Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson #11)

Release Date May 7, 2019

Elizaveta has vistors.


Elizaveta was in Europe. She’d come to help me, and stayed when Bonarata had made her an interesting temporary job offer. But her family was still here and obliged to our pack.

I called Elizaveta’s number and a woman’s voice answered it, soft and Southern. “This is the home of Elizaveta Arkadyevna,” she said. “I’m afraid that she’s not here and her family is all tied up right now. What can I do to help you?”

No one in Elizaveta’s family had an accent like that. Elizaveta clung to her Russian accent, but everyone else sounded newscaster American, the born-in-the-Pacific-Northwest kind of voice.

I had a very bad feeling. Especially since I was pretty sure that her “all tied up” wasn’t a figure of speech. It wasn’t that I could tell if she was lying or not—over the phone, sometimes I can tell and sometimes I can’t. It was that I heard the sound of people in pain.

I cut the line. There was nothing I could say that would be useful under the circumstances. Coincidences are always possible, even if unlikely.