Adam stared down the road. “If you hadn’t slowed down for me, you might have caught her.”

Maybe I would have—and maybe that wouldn’t have been a good thing. Warren’s truck pulled up, and Warren leaned over and opened the passenger door.

“No luck?” Warren asked, as we hopped in. I took the middle seat.

“No. Looks like she got in a car. Could have gone either way.”

Warren turned the truck around and headed back before he said anything. “That’s disturbing,” he said.

Zombies or not, the press needed to be appeased.

Tony had checked in with his boss and given him the official story that Adam and Armstrong had come up with—which was basically to leave out Cantrip’s involvement completely. The conveniently out-of-sight anonymous mercenaries took the majority of the blame. They had been hired to force the werewolves to act in violence and attack Senator Campbell, to get rid of the senator and to make the werewolves appear to be monsters.

Adam didn’t look like a monster. He looked like a handsome, charismatic man. He was very good on camera.

The person behind the plot apparently panicked when some of his mercenaries were captured while holding Kyle Brooks prisoner. He had them killed to keep them from talking.

Armstrong had done some uncleaning to reveal the deaths of the men caught kidnapping Kyle because it was now a useful part of the story.

When they heard about the killings, the other mercenaries left, burning the winery and letting Adam and the pack break free. Officials were trying to find the mercenaries (with an implied fat chance) and the man behind the plot (also fat chance). And hopefully, everyone would leave satisfied with nothing but the truth—if not quite the whole truth.

So Adam, Tony, Armstrong, Kyle, and Warren headed for Kyle’s office in Kennewick by way of Adam’s house so he could dress appropriately for a press conference, leaving the rest of us to hold down the fort. The good news was that between the runaway dead woman and the upcoming press conference, no one had said anything to me about the fact that I’d changed into a coyote. Maybe they all assumed I was a half-blood fae like Tad.

When Ben came up to tell me that there was a messenger from Marsilia for me at the front door, I was in one of the upstairs bedrooms reading James and the Giant Peach to the youngest three Sandovals. Kyle’s stash of emergency family-in-need supplies included a big box of books designed to appeal to a wide range of age groups.

“It’s just getting to the good part,” said Sofia. “We’re almost to the giant bugs.”

“Can you keep reading?” I asked Sylvia.

“Who is Marsilia?” she asked, taking the book from me.

“The woman who owns the car I’ve been driving around,” I told her.

She winced—she’d seen the car.

“Is that the vampire, Mercy?” asked Sissy, who was nearly seven going on thirty.