"How is your stomach feeling now?" he asked after a moment.
"Raw," I admitted. "But it's been that way since I wrecked my car and Adam and our pack were taken. I have no idea if it is from the silver or not."
Asil crouched on his heels in silence of thought, and I considered reminding him that he'd been in a hurry. At last he said, "You are certain that Peter is the only fatality?"
"So far," I said.
"I find that very interesting in light of the murders of your attackers." His eyes were bright and merry as he looked at me. Apparently, murders were good fun. "The one who killed the hired men would not bother keeping all of the pack alive. Such a man would say, 'One werewolf is enough to keep Adam on the hook, and this many hostages are expensive and dangerous to keep.' Which would be right. They were bloody stupid to take down a whole pack - any commander who ever had charge of a host of enemy soldiers would have been happy to explain it to them." He lost himself for a moment, presumably in happy contemplation of the troubles our enemies had gotten themselves into.
"Two different people?" I said.
Asil nodded. "So it seems to me. Moreover, a man who knew to hire these men, a man they would work for, would not have killed these mercenaries out of fear of what they know. These are very well-trained, sought-after mercenaries often hired by governments friendly to the US, Charles tells me. The kind of men who stay bought and don't take kindly to being betrayed."
"The Cantrip agents had the contacts but not the money to hire them," I said slowly. "Federal agents are well paid - but not that well paid."
"Can you contact Adam right now?"
"I can try."
"Please do so. We need to let him know what we know - and see if there is any new information he can offer us about his location or the people who have taken him."
I sat down on the floor and closed my eyes - reached down the rough golden rope that tied my mate and I together and - "Ow, ow, ow," I said, my eyes watering. "Owie, owie, owie. Damn. Damn."
Asil looked from me to the silver on the floor. "That will teach you not to use your bonds for things they were never intended," he told me. "Especially not silver. Werewolves and silver do not mix."
"Shut up," I said fiercely and very quietly because the sound of his voice sent sharp, arcing lightning rods of pain from my eyes all the way through my skull.
"That is quite a lot of silver," he observed. Then, sounding intrigued, he said, "And it is pure silver, though the substance that the tranquilizer dart uses is silver nitrate - which is a white powder."
Asil got up and moved around. Ben came close - I could smell him - but he didn't get close enough to touch. Werewolves are different when they are in their wolf shape, less human and less caught up in human manners. It would be wrong. But wolves are gregarious, far more so than humans or coyotes, for that matter. Normally, Ben would be pressing against me if I was in distress. Asil must still have been worrying him.
When my head quit feeling quite so breakable, I looked up - and Asil handed me a glass of water from the bathroom. I drank the whole thing and felt better.
"Don't worry," he told me when I handed him the empty glass. "I expect the effect is temporary. It'll probably go away once the silver is out of your system entirely." He touched my lips, a light, quick touch that didn't allow me time to react.
He showed me his fingertips - which were red, as if he'd put his fingers in a flame. I touched my lips, too, remembering how black they were.
"They used to use colloidal silver in nose drops for people with asthma or bad allergies," he told me. "People who used them regularly sometimes had their skin turn blue - there is a man who ran for the Montana Senate who is blue-skinned. I thought your lips were from lipstick - though you are a little older than most of the young ladies wearing black makeup."
I stared at him in horror. "It won't go away," I told him. "I'm not a werewolf, my body won't reject silver the same way yours does." Gabriel's little sister, Rosa, had done a report in school about a girl whose skin had turned gray when she was a teenager back in the fifties and nothing anyone had tried had made any improvement. I'd proofread it for her.
I scrambled to my feet and went into the bathroom to look at the mirror again. I took a washcloth and scrubbed at my lips, but they stayed black.
Asil didn't follow me into the bathroom, but he stood at the door.
"You told Armstrong that you think this was aimed at the werewolves."
"Don't you?" I asked.
Asil shook his head. "It doesn't matter what I think. Let's look at the world through their eyes a moment. If Adam did exactly as they asked him to, what would be the result?"
"They kill the pack anyway - can't have witnesses. They'd kill Adam, so he doesn't kill them. The senator's dead or wounded by werewolves. The people who think the only good werewolf is a dead werewolf would have more power." I ticked them off on my fingers, then said, "Kyle and I, Adam and I, and just I have gone through this a hundred times."
"Okay," Asil said. "The rogue Cantrip agents like the last part, the one that lets them go hunting werewolves. Maybe they like the dead senator part, too. Campbell has been standing between them and their kill-'em-all hunting license for a long time. But who is after Adam or the pack? You think they are the ones this is aimed at - so who benefits?"
"Shouldn't we do this part downstairs?" I asked, my throat tight. I didn't want to go over and over how much danger Adam and the pack were in - I knew. "We were discussing this with Armstrong."
Asil shook his head. "What happens if Adam and the pack are gone?"
I bared my teeth at him. "I go out for revenge - I don't do peanut butter much anymore. But if they aren't afraid of the pack, they aren't going to be afraid of me. Bran is scarier - but they probably don't know about Bran."
"Maybe they do," said Asil. "Maybe they're after Bran."
"They knew about Gerry Wallace's silver/DMSO/ketamine cocktail," I conceded. "They knew every wolf in the pack. Maybe they do know about Bran."
"Mercy?" Kyle called up from the floor below. "Are you through telling the werewolf all the things we mere mortals shouldn't know, yet? I'm making breakfast, and the sun's coming up."
"What were you planning on doing next before Agent Armstrong and I arrived?" asked Asil.
"I was going to go to get Adam's people, the ones who work for his company, to see if they can figure out where the money is coming from. See if they can tell if it is government money or private. I was going to the vampires to see if they knew anything about where someone might be holding a pack of werewolves - they run this town's supernaturals like the mob ran Chicago back in the day." There was something else. Something I was supposed to be remembering. "Damn it," I said, diving for my dirty, bloody jeans. "Tad. Damn it."