"I'm staying at the Red Lion in Pasco," Mom said to Adam. To me she said, "We left in a hurry and I couldn't find anyone to watch Hotep. He's in the car." Hotep was her Doberman pinscher, who liked me even less than I liked him.
Adam nodded solemnly though I didn't remember telling him that my mom's dog hated me.
"Adam," I said. "Thank you. For saving Stefan."
"No thanks necessary. We didn't save him for you."
Ben gave me an expression that might have been a smile if his face hadn't been so tight. "You weren't there in the basement with that thing." Andre's demon-possessed vampire, he meant, the first vampire I'd killed. He had captured several of the wolves and Stefan and... played with them. Demons like causing pain.
"If it hadn't been for Stefan..." Ben shrugged, as if letting a memory die away unspoken. "We owe him."
Adam glanced at Darryl, who opened the door. I thought of something.
"Wait."
Adam stopped.
"If I talk to Mom... does that count?" He'd told me I had to talk to someone, and my mother wouldn't go away until I told her everything. It seemed like I should be able to kill two birds with one stone.
He handed Stefan to Ben and walked to me. He touched my jaw, just below my ear, and, as if our fascinated audience wasn't watching, he kissed me, touching me with nothing more than his fingertips and his mouth.
At first the heat flushed through me... followed by a horrible choking fear. I couldn't breathe, couldn't move...
When I came back to myself, I was sitting on the couch with my head between my knees, Adam crooning to me. But he wasn't touching me, and neither was anyone else.
I sat up and came face-to-face with Adam. His face was still, but I could see the wolf in his eyes and smell the wild on his skin.
"Panic attack," I said needlessly. "I haven't been having them as often." I lied and saw from the expression on his face that he knew it. This one made four today. Yesterday, I'd done better.
"Talking to your mother counts," he said. "We'll take things slowly... see how it goes. You talk to your mother or anyone else you'd like. But it'll all keep until kissing me doesn't cause a panic attack, all right?"
He didn't wait for an answer, just strode out of the house followed by his entourage. Darryl waited until both Ben and Peter were out the door before closing it gently behind them all.
"Mercy," said my mother thoughtfully, "you never told me your werewolf neighbor was quite that hot."
"Mmm," I said. I appreciated her effort, but now that the time was at hand, I just wanted to get it over with. "And you didn't get to see him rip Tim's corpse to pieces."
I heard Mom suck in a hard breath. "I wish I had. Tell me about Tim."
So I did. And she didn't say a word until I was finished. I hadn't meant to tell her everything. But she didn't say anything, didn't move, didn't look at me. So I talked. Just barely, I managed to keep Ben's name out of it - his secrets were his to reveal - but everything else roared in jagged bits or choked roughly out of someplace dark and vile. It took a while to get it all out.
"Tim reminded you of Samuel," she said when I was through.
I jerked my head off her lap.
"No, I'm not crazy." She handed me a wad of tissues from the box that sat on an arm of the couch.
"That's why you didn't see it coming. That's why you didn't see what he was. Samuel was always a bit of an outcast, and it left you with a soft spot for outcasts."
Samuel? Cheery, sweet-tempered (for a werewolf) Samuel an outcast?
"He was not." I grabbed a handful of tissues and wiped snot and salt water from my face. My nose runs when I cry.
She nodded. "Sure he was. He likes humans, Mercy - and most werewolves don't." She shivered at some memory or other. "He listened to heavy metal and watched Star Trek reruns."
"He was the Marrok's second before he came here to lone wolf it for a while. He wasn't an outcast."
She just looked at me.
"Lone wolf doesn't mean outcast." I set my jaw.
The door popped open, and Samuel, who'd been sitting out on the porch for a while, came in. "Yes, it does. Hey, Margi - why'd you bring that dog with you? He's creepy-looking."
Hotep was black with reddish brown eyes. He looked like Anubis. Samuel was right, he was
creepy-looking. "I couldn't find a sitter for him," she said, standing up to get hugged. "How have you been?"
He started to say fine... then looked at me. "We've been taking our knocks, Mercy and I. But, so far, we've gotten back into the ring."
"That's all you can do," said Mom. "I need to go. Hotep will be fit to burst by now, and I need to get some sleep." She looked at me. "I can stay for a few days - and Curt wanted me to tell you that you're welcome to come home for a while." Curt was my stepfather, the dentist.
"Thank you, Mom," I told her, and meant it. Horrible as it had been, I thought spilling it all might have helped. But I had to get her out of town before Marsilia made her next move. "That was exactly what I needed." I took a deep breath. "Mom, I need you to go back to Portland. I worked today. It was better, doing what I always do. I think if I just stick to my normal routine, I'll put it behind me."
My mother narrowed her eyes at me and started to say something, but Samuel had reached into his pocket and handed her a card.