Bone Crossed (Mercy Thompson #4)(50)
Author: Patricia Briggs

"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 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."