Bone Crossed (Mercy Thompson #4)(63)

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."

"Enough games," she said, louder. "Call him for me."

I froze. That's why she wanted me. She wanted Stefan back. For a moment all I could see was the blackened dead thing that she'd dropped in my living room. I remembered how long it had taken me to realize who it was.

She'd done that to him - and now she wanted him back. Not if I could help it.

Adam hadn't moved from where he'd been standing, telling the room he trusted me to take care of myself. I wasn't sure he really thought so - I knew I didn't - but he needed me to stand on my own two feet. "Call whom?" he asked.

She smiled at him without looking away from me. "Didn't you know? Your mate belongs to Stefan."

He laughed, an oddly happy sound in this dirge-shadowed room. It was a good excuse to turn my back on Marsilia and quit playing the stare game. Turning my back meant that I didn't lose - only that the contest was over.

I tried not to let the sick fear I felt show on my face. I tried to be what Adam - and Stefan - needed me to be.

"Like a coyote, Mercy is adaptable," Adam told Marsilia. "She belongs to whom she decides. She belongs everywhere she wants to, for just as long as she wants to." He made it sound like a good thing.

Then he said, "I thought this was about preventing war."

"It is," said Marsilia. "Call Stefan."

I lifted my chin and glanced at her over my shoulder. "Stefan is my friend," I told her. "I won't bring him to his execution."

"Admirable," she told me briskly. "But your concern is misplaced. I can promise that he won't be hurt physically by me or by mine tonight."

I slanted a glance at Warren, and he nodded. Vampires might be hard to read, but he was better at sensing lies than I was, and his nose agreed with mine: she was being truthful.

"Or hold him here," I said.

The smell of her hatred had died away, and I couldn't tell anything about how she felt. "Or hold him here," she agreed. "Witness!"

"Witnessed," said the vampires. All of them. All at exactly the same time. Like puppets, only creepier. She waited. Finally, she said, "I mean him no harm."

I thought of earlier tonight, when he'd turned down Bernard even though I was pretty sure he agreed with Bernard's assessment of her continued rule of the seethe. In the end, he loved her more than he loved his seethe, his menagerie of sheep, or his own life.

"You harm him by your continued existence," I told her, as quietly as I could. And she flinched. I thought about that flinch... and about the way she'd let him live even though he, of all her vampires, had reason to see her dead - and had the means to do so. Maybe Stefan wasn't the only one who loved.

It hadn't kept her from torturing him, though.

I closed my eyes, trusting Warren, trusting Adam to keep me safe. I only wished I could keep Stefan safe. But I knew what he would want me to do.

Stefan, I called, just as I had earlier - because I knew he would want me to. Surely he knew where I was calling from and would come ready to protect himself.

Nothing happened. No Stefan.

I looked toward Marsilia and shrugged. "I called," I told her. "But he doesn't have to come when I call."

It didn't seem to bother her. She just nodded - a surprisingly businesslike gesture from a woman who would have looked more at home in a Renaissance gown of silk and jewels than she did in her modern suit.