I rubbed my nose against his back in reassurance, but I didn't speak. He was right, and I respected him too much to lie.
"I violated your trust, and my father's, too. I couldn't live with it: I had to leave. I traveled to the far corner of the country and became someone else: Samuel Cornick, college freshman, fresh off the farm with a newly minted high school diploma. Only on the night of the full moon did I allow myself to remember what I was."
The muscles under my hands convulsed twice. "In med school, I met a girl. She reminded me of you: quiet with a sneaky sense of humor. She looked a little like you, too. It felt like a second chance to me—a chance to do it right. Or maybe I just forgot. We were friends at first, in the same program at school. Then it became something more. We moved in together."
I knew what was coming, because it was the worst thing I could think of that could have happened to Samuel. I could smell his tears, though his voice was carefully even.
"We took precautions, but we weren't careful enough. She got pregnant." His voice was stark. "We were doing our internships. We were so busy we hardly had time to say ‘hello' to each other. She didn't notice until she was nearly three months pregnant because she assumed that the symptoms were from stress. I was so happy."
Samuel loved children. Somewhere I had a picture of him wearing a baseball cap with Elise Smithers, age five, riding him as if he had been a pony. He'd thrown away everything he believed in because he thought I, unlike a human or werewolf, could give him children who would live.
I tried not to let him know I was crying, too.
"We were doing internships." He was speaking quietly now. "It's time consuming and stressful. Long irregular hours. I was working with an orthopedic surgeon, nearly a two hour drive from our apartment. I came home one night and found a note."
I hugged him harder, as if I could have stopped what happened.
"A baby would have interfered with her schooling," he said. "We could try again, later. After… after she was established. After there was money. After…" He kept talking but he'd dropped into a foreign tongue, its liquid tone conveying his anguish better than the English words had.
The curse of a long life is that everyone around you dies. You have to be strong to survive, and stronger to want to do so. Bran had told me once that Samuel had seen too many of his children die.
"That infant tonight…"
"He'll live," I said. "Because of you. He'll grow up strong and healthy."
"I lived like a student should, Mercy," he told me. "Pretending to be poor like all the other students. I wonder if she knew that I had money, would she still have killed my baby? I would have quit school to take care of the child. Was it my fault?"
Samuel curled his whole body around my arm as if someone had punched him in the stomach. I just held him.
There was nothing I could say to make it better. He knew better than I what the chances of his baby being born healthy had been. It didn't matter, his child had never gotten any chance at all.
I held Samuel while the sun set, comforting him as best I could.
CHAPTER 6
I left Samuel sleeping and made tuna fish sandwiches for dinner, something I could put in the fridge for him in case he awoke hungry, but he stayed in his room until past my bedtime.
I set my alarm clock for a couple of hours later than my usual wake-up. Tomorrow was Saturday when I was officially closed. I had work to do, but nothing urgent, and Gabriel wasn't scheduled to come in until ten.
When I knelt for prayer before bedtime, I asked God to help Warren and Stefan catch the demon, as had become my usual plea. This time I added a prayer for Samuel as well. After a moment's thought I prayed for Adam, too. I didn't really think it was his fault that he turned me into a submissive ninny.
Even though I was all set to wake up late (for me), I got up just before dawn because someone was tapping on my window. I pulled my pillow over my head.
"Mercy." My window's assailant kept his voice down, but I knew it anyway. Stefan.
I rubbed my eyes. "Are you asking for quarter? I'm not in a particularly merciful mood." I can make fun of my name, but no one else can. Unless I'm in a really good mood. Or if I start it first.
I heard him laugh. "For quarters, perhaps. But I have no need to yield, if you are not assaulting me."
One of the nice things about Stefan was that he usually got my jokes, no matter how lame. Even better, he'd play along.
"You need money?" I asked in mock surprise. "I can write you a check, but I only have a couple of dollars in cash."
"I need a place to sleep the day, love. Would you shelter me?"
"All right," I threw back my covers and started for the front door. There went my plans to sleep in.
The sky was striped with the beginnings of sunrise when I opened the door.
"Left it a little late, Stefan." I said adding his name so that Samuel—who would have heard me open the door—wasn't alarmed.
Stefan didn't appear to hurry, but neither did he waste much time standing on my doorstep.
I hadn't seen him since the night of his trial. He looked tired. His shoulders were slumped and he didn't move with his usual effervescent energy. "I sent Daniel home, but I had a tip I had to check out. I thought I'd have time, but my powers lessen as dawn approaches and I found myself on your doorstep"—he grinned—"begging for mercy."
I escorted him to my bedroom door. "I thought Warren and Ben were working with you. Why didn't you have them check it out?"
"I sent them home earlier. They have jobs to do today, and even werewolves need sleep."
"They're working on a Saturday?"
"Warren has a job for his lawyer friend, and Ben had things to do that he couldn't get done when everyone else was working."
Ben was a computer geek working at the Pacific Northwest Nation Laboratory which was affiliated in some arcane manner with the Hanford Nuclear Site. Darryl, Adam's second, had gotten him the job—and from all accounts Ben was a pretty decent nerd. I think it surprised Darryl, who wasn't accustomed to being surprised.
I pulled open the closet door—Stefan's pillow and blanket were still there from the last time he'd spent the day. "Are you sure the sorcerer is still here? He could have moved on."
Stefan looked grim. "Watch the news this morning," was all he said before stepping into my closet and closing the door.
The car wreck that had so upset Samuel made the early news. So did the violent deaths of three young men who had gotten in an argument. We were two weeks into a heat wave that showed no signs of letting up anytime soon. There was another Arts festival in Howard Amon Park this weekend.
I assumed Littleton wouldn't have anything to do with the Arts festival or the weather (at least I hoped that a sorcerer wasn't powerful enough to affect the weather), so I paid close attention to the report on the dead men.
"Drugs are a growing problem," the newscaster said, as EMTs carried black sheathed bodies out on stretchers behind him. "Especially meth. In the last six months the police have shut down three meth labs in the Tri-City area. According to witnesses, last night's violence apparently broke out in a meth lab when one man made a comment about another's girlfriend. All of the men were high, and the argument quickly escalated into violence that left three men dead. Two other men are in police custody in connection to the deaths."