Adam thought the witch—or witches, because we really weren’t sure—was playing with us.
Adam dealt with the FBI, the Secret Service, and all of the hoopla that happens when you don’t actually die when a bomb goes off. The secret meeting wasn’t so secret anymore, and Bright Future, undeterred by their association with the bomber, held a sit-in at John Dam Plaza, a little park in the middle of Richland. I heard they gave out free ice cream cones.
Ford died in custody. The public was being held in suspense but our new friend in the Secret Service told Adam that no one knew why he died. It wasn’t suicide, but it didn’t look like murder, either.
After a couple of days, the news stories all concentrated on the upcoming meeting between the fae and the government. The bombing sort of faded to the background. After all, all of the bad guys died. They only had a driver’s license photo of Paul, and a few words from Adam about how he was a good and faithful employee—not enough to make a story out of Paul.
Paul only wanted Adam and the pack to know that he was a hero. He wouldn’t have cared, much, about what they said in the news.
Senator Campbell did a series of interviews with both conservative and liberal press. I caught several of those.
The senator was a handsome man—he could have starred in one of the 1950s Westerns that my foster father had been addicted to. He looked like a man you could trust.
He looked me directly in the eye. Or at least he looked in the camera and spoke as if he were talking to me.
“In the view of the fae,” he said, “we broke faith with them when we denied justice to one of their own. But they are willing to step up to the table one more time. It doesn’t matter what you or I feel about the fae, the fact of the matter is that we are less safe from them right this minute than we were before. An agreement will make us safer, make them safer, and make the lives of our children safer.”
Still looking at me through the TV, he said, “This is not a chance that is likely to come again in our generation. And I am not going to let the actions of a homegrown terrorist get in the way of making my country a safer place to live.”
He was an effective speaker. And his opinion was made more weighty by the common knowledge that he was the poster child for the anti-fae groups.
* * *
• • •
While the pack was herding zombies and Adam was dealing with investigators and reporters, Mary Jo, George, and I cleaned out Paul’s apartment. It took us two evenings to pack up his things. It seemed to me that it should take more time to bundle up a person’s life.
“Is his ghost here?” asked Mary Jo as we sorted books into boxes.
I looked around and shook my head. “I haven’t seen anything while we’ve been here.”
She closed up the box she was working on and taped it shut. “I called Renny. We’re going on a date on Saturday.”
“Good,” I said.
“Is it?” she asked pensively. “Pensive” was not an emotion I’d ever seen in Mary Jo.
“He loved me, you know,” she told me. “Paul, I mean. I know you didn’t see the best side of him, but he could be a lot of fun.” She was quiet for a moment, then she said, “I wish I had loved him back.”
She cried—and didn’t push me away when I gave her a hug. George came over and crouched beside her, putting a hand on her shoulder. He said what we’d all been thinking.
“He didn’t have anyone but pack,” he said. Then he rubbed her shoulder gently. “But he did have us, darling. We had his back when things went rough—and he had ours.”
“He saved my life,” I said.
I met Mary Jo’s wet eyes—mostly to avoid looking at Paul’s shade, who had shown up, looking lost, as soon as Mary Jo had acknowledged that he had loved her.
She nodded. “He was not an easy man, Mercy. But he was a good person to have at your back.”
“I know,” I told her sincerely.
“What he wasn’t,” George said, “was sentimental. Back to work, me hearties. Time and tide wait for no one.”
“We’re not sailing anywhere,” said Mary Jo. “So we don’t care about the tide, even if we were anywhere near the ocean. Maybe you should lay off the pirate game for a while. It’s warping your brain.”
“His brain is already warped,” I said.
George grinned at me. “I know you are, but what am I?”
I stuck my tongue out at him and we all got back to work. Paul lingered, touching a book or two as we packed them or fingering the empty bookcase. Sometimes he would reach out and almost caress Mary Jo—but not quite.
This shade wasn’t really Paul, I could tell—not like when he’d talked to me just after he’d died. But his shade made me sad. Sadder. So I didn’t look at him. At it.
* * *
• • •
Elizaveta made it back in time to just miss the funeral. I think she planned it that way—I sure would have under the circumstances.
A taxi dropped her and her luggage at our door smelling of stale air and all the things that go with air travel. She looked . . . old.
“Adam,” she said, brushing by me, and launched into a spate of Russian.
Her face crumpled with grief and loss and he held her while she cried. But his face was— It was probably a good thing she couldn’t see his face. After a moment, though, he closed his eyes and grief deepened the line of his mouth.
“Elizaveta,” I said. “Come sit down. We have a situation here and I think you may be the only one who can clarify what’s going on.”
She started to come in, but took a step back before her foot landed inside the threshold. “It is lovely outside,” she said. “I have just spent most of a day inside planes and airports. Can we sit out on the porch?”
I thought of the cleansing that Sherwood had performed on the house.
“Of course,” I said. “Why don’t you two find a seat and I’ll bring out some iced tea for everyone.” Elizaveta was fond of iced tea.
Eventually we all sat in the comfortable chairs that were scattered in seating groups all over the porch. Elizaveta drank her tea. I did not doubt her grief or her fear.
It sounded like Sherwood’s cat was going to make it. But Elizaveta’s house had been full of the ghosts of people she and her family had tortured to death for power. I couldn’t look at Elizaveta without seeing the face of that half-dead cat, as if he stood for all of her victims. She grieved, and I had not the slightest bit of sympathy.
“We buried the ashes of your family in your garden,” said Adam.
And there had been a lot of bones in that garden, Warren had told us. They had reburied what they found. We were still considering what to do about that garden.
Elizaveta’s face went still. “Oh?” But when he didn’t say anything more, she said, “Thank you. They would have liked that.”
I didn’t think any of her family would like where they were now. But I didn’t generally impose my beliefs on other people—especially when they wouldn’t do anyone any good.
“About the black magic,” she said tentatively. She was watching Adam; my reaction didn’t matter to her.
Adam shook his head. “I understand. I know how witchcraft works.” “Understand” did not mean “approve.”
“They tried to take us once before,” she said, watching him narrowly. “The Hardesty witches. Some sacrifices were necessary to ensure our survival.”
“I see,” Adam said. “Why didn’t you come to us for help?”
“It was at the same time that you and your pack got taken by the government agents,” Elizaveta said. “You were a little busy. By the time matters settled down for you”—after Frost was dead—“they had backed off.” She gave Adam a grim smile. “My family was not big compared to theirs. But we had some powerful practitioners.”
I was going to have to call Stefan and see what he’d found out about Frost.
“Mercy?” Adam asked.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was woolgathering.”
“I asked if you could describe the witch you saw,” Elizaveta said.
“Tall,” I said. “Dark hair. Big smile that lights up her face. She sounds like she comes from Adam’s quadrant of the country, though maybe not Alabama.”
“And she makes zombies,” said Elizaveta, as if what I’d told her had given her the final bits she needed to make an identification. “Definitely the Hardesty family.”
“Why do you think she’s making so many zombies?” I asked. “We’ve had a werewolf, twenty miniature goats, a cat, and a cow.”
“She can’t help it,” said Elizaveta. “It is the curse of that kind of necromancy, this uncontrollable need to create more. I am told that the euphoria that lingers after you bring the dead to life is more addictive than morphine. That’s why there aren’t many witches who do it. Some of the African-influenced families seem to have a better handle on that, but even they have a limit. She must be valuable if they haven’t put her down yet.”
“So could we track her using the zombies?” asked Adam. “How does zombie-making work?”
“It doesn’t matter how it works,” Elizaveta said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “By the time there are zombies running around, she could be miles away. What matters is that I can track that sort of magic in my territory.” She took a deep breath. “There were two witches at my house, and one of them was this zombie-maker.”
“Yes,” I said. “Would being a Love Talker make her valuable enough to keep around?”
“Ha,” said Elizaveta. “Is that what she is?”
“I’m not sure,” I told her honestly. Then I described the incident with Salas.
Elizaveta nodded. “Your vampire is right. This man— What was his name? This man is probably witchborn—you say that he has left town?”