“Only if you remember that while she is drumming up sympathy for her heaping helping of guilt—she doesn’t really feel responsible,” I said. “Just for now responsible.”
“Sounds like you know our Christy as well as those of us who lived with her,” said Honey, leaning a shoulder lightly against both of us in a gesture of solidarity. She looked at the pack, and said, “Some of us, anyway.”
On the far side of the werewolf pack trying to comfort Christy, Ben shared a cynical smile with us. He wasn’t petting Christy, either.
The pizza guy came after that and broke up the comfort-poor-Christy party. Pizza places don’t usually deliver that far out in the boonies, but Honey, it turned out, had an arrangement with a place in Kennewick—an arrangement that included a huge tip for the driver and a surcharge on the pizza.
The food was a signal, and as soon as the last scrap of pizza was gone, everyone retreated to their Honey-assigned sleeping places. Adam and I got the formal living room. Jesse opted into the giant upstairs room with her mother, where they’d decided to watch some disaster film from the seventies that had just made it to video.
“The upside of this,” Adam told me as we stood next to the air mattress, which had a fitted sheet already stretched over it, a pair of pillows, and a blanket, “is that we get this room to ourselves.”
I dropped down to sit on the mattress and gave him a look. “No door, no fun.” The sounds of the movie filtered down the stairs and into the room. Everyone in that room, everyone who was something other than human, at least, would hear whatever we said—or did—in here.
Adam smiled and plopped down beside me. The air mattress bucked under his sudden weight and tried to toss me off, so I lay down for more stability.
“I’m too tired to do anything anyway,” he said, lying back beside me. He reached over and took my hand. “If it’s any consolation, we’re not going to get a whole lot of sleep before we have to head to the lawyer’s.”
“I’d forgotten about the lawyer,” I said. “Somehow, that seems a long time ago.”
His hand clenched on mine, hard enough to hurt before his grip gentled. “I thought he’d kill you before I got there,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, trying to sound like it hadn’t bothered me. “Me, too.”
“Don’t do that again.”
“Okay,” I said agreeably. “How often can I get attacked by a volcano god in my shop?” I groaned. “Not that there is a shop.”
“You have insurance,” Adam said.
I sighed. “I’m not covered for acts of God,” I told him. “I wonder if they’ll try to find a way to make that mean volcano gods as well as God God.”
“God God,” Adam said, sounding amused. “I’ll remember that. Speaking of things to remember”—and now he didn’t sound amused at all—“I like it when you defend me. I haven’t gotten a lot of that.”
“That voice,” I said, and he laughed happily, though even his laugh held that rough sexual overtone. He rolled until he was on top of me, and he nibbled along my jawline.
“You like my body,” he told me, “you like me sweaty, and watching my belly when I do sit-ups.”
“Hey,” I said, trying for indignation, “I never told you that.”
He laughed again. “Sweetheart, you tell me that every time you can’t look away, and you know it. But”—he laughed again, then said, in that deep growly voice that was his own personal secret weapon—“you really like it when I talk to you, like this.”
“No door,” I squeaked. “She’ll walk in on us and make sure Jesse is with her.”
Adam froze and growled for real. “You’re right. You’re right. And I almost don’t care.”
“Jesse,” I said.
“Jesse,” he agreed with a groan, then rolled up—abdomen flexing nicely—and onto his feet. He began to strip, not bothering to hide his arousal. If Christy walked in, she’d get quite a show of what she’d thrown away.
“You might as well get ready for sleeping,” he told me in grumpy tones. “Morning is going to come early.”
“I’m keeping my clothes on,” I told him, equally grumpily. “Without doors, everyone will feel pretty free and easy stopping in to bring you their complaints.” Everyone being Christy. “I’m not taking chances.”
“They come in, they deserve what they get,” Adam told me and, naked, spread the blanket over the mattress and me.
I wiggled until I was right way around. Then I pulled the blanket off my face while he climbed under the covers. He planted himself right next to me, and his scent spread over both of us.
I was well on my way to sleep when a thought occurred to me. “He’s broken,” I told Adam.
Adam grunted. Then, when I didn’t say anything more, he laughed once. “Okay, Mercy. Who is broken?”
“Guayota, Flores, whoever,” I told him. “He was doing okay in the modern world before he ran into Christy. Before she reminded him of someone he lost a long time ago.”
Adam was thoughtful for a moment. “Because there weren’t any other bodies.”
“Warren would have found them if there were, right?” I asked.
“Warren or my buddies in the DEA,” he agreed.
“The women he killed, the ones Tony brought me in to look at, they all looked like Christy,” I told him. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”
Adam reached over and pulled me closer. “I believe that Guayota is very old and that Christy was his trigger. You know better than most how it is with the very old wolves. They’ll do fine—until suddenly they snap.”
“I still think we should give him Christy,” I said.
“No, you don’t,” he told me firmly. “I was there for your speech in the kitchen, remember?”
“If we gave him Christy,” I said persuasively, “we could visit them in the Canary Islands.”
“Like Lucia wants to visit Joel’s mother?” he asked. “Giving him Christy won’t fix him, Mercy. There’s no reasoning with the old ones once they are broken. He’s started killing and he’ll keep killing. And then there is Joel.”
I sighed. “I suppose you’re right. I think we’re going to wish that we’d had Tad come over here instead of going to Fairyland.”