"Marsilia's just lost her two right-hand men," said Samuel. "Andre and Stefan. She's vulnerable now."
"She has three other powerful vampires," I told him. "But Bernard and Estelle don't seem pleased with Marsilia lately." I told them about the confrontation the night before. "There's Wulfe, I guess, but he's…"
I shrugged. "I wouldn't want to have to depend upon Wulfe for loyalty—he's not the type."
"Vampires are predators," Adam said. "Same as us. If Blackwood smells weakness, I suppose it makes sense that he'd try for more territory."
"I like it," Samuel said. "Blackwood isn't a team player. This fits. It doesn't mean it's right, but it fits." Adam stretched the tension out of his neck, and I heard vertebrae pop. He gave me a little smile.
"Tonight I call Marsilia and tell her what we just talked about. It's not set in stone, but it's plausible. I bet we'll find Marsilia more cooperative." He looked at Samuel. "If you're home, I'd better go to work. I'll have Jesse come here when school's out, too—if you don't mind. Aurielle's booked, Honey has work to do, and Mary Jo is… not up to snuff."
After Adam left, Samuel went to bed. If anything started happening, he'd be up fast enough—but it told me that Samuel, at least, didn't think there'd be an attack in the daytime.
Neither of them even so much as mentioned the cranberry juice I'd thrown on them.
A FEW HOURS LATER, A CAR DROVE UP AND JESSE GOT out. She waved at the receding car, then bounced into the house in a wave of optimism, black-and-blue-striped hair, and— I put a hand over my nose. "What is that perfume you're wearing?"
She laughed. "Sorry, I'll go wash up. Natalie had a new bottle and insisted on spraying everyone with it." I waved her to my bedroom with the hand that wasn't plugging my nose. "Go use mine. Samuel's trying to sleep next to the main bath." And when she just stood there. "Hurry, for Pete's sake. That stuff is rank."
She sniffed her arm. "Not to my nose. It smells like roses."
"There are no roses," I told her, "that smell like formaldehyde."
She grinned at me, then bounced off to my bathroom to scrub up.
"So," she said when she returned, "since we're both under house arrest until the vamps settle down, and since I was an ace student today and got my homework done at school—how about you and I make some brownies?"
We made brownies, and she helped me change the oil in my van. It was getting dark by the time we set up my air compressor to blow out the water in my very small underground sprinkler system for the winter when Samuel appeared at the door bleary-eyed and growly, a brownie in one hand.
He made some grumbles about twittering girls who made too much noise. I looked up at the darkening sky and thought the lateness of the hour had more to do with his rising than the roar of my air compressor.
He made Jesse laugh with his snarls. He made a pretense of being offended and turned to me. "Are you finished?"
He could see I was rolling up cords and hose, so I rolled my eyes at him.
"Disrespect," he told Jesse, shaking his head sadly. "That's all I get. Maybe if I take you out and feed you, she'll start treating me with the respect I deserve."
But he grabbed the compressor before I could start rolling it to the pole barn.
"Where are you taking us?" Jesse said.
"Mexican," he said positively.
She groaned and suggested a Russian café that had just opened nearby. The two of them argued restaurants all the way to the pole barn and back and into the car.
In the end, we went out for pizza, a place on Columbia with a playground, noise, and great food. Adam was waiting, watching the little TV in my kitchen, when we got back. He looked tired.
"Boss run you ragged?" I asked sympathetically, handing him a brownie.
He looked at it. "Did you make this, or did Jesse?"
Her indignant «Dad» got her an unrepentant grin. "Just kidding," he said as he ate.
"I've been staying up nights," he told me. "Between the vampires and the Washington bigwigs, I'm going to have to start taking naps like a two-year-old."
"Trouble?" asked Samuel carefully.
He meant, trouble over me—or rather over that nifty video I'd never seen of Adam in a half- wolf form, ripping up Tim the Rapist's dead body.
Adam shook his head. "Not really. Mostly just the same old, same old."
"Have you called Marsilia?" I asked.
"What?" Jesse had been getting a glass of milk for her dad, and she set it down a little too hard.
"Mercy," growled Adam.
"Part of the reason you're here is that your dad has a pair of vampires in his holding cell," I informed her.
"We're in negotiation with Marsilia so she'll quit trying to kill everyone."
"I only get told half of what goes on," said Jesse.
Adam covered his eyes in a mock-exasperated fashion, and Samuel laughed. "Hey, old man. This is the tip of the iceberg. Mercy's going to be leading you around with a ring in your nose." But there was something in his eyes that wasn't amusement.
I didn't think anyone else noticed or heard the odd note of unhappiness in his voice. Samuel didn't want me, not really. He didn't want to be an Alpha… but he wanted what Adam had, Jesse as much as me, I thought—a family: kids, a wife, a white picket fence or whatever the equivalent had been when he was a kid.
He wanted a home, and his last home had died with his last human mate long before I was born. He glanced at me just then, and I didn't know what was in my face, but it stopped him. Just stopped all the expression, and for a moment he looked amazingly like his half brother, Charles—one of the scariest people I've ever met. Charles can just look at raging werewolves and have them whimpering in the corner.
But it was only for an instant. He patted me on my head and said something funny to Jesse.
"So," I said. "Did you call Marsilia, Adam?"
He watched Samuel, but said, "Yes, ma'am. I got Estelle. She's supposed to give Marsilia my message and have her call me back."
"She's playing one-upmanship games," observed Samuel.
"Let her," Adam said. "Doesn't mean I need to do the same."
"Because you have the edge," I said with satisfaction. "You have a bigger threat."
"What?" asked Jesse.
"The Big Bad Boogeyman vampire of Spokane," I said, sitting on the table. "He's coming to get her."
It wasn't a sure thing, but it didn't have to be as long as we could convince Marsilia of it. If I had been
Marsilia, I would've been worried about Blackwood.
ADAM AND JESSE WENT HOME. SAMUEL WENT TO BED, and so did I. When my cell phone rang, I was in the middle of a dream about garbage cans and frogs—don't ask, and I won't tell.
"Mercy," Adam purred.
I looked down at my feet, where Medea slept. She blinked her big green-gold eyes at me and purred again.
"Adam."
"I called to tell you that I finally got in touch with Marsilia herself."
I sat up, suddenly not sleepy at all. "And?"
"I told her about Blackwood. She listened all the way through, thanked me for my concern, and hung up."
"She's hardly going to panic over the phone and swear to be forever friends," I said, and he laughed.