She ushered Adam and me to Adam’s car.
“Now run while you can,” she murmured. “I will do the same. The grandmother magic will wear off in a minute, and someone will decide that the dead body means they should arrest someone. Don’t answer your phone unless you know the number and come into my office tomorrow at seven thirty.”
“She’s good,” I said. “Tough, smart, and funny as a bonus. I wonder if there really is grandmother magic.”
“For what we pay her, she’d better be good,” agreed Adam. “She doesn’t need grandmother magic to make people scramble at her command.” He pressed a button on his steering wheel, and said, “Call Warren.”
A woman’s voice from his dash said, “Calling.”
“Boss?” Warren answered. “Everyone okay?”
“Mercy’s singed, but still swinging.”
“Good to hear. I got quite an earful from your security chief, who deleted a lot of interesting material.”
“Then you know most of it. I need you to get everyone out of our house right now. Apparently, Christy’s stalker is some kind of supernatural who can set things on fire.”
“You want me to take them home?” Warren asked.
Adam took in a deep breath. “What do you think?”
“I think that our place got a lot of attention in the press when those rogue agents kidnapped Kyle.”
“Suggestions?”
“How about Honey’s place? It’s big enough to house everyone if we don’t all need bedrooms, and it hasn’t been plastered all over the newspaper.”
Honey’s house was in Finley, too. Another large house like ours, though it wasn’t built to be a pack den, so while there was plenty of room, it was short on beds.
“Sounds good. Call Honey, then get everyone out of the house.”
“You two okay?”
Adam’s eyes traveled to me. “Yes.”
“Kyle called about ten minutes ago and said to tell you that a Gary Laughingdog is at our house and would like to talk to Mercy on a matter of some urgency.”
“Tell him we will be right there.” Adam pulled a U-turn. “We’ll move them on to Honey’s house. Call me if Honey has a problem, and we’ll come up with something else.”
“Right. Is Laughingdog the guy Mercy visited in prison?”
I said, “Yes.”
There was a little pause. “So he broke out of jail?”
I said, “Yes,” again.
“Kyle doesn’t know that,” Warren said. “If the wrong things happen, Kyle could lose his license to practice law for having him in the house.”
“You get everyone safe,” said Adam, “and I’ll take care of Kyle.”
“Movin’ on it, boss.” Warren hung up the phone.
“Do you think he’ll go after our house?” I asked. “Guayota, I mean.”
“I don’t know enough about him to be making predictions,” Adam said.
“Why do you think that he believes she—” I stopped speaking.
“What?”
“I almost saw it then,” I sat up straighter and turned toward Adam. “I’m stupid. When Tony took me to look at the crime scene in the hayfield, I thought for an instant that one of the bodies he’d left was Christy’s.” The ghost could have been her sister. “She was the right age, right hair color, and right body type. All of the women were, I think—though it wouldn’t hurt to double-check.”
“We need to find out who this guy is,” said Adam grimly. “And we need to find the walking stick, so that Beauclaire doesn’t kill us before Flores does.”
“We have his name,” I said. “Guayota. That might help. And Zee gave Tad some insight he shared with me about Beauclaire and why not running Coyote down before Sunday might not mean disaster.”
He glanced my way and back at the road, inviting me to keep talking. So I explained Zee’s reasoning. When I was finished, Adam gave me a short nod. “Might work. It would be better to have the walking stick, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Zee’s insights into the problem with Beauclaire and the walking stick have showed me I need to start thinking outside the box more,” I said.
“Oh?” Adam glanced at me, then back at the road.
“I thought we should apply that kind of thinking to the matter of Christy’s stalker.”
He gave me a skeptical look.
“No, really,” I said. “Now that we know that Flores is really this nasty, fiery, superpowerful nothing-can-kill-me demon from hell, maybe we should consider just giving Christy to him?”
He laughed.
“I’m serious,” I said. And I was. Really. If only a little bit.
“Right,” he said affectionately. “I know exactly how serious you are. We’ve got a twenty-minute drive ahead. Why don’t you close your eyes and rest up?”
It sounded like a plan. My hands hurt, my hip hurt, my cheek throbbed, and someone had thrown a finger at me—and I hadn’t eaten today. Adam’s hand curled around the top of my knee, and I relaxed and let myself drift off. Nothing was so bad that Adam’s touch couldn’t make it better. Even if he wouldn’t let me give Christy to the fire-dog from hell.
8
Kyle let us in with a sincere, heartfelt gratitude that didn’t speak well of his guests.
He frowned at my face.
“The EMT told me the cheek will probably scar, but putting stuff on it won’t help,” I told him. “He also advised avoiding fights where throwing fire is involved.”
“I know of something that might help,” Kyle said. “I’ll talk to my hairdresser and see if I can’t get you some. Of course, if you keep fighting with people who throw fire at you, it’s unlikely to be of any help in the long run.”
“Let’s get through with Gary Laughingdog first,” said Adam. “And then I’ll tell you what happened tonight at Mercy’s garage.”
“I know most of it,” Kyle said. “Warren called a while ago and gave me a play-by-play. But the conversation was in my bedroom, and I haven’t passed anything along just yet.”
He ushered us to the ground-floor sitting room, where the defensive posture of our newest wolf put Adam on edge. Zack had pushed himself as far into the corner of the sofa as he could get. Gary Laughingdog, barefoot and dressed in jeans and a stained white t-shirt, was sitting on the back of the same couch, though right in the center of it. But he was leaning toward Zack, using body language to put pressure on the wolf.