“I’m never happy sitting down when there are vampires around—Stefan usually excepted. What did Marsilia say?”
“She didn’t call us, and we couldn’t get a lot of sense out of the vampire who did. She read a note, then giggled a lot.”
“Lily?” I looked at Warren.
“That’s what Samuel said.” He pulled a shirt off his shoulder, where I must have thrown it, and dropped it on the floor.
“She called him, too?”
He shrugged. “Yes. Marsilia wanted him there, too. No, I don’t know what it’s about, and neither does Adam. However, it’s unlikely that she’s going to annihilate us once we get there. Adam sent me here to bring you when you got back. I think he wanted you dressed, though.”
“Smart aleck,” I told him, hopping into my jeans. I found a decent bra and put that on. I finally found a clean shirt folded in the shirt drawer. I wondered who’d put it there.
It’s not that I’m not neat. In my garage, every tool is exactly where it belongs at the end of the day. Sometimes there’s a little friction when Zee has been in there because he and I have a different idea of where some of the tools should be.
Someday, when time presents itself, I’ll clean my room. Having a roommate forces me to keep the rest of the house reasonably clean. But no one cares about my room, and that puts it pretty far down on my list of to-dos. It’s below, for instance, keeping solvent, saving Amber from Blackwood, and attending the meeting with Marsilia. I’ll almost certainly get to it before I get around to planting a garden, though.
I pulled on the clean shirt. It was dark blue and emblazoned with BOSCH GENUINE GERMAN AUTO PARTS. Not the shirt I’d have picked out to pay a formal call on the Vampire Queen, but I supposed she’d have to take it or leave it. At least it didn’t have any oil stains.
Warren picked up a handful of jeans and unburied my shoes. “Now all you need is socks, and we can go.”
His cell phone rang, and he tossed the shoes at me and answered. “Yes, boss. She’s here and almost dressed.”
Adam’s voice was a little muffled, and he was talking very quietly—but I still heard him. He sounded a little wistful.
“Almost, eh?”
Warren grinned. “Yep. Sorry, boss.”
“Mercy, get a wiggle on,” Adam said in a louder voice. “Marsilia’s holding things up until you’re here—since you were a material part of the recent unrest.”
He hung up.
“I’m wiggling. I’m wiggling,” I muttered, pulling on socks and shoes. I wished I’d had a chance to replace my necklace.
“Your socks don’t match.”
I marched out the door. “Thank you. Since when did you become a fashionista?”
“Since you decided to wear a green sock and a white sock,” he said, following me. “We can take my truck.”
“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 never looked away from me.