? ? ?

When I got to work, finally, the imaginary parking lot full of cars with scheduled appointments that I hadn’t been there to repair wasn’t there. The customer parking lot was empty, as were the three repair bays.

Maybe Tad had called everyone and told them not to come in—but that didn’t sound like Tad. Answers came when I opened the office door and saw Zee at the computer inputting invoices.

Siebold Adelbertsmiter looked like a wiry old man, balding and nimble for his age. Looks, in his case, were very deceiving. Zee was an ancient fae smith, a gremlin, if you read his official government ID. Since gremlins were an invention of the twentieth century and Zee had been ancient when Columbus was commissioned to find a new route to Asia, I had my doubts. But I seldom contradicted Zee on matters that didn’t involve me.

He glanced up at me but didn’t stop the rapid keystrokes. “Your inventory is too low,” he said. “You will be out of parts this time next week.”

“I have a large order coming in day after tomorrow,” I said.

He grunted. “You are charging too much for labor. It is more than the dealership.”

“They charge what their faraway masters tell them a job should take. We charge actual time. Since I was trained by the best mechanic in the world, I am a lot faster. My right hand is arguably better and faster than I am, since his father is that same mechanic. Our clients usually get out cheaper—and they know that our repairs are solid.”

Zee grunted again.

Since he’d given me that same speech in the past—not quite verbatim, but close enough—I assumed that grunt was a grunt of approval.

“It is good,” he said after a moment, “when children prove they actually listen to their elders.”

“It is good,” I said carefully, because the old fae was as prickly as an Alpha werewolf about people noticing weaknesses, “to see someone who can really type. It takes me twice the time to do those entries as it does you.”

He huffed, but we both knew that not very long ago, his hands had been in no shape for quick typing. He’d been held and tortured by the fae who had been trying to find out just how powerful Zee’s half-human son was. That was why I hadn’t called him in to help Tad this morning. My comment amounted to “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better” in such a way that he wouldn’t take offense.

“This shop,” he said, changing the subject away from his hands. “Everything works correctly. It has no character.”

“Give it a few months,” I said. “Things will start breaking down just when we need them. It will be back to usual before you know it.”

He looked at me over the rims of the wire-framed glasses that he wore when doing close work. I was pretty sure they were an affectation. “Are you patronizing me?”

I hitched a hip on the padded stool that was on the customer side of the counter. “Nope.” I looked around at the clean walls and neatly organized matching shelving units. Even the bays smelled clean and new. “This shop makes me feel itchy, too.”

He hit the enter key and set his work aside. He took off his glasses and set them on the counter.

“You do not smell like a goblin,” he said.

Zee could smell goblins? I mean, I could smell goblins, and the werewolves could smell goblins, but I didn’t know that Zee could smell goblins.

“That was this morning,” I told him. “Very early this morning. I’ve showered since then. The more recent thing was a zombie werewolf set loose in the basement of my house.”

I gave him a general rundown of everything that had happened. Except for the secret part—that Elizaveta and her family had all been practicing black magic. I didn’t leave out the fae-government meeting. Zee was in a precarious place with the Gray Lords. They had wronged him and he’d avenged himself on the responsible parties. I wasn’t sure how safe he was, and I wouldn’t leave out any information about the Gray Lords for fear that it could affect his safety.

“Witches,” Zee said when I was done, ignoring the information about the meeting, which told me that he’d probably already known. “I have not had much to do with witches. In the old days, if one became troublesome, I killed them. Mostly they died off on their own before I felt the need to bestir myself.”

Witches were mortal, I was pretty sure. I had the feeling that they probably avoided the fae. It was a question that I might have thrown to Elizaveta—but not anymore.

“Do you think that we should warn the fae that there is a new group of witches in town?” I asked.

Zee grunted. “If they do not know, then they deserve to be blindsided. But I expect they know; they are planning their meeting with the government and so are more concerned with the doings of the mortals here than usual.”

I guess the meeting wasn’t as secret as all that, at least not among the fae.

Zee grunted again, then picked out a single inconsequential detail from my whole recitation of witches and zombies and said, “That rifle that was damaged—it was the one your father bequeathed you?”

I blinked at him a moment, then said, “Yes. The Marlin.”

He nodded. “Bring to me your father’s rifle, and I will fix it.”

Adam had looked at it and determined that the zombie had bent more than just the barrel. He didn’t think it could be fixed.

Neither of us had thought about bringing it to Zee. If Peter’s sword had been broken, Zee would have been the first person I’d have taken it to. But I just didn’t think of Zee and rifles at the same time.

“I will,” I said in a voice that was a little rougher than I meant it to be.

He frowned at me. “What are you leaking about, child? Go work on that carburetor. You have the mixture too rich, I can smell it from here.”

I huffed and went back to the car I’d been working on yesterday. I hadn’t been crying, no matter what Zee had said. Though it had been a close call. Bryan had really loved that rifle.

Tad returned with lunch. It was Chinese, so splitting it between the three of us instead of two was pretty easy. I shared the same information with Tad that I had with Zee. He was still mulling it over when an old customer stopped in with a stalling Passat and no appointment.

“I heard you were back in business,” Betty said, handing me the keys. “Thank goodness. I’ve had it to the dealership twice and they can’t figure out what it is.”

The dealership had a couple of decent mechanics in their mix. If someone brought a problem back to them, the car went to one of their good people. If they hadn’t been able to fix her Passat, then I was glad Zee had decided to spend the day here.

“We’ll take a look at it and call you when we know more,” I told her. “Do you want Tad to give you a ride home?”

Betty was in her eighties, though she didn’t look a day over sixty-five. Even if the waiting area was cleaner than it used to be, I wasn’t going to make her sit around until we knew what was up.

“Bless you, Mercy,” she said. “That would be wonderful.”

As Tad drove off with her, our two o’clock appointment drove in. I took that one and left the Passat with its mystery problem to Zee.

The rest of the day was pretty normal. We fixed a few cars, including the Passat. I never did figure out what was wrong with it—Zee told me he had to let the bad mojo out. I thought he was kidding, but that was what I put on the bill.

Betty had been Zee’s customer before I started working at the shop. She just laughed as she paid for the work when Tad and I dropped the car off.

“That Zee,” she said. “He likes his little jokes. One time he said that he told my car to behave itself. He didn’t charge me for that one—but the car ran fine for another six months. If Zee says he fixed the car, it will be fixed.”

We sent one old BMW to the eternal resting place (a scrap yard) and mourned with her owner. When there weren’t customers around, we chatted about odd topics. Zee, Tad, and I had spent a lot of days like this. It felt like coming home in a way the previous weeks had not, as if with Zee’s presence, the shop had regained its heart.

Working on a car cleared my head. When there was a gnarly mechanical problem to fix, I would concentrate on that—and all the other things going on in my life got sorted out by my subconscious. But most of the work I did in the shop was more like building with Legos. Once I had the plan of attack laid out, and understood the steps to take—then there was this Zen time where my head cleared and I could examine things without the hefty weight of emotion.