I decided that it must be a good thing.
The fae didn't--as far as I knew--turn into dust and blow away when they died.
So if he wasn't here, that meant he'd left.
"Thank you," I whispered because he wasn't there to hear me.
Then I put my clothes on and ran up the stairs to wait for rescue with Corban.
When Adam came, he had the yellow car I'd asked him for.
It was a one-sixteenth scale model of a VW bug.
He watched as I took it out of the package and followed me down the stairs and set it on the bed in the small room where I'd first woken up.
"It's for you," I said.
No one answered me.
"Are you going to tell me what that was about?" Adam asked as we went back upstairs.
"Sometime," I told him.
"When we're telling ghost stories around a campfire, and I want to scare you." He smiled, and his arm tightened around my shoulders.
"Let's go home." I closed my hand on the lamb necklace I'd found on the table next to the phone, as if someone had left it for me to find.
13
THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY WE PAINTED THE GARAGE.
True to his word, Wulfe had removed the crossed bones.
The least he could have done was repaint the door, but he'd managed to remove the bones and leave the graffiti that had covered them alone.
I thought he'd done it just to bug me.
Gabriel's sisters had voted for pink as the new color and were very disappointed when I insisted on white.
So I told them they could paint the door pink.
It's a garage.
What can it hurt? "It's a garage," I told Adam, who was looking at the Day-Glo pink door.
"What can it hurt?" He laughed and shook his head.
"It makes me squint, even in the dark, Mercy.
Hey, I know what I can get you for your next birthday," he said.
"A set of open-end wrenches in pink or purple.
Leopard print, maybe." "You have me confused with my mother," I said with dignity.
"The door was painted with cheap spray paint--as no reputable paint company had anything this gaudy in their color palette.
Give it a couple weeks, and it'll turn this sickly orangish pink color.