The Zee that stepped through the mirror wasn’t the one Adam was used to. Gone was the glamour that he’d presented to the world. He was no slender, balding old man—his sharp-featured face was both unaged and ancient, with skin the color of fumed oak. His body showed the musculature of a man who spent his days before a hot fire bending metal to his will—wide shoulders and taut flesh that knew hard work.

“Mercedes,” he said. “What have you done to your lips?”

Mercy touched her lips but didn’t say anything. Adam found that a hopeful sign.

White-gold hair slicked down over Zee’s shoulders like a waterfall of pale wheat. He wore, incongruously, a pair of black jeans and a gray flannel shirt with a motor-oil stain on one cuff. On his feet were his old battered, steel-toed boots.

Asil’s lips curled back, and he snarled softly.

“Peace, wolfling,” said Zee in his usual impatient and crabby fashion. “It’s been a long time since I hunted your kind. And, as I recall, you got away cleanly anyway. You have no axe to grind.”

The old fae frowned at Tad, who had set the deck of cards on the poker caddy and gotten to his feet.

“What’s wrong, Tad, that you’ve called me here?”

“What isn’t is a better question,” said Tad. “I’m really glad to see you. I don’t know exactly where to start.”

“If it helps,” Zee said, “I’m caught up to where someone has apparently taken most of the wolf pack captive. Last I heard, Mercy set you to guard Jesse and Gabriel while she went off to see how Kyle fared. I see that you managed to recover at least one of the wolves, Mercy.”

“Adam recovered himself,” Mercy told him. “The lips are from the silver.”

Zee frowned at her and took a couple of steps nearer. Adam stood up and pulled Mercy to her feet beside him, unwilling to let this stranger with Zee’s eyes and voice approach him when he was in a vulnerable position.

“Silver?”

Mercy explained how Coyote told her to change the rules and so she’d drunk the silver out of Adam’s body. Adam intended on having a word or two with Coyote the next time he saw him—not that it would do any good. Mercy backtracked and began again with Stefan’s helping her free Kyle and ran all the way through to escorting Asil to Sylvia’s house.

“So I sent Jesse and Gabriel to take the kids to Kyle’s house,” Mercy said.

“In Marsilia’s car, which now has a dent and a dead body in the back,” said Zee.

“It sounds worse than it is,” she assured him.

“No,” Adam disagreed. “It is exactly as bad as it sounds.”

“You know these assassins?” Zee asked Tad.