Silver Borne

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Titles by Patricia Briggs

The Mercy Thompson Novels

MOON CALLED
BLOOD BOUND
IRON KISSED
BONE CROSSED
SILVER BORNE

The Alpha and Omega Novels

ON THE PROWL

(with Eileen Wilks, Karen Chance, and Sunny)

CRY WOLF
HUNTING GROUND

MASQUES
STEAL THE DRAGON
WHEN DEMONS WALK

THE HOB’S BARGAIN

DRAGON BONES
DRAGON BLOOD

RAVEN’S SHADOW
RAVEN’S STRIKE

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This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Map illustration by Michael Enzweiler.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Briggs, Patricia.

ISBN: 9781101186114

1. Thompson, Mercy (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Automobile mechanics—Fiction.

3. Werewolves—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3602.R53165S56 2010

813’.6—dc22 2010001113

To Long-Suffering Editors who never lose their cool, Husbands
who feed horses, Children who drive themselves and fix their own
meals, to Vets who take panicked phone calls at all hours, and to
all of you who give of your time, talents, and energy to help
others and to be there when you are needed. My thanks.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many people who helped with this book. Thank you to Michael and Susann Boch, my friends in Germany who fix my German and provided Zee with his magic. Thank you to the two women who work at KGH and helped me find a safe space for Samuel. My apologies for losing the scrap of paper I wrote your names down on. If you catch me again, I will include your names in the next book. Thank you to Sylvia Cornish and the ladies of the book club who answered my questions about warrants. My thanks also go to Sgt. Kim Lattin of the Kennewick Police Department, who answered a number of urgent questions for me. To my awe-some husband, who choreographed many of the fight scenes (in this and other books). To Tom Lentz, who has a Kel-Tec and with Kaye and Kyle Roberson gave me excellent gun advice. As always, a very grateful author acknowledges the editing talents of the people who read, critiqued, commented, and argued along the way: Mike Briggs, Collin Briggs, Michael Enzweiler, Debbie Lentz, Ann Peters, Kaye and Kyle Roberson, Sara and Bob Schwager, and Anne Sowards.

As always, any and all errors in this book are the responsibility of the author.

1

THE STARTER COMPLAINED AS IT TURNED OVER THE old Buick’s heavy engine. I felt a lot of sympathy for it since fighting outside my weight class was something I was intimately familiar with. I’m a coyote shapeshifter playing in a world of werewolves and vampires—outmatched is an understatement.

“One more time,” I told Gabriel, my seventeen-year-old office manager, who was sitting in the driver’s seat of his mother’s Buick. I sniffed and dried my nose on the shoulder of my work overalls. Runny noses are part and parcel of working in the winter.

I love being a mechanic, runny nose, greasy hands, and all.

It’s a life full of frustration and barked knuckles, followed by brief moments of triumph that make all the rest worthwhile. I find it a refuge from the chaos my life has been lately: no one is likely to die if I can’t fix his car.

Not even if it is his mother’s car. It had been a short day at school, and Gabriel had used his free time to try to fix his mother’s car. He’d taken it from running badly to not at all, then had a friend tow it to the shop to see if I could fix it.

The Buick made a few more unhealthy noises. I stepped back from the open engine compartment. Fuel, fire, and air make the engine run—providing that the engine in question isn’t toast.

“It’s not catching, Mercy,” said Gabriel, as if I hadn’t noticed.

He gripped the steering wheel with elegant but work-roughened hands. There was a smear of grease on his cheekbone, and one eye was red because he hadn’t put on safety glasses when he’d crawled under the car. He’d been rewarded with a big chunk of crud—rusty metal and grease—in his eye.

Even though my big heaters were keeping the edge off the cold, we both wore jackets. There is no way to keep a shop truly warm when you are running garage doors up and down all day.

“Mercy, my mamá has to be at work in an hour.”

“The good news is that I don’t think it’s anything you did.” I stepped away from the engine compartment and met his frantic eyes. “The bad news is that it’s not going to be running in an hour. Jury’s out on whether it will be back on the road at all.”

He slid out of the car and leaned under the hood to stare at the Little Engine That Couldn’t as if he might find some wire I hadn’t noticed that would miraculously make it run. I left him to his brooding and went through the hall to my office.

Behind the counter was a grubby, used-to-be-white board with hooks where I put the keys of cars I was working on—and a half dozen mystery keys that predated my tenure. I pulled a set of keys attached to a rainbow peace-sign keychain, then trotted back to the garage. Gabriel was back to sitting behind the wheel of his mother’s Buick and looking sick. I handed him the keys through the open window.

“Take the Bug,” I told him. “Tell your mom that the turn signals don’t blink, so she’ll have to use hand signals. And tell her not to pull back on the steering wheel too hard or it will come off.”

His face got stubborn.

“Look,” I said before he could refuse, “it’s not going to cost me anything. It won’t hold all the kids”—not that the Buick did; there were a lot of kids—“and it doesn’t have much of a heater. But it runs, and I’m not using it. We’ll work on the Buick after hours until it’s done, and you can owe me that many hours.”

I was pretty sure the engine had gone to the great junkyard in the sky—and I knew that Sylvia, Gabriel’s mother, couldn’t afford to buy a new engine, any more than she could buy a newer car. So I’d call upon Zee, my old mentor, to work his magic on it. Literal magic—there was not much figurative about Zee. He was a fae, a gremlin whose natural element was metal.

“The Bug’s your project car, Mercy.” Gabriel’s protest was weak.

My last project car, a Karmann Ghia, had sold. My take of the profits, shared with a terrific bodyman and an upholsterer, had purchased a ’71 Beetle and a ’65 VW Bus with a little left over. The Bus was beautiful and didn’t run; the Bug had the opposite problem.

“I’ll work on the Bus first. Take the keys.”

The expression on his face was older than it should have been. “Only if you’ll let the girls come over and clean on Saturdays until we get the Bug back to you.”

I’m not dumb. His little sisters knew how t