I put up the Closed sign and locked the door.
When the water had finished its job in the shop, Zee ran us—clothes and all—into the shower for the same treatment.
Finally, wet and shivering with nerves, I dug my phone out and called Elizaveta, just as if nothing had changed in our relationship.
I don’t know that I trusted her—and I was really, really glad that Zee had been here so I didn’t need to trust her with everything. But calling her for help beat calling in Wulfe, the witchblood (or something magic using, anyway) vampire.
Elizaveta, black magic and all, was preferable to Wulfe. Besides, it was daytime, so I had no choice.
Then I called Adam.
“I heard you gave up your position as organizer,” he said.
“Was that what I was?” I asked. “I thought I was message girl. Yes. Abbot wanted me to get the fae to supply a list of the attending fae, by name, and what their powers were.”
“Ah,” he said. “And you told Abbot it wouldn’t fly.”
“And he said then there would be no talks,” I agreed. “So it wasn’t so much that I resigned as it was that if I continued in my position, there would be no talks.”
“And you wouldn’t have a position,” Adam said dryly.
“Exactly,” I agreed. “But I think he fired me anyway.”
“Sounds good to me,” he said. “It will be a lot less work.”
“Might shorten the life span of everyone living in the US by a decade or so, but less work is good,” I agreed.
He laughed. “The fae would never fill out paperwork for a meeting,” he said.
“Or supply real names,” I said. “Or fill out the sheets with lies. Better all the way around to establish what is possible and what is not possible before all hell breaks loose.”
Back when the fae first went into the reservations, the government had required the fae to give names and tell them what kind of fae they were. I don’t know about the other fae, but I know that Zee gave them the name he was going by right now—and the human-made category of gremlin. That probably fit him as well as anything else, but it trivialized the kind of power he could manifest. The one thing I did know was that none of the fae who filled out those forms were Gray Lords.
“So if you weren’t calling about that,” Adam said, “what are you calling about? And does it have anything to do with the reason my people tell me that the fire suppression system in your shop has been drained?”
“Yep,” I said. “The shop was cursed.”
“I will be right there,” he said. Then he said, in a low tone, “Did you call Elizaveta?”
“It was either her or Wulfe,” I said.
“And it’s daytime,” he agreed. “I’m leaving now.”
8
“It started with this?” asked Elizaveta, holding up the air filter.
She had been stalking around the garage for five minutes, muttering about the puddles everywhere. I was actually surprised that there wasn’t more water—but she hadn’t been here during the deluge.
Tad was in the office calling (with his poor sore fingers) the clients whose cars we had doused with water. We were offering them the repairs free of charge, but not delivering the cars until tomorrow or the next day, depending on how long cleanup took us. A problem, I could hear Tad explaining, with the new fire suppression system.
I’d found a spot near the wall that separated garage from office, and Adam had taken up a station next to me, where he proceeded to ignore Elizaveta’s doings and answer texts and e-mails on his phone. Or maybe he was planning world domination—with Adam’s phone it was hard to tell.
Zee took my other side, leaving the garage at large to Elizaveta.
My cell went off again. But the caller ID was blocked and my policy was that I didn’t pick up on blocked-ID calls just after I got off the hook for a nonpaying government job I didn’t want.
“Yes,” I said. “The air filter was the first thing we found.”
She made a noise and began examining it minutely. The bright orange substance had changed to something that looked a lot more like (and maybe was) the caked-on dirt I sometimes find in cars that belong to people who do a lot of driving on dirt roads around here. A lot of our dirt is powder-fine and coats everything in its path.
“So,” I said, “do you think that the cheese-colored magic plague let loose in my shop is the Hardesty witches? I know it’s an obvious question, but I figured I should ask it anyway.”
“Could be,” drawled Adam. “Unless you’ve been out annoying other witches without telling me.”
“The Hardestys are like . . . the Borgia family. There is seldom only one way for them to win,” counseled Elizaveta absently as she continued to examine the air filter. “Their goal always is to consolidate their power. Judging by their actions, if the meetings do not take place, they win. If they take place and they blow up—literally or figuratively—they win. If you spread a mysterious and fatal magical plague wherever you go, they triumph on all fronts.”
My phone rang again and she gave me an irritated look as if it were my fault that someone was calling me. There was no caller ID so I refused that call, too.
Elizaveta turned back to Adam. “The attack on your home . . . a zombie werewolf would be a treasure for a witch family, something not easily replaced. They did not expect you to defeat it. They expected it to kill whoever triggered the trap—maybe everyone in the house when it was triggered. It would not have destroyed the pack, unless they got lucky and it killed you, Adam. But if you had lost more pack members . . . I think that the meeting between you and the government would not be so important to you.”
She frowned again at the air filter. “They do seem to want badly to stop it, don’t they? I wonder why they do not want the government and the fae to make peace.”
“If the witches are trying to stop it, maybe we should fight a little harder to see that the meeting does take place,” Adam said. “To that end, Mercy, I have a dozen or so texts that tell me that you should answer your phone.”
I frowned at him, but the blocked caller started calling my phone again. Adam’s eyes on me, I answered the phone.
“Ms. Hauptman,” said the rough-hewn voice of the man everyone thought was about to declare his candidacy for president. “This is Jake Campbell. How are you?”
“Wet and cranky,” I told him. “My fire suppression system just went off and doused both me and my place of business. What can I do for you?”
There was a brief pause. “You can step back into the shoes that my assistant tried to force you out of. I have explained matters to him, and you’ll be dealing directly with my personal assistant, Ruth Gillman, after this. Ruth, you will find, is a very good listener.”
“Look,” I told him. “Fae are what they are. The ones you will be dealing with—assuming they send anyone who can actually make a deal or has any authority—are very old. They won’t give you true names because true names have power. Even names that are old, true or not, have power. They won’t tell you what they can or cannot do. First, it is rude. Second, most of them do not have the kind of power that they used to before Christianity and iron swept over their territory, and that is a very sore spot for most of them. Asking them about their power, about their names, could inspire one of them to demonstrate on the spot just how much power they still do have. I have a business to run and a very happy marriage. I am not interested in being squashed like a bug because someone else wants me to do something stupid.”
“Tell him how you really feel,” called Tad from the front desk; he must have been in between calls.
I guess I’d gotten a little loud. I get mad when I am afraid. And I had been afraid since I walked into the killing field of Elizaveta’s house.
“Okay,” Campbell said. “And that is exactly why we need you. And I am very sorry for the loss of your pack member. I think we both agree that it would be best if we proceed without incurring any more deaths if we can. So what is the proper approach?”
“They know you want a meeting,” I said. “Before the hotel blew up, the subject of that discussion was where.”
“You suggested a winery on Red Mountain,” he said. “It sounds like an excellent compromise.
“I might be part of a werewolf pack,” I said dryly, “but I do not require a pat on my head.”
“Noted,” he said. And I could hear a scratching sound, as if he were actually writing that down on a sheet of paper.
It probably said, M. Hauptman is touchy but possibly useful. Treat with kid gloves until she proves otherwise. Or maybe it was just his lunch order for his personal assistant, Ruth.
Being wet and scared was making me way more grumpy than usual.
“I told you I was wet and grumpy,” I said. “Also thoroughly spooked.” I hadn’t intended to admit that last part. “It makes me snap at people who might not deserve it.”
“I haven’t been near a bomb since I was in the army,” Campbell said. “Roadside mine took out the truck just ahead of mine. Not something I’ve forgotten, and I wasn’t hurt. It will be a while before you feel safe again.”
He was sincere. But other than the wrenching sadness that was Paul’s absence, I had hardly worried about the bomb. Witches were way scarier than bombs.
“That’s not what’s spooking me,” I said slowly. Senator Campbell and the other government officials were all at risk here.
There was a little silence. Then he asked, “I thought the fae agreed not to harm anyone in your territory.”
“They won’t,” I said, “as long as no one insults them by trying to insist that they fill out a questionnaire.”
“Not my idea,” said the senator. “But I didn’t object to it. It would be good to know something—anything about the fae we’ll be dealing with.”