she decided. "Okay. Shall we tell them we're going out to get you stuff that you need because your house burned down yesterday?"
"Secret girl stuff," I said. "Remember they can tell if you lie. So when this is all done, I'm going to go get a gallon of chocolate mint chip ice cream."
"Secret girl stuff," she said. "And if they try to send Warren with us because for some reason they think he ought to be interested in girlie things - which really makes no sense, since Kyle likes men, after all, the more manly the better - what do we do?"
"Preemptive strike," I told her. "Let's find Warren first and send him up to keep an eye on your father, who is sleeping."
And then Sam crawled out from under the bed.
* * *
IT WORKED. WE MADE IT ALL THE WAY OUT TO MY CAR with only Sam beside us. All the wolves in the house were fine with Jesse and me going out together - because we had Sam.
"You have to stay here, Sam," I said. And then stopped. Looked at him. Really looked at him.
Sam the wolf wouldn't have turned his back while everyone was trying to fix Mary Jo - and he wouldn't have looked like he felt guilty about it. Because Sam the wolf wasn't a doctor - he was a wolf. This morning, Darryl had recognized pretty quickly that Samuel was in trouble. But in the garage, not one of the wolves even looked funny at Sam. Because it had been Samuel.
"Welcome back," I said, trying to act like it was no big thing. I didn't know why he'd decided to take charge again - or if it was a good thing - but I figured the less drama about it, the happier Samuel would be. But . . .
"You can't come with us," I told him. "You heard Zee. We're going to see a lady who - " I stopped. "How do the fae manage this lying-without-lying stuff? It really sucks. Look, Samuel, we're going to see the lady who is scared to death of wolves. You have to stay here. You can't come as a wolf, and you don't have any clothes."
He just stood there looking at me.
"Stubborn," I said.
"We're going to be late," said Jesse. "And Darryl is looking out the window and frowning at us."
I grabbed my purse out of my car and held the back door of Adam's truck open for Samuel. "There should be jeans and sweats and stuff in a pack in the backseat if you want to dress," I told Samuel. "And when we get to the garage, you need to stay outside and leave her to us. Hopefully, we'll find out . . . what we need to find out . . . and I expect that we'll be really glad we have you with us then."
* * *
ON THE WAY TO THE GARAGE, I CALLED SYLVIA. SHE might insist on bringing the police into it - but I hoped I could talk her out of that. Her phone rang until the answering machine picked up.
"Sylvia, this is Mercy - I have news about Gabriel. You need to call me as soon - "
"I told you," she said, coming on the line. "My family doesn't want to talk to you. And if Gabriel chooses you over his family - "
"He's been kidnapped," I told her, before she could say something that would break her heart later. She wasn't as tough as she liked to pretend - I knew, because I pretended to be tougher than I was a lot, too.
Into the silence that followed, I said, "Apparently he walked to the garage last night and tried to take one of the cars - which he has my permanent permission to do. You'd know better than I why he'd do that and where he was going. I have a friend who is in trouble and that trouble crashed down on Gabriel."
"Your kind of trouble, right?" she asked. "Let me guess. Werewolf trouble."
"Not werewolf trouble," I said, abruptly irritated with her assumption that all werewolves were horrible. Me, she could be mad at, but she would have to hold her tongue around me about the wolves.
"Tell Maia that her werewolf buddy is going to put his neck in the noose trying to save her big brother, who got himself kidnapped by the bad guys." Because I knew that Samuel - my Samuel who was at that very moment