Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson #11)(73)

I didn’t know if she’d answer that question. Vampires are a secretive bunch. I could feel her hesitation, but Stefan made a muffled noise.

They had gagged him.

“If Stefan doesn’t come out of the seethe as soon as we deal with the witches,” I murmured softly, “then Adam and I will have to come visit.”

“Adam and I will have to come visit,” repeated Lilly’s little-girl voice. “Adam and I will have to come visit. Yummy.”

Lilly was a special vampire, extraordinarily gifted with music, but incapable of taking care of herself. See also “homicidally inclined.”

“Lilly, what did I tell you?” Marsilia said.

“Behave,” Lilly said sullenly, “or I can’t listen in.”

“That’s it,” Marsilia said. “Now, where were we?”

“How did you discover that there were other vampires made by Frost’s maker in other seethes?”

She sighed. “I did tell Stefan I would answer all of your questions, as long as they pertained to Frost or the Hardesty witches.”

“Wow,” I said involuntarily. Both that she’d agreed to it—and that she’d told me what she had agreed to.

“We are not enemies,” Marsilia told me. “Uneasy allies, perhaps, but not enemies.”

“I agree,” I told her. “I just didn’t know that you did, too.”

“I don’t like you, Mercy—though watching Bonarata run around in circles was almost enough to change my mind—but I do like Adam. More importantly, I trust him.” She sighed again. “And, I suppose, you as well.”

I didn’t trust her at all, so I didn’t say anything.

After a moment, she answered my question. “I asked my allies and my friends if they had vampires whose makers they were unsure of. In those places where that was true, I visited their seethes myself. I knew what Frost . . . smelled like, I suppose, though that isn’t quite the way it works. A Master Vampire can tell if a vampire is made by someone other than themselves. Eventually, with practice, we learn to tell which other Master made a vampire. So I went to those seethes where there were unknowns—vampires made by someone their own Master could not identify for certain. In three of those cases, the maker was the same as the vampire who made Frost.”

She paused, while I absorbed the fact that Marsilia could apparently teleport herself a lot farther than Stefan could. I was pretty sure she wasn’t talking about seethes that were nearby—and there had not been enough time for her, who could only travel at night, to go to very many places. She’d been teleporting a lot. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

I wasn’t the only one unsettled by matters, though.

“We owe you our gratitude, Mercy,” Marsilia said reluctantly. “These people were definitely sent in as spies and worse for the Hardesty witches. If you had not asked Stefan to look into it, I would not have taken up the trail. We destroyed the ones we found, and now all of the vampires in those seethes know what scent to follow. They are, in turn, consulting with their allies. We will find all of them.

“We are also presently trying to locate the vampire who made them all. He or she seemed to be active between thirty and forty years ago—approximately when all of the vampires I found were made. Since we did not find any newer ones, like as not that vampire was disposed of. But I do not want those witches to own a Master Vampire they can make do their bidding.”

Only Master Vampires could make other vampires.

“You are giving me a lot of information,” I said. “Let me give you some in return.”

“That is not the bargain I had with Stefan,” she warned me.

“We are allies,” I said. “But be warned that some of this is speculation.”

“So noted,” she said.

“I think that Frost wanted to destroy the vampires,” I told her. “And the werewolves as well. He engineered the whole rogue Cantrip debacle—with the end goal of having Adam assassinate Senator Campbell. We assume that it would have been revealed to be a werewolf kill.”

“Whereas Frost would have brought the vampires out to the public,” she said. “Yes, we figured that one out as soon as we realized he was Hardesty-bred. I had not made the werewolf connection, though I don’t know if that will be useful to me.” She made an exasperated noise that might have been more effective if I didn’t know that she feared those witches enough to force Stefan—and presumably all of her vampires—into the seethe for protection. “Filthy witches.”

“You are sure that you are safe in your seethe?” I asked.

“We have Wulfe, Mercy, but thank you for your concern,” she said dryly.

“Do you know how many of the Hardesty witches there are here in the Tri-Cities?”

“You should ask your goblins that,” she said. “But they will tell you that there are only two. They checked into a hotel for a few days before moving in with Elizaveta’s brood.”

“Huh,” I said. “Adam’s people have them in an RV in an RV park—though they’ve moved on.”

“I will give that information to my people,” she said. “We might be able to help. Do you have a description of the RV?”

“Adam will,” I told her. “Shall I have him call?”