“Mercy cares,” Honey said in that same funny voice she’d used before. She tapped a finger on the table. “She always cares.” This time it sounded more normal.

“I saw it,” Laughingdog said. “And that’s why I am suddenly a lot more interested in being helpful than I was ten minutes ago. What do you need, child?”

“Child?” I curled my lip, because letting a wolf get away with patronizing me would have been dangerous. A coyote was likely to be more annoying than dangerous, but in either case, it was better to stop it before it became a habit. Not that I expected to spend a lot of time with Gary Laughingdog; however, “better safe than sorry” was my phrase of the day.

He raised a hand in surrender. “I’m a lot older than I look, older by a damn sight than you and your bodyguard, too. Something I can tell because of this thrice-dammed useless foresight gift He left me with when I was about your age.” He nodded at Honey. “Said He’d come by and take it back, but He hasn’t.”

Beside me, Honey went still. Peter had been pretty old for a werewolf, at least two centuries. I didn’t know how old Honey was—and for the moment I didn’t care.

Werewolves don’t age physically. I’d always assumed that, like my human mother, I’d have a normal life span, and Adam could live to be as old as … well, as Bran Cornick, the Marrok, who ruled the North American werewolves and sometimes talked casually about things that happened in the Middle Ages. Through Hank and his brother, I had met a few other walkers, and they seemed to come in all varieties of young and old. I had known couples, growing up, where the werewolf looked to be in his twenties, and his wife was dying of old age. I didn’t want to do that to my mate. I worried about Adam because he didn’t talk about it at all, and Adam was all about discussing problems he thought had solutions.

I raised my chin. “How old will I get?”

He opened his mouth, then shook his head. “It’s not that kind of foresight. I don’t get dates, just possibilities. And if I did know, I don’t hate you enough to tell you.”

“She doesn’t know any other coyote walkers,” said Honey. “She is married to a man who will be young a hundred years from now. She wants to know that she is not going to leave him tied to a woman who will slowly die on him.”