Mercy for the Fallen (27 page)

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got nothing but time.”

“Sleep now, talk later,” I said, heading for the spare bedroom.  At least it used to be the spare, I hoped it still had a bed in there. 

Adam caught onto my shoulders and steered me back down the hall when I turned at the appropriate door.  “Take the master.”

“I’m not getting in bed with you,” I scoffed.

“Don’t trust yourself?”  His exaggerated smirk triggered an answering smile from me.  “I don’t need to sleep, you can have the big bed.  It was supposed to be yours after all.”

I’d almost forgotten I owned the place.  “Oh right, technically you owe me five years of rent.”

“You’re going to charge me for living here when I’m the one who gave you the house in the first place?”

I pretended to consider my options as I stepped into the bedroom, decorated in tasteful shades of taupe and cream.  “Now that you mention it, maybe there’s something you can do to work it off if you’re cash poor at the moment.”

Adam lingered by the doorway, hanging against the frame.  “That sounds intriguing.  Let’s hear your proposition.”

“Pancakes in the morning?”

Instead of sulking, his face split into a wide grin.  “You got it.”   He turned to leave, remembering to close the door as an afterthought.  “Merce?” he said, leaning back in through the doorway. 

“Yes?”

“Welcome home.”

* * *

I woke up sometime mid morning to the smell of sausage sizzling down the hall.  Only one thing sounded better than the lure of savory breakfast meat and the expected pancakes – a hot shower.  After nearly a month of making do with tepid sponge baths in the tree house, I used up all of the hot water in Adam’s fancy steam shower. 

Prepared to make do with the damp borrowed outfit I’d left in a heap on the bedroom floor, I was pleasantly surprised to see a clean set of clothes on the foot of the bed as I came out of the bathroom.  Maybe the silky, red top showed more cleavage than I was used to, but I couldn’t fault Adam’s taste or memory as I zipped up the soft jeans that clung to my curves like a second skin.  There was even a pair of gorgeous leather boots in my size, but I left them off to go find my breakfast. 

I met Adam outside the bedroom door, fist poised to knock, a tray full of food in the other hand.  “Hey, you beat me to it.  I was going to offer breakfast in bed.”  On the tray were the requisite stack of buttery pancakes, fat sausage links, a mug of steaming coffee and a single pink rose in a bud vase. 

“That’s so sweet, but I can come and eat out here.”  I appreciated the gesture, but the two of us in the bedroom was a bad idea, even over pancakes. 

“Okay sure,” he replied with an affable shrug and turned back down the hallway toward the kitchen. 

“Did you eat already?”

“I snuck a bite or two in.”

I was about to offer to share mine when I remembered he didn’t need to eat the same way I did. 

“Sam and Daphne should be over in about an hour, I wasn’t sure how long you’d need to pull yourself together.  You were never much of a morning person, as I recall,” he grinned, setting the tray on the breakfast bar. 

“You’re not wrong there.  Eve’s the opposite though.  She’s up with the birds lately, well… if there were any birds on Ma’on.”  A wistful look flashed across his features, but it was gone a moment later.  “So… five years.  How have you been?”  It seemed like a weird question after all the talking the night before, but I realized I hadn’t asked him what he’d been up to lately.

“Oh, you know, fine,” he said with a noncommittal shrug.  “You?”

“Good.  And Eve’s fine.”

“Good.”

Talk about awkward. 

And it stayed awkward between us, neither one of us wanting to talk about anything more than the weather, until Sam and Daphne showed up with more coffee and donuts.  I pounced on Daphne almost the moment she came into the door, dragging her into the kitchen with me to try and find napkins while Adam and Sam exchanged a few words.

“Are you and Adam…” Daphne whispered.

“No, of course not.” 

“Don’t look all offended.  It’s just when you didn’t come home last night and then Adam called to say you were over here, I sort of thought…”

“I didn’t want to wake you guys when it got to be late.” 
Not a lie…
  “And he and I had a few things to sort through.”

Daphne’s face fell.  “But you’re not together?”

“No.”

“I guess you didn’t sort through them all then, did you?”  She cocked a brow.

“It’s more complicated than that and you know it.  We’re on completely different timelines right now.”

“I know.  And I know how hard it is for you to accept that Parker’s moved on.” 

I could tell there was more she wanted to say.  “But?”

“
But
you know you’ve had unresolved feelings for Adam for a long time.”

“Maybe that’s true, but…”

“
And
he’s still head over heels for you, Mercy.  This whole time you’ve been gone, he’s never doubted you’d be back.”

“That’s because he’s the only one who knew where I went and why.  Something I’m not too happy about, by the way.”

“Do you still love him, Mercy?”

Something held me back from answering that question.  “I’m not ready to go there, not yet.  I’m…”

“Talking about us behind our backs, huh?  Good stuff, I hope.”  Adam waggled his brows at me playfully.

“Just girl talk.  But now that we’re all here, we probably should get down to business.”

“I do so miss these palavers,” Sam grinned, already scoping out a jelly donut.   

“I’ve missed them too.”  I shot him a smile, which I lost pretty quickly as Adam reached past me to steal my favorite, the chocolate old fashioned.  To my surprise, he put the donut on a small plate and slid it across the counter to me without a word. 

“Yeah, we should all get together for a barbecue once a week,” Adam smirked.  “But for now, let me officially open up the topic at hand – keeping Luce from getting to Eve.  You know,
I hate to say it, but we should really have Luz or Oriana here to talk about what other options we have to keep her hidden closer to home.”

“We can’t call Luz,” I frowned, surprised he’d even thought to bring her up.  “I’m not dragging Parker back into this.  I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell him where to find me if he calls any of you.”

“Sounds good to me,” Adam muttered, but Daphne was less accepting. 

“But Mercy, doesn’t he deserve to be involved?”

“He’s moved on with his life, and he’s happy.  He doesn’t need me getting in the middle of things, complicating them.”  The same could be said of both Sam and Daphne, but complicating their lives didn’t seem nearly as messy.  Neither one of them had kissed me in a moment of weakness. 

“But Mercy, she’s his daughter.  I’m sure he’ll want to…”

“I can’t, okay?” I blurted out, shutting her down.  “I’m sorry, but I can’t be around him right now.  It’s too… it’s too much.”

“Besides, she’s my daughter, not his,” Adam grumbled.  “I’ll figure out how to hide her.”

“We’re all here to figure this out,” Sam said diplomatically.  “Surely we can come up with a workable solution that doesn’t involve witchcraft at all.”

I’d almost forgotten about his bias against witches.  “At this point I’ll take all the help I can get, Sam.”  Just not from Luz or Parker. 

“We should definitely get your witch-in-law’s two cents on it,” Adam agreed. 

“Perfect, I want to see Matty and Oriana anyway.  It won’t take me long to get to Las Vegas.”  I could see Adam’s brow furrow when I said
I
instead of
we
, but he didn’t complain. 

“Okay then.  You’ve got the Vegas angle covered.  Luz isn’t the only witch in town.  I’ll put some feelers out with some of the others and see what I can find out.”

I remembered the friendly terms he was on with some of the witches in her circle. 
That wasn’t all he’d be feeling.

“I’ll consult my books, see if there isn’t anything else we might try that doesn’t involve trafficking with the dark arts,” said Sam.

I opened my mind to remind him that the witches we knew weren’t into any of that stuff, but I changed my mind.  It wasn’t up to me to overcome years of prejudice. 

“I can do some shopping for Bunny for when you bring her back,” Daphne perked up at the thought.  “She needs pretty much everything, right?”

“That’s true.  Can I pay you back later?  I need to get in to the bank at some point and figure out my cash position.”  I’d had some savings before, but mostly Parker had provided for us when I stopped working.  “And I’ll need some things too.”

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” Adam cut me off.  “I’ve got that taken care of.”

The mind boggled. 

“Alright, so we have a plan then,” I sighed.  It wasn’t much of one yet, but I felt confident we’d turn something up with so many heads working on it.  “I think I’ll go tonight after dark.”

“Good, then you can come shopping with me today,” Daphne beamed.  We started to make specific plans, what stores we’d hit first, what the essentials were to shop for.  We had to drop Sam off at home before we went.  He’d overcome his aversion to cars enough to ride in them now that his wings were gone, but he was clueless as to how to drive on his own. 

Adam singled me out as I went to retrieve my coat from the bedroom.  “Hey.  You’re taking Nelo with you to Las Vegas?”

“That’s right.  I told him I wouldn’t leave him for a while, I can’t take off the very next day.  You saw how he was last night.”

He leaned in closer to where I stood at the closet door.  “What about me?  It’s been five years since I last saw you.  Aren’t you the least bit worried about bruising my tender feelings?”  Flashing his best bedroom eyes at me, his lips curved into a sexy smile and I felt that old familiar pull.

“You can take it.”

“You are coming back though, no matter what you find out, right?”  There was a trace of vulnerability there beneath the swagger.

“Of course.” 

“Then why can’t I come too?” he pouted.

“Somebody needs to stick around and take care of Bitey,” I reminded him with a sweet smile.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Remember, we need to stay hidden from human eyes, so stay with me, or keep to the shadows while we’re here.  Okay, Nelo?  Las Vegas can be somewhat overwhelming sometimes.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Nelo agreed, his amber eyes bulging from all the lights on the strip.  I had it from Daphne that Oriana was headlining at a smaller club called Voo Doo Blues.  Sure enough, I saw the name of their act on the marquee –
Madame Oriana Knows All!

The establishment was small, but doing a brisk business, the waitresses wearing enough so that I wasn’t worried they’d stuck her into some kind of a burlesque club.  I spotted Oriana almost instantly, her long, silvery hair catching the stage lights, surrounding her in a sort of halo effect.  She sat at a deeply curtained table behind a glowing crystal ball, her eyes gazing into its depths. 

Dressed as a kind of gypsy/pirate wench – it was hard to tell what they were going for, between the bright scarves that made up her skirt and the leather bustier corseting her within an inch of her life.  She almost looked like a child dressing up for Halloween rather than a grown woman. 

Behind a partition sat a middle aged woman with a shock of frizzy orange hair, wearing a purple sequined dress two sizes too small for her.  On her lap rested a plastic bucket, the type a kid might take to the beach.  She drew a large card from the bucket, with a picture of a boat on the water. 

“I see a ship lost at sea.  Quickly, bring on the next challenge before the spirits depart!” Oriana said in a ringing voice, with far more theatricality than I gave her credit for. 

The woman looked suitably impressed, as did the crowd.  But now she dug through the cards, choosing one from the middle, probably thinking she’d memorized the order they were in or something.  The next card she held up had a china doll on it.

Oriana clapped her hands together in delight.  “Oh, how lovely, a pretty doll.  I had a pretty doll once but Mummy said that only good girls who mind their manners get to keep pretty dolls.  Naughty girls get the fiery furnace.”  Her voice was so forlorn at the last bit, I forgot I had a goal in mind, stopping to watch with rapt attention.   

“There she is, the Bringer of Life!”  Oriana cried out suddenly, hopping to her feet. 

“I beg your pardon?” the woman said, looking down at the card in confusion, but Oriana ignored her, beaming at me. 

“I’d forgotten how she shines.  Isn’t she pretty?”

I wasn’t sure if I should acknowledge her or keep stepping, but she looked at me expectantly, so I had to say
something
.  “Hey, Oriana.  I’ll catch up with you back stage.  I don’t want to interrupt your act.”

“Oh, I don’t mind.  I’d rather talk to you anyway.  This one’s wits are soft like cheese.” 

“Who is she talking to?” The woman tried to peep over the divider, not sure if it was part of the act or not. 

“And Nelo too!  We shall have a party!” 

“Yes, we’ll have cakes and tea.” I smiled at her enthusiasm.  “But you should finish your job here.  I’ll be backstage waiting.”

“You won’t change your mind and leave again?  Matty would be most disappointed, as would I.”

“No, I promise I’ll be there.”