“Enough,” said Uncle Mike. “One fight a night is good enough. Go home, Ymir.”
The kneeling elf looked at Uncle Mike, and the skin grew tight around his eyes for a moment before he smiled brightly. I noticed that his teeth were very white, if a little crooked. He stood up, using just the muscles of his thighs, like a martial artist. “It has been a long night.” He made a slow turn that encompassed not just Uncle Mike, the wolves, and me, but everyone else in the room—who I just realized were all watching us… or maybe they were watching the snow elf. “Of course it is time to go. I’ll see you all.”
No one said anything until he was out of the building.
“Well,” said Uncle Mike, sounding more Irish than usual. “Such a night.”
Mary Jo was moving but still dazed when we got her outside. So Adam instructed Paul and his friend (whose name, as it happened, was Alec and not Sean or Stan at all) to take her to Adam’s house. Paul packed Mary Jo in the back of her car with Alec and started to get in.
He looked at my feet. “You shouldn’t be out here barefoot,” he told the ground. Then he shut the car door, turned the key as he turned on the lights, and left.
“He meant thank you,” said Adam. “I’ll say it, too. I can think of a lot of things I’d rather do than try to defend Paul from Baba Yaga.”
“I should have let her have him,” I told Adam. “It would have made your life easier.”
He grinned, then stretched his neck. “This could have been a very, very bad night.”
I was looking over his shoulder at his SUV. “Would you settle for just a little bad? Your insurance doesn’t have an exception for snow elves, right?”
It had looked all right at first, then I thought it just had a flat tire. But now I could see the right rear tire was bent up at a forty-five-degree angle.
Adam pulled out his cell phone. “That doesn’t even register on my scale of bad tonight,” he told me. He put his free arm around my shoulder, pulling me against him as his daughter answered the phone. He wasn’t wearing a shirt.
“Hey, Jesse,” he said. “It’s been a wild night, and we need you to come pick us up at Uncle Mike’s.”
Chapter 5
“Some date,” Adam murmured. It didn’t matter how quiet he was; we both knew that most of the pack was inside his house listening to us as we stood on his back porch.
“No one could ever accuse you of being boring,” I said lightly.
He laughed with sober eyes. He’d scrubbed up in the bathroom at Uncle Mike’s and changed as soon as we’d made it back to his house. But I could still smell the blood on him.
“You need to see to Mary Jo,” I told him. “I need to go to bed.” She would survive, I thought. But she’d survive better with me at home and not disrupting the pack, who was forcing her to fight to live.
He hugged me for not saying all of that out loud. He lifted me to my toes—clad in a pair of Jesse’s flip-flops—and set me back down. “You go scrub your feet clean first so none of those cuts get infected. I’ll send Ben over to watch your house until Samuel is satisfied with Mary Jo’s condition and goes home.”
Adam watched from the porch as I walked home. I wasn’t halfway there when Ben caught up with me. I invited him in, but he shook his head.
“I’ll stay outside,” he said. “The night air keeps my head clear.”
I scrubbed my feet and dried them before I went to bed. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. But I woke up while the dark still held sway, knowing that there was someone in my room. Though I listened closely, I couldn’t hear anyone—so I was pretty sure it was Stefan.
I wasn’t worried. The vampires, except Stefan, wouldn’t have been able to cross the threshold of my home. Most anyone else would have woken Samuel.
The air told me nothing, which was odd—even Stefan had a scent. Restlessly, I rolled onto my side and right up against the walking stick, which had taken to sleeping with me every night. Mostly it gave me the creeps when it did that—walking sticks shouldn’t be able to move about on their own. But tonight the warm wood under my hand felt reassuring. I closed my hand around it.
“There’s no need for violence, Mercy.”
I must have jumped because I was on my feet, stick in hand, before it registered just whose voice I was hearing.
“Bran?”
And suddenly I could smell him, mint and musk that told me werewolf combined with the certain sweet saltiness that was his own scent.
“Don’t you have something more important to do?” I asked him, flipping on the light. “Like ruling the world or something?”
He didn’t move from his spot on the floor, leaning against a wall, except to put his forearm over his eyes as light flooded the room. “I came here last weekend,” he said. “But you were asleep, and I didn’t let them wake you up.”
I’d forgotten. In the hubbub of Baba Yaga, Mary Jo, the snow elf, and the vampires, I’d forgotten why he would have come to visit me personally. Suddenly I was suspicious of the arm he’d thrown over his eyes.
That Alphas are protective of their packs is an understatement—and Bran was the Marrok, the most Alpha wolf around. I might belong to Adam’s pack just now, but Bran had raised me.
“I already talked it all over with Mom,” I said defensively.
And Bran grinned hugely, his arm coming down to reveal hazel eyes, which looked almost green in the artificial light. “I bet you did. Are my Samuel and your Adam hovering over you and giving you a bad time?” His voice was full of (false) sympathy.
Bran is better than anyone I know, including the fae, at hiding what he is. He looked like a teenager—there was a rip in his jeans, just over the knee, and some ironic person had used a marker to draw an anarchy symbol just over his thigh. His hair was ruffled. He was perfectly capable of sitting around with an innocent smile on his face—and then ripping someone’s head off.
“You’re frowning at me,” he said. “Is it such a puzzle that I’m here?”
I dropped to the middle of the floor. It is uncomfortable for me to be in the same room for very long with Bran if my head is higher than his. Part of it is habit, and part of it is the magic that makes Bran the leader of all the wolves.
“Did someone call you about Adam bringing me into the pack?” I asked.
This time Bran laughed, his shoulders shaking, and I saw how tired he was.
“I’m glad I amuse you,” I told him grumpily.
Behind me the door opened, and Samuel said cheerily, “Is this a private party, or can anyone join?”