All righty.
“Drop the munchkin, Darryl,” I said in as relaxed a voice as I could find. There were too many fragile humans in here to allow this to break out into a real fight. “We promised not to let him get killed for twenty-four hours, right?”
Darryl took a step back, but his hand was still wrapped around Aiden’s throat. Then Darryl shook his hand, and Aiden dropped to his feet, lost his balance, and fell on his rump, a feral snarl on his face as he scrambled out of the vulnerable position.
“If you do what you’re thinking about doing, Aiden,” I said, “I’ll let Darryl loose.”
“Then he’ll die,” said Aiden, who’d managed to find his feet and stood in an angry crouch.
“Mmmhmmm,” I said. I wasn’t sure Aiden wasn’t right, but it’s never good to show fear in front of your enemies. I really, really wished I had some idea of just how powerful Aiden was.
There was a cardboard box of doughnuts on the counter: ah, Spudnuts. Probably Christy had brought them, but I took one out to eat anyway, as it was unlikely she’d poisoned them: she wouldn’t have known which one I’d eat.
I like most doughnuts, especially Spudnut doughnuts—but the glazed one I ended up with, covered with pink sprinkles, was not one of my favorites. But the point of eating was to give everyone time and reason to cool off.
“You kill Darryl, and I don’t think you’re going to walk out of here alive,” I said, conversationally, around a bite of glazed-with-sprinkles doughnut. I ignored Darryl’s indignant grunt when I agreed that Aiden might actually accomplish his death.
“I’ve faced creatures that would kill every living thing in this house without an effort, and I’m still alive,” he said grimly. “Try me.”
“Good doughnuts, Christy,” I said. Jesse put her finger to her lips when her mother would have said something. I licked my fingers—a waste of time until I finished the doughnut. “Look, Aiden, you are counting on our being enough that the Gray Lords back off, right? If the Gray Lords are afraid of us, don’t you think you should at least consider being afraid enough to back down from outright aggression into a position where negotiation can take place? If you aren’t worried about us, I might point out that the Dark Smith of Drontheim is upstairs.”
The tile under Aiden’s feet cracked with a loud pop, but he stood up from his defensive crouch. The tiles surrounding the cracked tile were discolored by the heat he was generating. It was ceramic tile. I wasn’t sure how much heat was required to crack ceramic tile, though I rather suspected that it was less heat than was needed to burn a house to the ground. We all stared at it a moment—even Aiden.
“My floor,” gasped Christy.
Yes. She had picked out the tiles in the kitchen, hadn’t she? I regarded Aiden with a little more favor than I’d felt before.
“Information first,” I said. “Does anyone want to tell me what happened?”
“I was watching the bacon,” Jesse said coolly. “And the next thing I know, the little creep was grabbing my butt.”
I trust I caught my instinctive clench of teeth before anyone saw it. No one touches my daughter without her permission—since Darryl had already made that clear, there was no need for me to come unhinged. Adam, whom I could sense listening from his office—he must have left his door open—apparently felt the same way, because Aiden was still breathing and Adam wasn’t in the kitchen. Yet. I started a countdown in my head.
“They were treating me like a child,” Aiden said.
“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked.
He looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Children are victims—I am neither child nor victim, despite what I look like. It was necessary that I do something to remind everyone that I might be in a child’s form, yet I own more years than anyone here.”
I blinked at him, so totally nonplussed that I was robbed of anger. That was an excuse I’d never heard before.
“So,” Jesse said in the same cool voice, evidently not as distractible as I was, “not regarding him as a child, I smacked his face with the spatula.”
That was my Jesse. She’d hit him hard, too, because, now that the flush of color he’d acquired while Darryl was strangling him had faded, I could see the rectangular red mark on his face.
“Mom had just come in with doughnuts, and we were talking, or I’d have seen him sneaking up on me.” She paused her story to answer the question on my face. “I don’t know why she’s here, Mercy, she hasn’t had a chance to say. She yelled at him—and that brought Darryl.”
Succinct, I thought, a little out of order, but with all the essential information.
“Grab my daughter’s butt again, and you draw back a stump,” growled Adam as he strode into the room two seconds after I expected him. He thanked Darryl with a nod but never took his eyes off the fae. “And I don’t care what you were trying to prove.”
“She’s your daughter?” The anger drained away from Aiden, leaving him looking like we’d just pulled the rug out from under him. “She was making food,” he said. “And I saw her carrying food and drink yesterday. I thought her but a servant.” He looked around, and indignation replaced his look of helpless confusion. “She called that woman ‘Mother,’ and I knew you were mated to this woman.” He gestured toward me. “How was I to know that you had two wives?”
Whiny, yes, I thought, wrong on many fronts, but also truthful. He was upset, not because he’d grabbed Jesse’s rump without permission but because it had been Adam’s daughter’s rump. Not a stellar individual, I thought, finishing off the doughnut, but look how he was raised. Feral didn’t begin to describe the likely result of being human and raised by . . . Underhill? The fairies? But he might still be salvageable.
I took the damp cloth from Christy’s hand and wiped my fingers with it. Salvageable by someone else. He was only going to be with us for another six hours or so.
Darryl flexed his hand, and bits of burnt flesh dropped to the floor, leaving his skin raw-looking but no longer charred. “Little man,” he growled, “you don’t touch unless you are invited. Not in this house—and if you are a gentleman, not ever. Servant, slave, or lady of the house.”
“I’ve broken my word,” Aiden said, gathering his dignity around himself. “I’ll leave.”
I almost let him go. But Zee had asked me—in the only way Zee would ask such a thing. I owed Zee.
“I knew I missed something,” I said. “I should have put in a clause about protecting yourself, right? Grandstanding is a very bad way to make bargains—it’s too easy to leave things out. But I can do that now. Let’s see.” I cleared my throat. “I declare that you can use the minimum force necessary to protect yourself until misunderstandings are cleared up—as long as you apologize right now and don’t do it again.”
Darryl gave me a look. Adam did, too. It was probably a very good thing that Aiden looked like a ten-year-old.
“Are you hurt, Darryl?” I asked.
He rubbed his hands together. “Not anymore,” he said.
“Darryl’s job is to make sure people are safe,” I said. “Did you disobey him?”
Aiden screwed up his face. “You are very strange,” he said. “I insulted your . . . stepdaughter, yes? Then I hurt the man who stood up for her honor.”
Jesse made a growling noise. “I stood up for myself, you little perv.”
Aiden looked at her.
She glared back.
“Okay, then,” I said. “Aiden, it is good manners to apologize when you offend someone. In your case, it means that you can continue to enjoy the protection of the pack for a few more hours.”
He turned to Adam, and said, sincerely, “Please accept my apologies for importuning your daughter.”
He turned to Jesse’s mother. “I am also sorry that I distressed you in any manner.” He bowed to Darryl. “I sincerely apologize for burning you. You w
eren’t hurting me, just scaring me. There was no cause.”
Jesse cleared her throat. He looked at her, and they eyed each other with mutual loathing. His lip curled. “I’m very sorry you don’t appreciate the honor I did you,” he said. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
He was lucky she didn’t hit him a second time, I thought.
“I’m very sorry,” Jesse said sincerely, “that I didn’t have a kitchen knife in my hand instead of a spatula. Next time, maybe I’ll be more careful.”
“Jesse,” I said, “your eggs are burning.”
I looked at Adam. “You take Aiden, and I’ll take Christy?” I mouthed.
“I’d like to speak to Adam,” Christy said, her tone making it clear she’d seen me. No help for it once she asked.
I shrugged. “Aiden, step outside with me.”
Darryl smiled. “I’ll go check the perimeter. It’ll let me keep an eye on you.”
“You could stay with Jesse,” I said because I didn’t trust that smile: it was a little too eager. “Help her with breakfast or something.”
“I can cook eggs,” said Jesse, scraping the blackened remnants into the garbage disposal, “assuming I don’t have to teach some ancient punk kid how to keep his hands to himself. Yuck.” She left it to her audience to decide where that last word was directed.
Aiden turned back and narrowed his eyes at her.
“Aiden,” I said.
He stiffened but followed me out to the backyard, where he stood, his arms wrapped around himself in hostile rejection . . . or possibly fear. Darryl trailed after us, then broke into a jog and headed for the river side of the property.
“What happened in there was all about power,” I said thoughtfully after Darryl was a sufficient distance away.
Aiden didn’t say anything.
I thought about power, about how Adam had sat in the soft hotel sofa to make Thomas Hao feel more at ease. So I sat down on the grass. The seat of my pants was immediately wet and cold—evidently the lawn had just been watered. At least my slacks wouldn’t show the water stain the way my usual jeans would have. Aiden looked at me, frowned, then took a seat on the nearest lawn chair.
“You felt it was dangerous for us to consider you a child,” I said, “because in your world, children are vulnerable, and the fae like to prey upon them.” I pushed my fingers into the soil. “Werewolves are not fae. For the pack, children are fragile, and the wolves, most of them anyway, see them as a charge, someone to be protected from all harm.”
“I would be safer, here, pretending to be the age that my body appears?” he asked warily.
I sighed and shook my head. For all that we both spoke English, we were alien, weren’t we?
“No,” I said. “Pretending is a lie—and wolves can tell if you lie. But you didn’t have to make a big deal of your real age in order to be safe. But I was talking about power, not specifically about you.” I looked up at the sky and thought about how to explain twenty-first-century manners and morals to someone who had last been human before Europeans had set foot on this continent.
“Touch,” I said, “is basic to the human condition. Mothers touch their babies to bond with them. Touch brings comfort or pain. Touch is important. The most powerful person in a room is the one who can touch anyone else—and no one can touch him back without permission.” The Romans would have substituted “sex” for “touch,” but I thought I didn’t have to go that crude. Sometimes, when dealing with very old creatures, my history degree was unexpectedly useful.
“Lady,” Aiden said sincerely, “you are strange. You are saying that I am less powerful than the girl.” He held out his hand and showed me the fire he held. “I do not think so.”
“Think about what happened in there,” I said. “Who ended up winning that encounter?”
“She hit me,” he said, “but I could have killed her—or hurt her so she never would have tried to hit me again.”
“But Darryl stopped you,” I told him. “Because he is more powerful, and his job is to take care of Jesse. To make sure no one touches her without permission.”
“I could have killed him, too,” said Aiden.
I shrugged. “Yes. But he has those who protect him, too. And you are not stronger than Zee—the Dark Smith.”
Silence.
I nodded. “So what is power for, Aiden?”
“To be safe,” Aiden said without hesitation.
A sociology professor of mine had asked that in my college class. She got answers ranging from wealth to the ability to do whatever you wanted to whomever you wanted. She said that when she’d asked that question in a village in a South American country that was on its fifth dictator in ten years, she’d gotten only one answer: safety.
“Okay,” I said, wondering what it said about Underhill that Aiden had that much in common with people who’d lived with uncertainty and terror for generations. “So what did you do when you touched Jesse without permission?”
There was a long pause. “I made her feel unsafe,” he said.
I shook my head. “Not really. She had no trouble defending herself—and she knew there was a houseful of people who would make sure she was safe. What you did do was tell her that you had no intention of letting her be safe with you.”
He said nothing.
“You are safe with us,” I told him. “We will not touch you nor allow anyone else to touch you while you are under our protection.”
“The big man with the dark brown skin touched me,” he said.
“Darryl.” I nodded. “You’re right. So unless you threaten one of our own, we will not allow you to be touched without your permission. We have the power to do that, and we extend that power to you—to our pack and to Jesse. Power comes from three places, Aiden. It comes from the power that you have as an individual. Some people have a lot of that—Zee has a lot of power just from being himself. Someone can leverage the power they have to take more power—but power taken by force only lasts as long as you can hold it. Most dictators don’t live long lives.”
He said, sounding offended, “The third way to gain power is to have others give you their power. I am not a child; nor am I stupid.”
I nodded, though I thought the jury was out on the last. “I’m pretty weak as far as creatures of magic are concerned. I have a few tricks. But I was able to grant you sanctuary from the Gray Lords—because I have friends, I have pack, and I have people who love me.” I turned my head, met his eyes, and frowned at him. “You are going to need a lot of power to stay safe from the Gray Lords. Right at this moment, that means you need to work at making people want to help you—instead of wanting to strangle you and shove your head through a refrigerator.”
He threw up his hands and cried out with honest frustration, “But how do I do that? I don’t understand you people. I don’t know your customs. I don’t know anything about this place.”
“Okay,” I told him. “Sometimes you have to start just knowing you don’t know anything. But if you assume that you are on the bottom of the pack—that means no touching anyone without invitation—you will be safe because I have promised you that, and I have the power to make that stick. But I cannot protect you from your own bad decisions; if you go around grabbing women’s butts, they might hit you with something a little sharper next time.”
Aiden stared at me. “You are very strange. I have no intention of coming anywhere near the Alpha’s daughter again.”
“That’s probably safer for you,” I agreed.
Jesse opened the back door. “Mercy,” she said, “Dad’s still in his office with Mom, and we have a visitor who wants to see you or Dad.” The subtle emphasis meant that Jesse knew who it was but didn’t think she should mention it in front of Aiden. That meant fae.
I stood up and dusted off the back of my pants, which were wet. “Okay,” I said. “In the interest of k
eeping our word, Aiden, you should come inside.”
“Why?” he sneered. “There are two werewolves watching the backyard. Aren’t three enough to give alarm? Or do you acknowledge that the fae can come into your territory and take me?”
Warren and Ben weren’t being obvious—I could smell them, but I couldn’t see them. Darryl had disappeared while I wasn’t watching.
“If we keep the weakest of us—that’s me—and the one most likely to be attacked—that’s you—in the same place, we keep our defense stronger than if we scatter them between us.” And there is a fae here to see us. I realized I hadn’t told him that because he looked like he was a child. I was going to have to get over that instinct. “Whoever our visitor is, he’s fae—or Jesse would have said something more. You need to come inside.”
I glanced at Jesse.
“Uncle Mike,” she said. “I told him to wait in the living room.”
“Is he here for me?” asked Aiden.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I suppose we’ll have to find out.”
7
I sent Aiden to wait in the kitchen, and Jesse headed upstairs to get ready for school. I didn’t think that Uncle Mike had come here to take Aiden by force but decided that keeping him discreetly in the heart of the house would be prudent.
Uncle Mike was . . . not a friend. The only fae I trusted enough to consider a friend was Zee. But Uncle Mike was someone I knew and mostly liked. He’d run an eponymous bar in Pasco where, in days before their sudden retreat, the fae had hung out with various members of the local supernatural community.
That Jesse had opened the door to him and left Uncle Mike in the living room was a testament to the neutrality that Uncle Mike had built while running his bar. Jesse trusted him more than I did. I’d have been happier if she’d left him on the front porch rather than letting him in herself, but no apparent harm had come from it.