She looked vulnerable.
Marsilia didn’t do vulnerable. And this dramatic entrance was unlike her, too. She could do drama, but this was drama without a point. We all knew her, knew that she was scary—so why the smoke and brimstone?
I tried to tamp down my adrenaline as I coughed to clear my throat. There was no need to overreact.
Marsilia was our ally. She was not a witch. Though she was scary, and she disliked me, she did not feature in my current nightmares. And still, staring at that pale, perfect face, I did not put my gun away. This was not like her, and that worried me.
Marsilia was an old vampire, and old vampires, like most old supernatural creatures, picked up talents and bits of magic throughout their lives. Marsilia could teleport. I hadn’t known that she could do this smoke-thingy, and I didn’t know why she’d bothered. Surely if she were trying to be scary, teleporting directly in was as scary as anything else she could have done.
Maybe she’d figured out who Sherwood was, too, and this show was for him. She was old; maybe she’d known all along who he was and had been waiting for us to figure it out.
She stood with her eyes closed for as much as three seconds. No one spoke because Adam did not. I’d have thought that seeing Marsilia would have lessened his tension—Marsilia and he liked each other—but it didn’t seem to.
Without opening her eyes, she pulled the veil back down to hide her face again. Only with her face behind the black smokey lace did she turn her head fully toward us. I saw the glint of something that might have been her eyes, though it was more red than brown.
“Where is my Wulfe?” she asked.
For a second I thought she was speaking about one of our pack—none of whom belonged to her. Then I realized she was talking about her second. W-U-L-F-E, not W-O-L-F.
Wulfe was a very old vampire, older than Marsilia. He was witchborn and a wizard, which meant that he wielded two entirely unrelated forms of magic in addition to whatever magical power just being an old vampire brought him. He was also bug-nuts. The combination of power and unpredictability made him the single scariest vampire I’d ever met—and I’d met Iacopo Bonarata, who ruled Europe.
Lately Wulfe had been stalking me.
“How should we know? He belongs to you,” I said, my voice sounding weirdly normal amid all the theater. “I haven’t seen him since last Thursday.”
He’d been standing just on the other side of the glass when I looked up while I was doing dishes, startling me into dropping a Pyrex baking dish on the edge of the sink. He’d been gone when I looked back up from the disaster of sharp glass in dirty dishwater. That was the last time I’d seen him.
Two days later he left a gift for me on Adam’s and my bed, a very long, green silk belt embroidered with phoenixes from one end to the other. Between every seven birds was the word “Ardeo.”
It was old. Very old.
Google translated the Latin as “I burn.” It was, apparently, meant to be taken in an erotic way and not as an offer to turn oneself into a pile of ashes. I didn’t think it was magical—it didn’t have the feel that the fae artifacts had. But Wulfe had left it on my bed, so I figured all bets were off.
Presently it was stored in our weapons safe until I figured out what to do about it.
More worrying than having custody of such a thing was how it got onto our bed. Adam had been unable to determine how Wulfe had entered the house unnoticed.
While it was true that vampires (among a few other supernatural creatures, according to their nature) could not enter a home without invitation, Wulfe had been brought inside when unconscious while everyone involved had been too exhausted and battered to make better choices.
Even so, our house was filled with werewolves. A vampire shouldn’t have been able to traipse around unnoticed. Especially since Adam’s pillow had been pulled out from under the covers and noticeably—probably deliberately noticeably—dented, as if Wulfe had lain beside the belt for a while.
It had been the second time Wulfe had made it up to our bedroom without anyone seeing him. The first time he’d just left a note covered with heart stickers, the kind kindergartners put on Valentine’s Day cards.
That’s when I’d asked Joel and his wife to move out and take Aiden—our fire-touched rescue boy—with them in case Joel wasn’t able to control his tibicena.
“Because of Wulfe?” Joel had asked.
“Because I don’t like the way Wulfe treats Aiden like a threat,” I told him bluntly. I hadn’t told him I was just as afraid for Joel, because that wouldn’t have been useful.
Joel had packed up his wife and Aiden and moved out. That reduced the people living in our home to Adam, me, and Adam’s daughter, Jesse. I was pretty sure Wulfe viewed Jesse as a noncombatant in our current weird stalker dance, leaving only Adam and me as targets.
But I wasn’t going to tell Marsilia all of that. Primarily because if Wulfe could waltz in and out of our home, I wasn’t going to advertise it to the enemy. Ally. Frenemy.
“You have seen him,” she said to me. “All know that Wulfe hunts the Columbia Basin Pack Alpha’s mate.”
Her words were formal, almost stylized. This was the Mistress of the seethe speaking, and it sounded like a threat to me. I just wasn’t sure what kind of threat.
Marsilia’s attention lingered on me a moment, but I wasn’t going to say anything until we knew more about what was going on. This time I was sure that it was a red glint I saw behind the black smokey lace. I’d seen vampires with eyes that glowed like that—they’d been very hungry. It made me glad she was all the way on the other side of the room.
I wondered if she was wearing the veil to hide her eyes or to protect us from her gaze. I was (mostly) immune to vampire magics, but Adam and Zack were not. I didn’t know about Sherwood. Marsilia had captured Samuel with her gaze once, so I didn’t assume Sherwood was safe.
Marsilia took a step closer to us, the smoke following her like a black wedding train. “There has been peace between us,” she said.
“Yes,” Adam agreed, his stance changing a little, Alpha werewolf speaking to the Mistress of the seethe.
“We have come together to keep this territory safe from other predators,” she said.
“Yes,” Adam agreed.
Supernatural beings in confrontational, or semi-confrontational, interactions tended to restate the obvious. I thought it was to make everything absolutely clear so that if death resulted, it would not be by misunderstanding.
“All know my Wulfe has been oft at your door of late,” she said. The archaic wording was unusual. Marsilia, like my friend Stefan (who was also an old Italian vampire), had mostly kept her Italian accent, but otherwise she spoke colloquial American English.
“He’s been stalking me, yes,” I agreed dryly.
“And now he is gone,” she said. “Others say that he is dead and your pack at fault. Adam Hauptman, if you would keep our alliance, you will find my Wulfe, prove he is not dead.” She might have invoked Adam’s name, but the hairs on the back of my neck were certain that she was still looking at me, no matter how much that veil hid.
“Wulfe’s a vampire,” said Sherwood, speaking for the first time. “He’s already dead.”
Sherwood distracted her from me. She looked at him, tipping her head sideways in a motion more wolf than vampire. I wasn’t sure how to read that. Maybe without the subtle disguise Bran had given Sherwood, she, too, recognized him.
But it was a brief pause. She looked squarely at Adam, and he tensed under her regard, even though her veil was now almost opaque.
I gripped Adam’s wrist, leaving my gun in my left hand. I could shoot left-handed, though not as well as with my right or in a proper two-handed grip. Sometimes I could extend my limited immunity to vampire magic to someone by touching them. And keeping Adam free of Marsilia’s influence was more important than whether or not I could hit the side of a barn.