Adam’s head came up, and he measured the sound of the sirens. “Stay here,” he said, and hopped down into the hole. He was gone less than a minute before he was back.

He looked at Tad. “You need to be out of here before those sirens get close. Can you change your appearance so no one will recognize you?”

Tad nodded.

“Change shape, then,” Adam said. “You understand that it won’t just be the police coming here. Even the dumbest cop is going to see that there was magic afoot here. We’re going to have government agents, and if they get a glimpse of what you can do, they are going to want you. You are too powerful for anyone to let you run around loose: human, shapeshifter, or fae. No one but your dad knows exactly how powerful you are—let’s leave it like that.”

Tad changed like I do—between one breath and the next. He was a little taller than usual and a lot handsomer. He looked clean-cut and real. I wondered if he’d stolen the appearance from someone or if he practiced in front of a mirror.

“That’s good,” said Adam. “Go.”

“Thank you,” I told him.

He grinned, and Tad’s grin looked odd on the stranger’s face. “You aren’t supposed to thank the fae, Mercy. You’re just lucky I like you.” Then he strolled casually outside and away.

Adam pulled out his cell phone. “Jim. Get rid of all copies of the feed to Mercy’s garage after I hit Flores with the engine. Blur or get rid of anything that shows Mercy’s assistant after he left when she closed up.”

“Got it.”

He hung up the phone and looked at me. He’d seen it faster than I had. Tad was incredibly powerful to do what he’d done. He was also young, and with his father locked away in Fairyland (the Ronald Wilson Reagan Fae Reservation’s less respectful nickname), he was vulnerable: no one but family could know what he was. I looked at the sheet of aluminum, now crumpled and torn aside. It could have been an airplane or a tank or … We needed to keep him safe.

“The hole goes underground out to the parking lot.”

“He told me his name was Guayota,” I said—and that’s when I saw the naked dead man lying on the floor where a dead dog should have been.

I blinked twice, and he was still there, belly down, but his head turned to the side so I could see the single bullet hole in his forehead. My bullet hole.

“Adam?” I said, and my voice was a little high.

He turned his head and saw the man, too. “Who is that?”

“I think,” I said slowly, “I think that’s the dog I shot.” I remembered that too-intelligent, ancient gaze.