"Of course not," she said. "Not unless you were really pi-" I raised an eyebrow and she changed the word without slowing down. "-ticked off. Did you have a knife? Or was it a crowbar?"

"My teeth," I told her.

"Ewwe-" She grimaced briefly. "Nasty. Oh, I see. You mean that you took him on while you were a coyote?"

Most humans only know about the fae-and there are still a lot of people who think that the fae are just a hoax perpetrated by the government or on the government, take your pick. Jesse, however, as the daughter of a werewolf, human though she was, was quite aware of the "Wild Things" as she called them. Part of that was my fault. The first time I met her, shortly after the Alpha had moved his family next to my home, she'd asked me if I were a werewolf like her father. I told her what I was, and she nagged me until I showed her what it looked like when I took my other form. I think she was nine and already a practiced steamroller.

"Yep. I was just trying to get his attention so he'd chase me and leave Mac-that's the striped werewolf-" I imitated her finger-down-the-nose gesture. "He is pretty nice," I told her. Then, feeling I had to play adult in fairness to her father, I said, "But he's a newbie, and his control isn't terrific yet. So listen to your father about him, okay? If Mac bit you or hurt you, it would make him feel awful, and he's had a bad enough time of it already." I hesitated. It really wasn't my business, but I liked Jesse. "There are a few of your father's wolves that you really do need to stay away from."

She nodded, but said confidently, "They won't hurt me, not with my father. But you mean Ben, don't you? Dad told me to stay out of his way. I met him yesterday when he stopped by." She wrinkled her nose. "He's a snark-even if he has that cool British accent."

I wasn't certain what a snark was, but I was certain Ben qualified.

We ate the cookies as they came out of the oven, and I gave her a loaded plate covered with tinfoil to take back with her. I went out to the porch with her and saw a sales-lot of cars parked at Adam's house. He must have called in the pack.

"I'll walk you home," I said, slipping on the shoes I kept on the porch for when it was muddy.

She rolled her eyes, but waited for me. "Really, Mercy, what'll you do if one of the pack decides to bother us?"

"I can scream really loud," I said. "That's if I don't decide to use my newly patented technique and kill him, too."

"That's right," she said. "But I'd stick to screaming. I don't think that Dad would like it if you started killing his wolves."

Probably none of them would harm a hair of her head, just as she thought. I was almost sure she was right. But one of the cars I could see was Ben's red truck. I wouldn't leave a fifteen-year-old alone if Ben was around no matter whose daughter she was.

No one bothered us as we walked through my back field.

"Nice car," she murmured, as we passed the donor Rabbit's corpse. "Dad really appreciates you setting it out here for him. Good for you. I told him the next time he annoyed you, you were likely to paint graffiti on it."

"Your father is a subtle man," I told her. "I'm saving the graffiti for later. I've decided that the next time he gets obnoxious, I'll take three tires off." I held my hand out and canted it, like a car with one wheel.

She giggled. "It would drive him nuts. You should see him when the pictures aren't hanging straight on the walls." We reached the back fence, and she climbed cautiously through the old barbed wire. "If you do decide to paint it-let me help?"

"Absolutely," I promised. "I'll wait here until you're safely inside."

She rolled her eyes again, but grinned and sprinted for her back porch. I waited until she waved to me once from Adam's back door and disappeared inside.

When I took the garbage out before I went to bed, I noticed that Adam's place was still full of cars. It was a long meeting, then. Made me grateful I wasn't a werewolf.

I turned to go into my house and stopped. I'd been stupid. It doesn't matter how good your senses are if you aren't paying attention.

"Hello, Ben," I said, to the man standing between me and the house.

"You've been telling tales, Mercedes Thompson," he said pleasantly. As Jesse had said, he had a nifty English accent. He wasn't bad-looking either, if a trifle effeminate for my taste.

"Mmm?" I said.

He tossed his keys up in the air and caught them one-handed, once, twice, three times without taking his eyes off mine. If I yelled, Adam would hear, but, as I told him earlier, I didn't belong to him. He was possessive enough, thank you. I didn't really believe Ben was stupid enough to do something to me, not with Adam within shouting distance.

" 'Stay here a moment, Ben, " Ben said, with an exaggeration of the drawl that Adam's voice still held from a childhood spent in the deep South. " 'Wait until my daughter has had a chance to get to her room. Wouldn't want to expose her to the likes of you. " The last sentence lost Adam's tone and fell back into his own crisp British accent. He didn't sound quite like Prince Charles, but closer to that than to Fagan in Oliver.

"I don't know what you think it has to do with me," I told him with a shrug. "You're the one who got kicked out of the London pack. If Adam hadn't taken you, you'd have been in real trouble."

"It wasn't me that done it," he growled ungrammatically. I refrained from correcting him with an effort. "And as for what you have to do with it, Adam told me you'd warned him to keep Jesse out of my way."

I didn't remember doing that although I might have. I shrugged. Ben had come to town a few months ago in a flurry of gossip. There had been three particularly brutal rapes in his London neighborhood, and the police had been looking in his direction. Guilty or not, his Alpha felt it would be good to get him out of the limelight and shipped him to Adam.