“I’ve just finished driving over the cable bridge when suddenly, Gary screams in my ear like Girl Number Two in some horror flick. It sounds like he is dying, so I pull right over on the side of the road instead of putting my foot on the gas and ramming the guy in front of me, which is that first reflex impulse I have when someone screams in my ear.” He paused, looking at me.
I figured that only a stupid person would say anything until he’d wound all the way down, so I stayed quiet and tried to look sympathetic.
Kyle’s foot tapped a rapid tattoo as he waited for me to respond. Finally, he said, “Warren gets out and opens the back door like he isn’t surprised. Like he expected Gary Laughingdog”–he bit out Gary’s name with special emphasis, separating the last name until the “Laughing” and the “dog” were really two separate words–“to break out screaming at any time. Warren whips off his belt and shoves it between Gary’s teeth because, Mercy, this relative of yours that we were just going to shove on a bus is having a grand mal seizure.
“So here I am, busy worried about what kind of people I’m associating with who are callously throwing a relative on a bus who has grand mal seizures so often that my partnerisn’t surprised by it–when my brain catches up with what the newscaster on the radio has been announcing. Can you imagine my amazement that Gary Laughingdog escaped from the Coyote Ridge Corrections Center? All this time when I thought I was escorting your relative, I’ve really been harboring an escaped convict.” He waited again, but I wasn’t that dumb.
He rocked forward as if he wanted to pace, but there just wasn’t room. “I explode all over my partner because it is instantly obvious to me that you and Adam both knew where he’d come from–because you’d talked to him before he came to my house. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Warren had known, too. I’m the only one left out of the ‘hey, this guy is an escaped convict’ knowledge circle.”
This is when I could have spoken, after he enunciated his problem, but he didn’t stop talking so I could explain.
“I told Warren when he lied to me about what he was that I don’t like lies,” he said. “Liars can’t be trusted. He told me that he would never lie to me again.”
He stopped talking then, but I had no words. I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten how much he hated to be lied to. How could I have forgotten, when he and Warren had broken up over it? Not over Warren’s being a werewolf but over Warren’s not telling Kyle what he was. They’d gotten back together, but it had been rough.
Gary moved his arm over his eyes. “Drama, drama, drama,” he whispered.
“You shut up,” I snapped. Warren and Kyle were going to break up, and it was my fault.
“You quit yelling while you’re in the room with the guy with a migraine,” Gary told me. “Look, Kyle. I get you. We’ve been trying to keep the whole escaped‑prisoner thing away from you–give you plausible deniability–but that’s obviously done. You go call the police and let them know you found me, and I’ll go quietly. You’ll keep your license–because you called them as soon as you found out, and we’ll all support you on that. But if you do, you have to know that it means that Warren and Adam will die.”
Kyle’s whole body turned to face the man on the bed. “What?”
“If I’m not here when the pack faces off with Guayota,” Gary said, very slowly and clearly like people do when they are talking to young children or people who don’t speak English, “then Guayota wins by killing all the wolves. That’s what this last Seeingwas about.”
He pulled his arm off his eyes and squinted at me. “Let this be a lesson to you, pup. Do not deal with Coyote. He’ll screw you over every time. Had I had this vision while lying in prison, I’d have let everyone die because, hey, what did I care? Bunch of werewolves I don’t know bite the big one, big whoop. But Coyote waits until I meet everyone first. I likeAdam. He’s what an Alpha is supposed to be and so seldom is. I like Warren, and I really, really think Honey is hot. I can’t just go back to jail–no matter how safe from Coyote–and let them all die.”
“Coyote?” asked Kyle. He looked at me and frowned.
“Dear old Dad,” said Gary. “Mine and hers. That’s how we’re related.”
“Not mine,” I snapped. “My father was Joe Old Coyote who rode bulls and killed vampires. The vampires killed him and made it look like a car wreck. If my father was Coyote, then he abandoned my mother when she was sixteen and pregnant. If Coyote was my father I’d have to hunt him down and kill him.”
My father was Joe Old Coyote, who died on a road in the middle of nowhere in Montana before I was born. He didn’t know that he was just a shell Coyote wore because Coyote had grown bored. He wouldn’t have left us if he’d had a choice. After he died, my mother had to leave me with werewolves because she didn’t know what to do with me and because she was too young to work at most jobs full‑time. So she’d left me. And I was a freaking grown‑up, so I could just deal. I was happy. My mother was happy.
And my father was dead. And if my father was Joe Old Coyote, I didn’t have to kill him.
Both Gary and Kyle were looking at me oddly, and I realized that I must have said all of that out loud. I cleared my throat. “So, yes, daddy issues. Both of us, Kyle. Gary was in jail because Coyote managed to facilitate his breaking the law, then left him to be picked up by the police.” I looked at Gary. “You know, if you wanted to be really paranoid, you might consider that Coyote wouldn’t be excited about having Guayota here, in Coyote’s playground. You might think that maybe you were in jail so that you were somewhere I could find you when I needed to ask someone how to get it touch with Coyote.”
He closed his eyes and nodded. “I’ve had the same thought. But didn’t you come find me because some fae dude wanted the walking stick you gave Coyote? He’d have to have manipulated him, too.”
I dropped to the floor because it was just barely possible. Here I’d been complaining about Christy’s manipulations. But she was minor‑league next to Coyote.
“It wouldn’t take much, right?” I mused. “Beauclaire isn’t fond of humans. And here is one of his father’s artifacts in the hands of a human despite all the fae who’d tried to take it from her. I’m sure Coyote knows a few of the fae who might whisper in Beauclaire’s ear.” I looked at Gary. “Tell me I’mjust being paranoid.”
“The thing you have to ask yourself is this,” Gary said. “Is it Guayota Coyote wants to rid the world of, or us? I cantell you that he won’t care if we die. Death doesn’t mean the same thing to him as it does to us. Possibly it’s a test of strength. Survival is one of those Catch‑22s. If you live through one of Coyote’s games, it delights him because then he can push you into one that is more dangerous. On second thought”–he opened his eyes and looked at Kyle–“ please, call the cops.”
“Why were you in jail?” asked Kyle.
“Seriously? Do you know how many guilty people are in jail? None.” Gary’s voice rose to imitate a woman’s voice. “Honest. I didn’t kill him. He fell on my knife. Ten times.”
“I saw Chicago,” said Kyle. “You won’t lie to me because Mercy can tell if you lie. And I’m a lawyer, and, current circumstances aside, I’m pretty good at hearing lies, too.”
Gary stared intently at him for a moment, then shrugged, letting the tension in his body slide away. “I guess it doesn’t matter to me. I could tell you that I got drunk, stole a car–though I’m pretty sure that was Coyote, but I was drunk, so who knows. Then I stole four cases of two‑hundred‑dollar Scotch–I’m pretty sure that might have been Coyote, too, but all I remember is watching him opening one of the bottles. Finally, I parked the car in front of the police station and passed out in the backseat with all but one of the bottles of Scotch until the police found me the next morning. That I am sure was Coyote. If I told you all of that, it would be true.”