“Gone?” I wasn’t going into that shop alone with her. Instead, I pounded her with the kind of questions any customer . . . okay, any obsessive customer would ask. “Where is he? Do you know how I can get in touch with him? Why isn’t the store open?”

She smiled. “I don’t know where he is at the moment.” Another evasion. She might know that he was in the basement, for instance, but not exactly where he was standing. “He’ll probably let me know when he gets a chance to call me. Who should I tell him came asking after him?”

I looked into her guileless eyes and knew that Tad had been right to be worried. All I had was Phin’s unresponsive phone, a nasty neighbor, and the store closed—but my instincts were clamoring. Something had happened to Phin, something bad.

I didn’t know him well, but I liked him. And, going by the phone call Tad had received, whatever had happened to him was tied to the book he’d loaned to me. Which made it my fault. Maybe if I hadn’t kept it to read this past month, he’d still be safe in his store.

I smiled back at her, a polite smile. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll stop in another time.”

She snapped her fingers. “Wait just a minute. My grandson told me that he’d loaned a nice young woman a rather valuable book that she should be returning soon.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Right now I’m interested in a first British edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” Not really a lie. It would be interesting, and I didn’t tell her I was trying to buy one. I don’t know if the fae can figure out if someone is lying as well as the werewolves can, but any group that has a prohibition against lying that is as stringent as the fae’s probably has a method to detect when it happens.

“He didn’t tell me about anything like that,” she said suspiciously, as if he would have normally.

But she had lost the chance to convince me that she was Phin’s assistant when she allowed my comment that she was a stranger to his store to stand.

“I suspect it’ll take him a while,” I told her. “I just stopped by to check in with him. I’ll come back another time.” I stopped the “thanks” that was on the tip of my tongue and substituted “Bye, now” and a casual wave.

I felt her eyes on my back until I was hidden behind rows of cars, and I was glad I’d parked the car a long way from the mall. Sam moved his head off my seat without raising any part of his body enough that he might be seen through the windows. He was hiding.

I looked at him and glanced at the bookstore as I cruised past it on the way out of the parking lot. The woman was back behind the counter going over something that looked like an account book.

Coincidences happen a lot less often in real life than they do in the movies.

“Sam,” I said, “are you staying out of sight of a fae? One that smells like all the elements at once?”

He raised his chin and dropped it.

“Is she one of the good guys?” I asked.

He made a gesture that was neither yes nor no.

“Trouble?”

He snorted affirmative.

“Damn it.”

I pulled over at a gas station, parked the car, and called Warren, Adam’s third in the pack and my friend.

“Hey, Warren,” I said when he answered. “Does Kyle have a safe in that monstrosity he lives in?” I could put the book in Adam’s safe—and if it weren’t fae who were looking for it, I’d feel relatively confident with it hidden and surrounded by werewolves. But Warren’s human boyfriend’s house would be a much less likely spot to leave it and nearly as safe.

“Several.” Warren’s voice was dry. “I’m sure he’d be delighted to loan you one. You storin’ blackmail material now, Mercy?” There were noises in the background of his phone, people and the kind of echoing you get in a really big building.

“Wouldn’t that be something,” I said. “How much do you suppose Adam would pay to keep an X-rated video of him off the Internet?”

Warren laughed.

“Yeah,” I said sadly, “that’s what I think, too. So no riches in my future, and no blackmail either. Can you or Kyle meet Sam and me at Kyle’s house sometime soon?”

“I’m on guard duty right now, but I bet Kyle is home. He doesn’t always answer the house phone. Do you have his cell number?”

Warren worked for his boyfriend—I know, it’s an awkward thing, but Warren hadn’t exactly been making rent at the Stop and Rob he’d worked at before. Kyle’d shaken a few trees, bribed a few officials (probably) and maybe blackmailed more, and gotten Warren a private detective’s license. Warren guarded clients and did quiet investigations for Kyle’s law firm.

“I have it,” I told him. “Are you at Wal-Mart?”

“Nope, grocery store. Wal-Mart was an hour ago.”

“Poor baby,” I said sympathetically.

“Nope,” he said, his voice soft. “I’m doin’ something useful. This lady deserves to feel safe—though lots of folks seem to think I’m responsible for her black eye.”

“You’re tough,” I said unsympathetically. “You can handle a few nasty looks.” Being a gay werewolf for a hundred years gave Warren a skin so thick it might as well be armor. Not much ruffled his feathers except for Kyle.

“I’m kinda hoping her soon-to-be-ex shows up,” he said softly; I thought so she wouldn’t hear him. “I’d like to get the opportunity to introduce myself to him.”

KYLE BROOKS’S HOUSE IS IN THE WEST RICHLAND HILLS, where the rich folks live. Huge and yet somehow delicately designed, it settles in among its neighbors like a sly cat among poodles. The size is right, but it’s more graceful and comfortable in the desert light than the rest of them. Divorce lawyering, at least in Kyle’s case, pays very well.

I parked the Rabbit on the street, let Sam out, and got the book . . . and the walking stick that was lying beside it.

“Hello,” I told it. It didn’t do anything magical or warm in my hands, but somehow, it felt smug.

I bumped the Rabbit’s door closed with a hip and trotted all the way up to Kyle’s front door. The significance of the book had just entered a whole new dimension, once the old woman at the bookstore had mentioned it. So I held it with both hands and tucked the walking stick under my arm.

When I got to the front door, I couldn’t ring the bell.

Sam saw my dilemma and caught the doorbell with a gentle nudge of one claw. Kyle must have been right by the door, as he’d promised when we talked, because when he opened the door, he was face-to-fang with Sam.

He didn’t even flinch. Instead, he cocked a hip, made a kissy face, then smiled seductively, turning an ordinary pair of jeans and a purple wifebeater into brothel-wear.

“Hey, darling,” he told Sam. “I bet you’re gorgeous in man shape, hmm?”

“It’s Sam,” I told Kyle dryly. And even though I knew it would just stir up trouble, I had to warn him again because I really liked him. “You need to be careful about whom you flirt with among the wolves—you might get more than you bargain for.”

Kyle could sometimes have a real chip on his shoulder—getting disinherited, then living in a conservative community has had that effect on more than one gay man—and Kyle could take flaming (and bitchy) to an art form when he thought it would make someone who disapproved of him uncomfortable. Luckily, he chose to take my warning in the spirit it was offered.

In an entirely different kind of voice, he said, “Love you, too, Mercy.” He dropped the flirtatious act with a speed and completeness that many an Oscar winner would envy. “Hey, Samuel. Sorry, didn’t recognize you with all the fur.” He looked at what I held. “You want to put a towel in my safe?”

“It’s a very special towel,” I told him as I ducked around him and into the house. “Dried Elvis’s hair on the day of the last concert.”

“Oooh,” he said, stepping back so Sam could follow me. He shut the door and, almost as an afterthought, turned the dead bolt. “In that case, you certainly need it someplace secure. You want the big safe with all the electronics or something better hidden?”