He held out his hand. She put her hand in his and he kissed it.
“Is this what it feels like to be a werewolf?” she asked him. “Nothing hurts.”
She closed her fingers over his; a beautiful smile lit her face.
“Adam,” she said. “I have wanted to do this for years.”
She stepped into his space, leaned her beautiful, strong, young, and naked body against his. She was just an inch or two taller than he was, but it didn’t matter. Adam was so much wider, more solid, that she looked like a fairy princess to his warrior.
They were beautiful.
She tilted her face to facilitate her kiss, revealing Adam’s face to me. Just as her lips touched his, Adam’s eyes met mine.
I couldn’t read what I saw there. Not then.
Then he closed his eyes. He kissed her. One of his arms wrapped around her waist. The other one slid down, through her long silky hair, and cupped the back of her head.
He snapped her neck, stepping back so that her body hit the concrete hard instead of cushioning her fall. It didn’t matter to her; she was dead. But it said a lot about how Adam felt about her.
He looked at me and waited for my judgment.
I knew that he had liked her. I knew that he thought of her as family, had enjoyed the verbal sparring matches they had sometimes engaged in. Enjoyed dusting off his mother’s Russian and flirting with an old woman.
“This is our territory,” I said, giving him the words he needed. “We don’t allow black magic in our territory.”
He closed his eyes and swallowed.
“That’s right,” he said. When I folded him in my arms, he lifted me against him and buried his face against my neck.
We held each other, surrounded by the dead.
13
“I can ask the earth to put them to rest,” said Zee.
I pulled away from Adam and looked over at the old smith. He stood on the balls of his feet, looking just like he usually did: expression subtly sour as if a scowl were ready to break out at any moment. He looked like a wiry old man who’d done hard physical work his whole life and could outwork any teenager in town—not like a legendary fae who had just faced battle with a foe who had so greatly outnumbered him.
Tad stood just beyond him. And there was an almost existential serenity gathered about his whole body. I had never seen Tad look so at peace with himself.
“They will just dig them up,” I said prosaically. “Someone twenty or thirty years from now will decide they want to build a housing development. Stick a backhoe into the ground and—whoopsie.”
“A lot of dead people here,” said the senator, limping very slowly over to us. “A lot of families who need closure.”
“Too many old zombies,” Zee said. “They are a feast for the crows.”
We must have looked blank—or I did, anyway.
To me, Zee said, “The black-magic users will come to use their bones. I know creatures of the fae who will be drawn to their corpses. I can put them to rest in the ground so that none will find them again.”
He looked at the senator. “The goblin king took care of the dead at your brother’s house. You won’t find the bodies of your people, either. But Uncle Mike tells me that your Ruth has photos, so you can identify them.”
“Took care of them?” he said. Then a little less hostilely he said, “The goblin king?”
“He would have treated them with respect,” I said, and I was sure I was right. Though what respect meant to a goblin and what it meant to Jake Campbell might not be quite the same thing. “His daughter was among the dead there. She tried to see what was going on and was killed by the witches.”
“I see,” he said.
“I will need help to lay them all out,” said Zee. “Tad and I can do it, but it will take longer and we want to get the bodies out of the way before the neighbors awake, yes?”
“The wolves are on their way,” said Adam.
“Did you call them?” I asked.
He shook his head. “But I opened the bonds and they have been looking. They will be here in a few minutes.”
The senator had been steadfastly not looking at Adam or me, and now that matters had calmed a bit, I knew why.
“I’ll just go get some clothes for us,” I said. “And the first-aid kit for your leg, Senator.”
I went to the garden first. I gathered up my clothes and put them on, including the concealed-carry holster and my gun—which reminded me that my cutlass was out there in the darkness somewhere. I’d have to go look for it when things calmed down.
I tied my tennis shoes and then took two steps into Elizaveta’s garden. The crow’s magic was gone. It was just an inanimate husk tied to a scarecrow now.
I was glad Elizaveta was dead.
I would miss the person I’d thought she was, even though that person was plenty scary. I would miss having her as one of the pieces I counted on to keep the people I loved safe. I worried about the vacuum she left behind. Someone would come, another witch, to take over this territory.
I was still glad that Elizaveta was dead.
I jogged over to Adam’s SUV and grabbed the first-aid kit and the spare set of clothes he kept in his gym bag. I started to go, and then turned back and grabbed a wet wipe out of the package he kept in the SUV to clean up messes.
Adam was talking to the senator when I got back.
“—can take you to a hotel, or Uncle Mike’s, or you can go wait at my home if you’d like,” Adam said.
The senator said, “I think I would like to see this through to the end.”
“Okay,” Adam said. “If you change your mind, just let me know.”
I gave Adam his clothes and watched him dress. When he was finished, he caught the expression on my face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I reached up and, very thoroughly, used the wet wipe to clean his mouth. Because I’d had time to analyze what I’d seen in his eyes right before he kissed Elizaveta. It had been horror.
Adam didn’t react, just let me finish washing away the stains. Not his stains, but the witch’s filthy magic and the results of Elizaveta’s choices brought to fruition and set on Adam’s plate. I cleaned those things from my mate. He closed his eyes when I was done and rested his face against my hand.
When he opened them again, they were blazing yellow.
“That is mine,” I told him sternly. “Be careful what you do with it.”