Book 1 - Page 23 (1/2)
There was no one in the office, but the door was unlocked. It had been updated since I'd been there last and the end result was rustic charm-which was better than the run-down 1950s tacky it had been.
I hopped over the front desk and took a key marked #1. Number one was the Marrok's safe room, specially designed to contain uncooperative werewolves.
I found a piece of paper and a pen and wrote: Wounded in #1. Please Do Not Disturb. I left the note on the desk where it couldn't be missed, then I returned to the van and backed it up to the room.
Getting Adam out of the van was going to be rough no matter what. At least when I dragged him into it, he'd been unconscious. I opened the reinforced metal door of the motel room and took a look around. The furnis.h.i.+ng was new, but spa.r.s.e, just a bed and a nightstand that was permanently fixed against the wall-nothing to help me get a werewolf who weighed twice what I did out of the van and into the room without hurting one or the other of us. There was no porch as there had been at Adam's house, which left almost a four-foot drop from the back of the van to the ground.
In the end I decided calling for help was better than hurting Adam worse. I went back to the office and picked up the phone. I hadn't called Sam's number since I'd left, but some things are just ingrained. Even though he was the reason I'd left here, he was the first one I thought to call for help.
”h.e.l.lo,” answered a woman's voice that sounded completely unfamiliar.
I couldn't speak. I hadn't realized how much I'd been counting on hearing Samuel until I heard someone else's voice instead.
”Marlie? Is there something wrong at the motel? Do you need me to send Carl?” She must have caller ID, I thought stupidly.
She sounded frantic, but I recognized her voice at last, and felt a wave of relief. I don't know why Lisa Stoval was answering this number, but the mention of Carl and the sudden tension in her voice cued me in. I guess she had just never sounded cheerful when she talked to me.
Some things might have changed, but some things I had just forgotten. Aspen Creek had a population of about five hundred people, and only about seventy were werewolves, but I seldom thought about the human majority. Lisa and her husband Carl were both human. So was Marlie, at least she had been when I left. She'd also been about six years old.
”I don't know where Marlie is,” I told her. ”This is Mercedes, Mercedes Thompson. There's no one in the motel office. I'd really appreciate it if you'd send Carl down here, or tell me who else to call. I have the Alpha from the Columbia Basin Pack in my van. He's badly wounded, and I need help getting him into the motel room. Even better would be if you could tell me how to get ahold of Bran.”
Bran didn't have a telephone at his home-or hadn't when I left. For all I knew he had a cell phone now.
Lisa, like most of the women of Aspen Creek, had never liked me. But she wasn't one of those people who let a little thing like that get in the way of doing what was right and proper.