Blood Bound (Mercy Thompson #2)(71)

"Vampires," I replied. Naomi's sneer sat oddly on her face, and seemed out of character-but I didn't know her enough to be sure.

Rachel tugged a chair around so she was opposite Naomi and me. "Don't take it out on her. She's Stefan's friend, remember. Not one of them."

Naomi looked back at her cup and I realized that she wasn't calm at all, she was in that place beyond fear where nothing you do matters because the worst has already happened and there's nothing you can do about it. I recognized that look. It's an expression I see a lot around the werewolves.

It was Rachel who told me what had happened.

"When Stefan didn't come back yesterday morning, Joey-that's short for Josephine-decided to leave while she could." Rachel didn't drink her coffee, just turned her cup this way and that. "After you left, though, I heard her motorcycle in the driveway. Can't mistake the sound of Joey's hog." She moved her hands away from the mug and wiped them on her thighs. "I was stupid. I know better-especially after Daniel. But it was Joey..."

"Joey has been here the longest," Naomi said, when it became obvious Rachel was finished speaking. "She was bound to Stefan already."

She saw my puzzlement because she explained, "That means she's almost one of them already. Everything except the actual changeover. The longer they stay bound before they die, the better the chance they'll rise again. Stefan is patient, his people almost always rise because he waits for years longer than most vampires."

She was telling me all this so she wouldn't have to go on with the story.

"Daniel?"

She nodded. "He was bound, just barely. It doesn't happen to all of us-but Daniel was still too new for the changeover to be certain. It was a miracle he survived. Stefan was so angry." She took a sip of coffee and grimaced. "I hate cold coffee." She took another sip anyway. "Andre did it on purpose, you know. One of those stupid one-upmanship games. He was terribly jealous of Stefan because Marsilia favored him-and at the same time he loved Stefan like a brother. So when he was angry he attacked one of us instead. Vampires don't usually care too much about the sheep in

"What happened to Joey?" I asked.

"She's dead," Naomi told her coffee cup.

"Permanently dead," Rachel said. "I thought it was her on the motorcycle. She was wearing a helmet, and she doesn't let anyone, not even Stefan, touch the hog. When I finally realized the rider wasn't tall enough to be her, I tried to run back to the house."

"She grabbed your arm?" I suggested. It wasn't a difficult guess, with the armband of bruises she wore.

Rachel nodded. "And covered my mouth so I couldn't scream. About then, a car drove up-one of the seethe cars."

Like the one Andre had driven last night. I worked on them from time to time in lieu of making a cash payment to the seethe. All the businesses in the greater Tri-Cities who weren't affiliated with more powerful groups paid protection money to the vampires. That's how I first met Stefan. He had helped me negotiate my payment from cash (which I couldn't afford) to work-mostly on his van, as it turned out, though I did the upkeep on the seethe's cars as well. They were Mercedes and BMWs, big, black sedans with dark, dark windows-just what you'd expect a bunch of vampires to drive.

"They popped open the trunk-and I thought they were going to shove me in, but it was worse than that. They already had Joey in there." She jumped up abruptly and ran from the room. I heard her throwing up.

"They killed Joey, cut off her head so she wouldn't ever become one of them." Naomi spoke evenly, but had to set down her coffee so she wouldn't spill it. "They told Rachel that we were to stay inside this house until they decided what to do with us. They didn't have to kill Joey to deliver that message. They could just have brought her back here-or one of them could have brought her over, the way Andre brought over Daniel."

"Rachel said 'she'. Was it Marsilia?" I asked.

Naomi shook her head. "It was the Teacher. Marsilia ... Stefan was a favorite of hers. I don't think she'd have killed one of us."

"The Teacher?" I asked.

"Her real name is Estelle-she reminds me of an evil Mary Poppins."

I knew the one she meant.

"They all have names among themselves," she explained. "Stefan was the Soldier, Andre is the Courtier. Stefan said it had to do with an old suspicion that if you spoke evil's name, you drew its attention. Stefan didn't believe in it, but some of the older vampires won't use real names when they talk of others."

"So Estelle," I said her name deliberately, "went against Marsilia's wishes?"

"No. Well, probably, but not against her orders."

"I'm trying to understand how the seethe works," I told her. "That's why I came here."

Rachel came back in the room looking even more pale than she had before. "I thought you were looking for Stefan?"

I nodded. They wouldn't care about Samuel and Adam. "I think... I think that there is more going on than just a vampire turned sorcerer. I wonder, for instance- who turned the sorcerer into a vampire."

"You think there's another vampire involved?" Naomi asked.

"Stefan said that the sorcerer was a new-made vampire. It occurred to me that his maker might be pulling the monster's strings. But I don't really know enough about vampires to make an educated guess."