“I’ll take chocolate, if it is all the same to you,” I told her.

“Mercy!” roared Adam from somewhere beyond the hall.

“Uh-oh,” said Yo-yo Girl. “Someone missed out on all the killing.”

“Here!” I called. “We’re okay.”

And then it was true. Because Adam was there and he had his arms around me and that made everything all right.

I KICKED THE SNOW AND STUBBED MY TOE ON THE kitchen sink. It was the night of the big rescue, and everyone was partying over at Adam’s house. I’d been hugged and fussed over until I decided that it was a good time to go check out the remains of my home.

The snow hid a lot, and the pack had cleaned it up. They’d had the whole month that I’d been missing to do it. I suppose I was lucky it hadn’t been a year or a century.

They hadn’t been able to find the Elphame after Zee had been forced to let his door close. Apparently, as Zee explained it to me, the Elphame moved in relation to the reservation, and Ariana hadn’t been able to find me.

It was only when the bond between Adam and me reconnected that they were able to locate the Elphame. While Zee worked to make another entrance, they’d sent Yo-yo Girl ahead to make sure I was safe. She apparently didn’t need anything as crude as an entrance to find her way to the Elphame. She probably had a name besides Yo-yo Girl, but the fae are funny about names, and no one wanted to give her a real one.

The fae who had belonged to the fairy queen were being housed in the reservation temporarily. Some of them had no memory of how they’d come to follow the fairy queen. Some of them were angry that I’d killed her, but not so angry they’d made any move against me. Zee said that the Gray Lords were torn between anger at the way the fairy queen had used a forest lord and a black witch, and triumph at the proof that Underhill was returning some power to all of the fae.

There wasn’t much left of my trailer except for a small pile of things that might be reused. I hadn’t lost the pole barn with my Vanagon inside. I hadn’t lost Medea or Samuel.

The first time I’d seen the place, there had been a coyote hiding under the porch, and I’d taken it as an omen. When I’d finally bought it, I’d felt like I had a home for the first time in my life. A home no one could take away from me.

“Saying good-bye?”

I hadn’t heard the Marrok, but Bran was like that.

“Yeah.” I smiled at him so he’d know I didn’t mind his presence.

“I meant to thank you for Samuel,” Bran said.

I shook my head. “It wasn’t me. It was Ariana—have you seen them together? Aren’t they cute?” Ariana wasn’t at Adam’s house, though Samuel was. She wasn’t quite up to bearing a pack of werewolves celebrating madly. Samuel had talked about her for twenty minutes, though.

Ariana hadn’t managed to touch Samuel when he was a wolf—yet, Samuel had told me. But she didn’t have any trouble with Samuel the man, and she didn’t have panic attacks around any of the werewolves—as long as they were calm and approached her one at a time in human form. She’d just needed a reason to work on her phobias, he’d explained with great pride. Bran had smiled when Samuel said that, the smile that said the Marrok had been up to something. So he might have had something to do with her finding her way among the wolves. Or maybe he just wanted me to think that. I’ve found that I do better when I don’t worry too hard about what Bran can and can’t do.

“Ariana is a gift,” said Bran. “But if it hadn’t been for what you did, Samuel wouldn’t have been around to receive it.”

“That’s what friends are for,” I told him. “Lift you when you’re down—and kick you in the rump when you need it. Adam helped. Speaking of friends, thank you for the Pack Magic 101 that kept me from being Zombie Mercy.”

He smiled, an expression that made him look about sixteen. If you didn’t know him, it would be hard to believe that this young man with the diffident expression was the Marrok.

“Did you get all of that?” he asked. “I wasn’t sure how much made it through.”

I looked at his innocent expression. “How much did you get back?”

He gave me wide eyes, then grinned. “I think that we both were getting a bit of a boost from an interested party.”

“Who?”

“Zee had no trouble freeing the forest lord from his chains. He’s a charming fellow, by the way, very gracious as well as powerful. She kidnapped him from his own place in northern California about a year, year and a half ago. His wife and family were very glad to hear that he’ll be coming home soon. Daphne, the fairy queen, apparently visited the reservation and decided this would be a good place to roost. She enthralled a nasty witch and used her to grab the forest lord—because she didn’t have enough power to enthrall him.”

“You think he helped us?”

“Someone did. I’d just about given up.” He looked around at the remnants of my home. “I have a more probable answer, but I’m having a little trouble wrapping my head around it. Have you decided what you are going to do with this yet?”

“It was insured,” I told him. “I might as well replace it.” Gabriel might need to live somewhere.

He and Zee had kept the shop going for the month I’d been missing. His mother wasn’t happy with his doing that, so he was living at Adam’s house. In the basement—as far from Jesse’s bedroom as Adam could manage.

“Look,” said Bran. “Your oak tree didn’t burn down.”

“Yeah,” I said, pleased. “Scorched a bit, but I think it’ll be okay.” I took a step toward it, and my foot caught something and moved it. I thought at first it was a broom handle, but when I bent down to retrieve it, it turned out to be my old friend the walking stick.

“Ah,” said Bran. “I wondered where that had gotten off to.”

I gave it a thoughtful look. “You’ve seen it?”

“It was sitting on the couch in Adam’s basement,” he said. “When I picked it up—suddenly all my efforts bore fruit at last, and I found you among the pack bonds as if you had never been missing.”

I gave him a wry smile. “It does seem to show up at interesting moments.”

“So,” he said, “have you given any thought to raising sheep?”

“Not at the present time,” I replied dryly. “No.”

We walked a little more in companionable silence.

“I have some photos,” Bran said abruptly. “Of Bryan and Evelyn.” My werewolf foster family. “Some of your old school pictures, too, if you want them.”

“I’d like that,” I said.

He looked back toward Adam’s house, and I saw that someone else was headed over.

“Looks like you’ve been missed. I’ll leave you alone.” He kissed my forehead and jogged off.

He met Adam at the barbed-wire fence, and Adam said something I couldn’t quite hear that made Bran laugh.

“Hey,” I said, as Adam approached me. His response was a blast of warmth that had me blushing.

“Do you have keys to your van?” he asked, his voice a dark caress that gave me goose bumps. He smelled of need and impatience.

“They’re in the van.”

“Good,” he said, taking my arm and walking briskly toward the pole barn that had survived the fire without a scorch mark. “If I had to go get my truck, someone might notice us leaving. I have keys to Warren’s apartment. He said the guest room has clean sheets.”

He stopped at the van. “I need to drive.”

Normally, I’d have argued with him just on general principle, but sometimes, especially with Adam so intense that he was ready to explode, it was just better to give Alpha males their way. Without a word, I headed toward the passenger side of the van.

He didn’t speed and he didn’t talk. We made it to Richland without hitting a red light, but there our luck ran out.

“Adam,” I said gently, “if you break my steering wheel, we’ll have to walk the rest of the way to Warren’s house.”

He loosened his hands but didn’t look at me. I put a hand on his thigh, and it vibrated under my palm.