Gary”—my half brother—“does. He says that nine times in ten he is right. And the one time left over might be Coyote’s fault, too, it’s just that he didn’t leave enough evidence to pin it on him.”
Adam hugged me. “Okay, okay.” He sighed, and there was enough guilt in his sigh that I was pretty sure he didn’t ascribe to my perspective.
He rubbed my arms lightly. “You’re getting goose bumps.” He released me and stood up. “You need to get dressed, tell me all about what you noticed at Elizaveta’s house—”
“Dead people,” I told him.
“—besides dead people,” he continued smoothly. “And then you need to go shower and rest.”
I sighed. “Nope.” Because as the ache of the return to my human self subsided, I realized that a nap was not in my near future. “After my debriefing, I need to shower and head to work. No rest for the wicked.”
He started to say something, then put his hands up in the air. “Okay. But I’ll bring pizza home for dinner.”
Today was my turn to cook.
“Deal,” I said.
He helped me to my feet and I let him. My hands felt clumsy and I was off-balance and had to lean on him to drag on my jeans. My hair smelled horrid—or at least smelled more horrid than the rest of me did. And I kept getting a whiff of Robert. I didn’t want to think about, let alone smell like, Elizaveta’s grandson. I pulled my hair back from my face and rebraided it. It didn’t help much, but at least it wasn’t brushing against my skin every time I moved.
He watched me get dressed with what some people might think was solely an appreciative eye. They just didn’t share a mate bond with Adam. My husband gave the lie to that old adage that men have only one idea in their heads at a time and usually that one thing was sex.
Part of him was cataloging my bruises. Part of him was noticing how wobbly I was. Part of him was worrying about things he couldn’t change. And part of him was thinking about sex.
I gave that part of him a wiggle of my hips, and he laughed.
“Hey,” he said. “No fair teasing when you know if you made it to horizontal, you’d be asleep before I got to first base.”
I stuck my tongue out at him.
“Careful,” he warned. “Or someone will take you up on your offer.” Then, with a quick, rueful smile, he switched gears. “So what did you find at Elizaveta’s?”
“What were you looking for?” I asked as I buttoned my jeans.
I pulled my shirt over my head instead of unbuttoning it, then paid for that bit of laziness with having to struggle when one of the shirtsleeves wouldn’t turn out properly.
Adam helped me get untangled. “Just tell me whatever you noticed.”
“Well, you know about the black magic, obviously,” I said. “It was all of them. All of the dead people were black practitioners—even Militza.”
No wonder Jesse had gotten a funny feeling about her. Maybe if she’d kept giving Militza rides, though, we’d have discovered what had been going on in our own backyard.
“What do you think about Elizaveta?” he asked. “Could she have lived in that house, with all of her family practicing black magic, and still be a gray witch?”
I shrugged. “Maybe? I don’t know about how witches operate on quite that intimate a detail. But she didn’t. Didn’t avoid it. Is that what you wanted me to find out?” That’s why he’d asked me if I could distinguish one witch’s magic from another’s. I hadn’t actually had to do that—Elizaveta’s confession had been in her bedroom.
He nodded, his face tight. He’d expected that answer, but he’d hoped for a different one.
“I don’t know how she hid it from us,” I told him, or maybe told myself. “I swear she doesn’t smell or feel like a black witch, Adam. But when I went snooping in her bedroom, there was a secret compartment in her closet.”
It had been the most interesting thing I’d found upstairs. The cubby had been well hidden, too. But it’s difficult to keep a compartment secret when it is often used and the person who is searching has the nose of a coyote.
“Did Sherwood vet that compartment before you opened it?” Adam asked sharply.
I waved a hand in reassurance. “Yes, of course he did. My guess is that she didn’t booby-trap it because she uses it too often. She keeps her working clothes there.”