"I have another pair just like it, too," I said. "Somewhere." Except I thought I'd thrown out the mate to the green sock last week.
THE WROUGHT-IRON GATES AROUND THE SEETHE WERE open, but the driveway was clogged with cars, so we parked off the gravel driveway. The Spanish-style adobe compound was lit with orangish lantern-style lights that flickered almost like the real thing.
I didn't know the vampire at the door, and, very unvampirelike, he simply opened the door, and said, "Down the hall to the stairway at the end and downstairs to the bottom."
I hadn't remembered there being a stairway at the end of the hall when I'd been here before. Probably because the huge, full-length-and-then-some painting of a Spanish villa had been in front of it instead of leaning against a side wall.
Although we'd entered on the ground floor, the stairway we were on took us down two full flights. I can see in the dark almost as well as a cat, and the stairwell was dark for me—a human would be almost helpless. As we descended, the smell of vampire clogged my nose.
There was a small anteroom with a single vampire—another one I didn't recognize. I didn't actually know more than a handful of Marsilia's vampires by sight. This one had silvery gray hair and a very young-looking face, and was dressed in a traditional black funeral suit. He'd been seated behind a very small table, but as we came down the last three steps, he stood up.
He ignored Warren entirely, and said, "You are Mercedes Thompson." He wasn't quite asking a question, but his statement was far from certain. He also had an accent of some sort, but I couldn't place it.
"Yes," said Warren shortly.
The vampire opened the door and swept us a short bow.
The room we entered was huge for a house—more a small gymnasium than a room. There were stands of seats—bleachers really, on either side of the long side of the room. Bleachers filled with silent watchers. I hadn't realized that there were so many vampires in the whole of the Tri-Cities, then I saw that a lot of the people were human—the sheep, I thought, like me.
And in the very center of the room was the huge oak chair festooned with carvings and accented with dull brass. I couldn't see them, but I knew the brass thorns on the arms of the chair were sharp and dark with old blood… some of it was mine.
That chair was one of the treasures of the seethe, vampire magic and old magic combined. The vampires used it to determine the truth of whatever poor being had the brass thorns stuck in its hands. It's gruesomely appropriate that a lot of vampire magic has to do with blood.
The presence of the chair raised my suspicions that this wasn't to be a negotiation for peace between the vampires and the werewolves. The last time I'd seen that chair, it had been at a trial. It made me nervous, and I wished I knew exactly what the words were that had been used to invite us here.
It was easy to pick out the werewolves—they were standing in front of two rows of empty seats: Adam, Samuel, Darryl and his mate, Aurielle, Mary Jo, Paul, and Alec. I wondered which ones Marsilia had specified and which were Adam's choice.
Darryl was the first to notice us because the door was almost as silent as the crowd of vampires. His eyes swept over me from head to toe and for a moment he looked appalled. Then he glanced around the crowd—all the vampires and their menageries were dressed up in their finest, be that ball gown or double-breasted suit. I thought I saw at least one Union army jacket. He looked at my T-shirt, then relaxed and gave me a subtle smile.
It seemed he decided it was okay I hadn't dressed up to meet the enemy. Adam had been talking rather intently with Samuel (about the upcoming football game, I later found out—we don't discuss important matters in front of the bad guys) but looked at his second, then looked up as we walked over to him.
"Mercy," he said, his voice ringing in the room as if it were empty. "Thank goodness. Maybe now we can get some business done."
"Maybe," Marsilia said.
She was right behind us. I knew she hadn't been there a moment ago because Warren jumped when I did. Warren was more wary than I was—no one snuck up on him. Ever. The side effect of being hunted by his own kind for most of his century-and-a-half-long life.
He turned, shoving me behind him, and snarled at her—something he wouldn't have normally done. All the vampires in the room rose to their feet, and their anticipation of blood was palpable.
Marsilia laughed, a beautiful, ringing laugh that stopped a second before I expected it to, making it more unsettling than her sudden appearance. Her sudden, businesslike appearance. The only other times I'd seen her, she'd worn clothing designed to attract attention to her beauty. This time she wore a business suit. The only concession to femininity was the narrow skirt instead of pants and the rich wine color of the wool.
"Sit," she said—as if she were talking to a poodle—and the roomful of vampires sat. She ever looked away from me.
"How kind of you to make an appearance," she said, her abyss-dark eyes cold with power.
Only Warren's warmth allowed me to answer her with anything approaching calm. "How kind of you to issue your invitations in advance, so I could be on time," I said. Perhaps not wisely—but, hey, she already hated me. I could smell it.
She stared at me a moment. "It makes a joke," she said.
"It is rude," I returned, taking a step to the side. If I got her mad enough to attack me, I didn't want
Warren to take the hit.
It was only when I stepped around him that I realized I was meeting her gaze. Stupid. Even Samuel wasn't proof against the power of her eyes. But I couldn't look down, not with Adam's power rising to choke me. I wasn't just a coyote here, I was the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack's mate—because he said so, and because I said so.
If I looked down, I was acknowledging her superiority, and I wouldn't do that. So I met her eyes, and she chose to allow me to do so.
She lowered her eyelids, not so far as to lose our informal staring contest, but to veil her expression. "I think," she said in a voice so soft that only Warren and I heard her, "I think that had we met at a different place and time, I could have liked you." She smiled, her fangs showing. "Or killed you."
"Enough games," she said, louder. "Call him for me."
I froze. That's why she wanted me. She wanted Stefan back. For a moment all I could see was the blackened dead thing that she'd dropped in my living room. I remembered how long it had taken me to realize who it was.
She'd done that to him—and now she wanted him back. Not if I could help it.
Adam hadn't moved from where he'd been standing, telling the room he trusted me to take care of myself. I wasn't sure he really thought so—I knew I didn't—but he needed me to stand on my own two feet. "Call whom?" he asked.
She smiled at him without looking away from me. "Didn't you know? Your mate belongs to Stefan."
He laughed, an oddly happy sound in this dirge-shadowed room. It was a good excuse to turn my back on Marsilia and quit playing the stare game. Turning my back meant that I didn't lose—only that the contest was over.
I tried not to let the sick fear I felt show on my face. I tried to be what Adam—and Stefan—needed me to be.
"Like a coyote, Mercy is adaptable," Adam told Marsilia. "She belongs to whom she decides. She belongs everywhere she wants to, for just as long as she wants to." He made it sound like a good thing.
Then he said, "I thought this was about preventing war."
"It is," said Marsilia. "Call Stefan."
I lifted my chin and glanced at her over my shoulder. "Stefan is my friend," I told her. "I won't bring him to his execution."
"Admirable," she told me briskly. "But your concern is misplaced. I can promise that he won't be hurt physically by me or by mine tonight."
I slanted a glance at Warren, and he nodded. Vampires might be hard to read, but he was better at sensing lies than I was, and his nose agreed with mine: she was being truthful.
"Or hold him here," I said.
The smell of her hatred had died away, and I couldn't tell an
ything about how she felt. "Or hold him here," she agreed. "Witness!"
"Witnessed," said the vampires. All of them. All at exactly the same time. Like puppets, only creepier. She waited. Finally, she said, "I mean him no harm."
I thought of earlier tonight, when he'd turned down Bernard even though I was pretty sure he agreed with Bernard's assessment of her continued rule of the seethe. In the end, he loved her more than he loved his seethe, his menagerie of sheep, or his own life.
"You harm him by your continued existence," I told her, as quietly as I could. And she flinched. I thought about that flinch… and about the way she'd let him live even though he, of all her vampires, had reason to see her dead—and had the means to do so. Maybe Stefan wasn't the only one who loved.
It hadn't kept her from torturing him, though.
I closed my eyes, trusting Warren, trusting Adam to keep me safe. I only wished I could keep Stefan safe. But I knew what he would want me to do.
Stefan, I called, just as I had earlier—because I knew he would want me to. Surely he knew where I was calling from and would come ready to protect himself.
Nothing happened. No Stefan.
I looked toward Marsilia and shrugged. "I called," I told her. "But he doesn't have to come when I call."
It didn't seem to bother her. She just nodded—a surprisingly businesslike gesture from a woman who would have looked more at home in a Renaissance gown of silk and jewels than she did in her modern suit.
"Then I call this meeting to order," she said, strolling to the old thronelike chair in the center of the room.
"First, I would call Bernard to the chair."
He came, reluctant and stiff. I recognized the pattern of his movement—he looked like a wolf called against his will. I knew he wasn't of her making, but she had power over him just the same. He was still wearing the clothes I'd last seen him in. The harsh overhead fluorescent lights glinted off the small balding spot on the top of his head.
He sat unwillingly.
"Here, caro, let me help." Marsilia took each hand and impaled it on the upthrust brass thorns. He fought. I could see it in the grimness of his face and the tenseness of his muscles. I couldn't see that it cost
Marsilia anything at all to keep him under her control.
"You've been naughty, no?" she asked. "Disloyal."
"I have not been disloyal to the seethe," he gritted out.
"Truth," said a boy's voice.
The Wizard himself. I hadn't seen him—though I'd looked. His light gold hair had been trimmed close to his skull. He had a vague smile on his face as he strolled down from the top of the bleachers across from us. He used the bleacher seats as stairs.
He looked like a young high school student. He'd died before his features had had a chance to grow into maturity. He looked soft and young.
Marsilia smiled when she saw him. He hopped over the last three seats and landed lightly on the hardwood floor. She was shorter than he was, but the kiss he gave her made my stomach hurt. I knew he was hundreds of years old, but it didn't matter—because he looked like a kid.
He stepped back and reached out a finger and ran it over Bernard's hand and down to the chair arm.
When he picked it up it dripped blood. He licked it off slowly, letting a few drops roll down the palm of his hand, over his wrist, until it stained the light green sleeves of his dress shirt.
I wondered who he was performing for. Surely the vampires wouldn't be bothered by his licking blood—and I was sort of right but mostly wrong. Bothered might not be the word, but there was a generalized motion from the stands as vampires leaned forward and some of them even licked their lips. Ugh.
"You have betrayed me, haven't you, Bernard?" Marsilia was still looking at Wulfe, and he held out his hand. She took it and traced the drying blood, letting her mouth linger over his wrist while Bernard quivered, trying not to answer the question.
"I have not betrayed the seethe," Bernard said again. And though she grilled him for ten minutes or more, that was all he would say.
Stefan appeared beside me. His eyes were on the sleeve of his white dress shirt as he casually fixed a cuff link, then he pulled the sleeve of his subtly pin-striped gray suit over it with a just-right tug. He looked at me, and Marsilia looked at him.
She waved her hand at Bernard. "Get up—Wuife, put him somewhere obvious, would you?"
Shaking and stumbling, Bernard rose, his hands dripping on the pale floor all the way to the stands, where Wulfe cleared out space on the bottom tier of seats for them both. He began cleaning Bernard's hands, like a cat licking ice cream.
Stefan didn't say anything, just ran his eyes over me in a quick survey. Then he looked at Adam, who nodded regally back, though he smiled a little, and I realized that he and Stefan were wearing the same thing, except that Adam wore a dark blue shirt.
Mary Jo saw the resemblance and grinned. She turned to say something to Paul, I thought, when a surprised look came over her face, and she just dropped. Alec caught her before she hit the floor as if this wasn't the first time she'd done something like that. Leftovers from the close brush with death, I hoped, not something the vampires were doing.
Stefan left me for Mary Jo. He touched her throat, ignoring Alec's silent snarl.
"Relax," Stefan told the wolf. "She will take no harm from me."
"She's been doing that a lot," Adam told him. That he didn't step between his vulnerable pack member and the vampire was an unsubtle message.
"She's waking up," Stefan said just before her eyes fluttered open.
And only after Mary Jo was clearly awaken did Stefan look at Marsilia.
"Come to the chair, Soldier," she told him.
He stared at her for so long that I wondered if he would do it. He might love her, but he didn't like her very much at the moment—and, I hoped, didn't trust her either.
But he patted Mary Jo's knee and walked out to where Marsilia waited for him.
"Wait," she told him before he sat down. She looked at the stands across from us, where the vampires and their food sat. "Do you want me to question Estelle, first? Would that make you happier?"
I couldn't tell who she was speaking to.
"Fine," she said. "Bring Estelle here."
A door I hadn't noticed opened on the far side of the room and Lily, the gifted pianist and quite insane vampire who never left the seethe and Marsilia's protection, came in carrying Estelle like a new groom carried his bride over the threshold. Lily was even dressed in a frothy white mass of lace that could have been a wedding dress to Estelle's dark suit. Though I'd never seen a bride with blood all over her face and down her gown. If I were a vampire, I think I'd only wear black or dark brown—to hide the stains.
Estelle hung limp in Lily's arms, and her neck looked like a pack of hyenas had been chewing on her.
"Lily," Marsilia chided. "Haven't I told you about playing with your food?"
Lily's sapphire eyes glittered with a hungry iridescence visible even in the overly brightly lit room.
"Sorry," she said. She skipped a couple of steps. "Sorry, 'Stel." She smiled whitely at Stefan, then she plopped Estelle's limp form on the chair, like a doll. She moved Estelle's head so it wasn't flopped to the side, then straightened her skirt. "Is that good?"
"Fine. Now be a good girl and go sit next to Wulfe, please."
Lilly had been in her thirties, I thought, when she was killed, but her mind had stopped developing far earlier. She smiled brightly and skipped over to Wulfe and bounced down to the seat beside him. He patted her knee, and she put her head on his shoulder.
As with Bernard, Marsilia stuck Estelle's hands on the thorns. The limp vampire came to shrieking, screaming life as soon as her second hand was pierced.
Marsilia allowed it for a minute, then said, "Stop," in a voice that fired like a.22. It popped but didn't thunder.
Estelle froze midscream.
"Did you betray me?" Marsilia asked.
Estelle jerked. Shook her
head frantically. "No. No. No. Never."
Marsilia looked at Wulfe. He shook his head. "If you control her enough to keep her on the chair, Mistress, she can't answer with truth."
"And if I don't, all she does is scream." She looked into the bleachers. "As I told you. You can try it yourself if you choose? No?" She pulled Estelle's hands off the chair. "Go sit by Wulfe, Estelle."
A Hispanic man came to his feet on one of the seats behind me. He had a tear tattooed just below one eye and he, like Wulfe, hopped down to the floor via the seats, though without Wulfe's grace. It was more as if he fell slowly down the bleachers, landing on hands and knees on the unforgiving floor.
"Estelle, Estelle," he moaned, brushing by me. He was human, one of her sheep, I thought.
Marsilia raised an eyebrow, and a vampire followed Estelle's human at three or four times his speed. He caught up to him before the man had made it halfway across the floor. The vampire had the appearance of a very elderly man. He looked as though he'd died of old age before being made a vampire, though there was nothing old or shaky in the hold he kept on the struggling man.
"What would you have me do, Mistress?" the old man said.
"I would have had you not allow him to interrupt us here," Marsilia said. I glanced at Warren, who frowned. She was lying then. I'd thought so. This was part of the script. After a thoughtful moment Marsilia said, "Kill him."
There was a snap, and the man dropped to the ground—and every vampire in the place who had been breathing stopped. Estelle fell to the ground, four or five feet from Wulfe. I glanced away and unexpectedly caught Marsilia staring at me. She wanted me dead; I could see it in the hungry look she had. But she had more pressing business just now
Marsilia gestured at the chair in invitation to Stefan. "Please, accept my apologies for the delay."
Stefan stared at her. If there was an emotion on his face, I couldn't read it.
He'd taken a step forward, and she stopped him once again. "No. Wait. I have a better idea."
She looked at me. "Mercedes Thompson. Come let us partake of your truth. Witness for us the things you have seen and heard."
I folded my arms, not in outright refusal—but I didn't go waltzing over either. This was Marsilia's show, but I wouldn't let her have the upper hand completely. Warren's hand closed over my shoulder—a show of support, I thought. Or maybe he was trying to warn me.
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