Ben sniffed the air nervously. "They're watching us." I smelled them, too.
"Yes." Of the three of us, Warren was visibly the least worried. He wasn't the kind of person to stew about things that hadn't happened yet.
It wasn't being watched that bothered me. What would happen if the vampires didn't believe me? If they believed that Stefan had really lost control, the way he remembered doing, they would execute him. Tonight. The vampires would not tolerate anyone who threatened the safety and secrecy of their seethe.
Not being a vampire, my word wouldn't be worth much here-they might not listen to me at all.
I'd never been certain how Stefan really felt about me. I'd been taught that vampires aren't capable of affection for anyone other than themselves. They might pretend to like you, but there would always be an ulterior motivation for their actions. But even if he wasn't my friend, I was his. If his death were my fault, because I didn't say or do something right I just had to do everything right, had to make them listen to me.
The door opened wide, making a curious groaning noise. There was no one in the entry way.
"And cue the scary music," I said.
"They do seem to be pulling out all the stops," agreed Warren, "I wonder why they're trying so hard to intimidate you."
Ben had settled down a bit, probably because Warren was so calm. "Maybe they're scared of us."
I remembered the vampires I'd seen last time I was here and thought Ben was wrong. They hadn't been afraid of Samuel. I'd seen Stefan lift his VW Bus without a jack, and the seethe was chock-full of vampires. If they wanted to tear me apart they could, and there wouldn't be a damn thing Warren or Ben (if he felt like it) could do to stop it. They weren't afraid of us. Maybe they just liked to frighten people.
Warren must have thought the same thing because he said, "Nah, they're just playing with us."
We entered the house cautiously, Warren first, then me, and Ben took up the rear. I'd have been happier with Ben in front of me. He might be willing to take a bullet for Adam, but me, I was pretty sure, he'd have been just as happy to eat.
There was no one in the entryway, or the small sitting room it led into, so we continued down the hall. One side of the hall had three doors with arched tops, all closed, but the other side opened into a very large, airy room with a high ceiling and recessed lights. The walls were covered with brightly colored paintings, some of them spanning floor to ceiling. The walls were painted a soft yellow shade that made it feel bright and cheerful even though there were no windows.
The floor was made of dark clay tiles in a variety of reddish browns. Light, neutral-colored woven rugs were scattered about almost at random. Three couches and five comfy-looking chairs, all a rather startling shade of coral that somehow managed to blend into the rest of the southwestern feel, were set in a loose semicircle around a large wooden chair, that looked as though it ought to have been sitting in a gothic mansion, rather than surrounded by all the sunny colors of the room.
Warren had started down the hallway, but I didn't follow him. There was something about that chair
The wood was dark, but the grain looked like oak to me. It was covered with carvings, from the lion-paw legs to the gargoyle crouched on the top of the tall back. Each of the legs had a ring of brass about a third of the way up. The arms were made entirely of brass wrought with delicate-appearing vines and small flowers and thorns. On the end of each arm, one of the thorns stuck up in a sharp point.
When I was almost close enough to touch the chair, I realized that I'd been sensing the presence of its magic even from the hallway-I just hadn't known what it was. To me, magic usually feels like a tingle, as if I am immersing my skin in sparkling water. This was a dull, bass thrum, as if someone were beating a very large drum while I plugged my ears so I could feel it, but not hear.
"Mercy?" asked Warren from the doorway. "I don't think that we're supposed to be exploring."
"Do you smell this?" asked Ben from the level of my knee. I looked down and saw that he was crouched on all fours with his head extended and slightly cocked. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. "There's old blood on that chair," he said.
I was going to ask him about it, but the first vampire entered. He was one I hadn't seen before. In life he'd been a medium-sized man, Irish, by the red hair. His movements were stiff and graceful at the same time, reminding me of the way a daddy longlegs moves. The vampire brushed past Warren and walked across the room without looking at any of us. He sat down on a small bench I hadn't noticed near the far wall.
The vampire's arrival seemed to answer any doubts Warren had, as he followed the vampire in and took proper bodyguard position to my right. Ben rose to his feet and stood just behind and to my left, so I was flanked by the werewolves.
Over the next few minutes the rest of the seats in the room filled up with vampires. None of them looked at us as they came in. I'd have thought it was an insult, except they didn't look at each other either.
I counted under my breath, fifteen vampires. They made an impressive showing, if only in the expense of their clothing. Silks, satins, brocades in all shades of the rainbow. One or two wore modern business suits, but most of them were in period costume, anything from medieval to the present.
Somehow I expected more dark colors, but I didn't see any black or gray. The werewolves and I were underdressed. Not that I cared.
I recognized the woman who had confiscated Samuel's cross the last time I'd been here when she came into the room. She sat in one of the coral chairs as if it had been a stool, her back upright like a Victorian lady in a tight corset, though she wore an aqua-colored silk dress with rows of beaded fringe from the nineteen twenties that seemed oddly frivolous for her stiff bearing. I looked for Lilly, the pianist, but she didn't appear.
My eyes swung past an old man with wisps of gray hair decorating his head. Unlike werewolves, vampires kept the appearance they had when they died. Even though he appeared ancient, I could be looking at the youngest vampire in the room.
I glanced at his face and realized that unlike the others in the room, he was watching me. He licked his lips and I took a step toward him before I managed to drop my gaze to the floor.
Werewolves might lock eyes for dominance purposes, but they couldn't take over your mind if you held their gaze.
Being a walker was supposed to keep that from happening, but I'd certainly felt the pull of his gaze.
A dark haired, young-seeming man with narrow shoulders had entered the room while I'd been playing peekaboo with the old man. Like Stefan, he was more human-seeming than most. It was his clothing more than his face that I remembered. If Andre wasn't wearing the same pirate shirt that he'd been in the night I'd met him, he was wearing its twin. Once he'd taken a seat in one of the plush chairs near the center of the room, he, unlike the other vampires, looked at me directly and smiled in a friendly fashion. I didn't know him well enough to know if he was friend or foe.
Before I could decide how to return his greeting, Marsilia, Mistress of the Mid-Columbia Seethe, came into the room. She wore a brilliant red, Spanish-style riding skirt with a frilly white blouse and a black shawl that suited her blond hair and dark eyes better than I'd have thought it would.
She walked with fluid grace, unlike the last time I'd seen her. Of all the vampires in the room, Marsilia was the only one who was beautiful. She took her time arranging her skirts before she sat down in the chair in the center of the semicircle. Her red skirts clashed badly with the chair's coral fabric. I don't know why that made me feel better.
She stared at us-no, at the werewolves, with an avid, almost hungry gaze. I remembered her with Samuel and wondered if she had a preference for werewolves. It had been because of a werewolf, Stefan had told me, that she'd been exiled from Italy. Vampires didn't have any rules against feeding from a werewolf, but the wolf she'd taken had been the property of a more powerful and higher-ranking vampire.
Ben and Warren, both, had the sense to keep their eyes averted from hers. It would have been instinctive to meet her gaze and try to stare her down, instinctive and disastrous.
Finally Marsilia's voice, deep and lightly accented, broke the silence. "Go and retrieve Stefan. Tell him his pet made it here and we are tired of waiting."
I couldn't tell who she was talking to, she was still staring at Warren-on whom she had gradually focused in preference to Ben-but Andre stood up and said, "He'll want to bring Daniel."
"Daniel is being punished. He cannot be brought out." The vampire who spoke sat directly on Marsilia's left. He wore a buff-colored, nineteenth-century businessman's suit, complete with pocket watch and blue-striped silk waistcoat. His moustache was striped like his waistcoat, though in brown and silver. He'd combed his hair back over a small balding spot on the top of his head.
Marsilia's mouth tightened. "Your aspirations to the contrary, I still rule here, Bernard. Andre, bring Daniel as well." She glanced around the room. "Estelle, go with him. Daniel might be difficult."
The middle-aged woman in her beaded flapper gown stood up abruptly as if someone had pulled on a string above her. As she moved, her beads made a soft chattering sound that reminded me of a rattlesnake. I couldn't remember them making any noise at all when she'd first come into the room.
Andre gave me a small, reassuring smile that no one else could see as he walked by. Estelle ignored us again as she passed. It was deliberate rudeness, I decided, though I preferred it to Marsilia's hungry gaze. I had to resist the urge to take a step forward and block her view of Warren.
If my errand hadn't been for Stefan, I'd have gone out and dragged in a few chairs for us, or maybe just sat on the floor; but I didn't want to antagonize anyone before Stefan was safe. So I just stood where I was and waited for him to arrive.
The minutes crawled by. I'm not very good at waiting, and had to fight not to fidget. I'd have thought that Ben would be worse than I, but neither he nor Warren seemed to have any problem staying still while we waited, not even under Marsilia's steady regard.
The wolves weren't as motionless as the vampires, though. None of the vampires bothered with the small touches that Stefan affected to make humans more at ease, like blinking or breathing.
One by one, as if Andre's leaving was some sort of signal, the vampires turned their gaze on me, their expressions blank. The only exceptions were Marsilia, and the vampire on her right, who appeared to be a boy of about fifteen-so I looked at them.
Marsilia watched Warren, occasionally flexing her long, highly decorated fingernails. The boy just stared off into space, swaying just a little. I wondered if he, like the musical Lilly, was damaged mentally. Then I realized he was swaying in time to the beat of my heart and took a quick step closer to Warren. The boy rocked a little faster.
By the time I heard movement in the hall behind us, he was swaying pretty quickly. Nothing like being prey in a room full of vampires to keep the heart racing merrily along.
I heard Stefan and his entourage coming well before they got to the room.
Estelle brushed past us first, and resumed her seat. Andre took up a position on a couch near the odd, wooden chair. I didn't have to turn my head to know that Stefan had stopped a few feet behind me-I could smell him. I turned anyway.
He still wore the clothes he'd been in when I last saw him, but he appeared unharmed. He was carrying a young man in his arms who could be no one but his young friend, Daniel, Littleton 's first victim.
Jeans and a "Got Milk?" T-shirt seemed incongruous on someone who looked as though he'd just been liberated from a Nazi death camp. His head had been shaved, and dark stubble turned the pale skin of his scalp blue. It made me wonder if vampires could grow hair.
Daniel's cheeks were so sunken I could almost see his teeth through them. His eyes looked blind, with irises that were startlingly white, and no pupils at all. It was difficult to judge the age at which he'd died accurately, but he couldn't have been older than twenty.
The man in the striped waistcoat, Bernard, stood up-and finally Marsilia quit staring at Warren, and turned her attention to the matters at hand.
Bernard cleared his throat then, in an appropriately businesslike tone, said, "We are here because early this morning Stefan called us to clean up his mess at a motel in Paseo. Five humans are dead, and there was considerable property damage. We were forced to call in Elizaveta Arkadyevna "-I hadn't known Elizaveta worked for the seethe as well as Adam's pack, but I suppose it made sense. The old Russian witch was the most powerful practitioner in the Pacific Northwest"because we could see no scenario in which the police would not be called in. The local authorities have accepted the story we manufactured and, according to our contacts, there will be no further inquiry into the case. Other than the monetary cost of employing the witch, no permanent harm has been done to the seethe." He bit off the last part a little too sharply, as if he wanted to disagree with his statement.
"Stefan," Marsilia said. "You put the seethe in danger. How do you answer this?"
Stefan took a step forward, then hesitated, looking at the vampire he held in his arms.
"I can hold him," Warren offered.
Stefan shook his head. "Daniel has not fed in too long, he would be a danger to you. Andre?"
Andre frowned, but got up to take the starving vampire into his arms so that Stefan could go stand before the others. I expected Stefan to stand where Bernard had, but he sat in the wooden chair, instead. He slid until he was pressed against the back then grasped each of the brass-studded gracefully curved arms, closing his hands around the ends as if he hadn't seen the brass thorns sticking up.
Or maybe he had. The thrum of magic I'd been feeling stepped up in tempo and strength, making my rib cage buzz with power. I tried to swallow my gasp, but Marsilia turned to look at me as if I'd done something interesting.
Her regard didn't last more than an instant before she turned her attention to Stefan. "You choose to offer Truth willingly?"