potbelly), grumpy man. Only the grumpy part was true. Thanks to glamour, a fae can look like anyone they want to. Glamour is the thing that makes something a fae - as opposed to, say, a witch or werewolf.
"Hey, Zee," I said when he showed no sign of noticing my presence. "Thanks for coming out this morning."
He rolled himself out from under the car and frowned deeply at me. "You need to stay away from the vampires, Mercedes Athena Thompson." Like my mother, he only used my full name when he was angry with me. I'd never tell him, but I've always kind of liked the way it sounds when pronounced with a German accent.
He took in my face in a single glance and continued. "You should be home sleeping. What is the use of having a man in the house, if he cannot take care of you for a while?"
" Mmm," I said. "I give up. What's the use of having a man in the house?"
He didn't smile, but I was used to that.
"Anyway," I continued briskly, though I kept my voice down so the people in the office couldn't hear anything. "There are two werewolves and a dead vampire in my house and I thought it was full enough to do without me for a while."
"You killed a vampire?" He gave me a look of respect-which was pretty impressive since he was still lying on his back on the creeper.
"Nope. The sun did. But Stefan should recover in time to face Marsilia tonight."
At least I was assuming it would be tonight. I didn't know much about the vampires, but the werewolves' trials tend to convene on the spot rather than six months after a crime. They are also over in a matter of hours, sometimes minutes, rather than months. Can't convince your pack Alpha you are less trouble to him alive than dead? Too bad. Pack law, necessarily brutal, was one of those nasty things that Bran was keeping under wraps for a while.
"Samuel told me you are going to be at a trial for the vampire."
"He called you," I said, outraged. "What did he do? Ask you to call him when I got here safely?"
Zee smiled at me for the first time and got out his cell phone. With oil-stained fingers he punched in my number. "She's here," he said. "Made it fine."
He hung up without waiting for a reply and widened his smile further as he dialed another number. I knew that one, too. But in case I'd missed it, he used names. "Hello, Adam," he said. "She's here." He listened for a moment; I did too, but he must have had the volume turned down low because all I could hear was the rumble of a male voice. Zee's smile turned into a malevolent grin. He looked at me and said, "Adam wants to know what took you so long?"
I started to roll my eyes, but it made the sore half of my face hurt worse so I stopped. "Tell him I had wild, passionate sex with a complete stranger."
I didn't stick around to hear if Zee passed my message on or not. I snatched my coveralls off their hook, and stalked into the bathroom.
Werewolves are control freaks, I reminded myself as I dressed for work. Being control freaks keeps them in charge of their wolf-which is a good thing. If I didn't like the side effects, I shouldn't hang out with werewolves. Which I wouldn't be doing if I didn't have one living with me and another living on the other side of my back fence.
Alone in the bathroom though, I could admit to myself that even though I was really, really angry... I'd have been disappointed if they hadn't checked up on me. How's that for illogical?
When I came out, Zee gave me the next repair job. I may have bought the business from him, but when we worked together, he still gave the orders. Part of it was habit, I suppose, but a larger part of it was that, though I am a good mechanic, Zee is magic. Literally and figuratively.
If it weren't for his tendency to get bored with easy stuff, he'd never have hired me. Then I'd have had to take my liberal arts degree and gotten a job at McDonald's or Burger King like all the rest of the history majors.
We worked companionably in silence for a while until I ran into a job that required four hands rather than two.
While I turned the rachet, Zee, who was holding a part in place for me, said, "I took a peek under that cover"-he nodded toward the corner of the shop where my latest restoration project lay in wait.
"Pretty, isn't she?" I said. "Or at least she will be when I get her fixed up." She was a 1968 Karmann Ghia in almost pristine condition.
"Are you going to restore it or make a street rod?"
"I don't know," I said. "Her paint is still the original and there's only a little cracking on the hood. I hate to mess with it unless I have to. If I can get her running well with original parts and Kim can stitch up the seats, I'll leave it at that."
There are three groups of old car enthusiasts: people who think a car should be left as much original as possible; the ones who restore it better than factory; and the people who gut them and replace the brakes, engine, and suspension with more modern equipment. Zee is firmly in the latter group.
He is not sentimental-if something works better, that's what you should use. I suppose forty or fifty years doesn't mean the same thing to him as it does to the rest of us-one person's antique is another's rusting hulk.
Since a good part of my income comes from restoring rusting hulks, I'm not picky. I have a partnership with an upholstery genius, Kim, and a painter who also likes to drive around and show the cars so we can sell them. After deducting the actual material cost of the restore and the shows, we split the profits according to hours spent on the project.
"Air-cooled takes a lot of upkeep," Zee said.
"Someone who wants an original condition Ghia won't care about that," I told him. He grunted, unconvinced, and went back to his job.
Gabriel took my Rabbit out to get sandwiches, then sat in the garage to eat with us. I uncovered the Ghia, and the three of us ate and debated the best thing to do with the car until it was time to go back to work.
"Zee," I asked as he raised a Passat in the air to take a look at the exhaust.
He grunted as he tapped with his index finger the exhaust pipe where it was badly dented, just in front of the first muffler.
"What do you know about sorcerers?"
He stopped his tapping and sighed. "Old gremlins go out of their way to stay away from demon-hosts, and it's been a while since humans believed enough in the Devil to sell their souls to him."
I got a little light-headed. It wasn't that I didn't believe in evil-quite the opposite. I've had ample proof of God, so I accepted that His opponent exists, too. I just didn't particularly want to know that someone who made a deal with Satan was lurking ten miles from my home killing hotel maids.
"I thought it was a just a demon," I said faintly.
" Ja don't know what this supposed to be, check later," he said; then he turned and saw my face. "Devil, demon-English is an imprecise language in these things. There are things that serve the Great Beast of Christian scripture. Greater and lesser spirits, demons or devils, and they all serve evil. The greater servants are bound away from our world, but can be invited in-just as vampires cannot enter a home without an invitation."
"All right," I took a deep breath. "What else do you know."
Zee reached up and put his hand on the pipe. "Not much, Liebchen. The few men I've encountered who claimed to be sorcerers were nothing but demon-bait when I met them."
"What's the difference?"
"The difference is who's holding the reins." The exhaust pipe began glowing a bright cherry red under Zee's hand. "Demons serve only one master well, and those who forget it tend to become enslaved rather quickly. Those who remember might stay in control a while longer."
I frowned at him. "So all the demon-possessed start out as sorcerers?"
Zee shook his head. "There are many kinds of invitations, intentional and not. Sorcerer, demon-possessed, it doesn't matter. Eventually the demon is in control."
The exhaust pipe made a loud noise and popped back out to its proper shape. Zee met my gaze. "This creature is playing with the vampires, Mercy. Stay out of its business. The seethe is better equipped to deal with such than you are."