There was a bath attached to the guest room, and I staggered into it, washing out my mouth and scrubbing wherever the silver had touched. Kyle opened the sink cabinet and handed me a new toothbrush and one of those little travel toothpastes. I used it, twice. My lips were still black, like one of those thirteen-year-old goth girls who wore black lipstick.

“I used to know a couple of guys who painted their lips with silver nitrate to turn them that color,” Kyle said. “I thought it was pretty stupid. Your lips weren’t black when you went to sleep. What happened?”

“I’m afraid to guess,” I said. Silver nitrate sounded familiar. I was pretty sure that was what Gerry Wallace had used in his tranquilizer concoction. “Give me a few minutes, and I might have something worked up that sounds vaguely coherent, okay?”

He looked worried but nodded. I looked in the mirror again and touched my lips. They felt just like they usually did. I grabbed a towel and went out to clean up the mess, but stopped when I got to it. The silver sludge was thickening. What if the towel stuck to it and made a bigger mess? And there was a lot of the stuff, more than I’d thought. If all of this had come from Adam, he should have been dead.

“Well,” I said. “What do I do with this?”

“What? Never vomit on a floor before?” Kyle asked conversationally as he perched on the side of the bed. “Or never vomit silver?”

Ben, sitting far enough away from the mess that there was no chance he’d touch it, stared at me. He leaned toward me and sniffed before settling back, his eyes intent.

I lifted my arm and smelled it, smelled Adam on it. I suppose if I could suck silver through the mate bond, it made sense that Adam’s scent could follow me, too.

“It’s magic,” I told them, and Kyle rolled his eyes.

“Look.” I was speaking as much to myself as to him and Ben. “This shouldn’t have worked. You can’t do this.” I waved at the mess. “I shouldn’t have been able to do this. Pack magic, mating magic means that I can talk to Adam sometimes when we aren’t near each other. It doesn’t mean that I can suck the silver out of his body and bring it back with me.” I looked at the mess again. “And if there had been this much silver in his body, he’d be dead—and look like the Tin Man.”

Kyle blinked. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him quite so … neutral.

“You can talk to Adam when he’s not in the room, and you don’t have a phone?” he asked.

I nodded.