Moon Called (Mercy Thompson #1)(46)
Author: Patricia Briggs

Stefan stepped away from the piano once Lilly was focused on her music. He drifted back to stand beside me, then he held out a hand.

I glanced at Samuel, but he was still lost in the music. I took Stefan’s hand and let him pull me to my feet. He took me to the far side of the room before releasing me.

"It isn’t being a vampire that made her this way," he said, not whispering, exactly, but in low tones that didn’t carry over the music. "Her maker found her playing piano at an expensive brothel. He decided he wanted her in his seethe, so he took her before he understood that she was touched. In the normal course she would have been mercifully killed: it is dangerous to have a vampire who cannot control herself. I know the werewolves do the same. But no one could bear to lose her music. So she is kept in the seethe and guarded like the treasure she is."

He paused. "But usually she is not allowed to wander about at will. There are always attendants who are assigned to keep her-and our guests-safe. Perhaps our Mistress amuses herself."

I watched Lilly’s delicate hands flash across the keys and produce music of power and intellect that she didn’t possess herself. I thought about what had happened when Lilly had come into the room.

"If Samuel had reacted badly?" I asked.

"She’d have no chance against him." Stefan rocked back on his heels unhappily. "She has no experience at taking unwilling prey, and Samuel is old. Lilly is precious to us. If he had hurt her, the whole seethe would have demanded retribution."

"Shh," said Samuel.

She played Liszt for a long time. Not the early lyrical pieces, but the ones he composed after hearing the radical violinist Paganini. But, right in the middle of one of his distinctively mad runs of notes, she switched into a blues piece I didn’t recognize, something soft and relaxed that lazed in the room like a big cat. She played a little Beatles, some Chopin, and something vaguely oriental in style before falling into the familiar strains of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

"I thought you weren’t going to play Mozart," said Stefan when she’d finished the song and begun picking out a melody with her right hand.

"I like his music," she explained to the keyboard. "But he was a pig." She crashed her hands on the keys twice. "But he is dead, and I am not. Not dead."

I wasn’t going to argue with her. Not when one of those delicate fingers broke the key beneath it. No one else said anything either.

She got up from the piano abruptly and strode through the room. She hesitated in front of Samuel, but when Stefan cleared his throat, she trotted up to him and kissed him on the chin. "I’m going to eat now," she said. "I’m hungry."

"Fine." Stefan hugged her, then directed her out of the room with a gentle push.

She hadn’t once so much as looked at me.

"So you think we’re being set up?" asked Samuel, with lazy geniality that seemed somehow out of place.

Stefan shrugged. "You, I, or Lilly. Take your pick."

"It seems like a lot of trouble to go to," I ventured. "If Samuel died, Bran would tear this place apart. There wouldn’t be a vampire left in the state." I looked at Stefan. "Your lady may be powerful, but numbers matter. The Tri-Cities isn’t that big. If there were hundreds of you here, I’d have noticed it. Bran can call upon every Alpha in North America."

"It is nice to know how we are esteemed by the wolves. I’ll make certain our Mistress knows to leave the wolf alone because she should fear them," said a woman from just behind me.

I jumped forward and turned, and Stefan was suddenly between me and the new vampire. This one was neither ethereal nor seductive. If she hadn’t been a vampire, I’d have put her age somewhere around sixty, every year etched in the lines of grim disapproval that traversed her face.

"Estelle," said Stefan. I couldn’t tell if it was a greeting, introduction, or admonition.

"She has changed her mind. She doesn’t want to come up to visit with the wolf. They can come to her instead." Estelle didn’t seem to react to Stefan at all.

"They are under my protection." Stefan’s voice darkened in a way I’d never heard it before.

"She said you may come, too, if you wish." She looked at Samuel. "I’ll need to take any crosses or holy objects you are wearing, please. We do not allow people to go armed in the presence of our Mistress."

She held out a gold-embossed leather bag, and Samuel unhooked his necklace. When he pulled it out of his shirt, the necklace didn’t blaze or glow. It was just a bit of ordinary metal, but I saw her involuntary shudder when it brushed close to her skin.

She looked at me and I pulled out my necklace and showed her my sheep. "No crosses," I said in a bland voice. "I didn’t expect to be out speaking to your Mistress tonight."

She didn’t even glance at Zee’s dagger, dismissing it as a weapon. After pulling the drawstring tight, she let the bag dangle from it. "Come with me."

"I’ll bring them down in a minute," Stefan said. "Go tell her we are coming."

The other vampire raised her eyebrows but left without a word, carrying the bag with Samuel’s cross in it.

"There’s something more happening than I thought," Stefan said rapidly. "Against most of those here, I can protect you, but not the Mistress herself. If you’d like, I’ll get you out of here and see if I can find the information without you."

"No," said Samuel. "We’re here now. Let us finish this."

Samuel’s words slurred a little, and I saw Stefan give him a sharp glance.

"Once more I offer you escort away from here." This time Stefan looked at me. "I would have no harm come to you and yours here."

"Can you find out where the other wolves are, if she doesn’t want you to?" I asked him.

He hesitated, which was answer enough.

"We’ll go talk to her, then," I said.

Stefan nodded, but not like he was happy about it. "Then I find myself echoing your gremlin. Keep your eyes away from hers. She’ll probably have others with her, whether she allows you to see them or not. Don’t look at anyone’s eyes. There are four or five here who could entangle even your wolf."

He turned and led the way through the house to an alcove sheltering a wrought-iron spiral staircase. As we started down, I thought we were going to the basement, but the stairway went deeper. Small lights on the cement wall surrounding the stairs turned on as Stefan passed them. They allowed us to see the stairs-and that we were traveling down a cement tube, but they weren’t bright enough to do much more. Fresh air wafted out of small vents that kept the air moving, but it also kept me from smelling anything from deeper down.