She scrambled up the stairs, heedless of the ghost. It was too late to do anything, so Adam hurried behind her. He saw nothing unusual and didn't feel so much as a shiver. He emerged right on her heels to find Mercy tight-lipped and shaky.
"Mercy, are you okay?" he asked, and she looked at him and solemnly shook her head.
"I was wrong. It wasn't a repeater." She rubbed her hands and glanced behind him. "But she can't get in here."
"Who is she?" asked Asil.
"What does it mean that she wasn't a repeater?" Adam didn't like the way Mercy looked - too pale, and there was sweat on her forehead.
"It means that she tried to hitch a ride." Mercy hugged herself and bounced on the balls of her feet.
"Who is she?" Asil asked again.
"Give us a minute," snarled Adam, though he stopped himself from looking at Asil and escalating matters further.
The other wolf's chest rumbled warningly.
"Sorry," Adam said with an effort that cost him. "Mercy. Is there anything I can do?"
She shook her head. "No. I'm okay. I've just never had that happen before. She just clung to me, and I couldn't tell her to go away." She shivered. "But Zee has this place barricaded with magic, and she couldn't follow me here."
She'd been in danger, and Adam had been right there and helpless. He had been leaving her alone because she didn't like "cuddling in public" much, and in this state, she had no choice. But when her teeth started chattering, he hugged her to him. She was icy cold and leaned into him. She was all muscle and bone - and she'd be offended if she knew he thought of her as fragile. Without the formidable will that drove her, she was ... small.
Her teeth quit chattering almost right away. She looked over Adam's shoulder, and said, "She's a ghost, Asil. I've seen her a few times hanging out around this house."
"Our house is haunted?" Tad sounded taken aback.
"She doesn't bother you," Mercy said defensively. She stepped away, and Adam let her go. "I'd have told you about it if she were bothering you."
Crisis apparently averted, Adam looked around. The room was narrow and long, wide enough, if barely, for three people to stand shoulder to shoulder. The floor was carpeted with layers of Persian rugs that were worth a not-so-small fortune.
Unmatched bookcases lined the wall on one of the long ways of the room, ranging from hand-carved museum pieces to boards separated by cinder blocks. The top two shelves of each held a selection of unpainted metal toys. The rest of the shelves were filled with various sharp-bladed weapons. The books, and there were a lot of them, were piled on the floor on the other side of the room. The wall directly across from the doorway they'd entered was entirely covered by an enormous mirror.
"Could you shut the door, Mercy?" Tad asked, walking up to the mirror. "I don't activate the mirror without the door closed."
Adam got to the door before Mercy could and closed the ghost out. He didn't like it that she was still obediently following orders, although this time, he thought, Tad hadn't meant it like that. Tad would know that giving Adam or Asil orders, under these circumstances, might be a bad idea, and so he'd told Mercy.
Mercy touched the door after Adam shut it. "There's some kind of magic," she said.
"Protections," Tad agreed, without turning from the mirror. "Useful to keep out ghosts and spies."
He knocked three times on the mirror, and said,
Spiegel spieg'le finde,Vaters Bild und Stimme,
in der Tiefe Deiner Sinne, seiner Worte seiner Form,
meiner Worte meiner Form, fuhre, leite, fuhr' zusammen,
deiner Wahrheit Bindeglied,
verbinde unsere Wirklichkeiten,
Wesen und Natur im Lied!
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall," Asil murmured when Tad quit speaking.
"Shh," said Tad. "This isn't that mirror. That mirror broke, and good riddance to it. Let's not give this one ideas, please."
Adam couldn't tell if he was serious or not.
After a few minutes, during which the mirror did nothing more interesting than reflect everyone present back at it, Asil started to look at the toys on the shelves, though he kept his hands to himself. It gave him an excuse to keep his back to Adam, which Adam appreciated.
Mercy bent down to get a better look at the books - most of them were German and old. But Adam noticed that there were a couple of newer mysteries, too - and what looked like a complete Doc Savage series, numbered one through ninety-six, in paperback. Mercy reached out to touch one old book, and Adam's instincts made him block her hand. "It's not smart to touch a grumpy old fae's things," he said.
"It wants me to touch it," she explained earnestly.
"All the more reason not to do it," Adam told her, keeping a hold on her hand.
A compliant prisoner, he thought, has to do whatever she is told by who - or whatever - tells her to do something. He wondered if that ghost would have given her trouble if she had been able to exert her will. He glanced at the mirror, but there was still nothing more interesting than their reflections in it. "Tad, what's the holdup?"
"Shh," the young man said. "Not so loud. Someone on the other side of the mirror might overhear. He'll come as soon as he can."
"There's a lot of metal in here for a fae's den," murmured Asil. "And enough magic to make my nose itch."
"Zee is a metalsmith," Mercy explained, leaning against Adam. Like Asil, she spoke quietly. "Iron-kissed. Siebolt Adelbertsmiter."
"The Dark Smith of Drontheim?" Asil was suddenly a lot more tense, his voice half-strangled.
"That's right," said Tad, looking away from the mirror because Asil was more interesting. At least that was why Adam was looking at him. Fortunately, the other wolf was looking at Tad.
"Your father is Loan Maclibhuin, the Dark Smith of Drontheim?" Asil turned to Adam, averting his eyes at the last minute. "Are you sure you want to contact Maclibhuin? Do you know what he is?"
"He's mellowed with age," Mercy assured Asil before Adam could say anything. She sounded like herself. "No more killing people because they annoy him. No more making crazy weapons that will inevitably cause more problems than they solve because he had a bad day and wanted to destroy a civilization or two."
Tad snorted. "He likes Mercy. He'll help us."
Suddenly exhausted, as much by keeping a tight rein on himself as by the events of the past few days, Adam sat down on the rug and pulled Mercy onto his lap, where she couldn't get into trouble.