Frowning, Tony made an irritated noise. "Is this another one of your 'It's too dangerous for you mere human cops? "
I rubbed my arms, but I wasn't cold, just chilled. I was under no illusions. Marsilia could have just killed me, but she was playing. But no matter how playful the cat is, the mouse is just as dead in the end. And the end would be whenever she decided. The only question was how many people - how many of my friends - she decided to take down with me.
Maybe I was panicking prematurely. Maybe she would settle for a punishment. Stefan was hers, there was no reason for the gut-deep feeling that he wouldn't be the last to suffer for my sins. I didn't know Marsilia well enough to make that kind of prediction.
"Mercy?"
"I don't know what the crossed bones mean." Other than bad news. "Zee tells me it is magical but probably not fae magic." Zee was out, anyone who cared to would know that he was fae, which was the reason that the garage was mine now, instead of his. There was a lot of prejudice against the fae. "He has a few contacts who'll take a look at it for me. I know a few other people I can ask, too." Adam had a witch on the pack's payroll for cleanup. She was good, but it would cost me a lot to hire her if Uncle Mike and Stefan didn't know what it was. This was shaping up into a real macaroni-and-cheese month.
"However, none of them will come within a hundred miles of a police investigation. Do you have anyone on the KPD who is an expert in magic?"
Tony held my gaze for a minute before giving up with a sigh. "Hell no, Mercy. You should have seen the brass's faces when they watched that video - " He stopped and gave me a guilty look. It was a video of me killing Tim... and all the stuff before that. He shrugged nervously and looked away. "There are a few who know something about fae or werewolves, but... if they know anything more, they keep it quiet for fear of losing their jobs."
He sighed and came back into the shop. "Go ahead," he told Zee. "Let's watch Tim's cousin paint the shop."
Once the two shadowy people moved fully onto the parking lot, Courtney was unmistakable. Instead of watching the whole process, Zee fast-forwarded it until the pair walked off with bags of empty spray-paint cans almost two hours later. He stopped the images when Courtney was close to the camera and impossible to mistake, her pretty, rounded face hard and angry. Zee flipped back and forth a little until we got a clear view of her companion's face, too.
The security system hadn't been in place long, but Zee loved gadgets. He must have spent some time playing with this one.
"It's Courtney all right... I don't remember her last name," I told Tony. "I don't recognize the man at all.
If it were Bright Future, there'd have been more people."
"It's personal," Tony agreed grimly. "You are going to want to give me those disks and file charges so we can give her some time to cool off. She's not going to stop harassing you anytime soon unless someone heads her off at the pass. It's safer for everyone if it's the police and not the werewolves or the fae."
Zee ejected the disk and handed it to Tony.
Tony frowned at it a moment. "I'm not worried about the kids, Mercy. But there's something about those bones and that guy that is sending my old radar into fits. If that's not a death threat, I'll be a monkey's uncle. You stick close to that werewolf boyfriend of yours for a while."
I gave him a martyred sigh. "Why do you think Zee is still here? I suspect I'm not going to get a moment to myself for the next year, at least."
"Yeah," he said, a smile lighting his eyes. "It's tough when people care about you."
Zee made a sound that might have been a laugh. He covered it by saying sourly, "Not that she makes it easy on them to watch over her. You just wait. All she's going to do for the next few weeks is complain, complain, complain."
Chapter 3
WORD HAD GOTTEN OUT THAT I WAS BACK IN THE SHOP and my regular customers started stopping in to express their sympathy and support. The graffiti only made things worse. By nine I was hiding in the garage, with the big overhead doors shut, even though that meant that the garage was hot and stuffy, and my electric bill was going to suffer.
I left Zee to handle the customers, poor customers. Zee is not a people person. Years ago, when I first came to work here, his nine-year-old son was in charge of the front desk and everyone was properly grateful.
I spent most of the morning trying to figure out the troubles of a twenty-year-old Jetta. Nothing more fun than sorting through intermittent electrical problems, as long as you have a year or two to waste. The owner got off her job at three in the morning and twice had gone to start her car and found the battery drained though the lights were off.
There was nothing wrong with the battery. Or the alternator. I was upside-down in the driver's seat, with my head up the Jetta's dash, when a sudden thought came to me. I rolled over and looked at the shiny new CD player in the ancient car, which had held only a cassette player when it had last visited here. When Zee came in, I was using Power Words to describe service techs who didn't know how to tie their own shoes but felt free and easy meddling in one of my cars. I'd been taking care of this Jetta for as long as I'd been working on cars, and felt a special affection for it.
Zee blinked at me a couple of times to hide his amusement. "We could give your bill to the place that put her stereo in."
"Would they pay for it?" I asked.
Zee smiled. "They would if I took it in." Zee took a personal interest in our customers' cars, too.
We locked up for lunch and went to our favorite taco wagon for authentic Mexican tacos. That meant no cheese or iceberg lettuce, but cilantro, lime, and radishes instead - a more-than-fair trade in my view.
The wagon was parked in a lot next to a Mexican bakery just across the cable bridge over the Columbia River, putting it in Pasco, but just barely. Some wagons are step vans, but this one was a small trailer laden with whiteboards that listed the menu with prices.
The sweet-faced woman who worked there spoke barely enough English to take orders - which probably didn't matter because there were very few English-only speakers among her patrons. She said something and patted my hand when I paid - and when I checked the bag to make sure the little plastic cups of salsa were there, I saw she'd added a couple of extra of my favorite tacos in our bag. Which proved that everyone, even people who couldn't read the newspaper, knew about me.
Zee drove us to the park on the Kennewick side of the river, where there were waterfront picnic tables for us to eat at. I sighed as we walked along the river's edge between the parking lot and the tables. "I wish it hadn't made the papers. How long before everyone forgets, and I don't get any more pitying looks?"