Jane had a new hat this month, a straw cowboy hat with an ostrich feather pointing jauntily up, just like the first ten inches or so of the ski hat Dick wore somewhere south of his belly button. The long tail of Dick's hat drooped down until its pompom end hung just below Dick's knees.
Asil's amusement turned into a real smile, an open and beautiful smile that made him look twenty-five instead of how-many-hundreds of years old.
"Kyle has Christmas wear for them," I told him. "He usually dresses them up the day after Thanksgiving. But he's been a little too busy to get them rigged out."
"You aren't really going to go, right?" asked Ben.
"Marsilia isn't going to hurt me," I told him.
He rolled his eyes. "Have you seen what you did to her car?"
"Peter died," I told Ben. "Go find Tad, and tell him that you two will be watching this house tonight."
His chin rose.
"I'm not taking Tad into the vampire den," I told him. "And Honey ... Honey should not be left guarding the kids, not tonight." Not when Peter had just died and she might lose control of her wolf.
Honey padded into the foyer, graceful, golden, and beautiful. She snarled at me.
"I am the boss of you," I told her as I headed for the stairs. "You're coming with Asil and me, so put a sock in it."
"Does the whole pack follow your orders so well, little coyote?" Asil asked, amused.
"Yes."
He laughed again.
I gave him a cool look. "Or they regret it for a long time."
We hadn't had a chance to resupply on cell phones yet, and that left me with no direct way to contact Adam. The first rule of being married is to communicate where you are going and why. I called Tony, and Sylvia answered - Tony had left his cell phone with her. Kyle's phone went straight to voice mail. I left a message on it and stopped to think. Armstrong probably had a cell, but I didn't have his number.
I called Kyle's office from the landline and told the recording that I was "going to meet with Marsilia" but didn't dare to get more specific than that. I called Stefan. He didn't answer his cell phone, and no one answered his home phone. I left more-detailed messages both places. When I set the phone on the counter, Asil and Tad were both in the kitchen.
Tad looked at Asil. "Mercy needs clothes to wear if she's going to face Marsilia. Stay here because I want to talk to her." Asil gave me an amused glance, Tad a less amused glance, but didn't protest waiting while Tad escorted me up the stairs and into the bedroom that he'd been sleeping in. He took out the odd chunk of metal from his pocket and invoked the sword his father had made.
"I already destroyed the cuffs," he told me, holding it out. "So I don't need it. I'm not a swordsman, and you're going into enemy territory dangerously unarmed. I don't know Asil, and Honey doesn't like you. You may need something."
"Asil is Bran's, he will defend me," I told him. I didn't take the sword. I've had some weapons training in karate classes, but I've also read the stories about the Dark Smith of Dronheim.
"Which is more than you can say about Honey," Tad groused. "Maybe you should take me."
I shook my head. "I don't want to leave either Honey or Asil with the kids. Honey might lose it and kill someone - I'd rather it be the vampires than the kids. Asil ... is not entirely stable. If something does happen here and he had to kill someone, it could be worse than Honey losing it. This visit with Marsilia shouldn't be dangerous." If Hao was not lying. "Can you discern lies?" Some fae could, some couldn't - though they themselves could not lie.
"Not with vampires," he admitted.
"Vampires are tricky," I agreed instead of saying, "Me either." "But I think Hao was serious about Marsilia taking action - which makes me suspect that we are dealing with something that directly threatens the vampires after all. She wouldn't stir herself on our behalf unless there was something big in it for her." That "I think" kept it from being a lie. If he thought I could read Hao's truth, he'd be less likely to argue. But I was pretty sure Hao had not been lying.
Who gains, Asil had asked me, if the pack is gone from the Tri-Cities? Not Marsilia, I'd assured him. Because Marsilia benefited from our pack. No one wanted to take on Adam - and because Marsilia and Adam had cooperated a time or two, people thought that we cooperated more with the vampires than we really did. Adam didn't object because he felt it kept the riffraff out.
But that meant one of her enemies might come after the pack in order to weaken her. She'd already withstood one attempt to take over her territory - and we of the Columbia Basin Pack had supported her. "I should be safe enough," I told Tad. "Honey might not like me much, but she is loyal to Adam, and she is impressive. And of the werewolves we have here, she's the single best fighter. I need you here - you'll take care of the children, first and foremost. Ben is good for defense if you need it, but I don't know how he'll be around kids." With his four-letter vocabulary and his anger problems, I'd have normally avoided leaving him with children or undefended women. But he was loyal to Adam, and I was confident that he wouldn't hurt any of the kids even if he might expand their vocabulary in unfortunate directions.
"All right," Tad said. "All right. But you take the sword." He held it out again. It looked wicked and wrong in a room filled with Thomas the Tank Engine's cheery presence.
I made no effort to take it. "I know about your father's swords."
Tad laughed. "Yeah, there was a long period of time when Dad was pretty angry with the world. This one is called Hunger, and it needs to taste your blood; then it will serve you - until it tastes another's blood it likes better. I know you've done some weapon forms in karate, but, you're right, it's still better not to use it unless you have to. You'll never know when it might prefer someone else - and since you aren't fae, it will be even less inclined to stay with you. However. It will kill vampires in a way a normal sword cannot. It will also eat magic - items or spells, though from my experience it is pretty slow." He looked at me. "And there's still that fae assassin running around when she should be dead. I don't know for sure that this sword will do anything to her, but it's more likely to incapacitate her than a knife, a bullet, or even a werewolf is."
He held the sword out again, and I took it gingerly.