I glanced over at Adam, but he was still focused on Mary Jo.
She was shaking like someone on the verge of hypothermia, but seemed to be alive still.
"What about that bag," I asked.
"What if someone picks it up from the river?" "A few minutes of running water will remove any magic from a spell set in fabric," Uncle Mike told me.
"It was a trap for the wolves," I told him.
I knew that because it had tasted like vampire.
"No one else except for the mobile mountain was affected ...
Why him and none of the rest? And what in the world is a snow elf? I've never heard of one." As far as I'd ever known, "elf" was one of those generic terms coined by mundanes as a way to refer to the fae.
"The government," said Uncle Mike, after a moment to consider what he wanted to tell me (getting the fae to share information is harder than getting a drop of water from a stone), "requires us to register and tell them what kind of fae we are.
So we chose something that appeals to us.
For some it is an old title or name, for others ...
we make it up, just like the humans have made up names for us for centuries.
My favorite is the infamous `Jack-Be-Nimble.' I don't know what that is, but we have at least a dozen in our reservation." I couldn't help but grin.
Our government didn't know they had a tiger by the tail--and the tiger wasn't going to tell them anytime soon.
"So he made up the snow elf bit?" "Are you going to argue with him? As to why the bag aimed at the wolf worked--" "I have another true form," said a soft, Norse-accented voice behind me.
There weren't very many people who could sneak up on me--my coyote senses keep me pretty aware of my environment--but I sure hadn't heard him.
It was the snow elf, or whatever he was, of course.
He was a couple of inches shorter than me--which he could have fixed as easily as Zee could have gotten rid of his bald spot.
I supposed someone whose true form--at least one of them--was ten feet tall didn't mind being short.
He looked at me and bowed, one of those abrupt and stiff movements of head and neck that brings to mind martial artists.
"I'm glad you are fast," he said.
I shook the hand he held out to me, which was cool and dry.
"I'm glad I'm fast, too," I told him with honest sincerity.
He looked at Uncle Mike.
"Do you know who set it? And if it was aimed at the werewolves or at me?" Adam was listening to the conversation.
I wasn't sure how I knew, because it looked like he was totally involved with his battered wolves.
But there was something in the tension of his shoulders.
Uncle Mike shook his head.
"I was too concerned with getting it away from you.
Berserker wolves are bad enough, but a berserker snow elf loose in downtown Pasco is something I don't want to see." I knew.