He looked like a fiftyish, thinish (with a little potbelly), grumpy man. Only the grumpy part was true. Thanks to glamour, a fae can look like anyone they want to. Glamour is the thing that makes something a fae - as opposed to, say, a witch or werewolf.
"Hey, Zee," I said when he showed no sign of noticing my presence. "Thanks for coming out this morning."
He rolled himself out from under the car and frowned deeply at me. "You need to stay away from the vampires, Mercedes Athena Thompson." Like my mother, he only used my full name when he was angry with me. I'd never tell him, but I've always kind of liked the way it sounds when pronounced with a German accent.
He took in my face in a single glance and continued. "You should be home sleeping. What is the use of having a man in the house, if he cannot take care of you for a while?"
" Mmm," I said. "I give up. What's the use of having a man in the house?"
He didn't smile, but I was used to that.
"Anyway," I continued briskly, though I kept my voice down so the people in the office couldn't hear anything. "There are two werewolves and a dead vampire in my house and I thought it was full enough to do without me for a while."
"You killed a vampire?" He gave me a look of respect-which was pretty impressive since he was still lying on his back on the creeper.
"Nope. The sun did. But Stefan should recover in time to face Marsilia tonight."
At least I was assuming it would be tonight. I didn't know much about the vampires, but the werewolves' trials tend to convene on the spot rather than six months after a crime. They are also over in a matter of hours, sometimes minutes, rather than months. Can't convince your pack Alpha you are less trouble to him alive than dead? Too bad. Pack law, necessarily brutal, was one of those nasty things that Bran was keeping under wraps for a while.
"Samuel told me you are going to be at a trial for the vampire."
"He called you," I said, outraged. "What did he do? Ask you to call him when I got here safely?"
Zee smiled at me for the first time and got out his cell phone. With oil-stained fingers he punched in my number. "She's here," he said. "Made it fine."
He hung up without waiting for a reply and widened his smile further as he dialed another number. I knew that one, too. But in case I'd missed it, he used names. "Hello, Adam," he said. "She's here." He listened for a moment; I did too, but he must have had the volume turned down low because all I could hear was the rumble of a male voice. Zee's smile turned into a malevolent grin. He looked at me and said, "Adam wants to know what took you so long?"
I started to roll my eyes, but it made the sore half of my face hurt worse so I stopped. "Tell him I had wild, passionate sex with a complete stranger."
I didn't stick around to hear if Zee passed my message on or not. I snatched my coveralls off their hook, and stalked into the bathroom.
Werewolves are control freaks, I reminded myself as I dressed for work. Being control freaks keeps them in charge of their wolf-which is a good thing. If I didn't like the side effects, I shouldn't hang out with werewolves. Which I wouldn't be doing if I didn't have one living with me and another living on the other side of my back fence.
Alone in the bathroom though, I could admit to myself that even though I was really, really angry... I'd have been disappointed if they hadn't checked up on me. How's that for illogical?
When I came out, Zee gave me the next repair job. I may have bought the business from him, but when we worked together, he still gave the orders. Part of it was habit, I suppose, but a larger part of it was that, though I am a good mechanic, Zee is magic. Literally and figuratively.
If it weren't for his tendency to get bored with easy stuff, he'd never have hired me. Then I'd have had to take my liberal arts degree and gotten a job at McDonald's or Burger King like all the rest of the history majors.
We worked companionably in silence for a while until I ran into a job that required four hands rather than two.
While I turned the rachet, Zee, who was holding a part in place for me, said, "I took a peek under that cover"-he nodded toward the corner of the shop where my latest restoration project lay in wait.
"Pretty, isn't she?" I said. "Or at least she will be when I get her fixed up." She was a 1968 Karmann Ghia in almost pristine condition.
"Are you going to restore it or make a street rod?"
"I don't know," I said. "Her paint is still the original and there's only a little cracking on the hood. I hate to mess with it unless I have to. If I can get her running well with original parts and Kim can stitch up the seats, I'll leave it at that."
There are three groups of old car enthusiasts: people who think a car should be left as much original as possible; the ones who restore it better than factory; and the people who gut them and replace the brakes, engine, and suspension with more modern equipment. Zee is firmly in the latter group.
He is not sentimental-if something works better, that's what you should use. I suppose forty or fifty years doesn't mean the same thing to him as it does to the rest of us-one person's antique is another's rusting hulk.
Since a good part of my income comes from restoring rusting hulks, I'm not picky. I have a partnership with an upholstery genius, Kim, and a painter who also likes to drive around and show the cars so we can sell them. After deducting the actual material cost of the restore and the shows, we split the profits according to hours spent on the project.
"Air-cooled takes a lot of upkeep," Zee said.
"Someone who wants an original condition Ghia won't care about that," I told him. He grunted, unconvinced, and went back to his job.