“Not being Coyote’s child with a mystical connection to a werewolf, I have to follow the rules of magic,” Zee told Adam. He pulled his hand away from my skin and frowned at the disk of silver he held while I caught my breath. “This is a lot of silver to have scattered in your body, Mercy—and we are not finished yet. And you said that you already rid yourself of some of it?”

Adam nodded. “I saw the bedroom floor.” He must have gone to Kyle’s first, then, and followed me to Sylvia’s. “More silver came out than went in. They gave me five or so good shots of the stuff, but nowhere near the amount on the floor.”

“Conservation of matter,” said Asil, “would indicate that perhaps she pulled the silver from more than just you. How bad is the pack?”

“Conservation of matter,” said Tad astringently, “is a funny concept when expressed by a werewolf. Who knows better that magic makes science blink than a 170-pound man who turns into a 250-pound werewolf?”

“They are not as bad as I’d feared,” Adam said slowly, though he acknowledged Tad’s comment with a smile. “I hadn’t considered that she might have helped the lot of us. Most of them are still pretty sick—but Warren and Darryl are almost back to normal. Still, if there had been that much silver, even scattered through all the pack, we would all be dead.”

“But there are still some sick from the silver?” Zee asked.

“Yes.”

Zee waved to Tad. “Come over here and put your hand over mine, I’ll show you how to do this so you can heal Adam’s pack.”

“Cool,” I said without enthusiasm, but my hackles had smoothed out again. “I get to be a teaching exercise.”

Like a dog with a face full of porcupine quills, I found it harder to stand still and let silver be drawn out a second time. But the pain did focus my attention on the present, as did Adam’s grim face. I gave him a cheery smile, and his frown deepened.

Zee taught magic the way he taught mechanicking—by making Tad do all the work while he stood behind him and made acerbic corrections. He did it in Old German, and though I can get by in modern German, the old stuff sounds a bit like Welsh spoken by a Swedish man with marbles in his mouth.

In the end, Tad held a dime-sized bit of silver, I rubbed the cramps out of my thighs, and Adam stalked back and forth like an enraged baboon I’d seen once at a zoo. Asil had retreated to the far corner of the room with a book, to keep his presence from inciting Adam further.