“We exist independently because Bran allows it,” I said dryly. “Bran hasn’t given our pack carte blanche, and he wouldn’t have overlooked Harolford taking over. Did James call Bran yesterday?”
“Yes,” she said. “And talked to him for a while, apparently. But he didn’t say anything until Fiona and Sven left to go after their target—we were supposed to go after ours then. That doesn’t matter. We didn’t. Once the four of us were alone, James explained to us that Fiona had been lying to us all along: we could have gone to Bran for help—but Fiona is under a death sentence. She needed us.”
“Bran would have killed her, even if she and Harolford had succeeded here,” I told her.
“So James said,” she agreed.
“So how did James get turned to stone?” I asked.
“Bran invited us to Montana. As soon as Fiona and Sven left, we started packing,” she said. “James finished first so he went to get the car. He never came back. We were looking for him—and Li said … Li said, ‘Hey, Nonnie, do you remember a rock being there?’ And it was James.”
There was horror in her voice. I didn’t want to push her over the edge until she’d given us all of the information that we needed, so I didn’t ask her any more about James. I’d see him soon enough.
“When are you expecting Fiona back?” I asked. “We will help if we can, but I need to know what my people will be walking into.”
“Sven and Fiona are supposed to be back here by five,” she said. “But Fiona likes to savor her kills—and if you manage to keep her from her target … she doesn’t give up.”
I looked at Adam, who had just set his phone down. I hadn’t tried to follow his conversation.
“The three of them will stay indoors and away from windows until we give them an all-clear. Warren and Zack are armed. Kyle is sending everyone in his office home. We can hunt Fiona and Harolford down at our leisure.”
“Did you hear that?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Kyle Brooks is safe and likely to stay that way. We have time. I am going to hang up now and confer with Adam. Expect us about a half hour from now.”
“Okay,” she said mournfully. “We’ll wait.”
I hung up.
“We can’t help Ben,” Adam said. “And no one turned him to stone.”
“I’ve been working on how to deal with the weaver,” I told him. I grabbed the backpack we kept on the floor of the back seat and came up with the protein bars. “I’d like to have had more time to make sure I’m right. But I know who our villain is—and I think I know what we need to do.”
“Tell me,” Adam said.
“I can’t tell you his name—I think that might attract his attention in the wrong way.”
“But you’ve worked it out?” he asked.
I nodded. “Maybe. Probably. He’s not powerful as the fae go.”
Adam gave me a look.
“Really. Outside of the power that Underhill gave him, he is one of the lesser fae.”
“How do you know that?” he asked.
“The fae are creatures whose lives are bound by rules. That they cannot lie being the core rule all of them must follow.” I handed him a protein bar. “Here, eat this.”
“I never thought of them that way,” Adam said, taking the bar and starting in on it. I immediately felt a little calmer.
“That’s because you usually deal with the powerful fae,” I told him. “The Gray Lords, Zee, Baba Yaga, and the like. The powerful fae have a lot fewer rules and they are bendy.”
“Okay,” he said. “Yes, I’ve noticed that.”
“The other important thing to remember about the rules is that they constrain all the fae. But only the fae.” I frowned. “Dang it. I think that the rule about lying has to be an exception, because we know that the fae actually can lie—they just suffer a horrible fate if they do.”
“Maybe that is the rule,” Adam suggested. “If a fae lies, they will suffer a horrible fate.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling better. “That fits. And the fae can’t lie without suffering a horrible fate. But we could lie to a fae.”
“Only if we have a death wish,” said Adam. “But I know what you mean. I could tell Zee that you love orange juice. Which he knows isn’t true. But I could say the words and not suffer a horrible fate.”
“Right,” I told him.
“The weaker the fae, the more rules they have?” Adam asked, pulling the conversation back to the point.
“Yes.” I looked up and realized he was taking the most direct route to the address we’d been given. “Could we make a stop at home before we go see what the smoke weaver has done to James Palsic?”
His eyebrows went up, but he made a minor course correction that would take us home first. I unwrapped another protein bar and handed it to him. His lip quirked up, but he took the bar.
I watched him eat and thought about how I wanted to frame the information I’d put together. I needed him to believe me so that he would agree to the plan I’d devoted a lot of time to yesterday while I had been fixing cars. Because that plan required a certain amount of risk on my part—which was something that was hard for Adam. But I was the only person who could do it.
“Take brownies,” I said. “The lowest caste of brownies have very specific rules. They must find good people. Once they do, they clean their homes or do work for them—and this makes the brownies happy. But they can do these things only so long as the people they are working for never see them and never say anything about them. They must be given milk and bread—but cannot be thanked aloud. If they are seen, thanked, or not fed, the brownies have to move on and find someone else to serve. They have no choice about any of it.”
“What rules does the smoke weaver have?” Adam asked.
“He has to make bargains,” I told him. “If one is offered to him properly, he has to accept. That’s how Underhill caught him in the first place. And there’s a rule about his name, too. People who know it can’t tell anyone what it is. Before Underhill got ahold of him, he had only one power, to transform one thing into another. It is an impressive power—but it is also very limited.”
“Tell that to James Palsic,” said Adam.
“Yes, well.” I waved that away. It shouldn’t matter to my plan. I hoped. “Tilly told me that the intent of her upgrade was that he would have an easier time making himself look like a specific person. It made me think that was a problem for him before she changed him. Like maybe he couldn’t make himself look very much like a person at all.”
Sorting through the implications of Tilly’s story had taken me most of yesterday.
“The way to defeat him is to use the rules that he has to follow,” I said. Baba Yaga had told me something of the sort.
“I can already tell,” Adam said, “that I’m not going to like this.”
“Here,” I said. “Eat another protein bar.”
I DROVE JESSE’S CAR TO THE ADDRESS THAT NONNIE Palsic had given me. Adam would collect what I needed from home and then follow me out; hopefully it wouldn’t take too long.