if he was waiting for the geas to stop him again, "there's an antiquarian bookstore in the Uptown Mall in Richland. You might go talk to the man who runs it. He might be able to help you find out more about that stick. Make sure you tell him that I sent you to him - but wait until he's alone in the store."
"Thank you."
"No, Mercy, thank you." He paused, and then for a moment sounding a bit like the nine-year-old I'd first met, he said, "I'm scared, Mercy. They mean to let him take the fall, don't they?"
"They were," I said. "But I think it might be too late. The police are not accepting his guilt at face value and we found Zee a terrific lawyer. I'm doing a little nosing about in O'Donnell's other doings."
"Mercy," he said quietly. "Jeez, Mercy, are you setting yourself up against the Gray Lords? You know that's what the blind woman is, right? Sent to make sure they get the outcome they want."
"The fae don't care who did it," I told him. "Once it's been established that it was a fae who killed O'Donnell, they don't care if they get the murderer. They need someone to take the fall quickly and then they can hunt down the real culprit out of sight of the world."
"And even though my father has done everything he can think of to dissuade you, you're not going to back down," he said.
Of course. Of course.
"He's trying to keep me out of it," I whispered.
There was a short pause. "Don't tell me you thought he was really mad at you?"
"He's calling in his loan," I told him as a knot of pain slowly unknotted. Zee knew what the fae would do and he'd been trying to keep me out of danger.
How had he put it? She'd better hope I don't get out. Because if I got him out, the Gray Lords would be unhappy with me.
"Of course he is. My father is brilliant and older than dirt, but he has this unreasoning fear of the Gray Lords. He thinks they can't be stopped. Once he realized how the wind was blowing, he would do his best to keep everyone else out of it."
"Tad, stay at school," I told him. "There's nothing you can do here except get into trouble. The Gray Lords don't have jurisdiction over me."
He snorted. "I'd like to see you tell them that - except that I like you just as you are: alive."
"If you come here, they will kill you - how is that going to help your father? Tear up that ticket and I'll do my best. I'm not alone. Adam knows what's up."
Tad really respected Adam. As I hoped, it was the right touch.
"All right, I'll stay here. For now. Let me see if I can give you a little more help - and how far this damned geas Uncle Mike set on me goes."
There was a long pause as he worked through things.
"Okay. I think I can talk about Nemane."
"Who?"
"Uncle Mike said the Carrion Crow, right? And I assume he wasn't talking about the smallish crow that lives in the British Isles, but the Carrion Crow."
"Yes. The three white feathers on her head seemed to be important."
"It must be Nemane then." There was satisfaction in his voice.
"This is a good thing?"
"Very good," he said. "There are some of the Gray Lords who would just as soon kill everyone until the problems go away. Nemane is different."
"She doesn't like to kill."
Tad sighed. "Sometimes you are so innocent. I don't know of any fae who doesn't enjoy spilling blood at some level - and Nemane was one of the Morrigan, the battle goddesses of the Celts. One of her jobs was delivering the killing blow to the heroes dying in the aftermath of a battle to end their suffering."
"That doesn't sound promising," I muttered.
Tad heard. "The thing about the old warriors is that they have a sense of honor, Mercy. Pointless death or wrongful death is an anathema to them."
"She won't want to kill your father," I said.
He corrected me gently. "She won't want to kill you. I'm afraid that, except to you, my father is an acceptable loss."
"I'll see what I can do to change that."
"Go get that book," he said, then coughed a bit. "Stupid geas." There was real rage in his voice. "If it cost me my father, I'm going to have a talk with Uncle Mike. Get that book, Mercy,