I guess I’d gotten a little loud. I get mad when I am afraid. And I had been afraid since I walked into the killing field of Elizaveta’s house.

“Okay,” Campbell said. “And that is exactly why we need you. And I am very sorry for the loss of your pack member. I think we both agree that it would be best if we proceed without incurring any more deaths if we can. So what is the proper approach?”

“They know you want a meeting,” I said. “Before the hotel blew up, the subject of that discussion was where.”

“You suggested a winery on Red Mountain,” he said. “It sounds like an excellent compromise.

“I might be part of a werewolf pack,” I said dryly, “but I do not require a pat on my head.”

“Noted,” he said. And I could hear a scratching sound, as if he were actually writing that down on a sheet of paper.

It probably said, M. Hauptman is touchy but possibly useful. Treat with kid gloves until she proves otherwise. Or maybe it was just his lunch order for his personal assistant, Ruth.

Being wet and scared was making me way more grumpy than usual.

“I told you I was wet and grumpy,” I said. “Also thoroughly spooked.” I hadn’t intended to admit that last part. “It makes me snap at people who might not deserve it.”

“I haven’t been near a bomb since I was in the army,” Campbell said. “Roadside mine took out the truck just ahead of mine. Not something I’ve forgotten, and I wasn’t hurt. It will be a while before you feel safe again.”

He was sincere. But other than the wrenching sadness that was Paul’s absence, I had hardly worried about the bomb. Witches were way scarier than bombs.

“That’s not what’s spooking me,” I said slowly. Senator Campbell and the other government officials were all at risk here.

There was a little silence. Then he asked, “I thought the fae agreed not to harm anyone in your territory.”

“They won’t,” I said, “as long as no one insults them by trying to insist that they fill out a questionnaire.”

“Not my idea,” said the senator. “But I didn’t object to it. It would be good to know something—anything about the fae we’ll be dealing with.”

“I can see how you’d feel that way,” I said. “You might start by reading the Mabinogion.”

“On my mother’s knee,” said Campbell. “I was afraid of that. But if you aren’t worried about the fae, just what is spooking you?”

“Witches are spooking me,” I said.

Elizaveta hissed, “Mercy, that is my business.”

I narrowed my eyes at her.

“It ceased being your business when Paul died,” said Adam; he nodded at me.

“Witches?” The senator’s voice was cautious.

“Witches,” I said.

And that is how you get a personal meeting with a US senator. Tomorrow, with details to follow.

 

* * *

 

• • •

“Okay, then,” I said, letting out a surprised and appalled breath as I hit the disconnect. “That was weird.”

Elizaveta gave me a long stare. Then she looked at what she still held in her hands.

“This is not the spark,” she proclaimed, placing the filter back where she had found it, on the floor by the sink. She turned around, looking at the wet shop.

“Who was it who knew to flood the shop with water?” she asked. Her gaze fell on Zee. “Adam said it was the fae. Are you the fae who works for Mercy?”

Zee smiled meekly and agreed that he was. “One picks up a thing or two in a long life,” he said. “It would have been better if it had been salt water, but city water seemed to do well enough.”

Keeping track of who knew what about whom was eventually going to make me crazy. Elizaveta knew nothing of who Zee was beyond that he was a simple mechanic. To be fair, I’d known him for nearly ten years before I understood much more than that.

“You may have saved the lives of everyone here,” she told him graciously.

He gave a slight nod. “Did what I could.”

She dismissed him from her thoughts as she looked around the shop. “Let’s see what they’ve hidden in here.”

She muttered something under her breath in Russian that made Adam smile—a thing here and then gone—behind her back. And she waved her hands out as if she were shaking dust off them in a rhythm that seemed to have a specific beat. She frowned and said, “This would be easier to do without the water masking the feel of the magic.”

“I am sorry,” said Zee meekly. “It seemed the right thing to do at the time.”

She nodded. “I see. And yes, it was. But it still makes this more difficult.” She closed her eyes and made that same flick-flick gesture with her hands, but this time she started walking forward.

Adam moved closer to her. I thought it was probably to be in a better position to keep her from, say, falling into the pit under the lift or over the knee-high toolbox, a tripping hazard that had already claimed a victim today—me. And my eyes had been open at the time.

But she seemed to sense those hazards before she came too close to them. She walked in a hesitant, zigzag path that reminded me of the finding game of Hot and Cold. Whatever she was using to guide herself took her to one of the shelving units that covered the back wall. She reached into a cardboard box of oil containers and pulled out a rag doll dressed all in black.

She opened her eyes then and regarded the doll. “Well, look what we have here. A poppet.”

Adam hit a button on his phone. “I need a review of Mercy’s shop. Someone planted a doll along the east wall in the garage bay area.” He met Elizaveta’s eyes. “Sometime between close of shop yesterday and opening today.”

Elizaveta nodded. “I concur.”

Tad came into the garage and, after Adam disconnected, he nodded at what Elizaveta was examining.

“A voodoo doll?” he asked.

She made a negative noise, but then said, “Of a sort, I suppose. Though this is nothing so crude as that, nor does it rely on sympathetic magic. This is something of a higher art.”

She looked at me. “I’m surprised you weren’t killed outright.”

“I was wearing nitrile gloves when I picked up the air filter,” I said, approaching to examine the doll with morbid curiosity.

She snorted. “I don’t know why that curse didn’t touch you—but it wasn’t a silly pair of plastic gloves.”