I was growing resigned to the way the pack dealt with me since my mate had declared me off-limits to anything but the utmost of respect on pain of death. By consensus, they mostly deferred to me, as if I were a wolf dominant to them.

It felt wrong and awkward, and it made the back of my neck itch. What did it say about me, I wondered, that I was more comfortable with all the snide comments and personal attacks than with gracious subservience?

“Wrong,” I told her.

I pointed at Ben. “Killing me instead of getting rich is bad. Consider yourself punished.”

I looked back at Mary Jo. “Ben is a simple problem with a simple solution. You are a stickier mess and this is not punishment. Or not really punishment. This”—I waved around us at the early-morning landscape—“is so you quit apologizing about the past for something you meant wholeheartedly at the time. And would do again under the same circumstances. Your apology is suspect—and annoying.”

Ben made an amused sound, sounding relaxed and happy—but he was bouncing on the balls of his feet again. “That sounds about right, Mary Jo. If she were really getting back at you for all the trouble you caused her—it might land you on the List of Mercy’s Epic Revenge. Like the Blue Dye Solution or the Chocolate Easter Bunny Incident. Getting called out at the butt-crack of dawn doesn’t make the grade.”

“So all I have to do is quit apologizing and you’ll stop calling me out at three in the morning to chase goblins or hunt down whatever that freak thing we killed last week was?” she asked skeptically.

“I can’t promise that,” I told her. Mary Jo was one of the few wolves I could count on not to increase the drama or violence of a situation. “But it will . . .” Must be truthful. I gave her a rueful shrug. “It might mean I stop calling you first.”

“Epic,” she said with a wry glance at Ben. “Epic it is. I think I will probably quit apologizing.” Then she said, “I suppose I’ll find some other way to irritate you.”

Hah! I’d been right—her apologies had been suspect. I had always liked Mary Jo—even if the reverse was not true.

She looked at the barn again and sighed heavily. “Have you spotted the goblin in there?”

She didn’t bother trying to be quiet—none of us had been. Our prey could hear at least as well as any of us. If he was in there, he’d have heard us drive up. I was still learning about the goblins and what they could do, but I did know that much.

“No,” I said.

“Do you think he’s still in there?” she asked.

“He’s still in there,” I said. I held out my arm so they could see the hair rise as I moved it closer to the barn. “If he weren’t, there wouldn’t be so much magic surrounding it.”

Mary Jo grunted. “Is it my imagination, or is it too dark in the barn?”

“I think I remember this,” said Ben thoughtfully, peering into the barn. His clear British accent had the weird effect of making everything he said sound a little more intelligent than it really was, an effect that he conscientiously—I was convinced—canceled by adding the kinds of words responsible for whole generations of people who knew what soap tasted like. “You know—the whole seeing-fuck-all-in-the-dark thing?”

“I never was human,” I told him. “I’ve always been able to see pretty well in the dark.” After I said it, I had a thought.

There was a faint chance that the goblin’s magic was affecting our eyesight rather than just spreading an illusion of darkness over the interior of the barn. I looked away from the barn to make sure my eyes were functioning as they should.

There was nothing but open fields around us, a couple of old wooden posts set into the ground as if they had once been part of a fence, and in the distance, a few miles away, I could see the new neighborhood of McMansion farmettes that I’d passed driving here.

Mesa, where we all now stood, was a little town of about five hundred people that was in real danger of being swallowed in the outward creep of Pasco’s ever-growing population. It is flatter than most of the area around the Tri-Cities, with an economy primarily based in growing dryland wheat, hay, and cattle.

The town name is pronounced Meesa, not Maysa—which, even after all the years I’ve lived in the Tri-Cities, still strikes me as wrong. With so many Hispanic people living here, you’d think we would be capable of pronouncing a Spanish word correctly instead of borrowing from the ridiculous dialogue of a Star Wars character, right? But Meesa it is.

“Cain’s hairy titties,” muttered Ben, joining me in my observation of the rural setting. “What hermit was so misguided in life that he was hanging around this peopleless landscape at the bell end of the night and happened to see a freaking goblin disappear into a hay barn? And for that matter, goblins are city denizens like me. What the shagging hell is it doing out here?”

“No one living was here when it came,” I told him in a sinister voice.

He gave me a look.

In a confidential whisper I said, “I talk to dead people.”

He scowled at me. I wasn’t lying but he knew me well enough to know that I was pulling his leg. He stared up at the barn with narrowed eyes. He snorted.

“Bollocks, Mercy. There’s cameras here.”

I don’t think he actually saw them—I hadn’t spotted any yet. But Ben was a computer nerd; when in doubt, his brain focused on electronics.

“A surveillance system connected to the owner’s iPhone,” I confirmed, dropping my dramatic pose. “Apparently there was a party involving underage participants and several kegs of alcohol that ended up with a mess and several thousand dollars of damage. Thus the cameras and a motion sensor were installed. They made the farmer happy by interfering in two underage keggers, and tonight they alerted the owner of the barn that he had an uninvited guest. He called me.”

“And you called us,” said Mary Jo dryly. “Thank you for that.”

I grinned at her and gave her my best John Wayne impression. “It’s a dirty job, ma’am, but someone has to do it.”

“Where’s Adam?” asked Ben suddenly. “He wouldn’t send you out alone after a goblin, not even a half-arsed, hay-shagging knob who doesn’t know any better than to keep to the city like a civilized goblin should.”

Like me, the whole pack had been learning about goblins, and gaining a new respect for them.

I shrugged. “He wasn’t home when the call came. Top secret meetings. I left a message on his voice mail.”

“A meeting at this hour?” asked Mary Jo.

“Goes with his job,” I told her.