"This could have been a very, very bad night." I was looking over his shoulder at his SUV.
"Would you settle for just a little bad? Your insurance doesn't have an exception for snow elves, right?" It had looked all right at first, then I thought it just had a flat tire.
But now I could see the right rear tire was bent up at a forty-five-degree angle.
Adam pulled out his cell phone.
"That doesn't even register on my scale of bad tonight," he told me.
He put his free arm around my shoulder, pulling me against him as his daughter answered the phone.
He wasn't wearing a shirt.
"Hey, Jesse," he said.
"It's been a wild night, and we need you to come pick us up at Uncle Mike's."
5
"SOME DATE," ADAM MURMURED.
IT DIDN'T MATTER HOW quiet he was; we both knew that most of the pack was inside his house listening to us as we stood on his back porch.
"No one could ever accuse you of being boring," I said lightly.
He laughed with sober eyes.
He'd scrubbed up in the bathroom at Uncle Mike's and changed as soon as we'd made it back to his house.
But I could still smell the blood on him.
"You need to see to Mary Jo," I told him.
"I need to go to bed." She would survive, I thought.
But she'd survive better with me at home and not disrupting the pack, who was forcing her to fight to live.
He hugged me for not saying all of that out loud.
He lifted me to my toes--clad in a pair of Jesse's flip-flops--and set me back down.
"You go scrub your feet clean first so none of those cuts get infected.
I'll send Ben over to watch your house until Samuel is satisfied with Mary Jo's condition and goes home." Adam watched from the porch as I walked home.
I wasn't halfway there when Ben caught up with me.
I invited him in, but he shook his head.
"I'll stay outside," he said.
"The night air keeps my head clear." I scrubbed my feet and dried them before I went to bed.
I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.
But I woke up while the dark still held sway, knowing that there was someone in my room.
Though I listened closely, I couldn't hear anyone--so I was pretty sure it was Stefan.