But no matter how playful the cat is, the mouse is just as dead in the end.
And the end would be whenever she decided.
The only question was how many people--how many of my friends--she decided to take down with me.
Maybe I was panicking prematurely.
Maybe she would settle for a punishment.
Stefan was hers, there was no reason for the gut-deep feeling that he wouldn't be the last to suffer for my sins.
I didn't know Marsilia well enough to make that kind of prediction.
"Mercy?" "I don't know what the crossed bones mean." Other than bad news.
"Zee tells me it is magical but probably not fae magic." Zee was out, anyone who cared to would know that he was fae, which was the reason that the garage was mine now, instead of his.
There was a lot of prejudice against the fae.
"He has a few contacts who'll take a look at it for me.
I know a few other people I can ask, too." Adam had a witch on the pack's payroll for cleanup.
She was good, but it would cost me a lot to hire her if Uncle Mike and Stefan didn't know what it was.
This was shaping up into a real macaroni-and-cheese month.
"However, none of them will come within a hundred miles of a police investigation.
Do you have anyone on the KPD who is an expert in magic?" Tony held my gaze for a minute before giving up with a sigh.
"Hell no, Mercy.
You should have seen the brass's faces when they watched that video--" He stopped and gave me a guilty look.
It was a video of me killing Tim ...
and all the stuff before that.
He shrugged nervously and looked away.
"There are a few who know something about fae or werewolves, but ...
if they know anything more, they keep it quiet for fear of losing their jobs." He sighed and came back into the shop.
"Go ahead," he told Zee.
"Let's watch Tim's cousin paint the shop." Once the two shadowy people moved fully onto the parking lot, Courtney was unmistakable.
Instead of watching the whole process, Zee fast-forwarded it until the pair walked off with bags of empty spray-paint cans almost two hours later.
He stopped the images when Courtney was close to the camera and impossible to mistake, her pretty, rounded face hard and angry.
Zee flipped back and forth a little until we got a clear view of her companion's face, too.
The security system hadn't been in place long, but Zee loved gadgets.
He must have spent some time playing with this one.