River Marked (Mercy Thompson, #6)

by Patricia Briggs

“Friend Bear,” said Coyote. “Change is not bad. Change is just change. Startling to those of us who go away, then come back after a long time, yes. But it is not evil.”

All change brings bad things and good things to replace the bad and good things that were before. It is natural to look back and say it was better before—but that does not make it true. Different is not worse. It is just different.”

The man with the belt with the brass bells put an arm around Bobcat. “The problem is this, Bobcat. Things change whether you want them to, or not—unless you are dead.” His voice was hoarse, like a three-pack-a-day-for-twenty-years smoker. “Don’t hold so hard to the past that you die with it.”

“All that is mortal dies. Death is not such a bad thing. What would be a bad thing would be living without challenges. Without knowing defeat, we cannot know what victory is. There is no life without death.”

I fed Adam, and when he grunted at me, I fed myself, too. I had to keep my strength up. If four people had died to give me a chance to help kill the river devil, it wouldn’t do to fail because I hadn’t eaten.

My old college roommate had spent an entire summer trying to teach me to snorkel. We proved that the fins greatly increased my speed in the water and that the snorkel greatly increased the chance of my drowning myself.

The staff had sucked the heat from her flesh, turned her black heart to white ice. The weight of my body had given more torque to the staff; the heart cracked and pulled loose from the river devil’s body.

Sometimes the thought had occurred to me that Adam dressed so civilized in his silk shirts and hand-tailored suits as a shield against the wildness within him.

At the sound of Jim’s name, the local cops all looked wise and quit asking questions. One of them murmured, “Native American medicine man,” to the FBI agents, and suddenly no one asked Adam any more questions about why we were here. Apparently, no one wanted to create an incident with the Yakama Nation.

I suppose we must work on being gracious and grateful until we can do for ourselves. Someday the wheel of fate will put us in a position to be of use to them, and we will remember how much easier it is to give help than it is to accept it.

Coyote told me a few stories about himself. He used the rude versions, too. Potty humor shouldn’t be funny to anyone over the age of twelve—and then only to the male half of the species. But somehow it was different when Coyote told it, both sly and innocent at the same time.

“Would you,” I said carefully, remembering what Charles had taught me about guests and things that they admired, “care to accept it? It has delighted me for many days, as have you—which makes it a fitting gift for such an honored and welcomed guest.”

I’d given it back to the fae quite often when it first came to me—and it had always returned. But somehow, I thought that it would stay with Coyote.

I love you, Adam. I want you to know that I fought to get back to you. I didn’t take the easy way out. I didn’t give up. I fought this death because I had you waiting for me on the shore. If it had been possible to drag this puny mortal flesh back to you, I would have done it, if I had to crawl to do so. I would have walked through Hell to get back to you, and only failed because of the weakness of my body, not of my heart.