“Guesting laws aside”—Adam took a deep breath and gave a decisive nod—“the first thing we really need is information. And I have one place we can get more without risking anyone.” He hitched his hip up off the chair and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “So I vote that we see what our note writers want first.” He dialed, then set the phone on the table with the speaker on—apparently done with his nod to democracy.
It rang three times and stopped. I could hear breathing on the other side of the connection. They waited for us to speak—but that’s not how an Alpha plays the game.
Eventually, a voice that could have been a high-pitched man’s or a low-pitched female’s said, tentatively, “Who calls?”
Aiden jerked awake at the sound of the voice and dug his hands into Adam’s arms, then slid off his lap and backed into a corner of the kitchen. Zee knew the voice on the phone, too. His eyes narrowed, and he pursed his lips, but he nodded at Adam.
“You give this number to a lot of people?” Adam asked.
“Mr. Hauptman,” said the voice, the tentative quality disappearing, buried in cold confidence. It was a woman’s voice, I decided. “We do not desire a war with you.”
“Could have fooled me,” he growled. “You set a troll on my city.”
There was a pause. “Your city?” she said. “I believe you are the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack, not the mayor of Richland, Pasco, or Kent-Kenta-Ken . . .”
Adam smiled in satisfaction. “Kennewick,” he said, “is the name you’re looking for. And my territory is where I say it is.”
“What your woman says it is,” she snapped, implying, I thought, that the power in the pack was not Adam, but me.
“Exactly so,” agreed Adam to my surprise. I wasn’t the only one. Tad looked at me with an odd expression. “She is my mate and speaks with my voice. It doesn’t sound as though we can work together. You are wasting my time.” He reached out and hit END, cutting off the call.
Aiden said, “It is dangerous to play games with them.” His shoulders were hunched, and he did not look at any of us. “Especially dangerous with that one.”
Tad murmured, “Listen to Captain Obvious.” That earned him a quelling glance from Adam.
I started to ask Aiden—or Zee—just who we were dealing with, but Adam spoke first.
“We are dangerous, too,” my husband told Aiden, not unkindly. “They need to remember that.” He looked at Zee. “How long do you think she’ll wait before calling back?”
Zee pursed his lips. “It depends upon how much she wants—”
The phone buzzed, and Adam glanced at the screen. “Apparently quite a lot,” he said. He hit the green button on the screen and set it back down on the table.
“You have something I want,” she said.
I frowned at Adam, and he nodded. He’d caught her change from the “we” of the note to “I.”
“You’ve said that before,” Adam said. “I probably have several things you want, pick one.”
“The boy,” she said.
“No dice.” Adam hit the red button, and we all waited. Aiden stared at the floor and wrapped his arms around himself.
“Adam offered you indefinite protection,” Tad told Aiden. “You probably missed it in the middle of your panic attack. But he won’t allow you to be given to the fae against your will. Not ever. Nicely played.”
Aiden opened his mouth.
The phone rang again.
Adam touched the green button, and said, “You bore me.”
“I need the boy,” she said.
“And you offer?”
“The note told you we are willing to allow you your territory.”
His body relaxing like a cat’s, Adam smiled, his teeth white and even. “So the note said.” His voice was very soft. “No one allows me anything.” He paused and continued in a more normal tone. “That doesn’t mean we can’t negotiate. What are you, yourself, willing to offer me, and why are you answering this phone instead of whoever wrote those notes?”
The Fideal was male—and I would have recognized his voice. The woman might have been working with him, or some group of fae—but she was trying to work out a deal alone. Adam had just let her know that he understood that.
She responded with silence. Hard to tell if she was panicking or just thinking.
“Fae can lie,” Adam told her conversationally. “But I understand that they are punished for it. Removed from all that is and was and could be. A curse of rare power levied against your race by those who went before.”
I raised my eyebrows. I didn’t know that. Zee focused intently on Adam. I assumed that Zee knew that fae could lie but wanted to know where Adam had gotten his information.
“You will regret—” she spat, but Adam had already disconnected his phone.
“Well, that one wants you, Aiden,” Adam said. “But as entertaining as that phone call was, we didn’t learn what the fae as a whole want. Who was she, Zee?”
“The Widow Queen,” he said. “Neuth. She has other names. The Black Queen.”
“A fairy queen?” I asked. I’d met one of them.
But Zee shook his head. “No. She’s sidhe fae—a Gray Lord. She likes to play with the humans, though, causing misery—which she can feed upon. She made her way into more than one folktale. I’d heard that she was at the one in Nevada. I did not see her while I was at our local reservation.”