Frost Burned

“Mercy.”

I nodded, so he’d know I’d heard him. I wasn’t ready to risk talking right away. Too many things were raw, and Adam and I weren’t alone.

“Why didn’t the cuff act right away?” asked Asil. Maybe he’d done it to take everyone’s attention off me, but I didn’t know him well enough to be sure. “The coyote that jumped in and attacked that fae, magic sword and all, was not without willpower.”

“It was when Adam came back,” Tad said. “It isn’t easy to steal someone’s will. With Huon’s Cup

before

” He made an unhappy sound. Looked at Asil, who might or might not know about that incident. Before. When I’d been raped because I could not resist the magic of the cup I’d drunk.

Tad cleared his throat.“The cup that worked on Mercy before used the act of drinking out of it to imply consent,and it was a more powerful artifact in the first place. Peace and Quiet is a two-part spell, each lesser. The first is spelled to make the wearer happy and relaxed. Sort of like the best marijuana ever. That leaves the prisoner vulnerable so that the second one can work to make the person wearing it compliant. The magic continues to work after the cuffs have been removed, so they could be used to subdue more than one prisoner.”

I rubbed the wrist the cuff had been on. I hadn’t felt anything from it—though I’d been busy at the time. If she’d used the other cuff first, would I just have let her take me? Instead, the magic had snuck up behind me and taken me without giving me a fair chance to fight it. It had waited until the euphoria of having Adam back had leftme defenseless, then stolen my will.

“Will the magic come back if I relax again?” I asked, swallowing bile. I was safe. Adam was here, had been here the whole time. Nothing bad had happened—though I remembered the feel of the weeping ghost’s attempt to take control of my body. What would have happened if Zee hadn’t built wards into the doorway that I could cross and the ghost could not? The walls of the room confined me when the coyote inside me wanted to run until I focused my eyes on Adam again. In his steady regard, I read my safety—as ridiculous as my need for it was. If the ghost had gained control, he’d have dealt with it—as he’d dealt with the fae magic that had turned me into a helpless doll.

“No,” said Zee firmly. “It isn’t so easy to work magic upon you,Liebchen. One chance was all it had. Probably you’d have recovered on your own after a few days. The Fairy Queen’s Gift is weak, a designed weakness that brought about the downfall of the fairy queen who depended upon it too much.”

I nodded, and the tightness in my belly eased.

Zee looked at Tad.“It also isn’t so easy to destroy an artifact, powerful or not. I would never advocate it because it would put me in trouble with the Gray Lords.” He looked at the black blade and smiled a little, handing it back to Tad. “Hier, mein Sohn. You take this for a while. You might find it useful. Be careful, though, it is a hungry sword and likes best to eat magic—and it has a habit of betraying its wielder.”

Tad smiled, worked whatever magic was necessary to turn it back into a steel grip with no blade in sight, and tucked it into the pocket of his jeans.“I understand,” he said. “And I know the stories about this sword.”

“Good.” Zee looked at me. “Removing the silver isn’t going to be pleasant, Mercy.” He glanced at Adam. “But we have to do it now or maybe never. I don’t know if I’ll be able to use the mirror gate again.” He frowned. “Ariana could attempt it, but her magic is not what it once was. Tad has the magic, but he doesn’t know enough to ad-lib such a spell.”

“Is magic ever pleasant?” I asked. “I’d rather you did it.” I’d been hoping the old gremlin could do something about my little silver problem, and I wasn’t going to let a little PTSD moment stop me. I braced myself, closed my eyes, and made sure I had control of my face.

Zee laid his hands on my cheeks and filled me with his magic. It didn’t hurt at first. Zee’s magic had a flavor, one that spoke of oil, metal, movement, and red heat. I could feel the call of his magic, and it felt very different from the way I’d called the silver out of Adam. Gradually, my feet started to tingle, but as soon as that tingle started to travel upward, the sensation in my feet changed to a sizzle like the bite of a red ant or two that rapidly increased to a thousand. The sensation followed the tingle all the way up my body.

“Ow, ow, ow,” I chanted.

“It didn’t hurt when she took the silver from me,” Adam said, sounding unhappy.

I shut up. I could deal with a little stinging; okay, a lot of stinging. I didn’t need to upset Adam.

“Not being Coyote’s child with a mystical connection to a werewolf, I have to follow the rules of magic,” Zee told Adam. He pulled his hand away from my skin and frowned at the disk of silver he held while I caught my breath. “This is a lot of silver to have scattered in your body, Mercy—and we are not finished yet. And you said that you already rid yourself of some of it?”

Adam nodded.“I saw the bedroom floor.” He must have gone to Kyle’s first, then, and followed me to Sylvia’s. “More silver came out than went in. They gave me five or so good shots of the stuff, but nowhere near the amount on the floor.”

“Conservation of matter,” said Asil, “would indicate that perhaps she pulled the silver from more than just you. How bad is the pack?”

“Conservation of matter,” said Tad astringently, “is a funny concept when expressed by a werewolf. Who knows better that magic makes science blink than a 170-pound man who turns into a 250-pound werewolf?”

“They are not as bad as I’d feared,” Adam said slowly, though he acknowledged Tad’s comment with a smile. “I hadn’t considered that she might have helped the lot of us. Most of them are still pretty sick—but Warren and Darryl are almost back to normal. Still, if there had been that much silver, even scattered through all the pack, we would all be dead.”

“But there are still some sick from the silver?” Zee asked.

“Yes.”

Zee waved to Tad.“Come over here and put your hand over mine, I’ll show you how to do this so you can heal Adam’s pack.”

“Cool,” I said without enthusiasm, but my hackles had smoothed out again. “I get to be a teaching exercise.”

Like a dog with a face full of porcupine quills, I found it harder to stand still and let silver be drawn out a second time. But the pain did focus my attention on the present, as did Adam’s grim face. I gave him a cheery smile, and his frown deepened.

Zee taught magic the way he taught mechanicking—by making Tad do all the work while he stood behind him and made acerbic corrections. He did it in Old German, and though I can get by in modern German, the old stuff sounds a bit like Welsh spoken by a Swedish man with marbles in his mouth.

In the end, Tad held a dime-sized bit of silver, I rubbed the cramps out of my thighs, and Adam stalked back and forth like an enraged baboon I’d seen once at a zoo. Asil had retreated to the far corner of the room with a book, to keep his presence from inciting Adam further.

“If Tad intends to do this to the werewolves,” I said through gritted teeth because every muscle on my body was cramping with equal insistence, “then Adam will have to hold them down.”

Adam stalked over to me and began kneading my shoulders. I sighed in relief and let him work on them while I turned my attention to my left calf.

“It won’t be so difficult with the wolves,” said Zee. “Their bodies are already working to get rid of the silver, and all it will require is a little assistance. They also heal faster.”

“I’ll keep watch,” Adam promised me. “Tad won’t take any harm.”

“So are the fae planning on taking over the world?” I asked Zee.

He laughed so hard, he couldn’t speak for a few minutes. “The short answer is yes,” he told me cheerfully.