your regular security detail but also most of the pack?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “I also added a premium for being a bunch of jack . . . rabbits.”
“You can say ‘jackass’ in front of me,” said Sherwood, batting his eyelashes.
“You swear in front of my wife again,” purred Adam, “and we’ll discuss what I will say in front of you.”
Sometimes I forgot how old my mate was. In most ways he was thoroughly modern. But he always opened the door for me, pulled out my chair at restaurants—and avoided swearing in front of me. None of which I minded.
Sherwood slid to the front of the couch—so he could get out of it in a hurry—and it wasn’t to run away. The events of this morning had left both werewolves on edge. It wasn’t beyond the pair of them to engage in what Adam liked to call “a good tussle” to blow off steam.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Does that mean that the government can force the pack to work for them whenever they want to?”
Adam said, “Point to you. That’s what the contract says, and it says it with no out date. However, I told them I would give in this one time—because of the importance of these negotiations. But I also told them that I’d take them to court to fight that contract if they didn’t add an addendum limiting them to this one time.”
“Slippery slope giving in to them at all,” said Sherwood.
“You make sure to fire that contract lawyer,” I told Adam. “Because the real problem if this came to a court battle isn’t privacy for the government; it’s making the fae think that we won’t keep our word.”
Adam nodded tiredly. “And if the government ever figures that out, it might give them the idea that if they want to get the best of us, they just need to go to Los Alamos, talk to one of my business directors, and get them to sign off on a contract with an obscure and useful clause.”
He took a breath and let it out. “The government, in the embodiment of Piotrowski, is anxious to move while the fae are willing to meet. It wasn’t in their interest to fight me. So I got more money and an addendum to that contract that ends any obligation my pack has to the government directly after the meeting is held. It isn’t always a bad thing that the government doesn’t know the fae as well as they might. As well as we do.”
We all fell silent, contemplating the complexities of a close personal relationship with the fae.
Finally, Adam slapped his hands together and dusted them. “But that’s a problem for another day. I think we have sufficient problems at hand.”
“Right?” I said. “How many of you think that the attack on Elizaveta has something to do with this meeting?”
We all raised our hands, including Adam.
“That goblin this morning could have been involved, too,” I said. “He told us that ‘she’ told him that he could come here, that we would keep him safe from the authorities—or words to that effect.”
“Checking our response time?” asked Sherwood.
I yawned. “Or exhausting our resources.”
“Or we are jumping to unwarranted conclusions,” cautioned Adam. “Getting from ‘she’ to ‘a witch’ to ‘the witches who attacked Elizaveta’s family’ is a leap of Olympian scale. And adding that this meeting has nothing to do with witches at all . . . and yet.”
“Right?” I said.
“Coincidences sometimes happen,” Sherwood said heavily. “But when they happen around witches, they aren’t usually coincidences.”
* * *
• • •
When I got to work, finally, the imaginary parking lot full of cars with scheduled appointments that I hadn’t been there to repair wasn’t there. The customer parking lot was empty, as were the three repair bays.
Maybe Tad had called everyone and told them not to come in—but that didn’t sound like Tad. Answers came when I opened the office door and saw Zee at the computer inputting invoices.
Siebold Adelbertsmiter looked like a wiry old man, balding and nimble for his age. Looks, in his case, were very deceiving. Zee was an ancient fae smith, a gremlin, if you read his official government ID. Since gremlins were an invention of the twentieth century and Zee had been ancient when Columbus was commissioned to find a new route to Asia, I had my doubts. But I seldom contradicted Zee on matters that didn’t involve me.
He glanced up at me but didn’t stop the rapid keystrokes. “Your