"Brownies are done, my sweets," said Kyle. "Anyone want something more to drink?"
"No, thank you." It was just make-believe, I thought, watching the vampire feed.
"Warren?"
His name finally drew Warren's gaze off the TV screen. "Water would be nice."
Warren wasn't as pretty as Kyle, but he had the rugged-man look down pat. He watched Kyle walk down the stairs with hungry eyes.
I smiled to myself. It was good to see Warren happy at last. But the eyes he turned to me as soon as Kyle was out of sight were serious. He used the remote to raise the volume, then sat up and faced me, knowing Kyle wouldn't hear us over the movie.
"You need to choose," he told me intently. "Adam or Samuel or neither. But you can't keep them dangling."
Adam was the Alpha of the local werewolf pack, my neighbor, and sometimes my date. Samuel was my first love, my first heartbreak, and currently my roommate. Just my roommate - though he'd like to be more.
I didn't trust either of them. Samuel's easygoing exterior masked a patient and ruthless predator. And Adam...well, Adam just flat scared me. And I was very much afraid that I loved them both.
"I know."
Warren dropped his eyes from mine, a sure sign he was uncomfortable. "I didn't brush my teeth with gunpowder this morning so I could go shooting my mouth off, Mercy, but this is serious. I know it's been difficult, but you can't have two dominant werewolves after the same woman without bloodshed. I don't know any other wolves who could have allowed you as much leeway as they have, but one of them is going to break soon."
My cell phone began playing "The Baby Elephant Walk." I dug it out of my hip pocket and looked at the caller ID.
"I believe you," I told Warren. "I just don't know what to do about any of it." There was more wrong with Samuel than undying love of me, but that was between him and me and none of Warren's business. And Adam...for the first time I wondered if it wouldn't just be easier if I pulled up stakes and moved.
The phone continued to sing.
"It's Zee," I said. "I have to take this."
Zee was my former boss and mentor. He'd taught me how to rebuild an engine from the ground up - and he'd given me the means to kill the vampires responsible for Warren's limp and the nightmares that were leaving fine lines around his eyes. I figured that gave Zee the right to interrupt Friday Night at the Movies.
"Just think about it."
I gave him a faint smile and flipped open my phone. "Hey, Zee."
There was a pause on the other end. "Mercedes," he said, and not even his thick German accent could disguise the hesitant tone of his voice. Something was wrong.
"What do you need?" I asked, sitting up straighter and putting my feet on the floor. "Warren's here," I added so Zee would know we had an audience. Werewolves make having a private conversation difficult.
"Would you drive out to the reservation with me?"
He could have been speaking of the Umatilla Reservation, which was a short drive from the Tri-Cities. But it was Zee, so he was talking about the Ronald Wilson Reagan Fae Reservation just this side of Walla Walla, better known around here as Fairyland.
"Now?" I asked.
Besides...I glanced at the vampire on the big-screen TV. They hadn't gotten it quite right, hadn't captured the real evil - but it was too close for comfort anyway. Somehow I couldn't work up too much sorrow at missing the rest of the movie - or more conversation about my love life either.
"No," Zee groused irritably. "Next week. Jetzt. Of course, now. Where are you? I will pick you up."
"Do you know where Kyle's house is?" I asked.
"Kyle?"
"Warren's boyfriend." Zee knew Warren; I hadn't realized he hadn't met Kyle. "We're out in West Richland."
"Give me the address. I will find it."
Zee's truck purred down the highway even though it was older than I was. Too bad the upholstery wasn't in as good a shape as the engine - I shifted my rump over a few inches to keep a wayward spring from digging in too deeply.
The dash lights illuminated the craggy face that Zee presented to the world. His fine white hair was mussed a little, as if he'd been rubbing his hands over it.
Warren hadn't said more about Adam or Samuel after I'd hung up because Kyle, thank goodness, had arrived with brownies. It wasn't that I was bothered by Warren's interference - I'd done enough interfering in his love life that I figured he had a right. I just didn't want to think about it anymore.
Zee and I rode mostly in silence from West Richland, all the way past Richland and on through Pasco. I knew better than to try to get something out of the old gremlin until he was ready to talk, so I let him alone until he decided to speak - at least after the first ten or fifteen questions he hadn't answered.
"Have you been to the reservation before?" he asked abruptly as we crossed the river just outside Pasco on the highway to Walla Walla.
"No." The fae reservation in Nevada welcomed visitors. They had built a casino and small theme park to attract tourists. The Walla Walla reservation, however, actively discouraged anyone who wasn't fae from entering. I wasn't quite certain if it was the Feds or the fae themselves responsible for the unfriendly reputation.
Zee tapped unhappily on his steering wheel with hands that belonged to a man who'd spent his lifetime repairing cars, tough and scarred with oil so ingrained not even pumice soap would remove it.