Storm Cursed

9

“You were crying,” Adam said, his voice soft with sleep. He brushed a finger over my cheekbone.

We were both familiar with each other’s nightmares. I couldn’t recall what I’d dreamed about, but sadness still clogged my chest.

I rubbed my head against his hand for comfort, like a cat. A cat.

“It was something about cats,” I told him. “Sherwood’s cat, I think. But I don’t remember it anymore.”

“Okay.” He tucked me against him. “Go back to sleep.”

I glanced at the clock and saw that I’d been sleeping less than an hour. No wonder I felt so tired.

“We need to find those witches,” I said.

Adam nodded. “I hate fighting a defensive battle. All you can do is react, react, react. And you find yourself running around like Chicken Little, never knowing where the next rock will fall from.”

“Adam,” I said slowly, “if you hate being on the defensive—why are you running a security firm? Isn’t security, by definition, always on defense?”

“I hear your logic,” he said. “But I’m not listening.”

“Ethically,” I said, “defense is easier to defend than, say, assassinations or attacking people because they irritate you.”

He growled, then laughed. “Defense is easier to defend.”

“Hey,” I told him, “it’s two in the morning. I’m not responsible for anything I say after midnight.” I frowned. “I have this weird feeling that we need to hunt down those witches really soon.”

He kissed me long and sweet, then pulled me against him and said, again, “Go to sleep, Mercy.” He rolled until I was on top of him, then rumbled, “We need all the sleep we can get if we are going to hunt witches in the morning.”

“Oh goody,” I said.

We were on our third day of a full house. Werewolves who had human families were still on virtual house arrest for their own protection. That meant breakfast was a big deal and both the kitchen and the dining room table were full.

Adam had intended to work from home this morning. But when Jesse asked him what he wanted for breakfast when he came downstairs from his shower, he said, “No time for breakfast.”

That was a little unusual. Werewolves have to eat a lot. And “hangry” just doesn’t describe what happens to a werewolf when he is hungry.

He saw my look and grinned at me.

“You’re in a good mood today,” I told him.

“You need to eat,” said Jesse. “There is always time for a good breakfast.”

He breezed through the kitchen, kissing her on her cheek and me, lightly, on the mouth. Aiden got a fist bump. Aiden wasn’t big on touch—so we let him decide when he needed a hug.

“I got called in,” Adam told us. “No rest for the wicked. Jesse, there’ll be food where I’m going.”

He glanced around the room and called all the werewolves to him with nothing more than a glance. After a moment, a few other werewolves appeared from other places, so Adam must have used pack bonds.

“Dress up for an official workday,” he told them. “Meet me at the office. ASAP. Food will be served.”

They scattered. No mistaking the rising energy of “something to do at last” that rose from them.

“No hunting witches?” I asked.

“No witch hunts today,” he told me. “I expect to be late.”

“Where at?” Jesse asked.

“Sorry, I can’t tell you.” He paused. Kissed me again. Then said, “Don’t go hunting without me.”

And then he was gone.

“Huh,” said Jesse. “He seems awfully excited.”

We exchanged mutual raised eyebrows.

“Grrr,” said Kelly’s wife, Hannah. “I hate secrets.” She looked at me with lowered brow. “Do you know how much longer we are all stuck here?”

“Don’t look at me,” I said. “I told Adam we had to go witch hunting today.” I waved a hand at all the werewolves bounding out the door wearing Hauptman Security shirts. “You see the result.”

“Just how dangerous are these witches, really?” she asked.

A cold chill ran down my spine—and for a moment I had a glimpse of the dream I’d had last night.

“Very,” I said. “You all stay inside this house today. If we don’t get the situation taken care of in the next few days, maybe we should see about a camping trip or something for everyone until this all blows over.”

I grabbed a piece of toast and a slice of bacon and slunk out. They all knew that my garage had just reopened and I needed to go to work. They would be safe with Joel—and Aiden for that matter—but they weren’t happy.

Zee and I spent the morning detailing the cars that had gotten soaked the day before yesterday, using my new steam cleaner and the old Shop-Vac I’d brought over from home. For the heck of it, I detailed Stefan’s van, too. It needed it. I tried the steam cleaner on Stuffed Scooby. The best that could be said about that attempt was that he didn’t look any worse. I managed to reattach the spot that had fallen off his back with a little hot glue.

Tad’s hands were still in rough shape, so I’d sent him home to heal up.

“It’s a good thing,” said Zee, cleaning the outside of the driver’s-side window of the car we were working on, “that it’s high summer. These should finish drying out in the sun this afternoon.”

“I’ll remember to thank the witches for picking this time of year when we finally catch up to them,” I said.

I was working on the interior. The car was a couple of decades old, and I might have been the first person to clean the dash. I hoped that the plastic didn’t dissolve in panic at the touch of my cleaner, but I wouldn’t detail a car and send it out with a gunk-covered dash.

Zee paused. “Liebling, this might not be a battle for a little coyote. Black witches are an ugly thing. Maybe leave it for the ugly thing that your pack’s witch has become.”

I shook my head. “No. Adam has promised to protect the government people—and the witches have made it pretty obvious that they intend harm. And they attacked us—here and at my home. We can’t just stand back and hope that Elizaveta takes them out.”

I quit scrubbing for a moment so I could look him in the face. “And what if Elizaveta joins with them like some of her family did?”

“The Gray Lords tell us that no one is to interfere with the witches,” he said.

“They know about them?” I asked.

He nodded. “I told them about the attack here, Mercy, but they already knew that the black witches had attacked Elizaveta.” He scrubbed with a little more emphasis, then said reluctantly, “They are right to tell us not to interfere. These talks are important and it would be too easy to make ourselves look bad if we take on the witches. I may be an outcast—”

“I’m not sure you can be an outcast by choice,” I told him. “They’d take you back in a moment if you wanted to go.”

He shrugged. “Sometimes the English language confuses me.”

“Sure it does,” I said. I took out a Q-tip and started on the vent covers. “Outcast. Cast. Out. That means someone kicked you out. If you leave—then you can be something less pathetic and more adventurous-sounding. Like a rogue.”

He snorted. “I may be a rogue, Mercy, but I don’t want the fae to fade away and die.” He looked thoughtful. “I don’t want all of them to fade away and die, anyway. And the ones I’d prefer dead, I’d rather kill myself.”

“Hah,” I said.

My phone chimed and I checked the text message—it was from Ruth Gillman. She was reminding me of our lunch date, and requesting that I pick the venue since she wasn’t familiar with the Tri-Cities.

“I’m going to talk to Senator Campbell’s assistant over lunch,” I told Zee. “Do you have any idea who the fae are going to send to deal with them? I won’t tell her if you don’t want me to, but I’d like to have a ballpark guess about how easily offended the fae who are treating with the humans are going to be.”

“Es tut mir leid, Mercy.” Zee shook his head. “I do not know. I am a rogue, you see; they do not tell me such things. But you may tell them that the majority of the fae are tired of the fuss. They would like to go and live their lives. They are not clamoring for human blood.”

I gave him a look and he flashed a quick smile.

“Ah, you are right. There are fae who would love to bathe in human blood. But the fae who are making the decisions are not driven by the need to destroy. They just want a place to live in peace.”

“Do you have any sense that this meeting might be dangerous?” I said. “I mean, that the humans will have to watch what they say and how they say it? Some of the fae can be very prickly.” I cleared my throat. “And Adam and most of the pack are going to be putting themselves between the fae and the humans if something goes wrong.”

“I don’t know who they are sending,” Zee said again. “But I do know that they will not send out anyone who is not familiar with working with the human government. With humans in general.” He turned on the steam cleaner—and then shut it off again. “Among the more powerful of us, we have a lot who are trained in human law. Like your government, we have an overabundance of lawyers.”

I had been going to meet Ms. Gillman at the Ice Harbor Brewing Company, a local pub, but changed my mind at the last minute and texted her directions for a different place.

She beat me there and was waiting for me in a white Camry that shouted “rental car.” When I pulled in next to her, she unlocked her doors and got out.

“I was just about to text you to make sure I’d gotten the right place,” she said. “I hope that this is like good Chinese restaurants. You know—where the more run-down the exterior is, the better the food.”

She was right that it wasn’t pretty. The exterior was boxy and an unlovely blend of textures and shades of white.

The wall nearest the entrance had been newly repaired. I’d been here when a snow elf had taken the whole wall out. He’d been chasing me at the time.

Getting chased by a snow elf might not sound impressive. But when a frost giant says he’s a snow elf, there aren’t many, even among the fae, who would argue with him about it.

The repair work, though not beautiful, had been competently done. Like the rest of the building, it had been painted white. It might have looked better if the rest of the building, also whitish, had been painted sometime this century.

The only elegant thing in sight was a hitching post that looked like someone had lifted it from the movie set of Elrond Half-elven’s home in The Lord of the Rings. It was new because I’d have remembered if I’d seen something so out of place before.

I didn’t know what Uncle Mike’s needed with a hitching post. I breathed in and paid attention to the scents—there just might have been a hint of horse in the air.

“You found the right place,” I told Ruth Gillman, assistant to the most famously fae-hostile senator in Congress. “Welcome to Uncle Mike’s.”

The big Uncle Mike’s sign was down today, awaiting a newer, bigger sign. But there were cars in the lot and the Open sign on the door was lit.

She stiffened and gave me an unsmiling look. “Do you think that it is wise to discuss our meeting here?”

Uncle Mike’s had, once upon a time, been the local fae hangout—humans not allowed. It had sat empty for a while during the worst of the tensions between the fae and humans. But Uncle Mike had gone to work on it, right after the fae had signed their agreement with our pack. It had been up and running for a few weeks now. All the work, from the bussers to the brewmaster himself, was done by the fae. But this time, Uncle Mike had opened it to all customers.

He hadn’t made a big deal about its reopening, and I was sure there were still locals who didn’t realize it existed. But from Ruth’s face, the government knew all about Uncle Mike’s.

“I think that eating lunch here will teach you more than anything you can get out of me in a two-hour meal,” I told her. “Whatever else you need to know, you can ask.”

I hadn’t called ahead, but Uncle Mike himself met us at the door. He looked better than I’d seen him in a while and had his charming-innkeeper thing he did so well blazing away like a blast furnace.

“Mercy,” he said expansively. “Sure and it’s been too long since you’ve brightened our doorstep. Who are you bringing with you, darlin’?”

I made introductions and Ruth’s eyes widened when I gave her his name. Uncle Mike was one of the more accessible fae, and I was sure the government thought they knew quite a bit about him. I was equally sure they didn’t know anything he didn’t want them to know.

“Senator Campbell’s aide,” Uncle Mike said. “And you’re both here for lunch, no doubt. I have just the spot for you.”

He sat us at a card-table-sized table, just in front of the stage where a middle-aged man was tuning his guitar. I didn’t know him—I didn’t think.

The fae have glamour. They might tend to wear the same guise from day to day, but that doesn’t mean that they have to. But I was pretty sure he was new to me; he didn’t smell familiar. A lot of the fae forget about scent.

The crowd was tame today, and mostly human seeming. I could smell fae, thick in the air. But this looked very much like any bar-restaurant lunch crowd.

The hobgoblin who came bustling up to the table with drinks neither of us had ordered was as fae as fae get. He set down a glass full to the brim with something that was a lovely amber for Ruth. For me he brought a bottle of water. Unopened.

“Compliments of Uncle Mike,” he said, his voice a bass rumble far too big for his wiry greenish-gray body, which was barely tall enough to keep his head above the height of our table. His ears, more fragile and larger than anything Mr. Spock had ever sported, moved rapidly, as if they were wings.

I’d never seen another hobgoblin with ears like his. I was curious as a cat, but it had always felt rude to ask why his ears fluttered like that.

Like the other employees he wore black pants, but there was no sign of the kelly green shirt emblazoned with Uncle Mike’s logo all the rest of the staff wore, including Uncle Mike. Instead, the hobgoblin’s upper body was as bare as his long-toed feet.

Hobgoblins and goblins are related, I’d been told, but it was a long way back and they both liked to pretend it wasn’t so.

“I didn’t intend for Uncle Mike to treat us, Kinsey,” I said.

“Pssht,” said the hobgoblin. “He said nothing owed for it, Mercy, don’t fuss.”

“All right,” I told him. He grinned and scurried off.

Ruth sat very still in her seat, almost as if she’d forgotten to breathe.

The guitarist grinned at me, briefly, and his sharp teeth were slightly blue. He slid callused fingertips over the strings to make a shivery-raspy sound, then began picking his way through a Simon and Garfunkel piece.

The music seemed to break the spell that held her still. Ruth blinked and lifted the glass to her mouth for a careful sip. She paused and drank another swallow before she put it down.

“That is lovely,” she said. “Am I going to need someone to drive me home after I drink it?”

Uncle Mike, who’d bustled past us without a glance a couple of times, paused at her question. He dragged over a chair from another table and joined us.

He had a glass that looked and smelled very much like Ruth’s. He hadn’t been carrying it a moment ago, and I hadn’t seen him pick it up. Usually he was more circumspect about using magic, especially in front of the enemy.

“Not if you only have one, Ruth Gillman,” he said. “This is mead of my own making. I won’t deny there’s some powerful spirit in’t, but it will do you no ill.” I felt the magic in his words, but I was sure she hadn’t. Since I was sure that the magic was attached to his guarantee, I let it pass without challenge.

“And,” he continued, “not if you eat some of my lovely stew for lunch. We have sandwiches and such, but the stew is the best thing on the menu today.”

For the rest of lunch, Uncle Mike set out to charm Ruth Gillman. Only once more did I catch a whiff of magic emanating from him. This time it was to amp up the power of his smile, and I tapped my toe against his leg.

He shot me an apologetic glance. “Habit,” he told me.

“What is?” Ruth asked.

“Flirting with pretty ladies,” he said.

“I’m married,” she told him. “And happy.”

“My favorite kind,” he said. “Happy is a wonderful thing. Tell me about your wife?”

She had not told him that she had a wife. That told me that the fae might not let the humans know who or what was coming to their meeting, but they knew an awful lot about who the government was sending.

My phone rang. I glanced down at it. “I have to take this call,” I said, slanting a concerned look at Ruth. She didn’t see it, but Uncle Mike did.

“She’ll be safe as houses with me,” he promised.

“Where did that come from?” asked Ruth. “‘Safe as houses,’ I mean. I’ve heard it all my life and never understood it.”

With Uncle Mike’s promise to play guardian, I abandoned Ruth in the land of the fae, though not without misgivings. I answered the phone while I walked.

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s too loud in here. Give me a second and I’ll be outside.”

I stepped outside to, well, not silence—that area of town has a lot of noise—but it was quieter than inside the bar.

“Zack,” I said. “How can I help you?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I’m not really sure there’s anything wrong. But Warren left this morning in a big hurry. Kyle just got back.”

When Warren and Adam together had tried to get Kyle to stay safe at the pack house, he’d just looked at them. When he left for home, Zack and Warren had gone with him. Kyle might be just human, but making him stay would have taken more threat from either Adam or Warren than either of them was willing to be responsible for.

“Isn’t it early for him to be home from work?” I asked.

Zack said, “Kyle took the afternoon off because he and Warren were supposed to go out shopping for a new bed. He can’t reach him by phone—the phone is off. We both think that it’s not like Warren, but Kyle is too angry to worry.”

Zack, our submissive wolf, lived with Warren, third in the pack, and Warren’s boyfriend, Kyle. Zack wasn’t gay, but he’d come to us damaged and everyone felt better with him living with someone in the pack—and Kyle’s house was bigger than ours.

Kyle and Warren had both taken him under their protection. It was cute that most of the pack was more afraid of Kyle. It wasn’t that anyone in the pack would hurt Zack. But if someone inadvertently scared him . . . well, if Kyle was around, they would never do it again.

“I’ll try to call Adam, but if you can’t reach Warren, likely Adam will be in the same boat,” I told Zack.

Maybe the president had stopped in, I thought. They take away people’s cell phones when the president’s around, right? Something that big might be a good reason for why Warren had turned off his phone and not told Zack what was up.

Or maybe it was just another boring meeting, but the president would be a better story. And it had a better chance of pouring water on Kyle’s temper than just a meeting.

I called Adam and, not unexpectedly, got his voice message. I hung up and called Zack back.

“I can’t get through, either, but the pack bonds feel fine. So I don’t think anything is wrong.”

“Okay,” Zack said. “I’ll let Kyle know.”

“If he decides to be worried instead of mad, you could call Hauptman Security. They won’t be able to tell him anything.” I paused. “Wait. They might be able to tell me more than they could either of you. I’ll do that, too.”

Hauptman Security answered on the second ring.

“Hey, Mercy,” said Jim.

“Hey,” I said. “Is the boss around?”

“Nah,” he told me. “He and most of the crew—that crew, if you know what I mean—got called out this morning. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No,” I told him. “Thanks.” “That crew” had to be the werewolves.

I called and told Zack that all seemed quiet on the Hauptman Security front. I promised to let him and Kyle know if I heard anything before they did.

By the time I got back to Ruth, there was food on the table. We ate, Uncle Mike flirted—and I realized that I didn’t see this side of Uncle Mike very often anymore. There was a time when I wouldn’t have known there was another side to him.

Ruth polished off her mead—which she told Uncle Mike she usually didn’t like. We both ate the last of the stew and homemade bread and said our good-byes.

Ruth stood by her car for a moment, looking thoughtful. Then she looked at me. “Was I bespelled?”

“Nope,” I told her. “He can, but he doesn’t. Won’t do it at his place of business.” I didn’t feel obligated to tell her that he’d started to—because I believed Uncle Mike that he hadn’t done it intentionally.

“He was funny and kind,” she said.

“Mostly people are just people when you get to know them,” I told her. “Even fae people.”

“Did you plan this with him?”

I shook my head. “I did not tell him we were coming. He’s an old friend of mine—but he doesn’t usually give me that sort of personal attention when I come here. He definitely knew who you were, and gave you the red-carpet treatment. Someone clued him in, but it wasn’t me.”

I wondered if it was Zee, but that didn’t feel like something he’d do.

“Why did he make such a fuss?” she demanded, and there was a hint of fear in the air. “I’m nobody.”

“That’s not true,” I told her. “As to why . . . for the same reason that anyone treating with the US government puts its best foot forward. They don’t want you scared. They don’t want a war. They want an agreement that everyone can live with—on both sides.”

“You like him,” she said. It was almost an accusation.

I nodded. “I do, and so do most people—fae or not.”

“You trust him.”

That was harder. “I trust him to be himself,” I told her. “I won’t say he isn’t dangerous. But I’ve seen him protect two men, humans whom he did not know, at a significant risk to himself. He knew that those men were important to me—but the chance of my finding out that he had been there and done nothing was, in my estimate and his, not very great. He did it because it was the right thing to do.”

“They are not Christians,” she said. “They are not moral people.”

She said it as if it were a mantra, something she’d been taught. I’d heard it just the other day in a JLS sound bite on Facebook. As if only Christians were moral. As if all Christians were moral.

My old pastor liked to say that church is a hospital for the sick, not a mausoleum for the saints.

“They do not lie,” I said, choosing my words with care. “Otherwise they are, morally, a great deal like us. Their morality spans the spectrum of good and evil. Like us, they have rulers—and those rulers, pragmatically, know that they have to enforce laws that keep the peace between fae and humans.”

“Okay,” she said. She stared at Uncle Mike’s for a moment. “You’ve made me think about things that I thought my mind was made up about. I’m not saying I’ve changed my mind. Just that I’m reconsidering.”

“That is very”—what could I say that didn’t sound patronizing?—“open-minded of you.”

She looked at me. “You seem so straightforward. Jake thinks that you are your husband’s minion, doing the great Alpha werewolf’s bidding, poor human that you are. But you are your own person, aren’t you? And you aren’t nearly as straightforward as you appear to be.”

“Stick with me,” I intoned lightly, “and I’ll have you thinking that Adam and I, that the werewolves, are the good guys.”

She held out her hand, so I did the same and we shook. She started to say something, shook her head, and got in her car. She gave me a wave as she drove away.

“I hope I didn’t make a mistake,” I muttered.

“That’s both of us,” said Uncle Mike, who was somehow right behind me. “But all you can do is show them your cards and hope they show you theirs. It might have been nice if you’d warned me that you were coming.”

I smiled grimly at him. “You knew.”

“Kinsey saw her in the parking lot,” Uncle Mike told me. “But I could have used more time.”

“I may trust you, Uncle Mike,” I told him, “but you have twenty or more fae in there that might owe allegiance to any one of the Gray Lords. If I’d told you we were coming, it could have compromised her safety. Isn’t her safety the real reason you joined us for lunch?”

“Well, now,” said Uncle Mike, “can’t I flirt with a pair of pretty women when they come to dine at my place without getting accused of ulterior motivation?”

I shook my head and laughed. “No.”

“That’s all right, then,” he said happily.

Tad was at the shop by himself when I got back. His hands were newly bandaged and he was reading a book.

“Hey, Mercy,” he said. He held up a hand. “Look what I did. The lady at the doc-in-a-box said they’d heal in a week or so if I gave them a chance.”

“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “I sent you home.”

“Dad had to step out for lunch,” he said. “We didn’t want to leave the garage unattended, given what happened yesterday.”

“I don’t know that it matters,” I told him. “Adam’s people watched the tapes and found when the poppet was placed in the box. Someone came through the front door without setting off the alarm. They walked into the garage, put the poppet in the box, and walked out the way they came in.”

“How did they do that?” asked Tad, putting down his book. “Did they see a face?”

I nodded. “It was one of Adam’s security people. But when Adam questioned him, the guy said with perfect honesty that he didn’t remember doing any of it. Adam gave him a leave of absence and tickets to California for him and his girlfriend—to get them out of the range of the witches.”

“If they can get one of Adam’s people,” Tad said slowly, “they can get more.”

I nodded. “That’s what we think.”

“Better find them and take care of them soon, eh?” Tad said. “Dad says that the Gray Lords told everyone hands off.” He gave me a firm look. “But he also pointed out that he and I are rogues. Cast-outs—did you have an argument with him over that term, Mercy? He said cast-outs don’t need to follow the rules. If you need help, you let us know.”

I got home after dark because cleaning the waterlogged cars had put us behind, and Tad’s necessary medical leave had put us even further behind.

There was a gaggle of people wandering around the house, children and wives, but the only pack there were Sherwood (back from work) and Joel.

I pulled Sherwood aside. “Has anyone heard from any of the other wolves?”

“You mean the pack?” he asked. “No. I thought Adam might have told you. Maybe the president showed up and they needed Adam to provide security unexpectedly.”

Funny how both of our minds went to the same place. But how else to explain the radio silence? I couldn’t help it; my mind went back to last November when the whole pack had been taken by a bunch of nutjobs taking orders, whether they knew it or not, from Frost. Who, I was pretty sure by now, was not only a vampire but a Hardesty witch.

I called Kyle.

“Hey, Mercy,” he said. “Do you know when I can expect Warren to come home?”

Yep, he was still mad.

“No,” I said. “Is Zack still there?”

“Yes.”

“I think you and he should come to pack headquarters,” I said. “Please. I don’t like it that the whole pack is out of contact.”

I could practically feel the worry win out over anger. But all he said was “Okay.” Then he disconnected.

My phone rang. I looked down and saw that it was Stefan.

“Hey,” I said. “I’ve been trying to get in touch. I was about ready to drive over again.”

“I have the information you need on Frost,” Stefan said. “But I had to go to Marsilia to get it, and it comes with a price.”

“What price?” I asked.

Marsilia’s voice gave me my answer. “Stefan needs to stay here until this is over. This family, the Hardesty family, they produce people who control the dead, Mercy. More people like Frost. I do not want to lose Stefan to them, or worse, have him turned against me as a weapon.”

Sherwood was listening intently. He made a motion and Joel, in his dog form, got up from where he’d been playing with one of Kelly’s boys and walked over to us so he could listen, too.

“Okay,” I told Marsilia. “I can agree with that reasoning.”

“I am so pleased,” said Marsilia with a bite in her voice, “that you approve. Particularly as Stefan does not. I will tell him that his pet doesn’t think that he can defend himself, either.”

I thought of all the replies I could make. I was reasonably sure that Stefan could hear me—though he wasn’t saying anything.

“Stefan is dear to me,” I said at last. “I would not have him take unreasonable risks for doubtful outcomes. If Death or the witch she brought with her can command the dead as Frost did”—and didn’t that sound stupid?—“if one of them is better at it than Frost was, I would rather that all my vampire allies stay as far away from the witches as possible. For their sakes and my own.”

“Why, Mercy,” she purred, “you’ve been spending too much time with politicians. Be careful or you’ll end up just like them.”

I didn’t respond.

Finally she said, in a brisk and businesslike fashion, “I did not connect Frost to the witch family until Stefan asked me about him.”

“They are connected, then?” I asked.

“Yes. I knew he’d come from Bonarata to monitor me, and I assumed he was one of Bonarata’s. I did not examine him closely—such things can be misunderstood. I did not want to give Bonarata reason to come boiling out of Europe so he could stick his big feet in the middle of my affairs.”

“Understandable,” I said.

“But, since matters between me and the Master of Milan have been altered in the past few months, when Stefan asked me to check into Frost, I called Jacob.” Iacopo Bonarata, she meant, the Master of Milan himself.

That was a lot more action than I’d expected. I hadn’t expected Stefan to take matters to Marsilia at all.

“Jacob assured me that Frost showed up at his doorstep twenty years ago, a full-fledged vampire. He was, I am fairly sure, though it is difficult to ascertain such things over the phone, surprised to find that Frost was young enough that we had to dispose of his body. From the condition of that body, Wulfe and I estimate that Frost was no more than seventy years old—dating from his human birth, not his vampiric rebirth.”

“Who made him?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” Marsilia said. “But I have called around to seethes where I have allies. I found that there are at least three other vampires who share his bloodline.”

“I thought Frost took over all the other seethes,” I said.

“Do you think Bonarata would have allowed that?” she said. “No. But he took over most of the seethes of the western United States, all of them except for Hao’s and mine, before he died. Hao’s probably doesn’t count, since he is the only vampire in his seethe. Seattle doesn’t count because it was the werewolves who kept him away from there, not the vampires. The vampires in Seattle barely qualify as a seethe at all.”

“Okay,” I said. “But how did you discover that there were vampires made by Frost’s maker in your allies’ seethes?”

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?”

“It might be useful.” She paused. “There is a saying about the Hardesty witches—they travel in pairs. I don’t know much about them, Mercy, though I am fixing that. They have stayed under my radar. I have inquiries out with seethes that are closer to their home base. The vampires who live near them are unwilling or unable to talk about them. But a vampire from Kentucky told me this creepy little bit of doggerel verse.”

Wulfe’s voice broke in. “One by one, two by two, the Hardesty witches are traveling through. With a storm of curses, they call from their tomes; they will drink your blood and dine on your bones.”

“Hmm,” Marsilia said into the silence that followed. “It sounds remarkably more horrid when you say it, Wulfe.”

“It’s because I’m scarier to start with,” he said.

“Do you need anything more that I can offer?” she asked me.

“Is Stefan okay?”

Stefan grunted an affirmative that managed to sound irritated but not enraged. Pretty impressive communication skills considering I was getting that with the filter of (presumably) a gag and a phone.

“Can I call you if I have more questions?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said.

“I appreciate it,” I told her, and hung up.

“What does this Frost character have to do with what’s going on now?” asked Sherwood, who hadn’t been here for that episode.

“I think it’s the other way around,” I said. “These witches were behind Frost. And now they’re screwing with us again.”

“The vampire is afraid of them,” said Sherwood softly.

“So am I,” I said. “I wish I knew where Adam was.”