I opened the locker and collected the Vanagon’s keys. I walked out the prison door a free woman, but it wasn’t until I turned the van out onto the freeway that I really relaxed.

“So all you have to do to summon Coyote is be interesting,” Honey mused. “Shouldn’t take you long.”

“You could stake me out naked in the desert near an anthill,” I suggested.

She shook her head. “I don’t do clichés. Besides, Adam might object.”

My phone rang.

“Could you see who that is?” I asked.

She picked it up off the floor between our seats and, after a glance at the readout, answered it. “Adam, it’s Honey,” she said. “Mercy is driving.”

“Why hasn’t she picked up her phone for the past hour?” he asked.

She held the phone my direction and raised one eyebrow in inquiry.

“I’ve been in prison,” I said in a sad voice. And left it at that. Honey flashed a grin at me, the expression startling because I was so used to the reserve she’d been carrying around with her.

There was a brief silence. “Okay,” Adam said. “Was your undoubtedly brief sojourn the cause of your phone call earlier today? Christy said you didn’t leave a message.”

“Christy answered your cell phone, and you thought Mercy should leave a message?” Honey’s voice let everyone know exactly what she thought of that.

“No,” said Adam with gently emphasized patience. “I thought that she should have told Christy to give me the phone.”

“You were unavailable,” I told him.

Silence followed. Unhappy silence. And then I remembered who the enemy was and what she wanted to do to Adam and me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I let her get to me. But not to the point I did something stupid, I promise. I called Honey, and she came with me to see a man about summoning Coyote. Hank gave me his name. It was safe enough.”

Adam made a man sound that could have meant anything, but I took it to mean that we were okay again. When he used actual words, the subject wasn’t Christy anymore. “What did you learn from Hank’s contact?”

A lot. Important things I didn’t want to talk about on the phone. So I gave him the least of it. “He doesn’t summon Coyote because he’s pretty sure that’s the stupidest thing anyone could do. But apparently Coyote has a habit of showing up when he finds one of us—his descendants—interesting.”

Adam laughed ruefully. “Shouldn’t take you long, then.”

“That’s what I told her,” Honey said.

“Any word on the fire?” I asked.

“Arson is confirmed,” Adam said, “though there seems to be some confusion about the accelerant used. Whatever it was, it got really hot, really fast.”

“Do you think he’s done this kind of thing before?” I asked.