Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(6)

He was incredibly dangerous. Possibly to keep him alive—more probably for reasons of her own—Underhill had gifted him with fire. But we were dangerous, too, so we’d taken him into our family and largely treated him like the child he appeared to be. He seemed to take comfort in that, maybe even enjoy it.

Entering the house, he could have been any abnormally dirty human child. He appeared to have gotten wet, at some point, then rolled in the dust that was our dirt in late summer. One of his grubby hands was firmly gripping the equally ragged and dirty girl who was about an inch shorter than he was.

He paused, having yanked the girl halfway into the kitchen with irritation bordering on anger. He appeared to set all that aside as he observed the room and read the emotions with a brain that was not remotely childlike.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This is a bad time.”

But the child he’d dragged in suddenly became cooperative and took another step into the room.

“No,” she told him. “It’s a wonderful time. I love battles. Blood and death followed by tears and mourning.” She scratched at her matted hair, gave me a sly look, then smiled delightedly at everyone else.

“Underhill,” Adam said dangerously, “what are you doing here in my home?”

Underhill was an ancient magical land. She was powerful enough to chew the fae up and spit them out again—even the fae who had the power to raise the seas or split the earth were cautious when dealing with her. She was capricious to the point of maliciousness, and when she chose, she manifested as a girl Aiden’s age. While Aiden had been a child, trying to survive in Underhill’s realm, she had joined his small group of friends as a fellow survivor. Eventually he’d figured out who and what she was, but she continued to treat him as a friend. I still didn’t know exactly how Aiden felt about her—it was possible that he didn’t know what he thought about her, either.

She was, understandably, not worried about facing down an irate Alpha werewolf.

“I heard you were inviting everyone in,” she said disingenuously. “The Dark Smith and his misbred but powerful son. The coyote and the tibicena-possessed man.” She smiled, displaying dimples. “The vampire—you know, the crazy one?”

She meant Wulfe.

The night the witches had died, Wulfe had been injured. Not physically, but mentally or spiritually or something—and it had been my fault. We brought Wulfe back with us, unconscious and babbling by turns, and Ogden, the pack member who was carrying him, had brought Wulfe into the house.

I found out later that he’d had no idea he was carrying a vampire. He didn’t know Wulfe personally, and something—probably my whammy—had affected his scent. But Ogden shouldn’t have been able to just bring Wulfe into the house. A vampire must be verbally invited into a home by someone who lives in that space. I suspect, given the function of our home for the wolves, that any member of our pack could invite a vampire in—but Ogden swore he hadn’t said a word to anyone.

So Wulfe could come and go in our home anytime he wished. Maybe he’d always been able to.

“That’s your fault, too,” said Auriele, looking at me.

I don’t know how she figured that, other than that I was the one who had knocked Wulfe silly so he could be carried into the house. True enough, I supposed, if you were looking for reasons to blame me for the sun rising in the east.

I looked at Auriele, then Darryl. I looked at Aiden and Underhill, a primordial being who was relatively powerless here in our world. “Relatively” being the correct word, as I had no doubt she could destroy our home and everyone in it with very little effort on her part. I looked at Adam, who was not looking at me—my mate, who had said nothing to contradict Auriele.

And I was done.

Without a word, I slipped around Underhill and Aiden and out the open back door, grabbing my shoes on the way out. No one tried to stop me, which was good. I’m not sure that I would have responded like a mature adult.

Our backyard was set up for pack gatherings, with scattered picnic areas and benches landscaped into the yard. There was a new huge wooden playset with a pirate ship’s lookout on top, complete with Jolly Roger.

We’d had all the pack and their families incarcerated here for a few days and decided that something for kids to play on would be a good idea. I hadn’t expected the whole pack to play on it, but they loved it.

The logs bore scars from werewolf claws, and the Jolly Roger had a tear on one corner from when a couple of the wolves had fought over it.

I paused to look at the other new thing in the yard.

Part of a wall, six feet or so high, had been constructed in the corner of the property. The stones were river rock, mostly gray and all uncut. They were set without mortar, the shape of the stones matched to hold the wall together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The wall ran for about twenty feet on either side of the corner of the lawn.

About three feet from the corner, on the side that ran the border between what had once been only my property and Adam’s, was a battered oak door—even though with very little effort anyone could have walked around the wall.

The wall and its door hadn’t been there when I came home from work, not an hour ago.

And I knew why Aiden had been so hot when he’d come into the kitchen. Underhill had made the wall, so she could have a door.

When Aiden had left Underhill, she’d missed him. After a misadventure in Underhill’s realm, we had made a bargain. A couple of times a month we escorted Aiden to the Walla Walla fae reservation, where there were many doors to the magical land.