I started to shrug, but nodded my head instead. “As normal as it gets.”
“Fine.” He looked at Samuel. “Tell me that you’re not a danger to your patients.”
I waited anxiously for a smart-ass comment, but Samuel was tired, too. He only said, “I’m not a danger to my patients.”
“All right,” Tony said. “All right. Dr. Cornick, if anyone asks about this, just tell them it was a police matter you were helping in.” He took out his wallet and pulled out a card. “Give them my number if you need to.”
Samuel took the card. “Thank you.”
Then Tony turned back to Adam. “Mr. Hauptman,” he said. “Mercy tells me that I ought to speak with you first on matters concerning werewolves.”
Adam rubbed his face tiredly. It took him so long to speak that I worried. Finally he said, in an almost civil tone. “Yes. Did Mercy give you my number?”
“We didn’t get that far.”
Adam collected himself and managed a small smile that made him look like a hungry tiger. Tony took a discreet step back. “I’m not carrying my cards tonight, but if you call my office, I’ll instruct them to give you my cell phone number—or Mercy usually knows how to get in touch with me.”
My ankle was just sprained. Stefan left while Tony was talking with Adam. No one but me seemed to notice. I don’t know if he did some vampire thing, or that no one else cared.
Adam wanted me to stay at his house. But he had half the local pack, part of the Montana pack, and Kyle staying at his house. I had no intention of joining the crowd.
After the others left for Adam’s house, Samuel carried me into my battered trailer and started toward my bedroom, but I didn’t want to sleep. Not ever.
“Can you take me to the office, instead?” I asked.
He still wasn’t speaking much, but he obediently switched directions and took me into the tiny third bedroom that hummed with various bits of electronics.
He set me in the chair, then dropped to his knees in front of me. His hands were shaking when he closed them on my knees and pulled them apart so he could fill up the space between. His body was hot as he pressed himself against me and buried his face in my neck.
“I knew you’d come,” he whispered and the power of his wolf ruffled my hair as it rushed over me. “I was so worried. And then…and then the wolf came. Adam kept control—he tried to help me, but I was in a worse state than Ben, who had been there far longer. I am losing control of my wolf, I’m a danger to you. I told my father that as soon as you are well, I will return to Montana.”
I held him with my good arm. “Demons aren’t good for a werewolf ’s control.”
“Of the three of us there,” he told my neck, “I had the least control.”
That wasn’t true. I’d been there and seen him still fighting when Ben had given up entirely to the wolf. But before I took up that argument, I realized something.
“That church is less than half a mile from the hospital,” I told him. “Uncle Mike told me the demon’s presence causes violence anywhere near him—and the police records confirm that. When Tony worked it up for me, we found that the area of effect was over three miles in diameter. You’ve been fighting the demon since the night I first ran into Littleton. It had Ben for a few days—you, it’s been working on for weeks.”
He stilled, thinking about it.
“The night you lost control after that accident with the baby,” I said. “It wasn’t you, it was the demon.”
The arms of my chair creaked a protest under his hands. He took a deep breath of my scent and then pulled back a little so he could look me in the face. Very slowly, giving me plenty of time to pull away, he kissed me.
I thought I might love Adam. Samuel had hurt me once before—very badly. I knew that he might only want me now for the same reason he had wanted me then. Even so, I couldn’t pull away.
I had come so close to losing him.
I returned his kiss with interest, leaning into his body and threading my fingers through his fine hair. It was Samuel who ended the kiss.
“I’ll get you some cocoa,” he said, leaving me in my chair.
“Sam?” I said.
He stopped at the door, his back to me and his head lowered. “I’ll be all right, Mercy. For tonight, just let me get us both some cocoa.”
“Don’t forget the marshmallows,” I told him.
Chapter 14
“He’s not come to trial yet?”
“No,” Stefan sipped at his tea, which he had requested. I hadn’t known vampires could drink tea. “How’s the ankle?”
I made a rude noise. “My ankle is fine.” Which wasn’t strictly true, but I wasn’t going to let him change the subject. “It took them only a day to bring you to trial and it’s been two weeks for Andre.”
“Weeks that Andre spends in the cells beneath the seethe,” Stefan said mildly. “He’s not out vacationing. As for how long it is taking, I’m afraid that is my fault. I’ve been in Chicago to see what I can ferret out about Andre’s activities there. To make sure that Littleton was the only person he managed to turn.”
“I thought Andre didn’t have enough control to turn his people into vampires.”
Stefan set his tea on the table and gave me an interested look. “Rachel said you’d been over to visit. I hadn’t realized how much you learned.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “I grew up with werewolves, Stefan, intimidation isn’t going to work. Tell me how Andre managed to turn a sorcerer when he can’t turn one of his minions.”
His face lit up in one of his generous smiles. “I don’t know. I’ll tell you what I do know. Cory Littleton has been flirting with evil since he was a very young boy. His apartment in Chicago—which Andre has paid for up until next December—had a secret room I sniffed out. It was full of interesting things like black wax candles and books on ancient ceremonies that would have been best left uncatalogued. I burned them, and the notebooks he kept his journals in—written in mirror writing of all things. At least it wasn’t in Greek.”
“Does Andre know how Littleton became a sorcerer? Could he make more of them?” asked Samuel, his sleep-roughened voice emerging from the hallway.
“Hello, Samuel,” Stefan said. Medea came out of the hallway shadows first, meowing sharp little complaints as she trotted across the kitchen floor and hopped onto Stefan’s lap.
Samuel followed, half dressed and sporting a day’s growth of beard. Samuel hadn’t been himself since Littleton captured him—or maybe since that night he told me about the baby his girlfriend had aborted. His temper was shorter and he was too serious—when I tried to bring up the subject of that kiss we’d shared, he wouldn’t discuss it. I worried about him.
“Does Andre know how to create a sorcerer?”
Stefan nodded his head slowly. “According to Littleton’s journals he does. Littleton told him.”
Samuel pulled out a chair and spun it around so he sat on it backwards. “Was it something about Littleton being a sorcerer that allowed him to survive being turned?”
Medea batted Stefan’s hand and instead of picking up his cup, he rubbed her behind her ears. She purred and settled more firmly on his lap.
“I don’t know,” Stefan answered finally. “I’m not certain even Andre knows. He fed off Littleton for several years before turning him. I don’t think that he has any more Littletons waiting in the wings, though. It’s not all that easy to find someone willing to sell his soul to the devil.”
Samuel relaxed.
“He was a sorcerer before he was a vampire?” I asked.
“Yes.” Stefan wiggled his fingers in front of Medea’s nose and she batted at them. “He was a sorcerer before he met Andre. He thought that being a vampire would make him more powerful—Andre told him so. Neither he nor the demon was pleased to find out that being a vampire meant that they had to follow Andre’s orders.”
“He wasn’t following Andre’s orders that night in the church.” Samuel reached over a
nd grabbed a cup and filled it from the teapot on the table.
“No. It is possible to break the bond of control the maker has over his children, just difficult.” Stefan sipped his tea and I wondered what his careful expression was hiding.
“Speaking of bonds,” I said, finally asking the question that had haunted me since the night I’d killed Littleton, “will there be any permanent effects from your sharing blood with me that night?”
I wanted him to say “no.” Instead he shrugged. “Probably not. One blood exchange isn’t much of a connection. Any effects from it will fade. Have you noticed anything odd?”
I shook my head—no telekinesis tricks for me.
“Why were you able to call her to you?” asked Samuel. “I thought she was immune to vampire tricks.”
“Mostly immune,” murmured Stefan. “But you don’t have to worry about that. Calling is one of my talents. If Mercy hadn’t been mostly unconscious—and willing to come—I couldn’t have called her. She’s not going to suddenly find herself unable to resist coming to my call or the call of any other vampire.”
I didn’t ask him about the memory I had of him murmuring loving words into my ears. I hoped it was just something to do with how he’d called me.
“Why did you come here tonight?” I asked instead.
Stefan smiled at me with such power I wasn’t sure he was truthful when he said, “I had to strengthen my stomach. Visits with you are always bracing, Mercedes, if not completely comfortable.” He glanced down at his watch. “But it’s time for me to go while you still are able to get a full night’s sleep. The Mistress will expect a full report.”
He put the cat down with a final pat and got up to leave. In the open doorway he hesitated, and without looking at me he said, “Don’t fret, Mercy. I’ve learned all I can, and she won’t hold back the trial again. Andre will face justice.”
I waited until Stefan had left before I asked Samuel, “They have that chair, the one that makes you tell the truth. Why did he go out to investigate?”
Samuel gave me a dark look. “Sometimes I forget how young you are,” he said.
I glowered right back at him. “Don’t think that ticking me off will get you out of answering. Why did he delay the trial?”
Samuel took a sip of tea, grimaced and set it down. He wasn’t a tea drinker. “I think he’s worried about what questions will get asked and what questions will not. If he knows enough, he can testify himself.”
It sounded fine, but I couldn’t see why he’d tried not to tell me that. There must be something more.
He looked at my face and laughed wearily. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Go to bed, Mercy. I need to get ready to go to work.”
“Dad told me to ask you when you’re going to fix that eyesore the sorcerer made of your house,” Jesse said levering herself onto a shelf in my shop.
“When I win the lottery,” I told her dryly and went back to tightening the belt on the old BMW I was working on.
Jesse laughed. “He told me you’d say that.”
My shoulder was still pretty sore and I limped, but at least I could work now. Zee had taken over the shop for two weeks—he didn’t want me to pay him. But he’d saved my life with his vampire kit, I owed him enough. If I was lucky, after paying him I’d still be able to cover the bills, but not much else. It would be a few months before I could afford to even look at replacing the siding on the trailer.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked.
“I’m waiting for Gabriel to get off work.”
I looked up at that.
She laughed harder. “If you could see your face. Who are you worried about, him or me?”
“When you break his heart, it’ll be me who’ll have to live with the moaning.” If there was real fear in my voice, it was only because Zee’s son Tad, Gabriel’s predecessor, had had a very rocky love life.
“When she breaks my heart? If anyone’s heart breaks, it’ll be hers,” Gabriel informed me grandly, from the office doorway. “Unable to resist my charms, she’ll be devastated at my callousness when I tell her I must go to college. The loss will cause her to resign herself to a long and lonely life without me.”
Jesse giggled. “If my dad stops in, tell him I’ll be home around ten.”
I gave Gabriel a stern look. “You know who her father is.”
He laughed. “A man who will risk nothing for love is not a man.” Then he winked. “I’ll have her home before ten, though, just in case.”
Alone, I buttoned up the BMW and closed down the shop. Stefan hadn’t called me this morning before I came to work, so I didn’t know if anything had happened with Andre.
There was nothing to worry about. Andre was clearly guilty of creating a monster. Still, there had been a weariness in Stefan’s manner last night that made me fret a little. If it was an open and shut case, why had he spent weeks in Chicago investigating?
I had company waiting for me in the parking lot. Warren had lost some weight and still limped, even worse than I did. It hadn’t stopped him from wiping the floor with Paul who now cringed whenever Warren walked by. And if there were occasional nightmares, he still looked much happier than he had been.
Much of that was due to the handsome man leaning on the fender of Warren’s battered truck wearing, of all things, a lavender cowboy outfit complete with purple hat. The only good thing that had come out of the Littleton business was that Warren and Kyle were an item again.
“Who ticked you off?” I asked Kyle, who had exquisite taste.
“I was meeting a client’s husband and his high-powered Seattle lawyer. The longer they think I’m a lightweight poof, the higher I’ll hang them in court.”
I laughed and kissed him on the cheek. “It’s good to see you.”
“We’re going to catch a show at my place,” Kyle said. “We thought you might like to join in.”
“Only if you change clothes,” I told him seriously.
The truck rocked a little and Ben stuck his head over the side of the bed where he’d been resting. His red coat was rough and his eyes were dull. He let me touch his face before curling back up in the truck bed.
When I got in the cab, Warren said, “Adam thought it would do Ben some good to get out. We thought it would do you some good, too.”
“He’s still not shifting,” I asked.
“No. And he wouldn’t hunt with us at full moon.”
I glanced out the back window, but, although he doubtless could hear us talk about him, Ben didn’t raise his head off his front paws.
“Is he eating?”
“Enough.”
Which meant that he wasn’t likely to lose control and eat me like he’d eaten Daniel—that’s what Daniel had been telling me. Vampires, not even vampires possessed by demons, don’t eat other vampires.
It surprised me a little that Ben was taking it so hard. He had always seemed to me like the kind of person who could strangle his granny for her pearls then eat a peanut butter sandwich in her kitchen afterwards. Maybe I was wrong—or else eating someone was tougher. Warren had told me that Ben and Daniel had struck up an odd friendship while they were out hunting Littleton. It hadn’t been strong enough to save Daniel, but it might be enough to destroy Ben.
We watched Japanese anime, ate take-out Mexican food, and made rude jokes while Ben watched us with empty eyes. Warren drove us both home in the early evening, dropping me at my house first.
There was a note on the fridge from Samuel. He’d been called into work because one of the other physicians was sick. The phone rang while I was still reading Samuel’s note.
“Mercedes,” said Stefan’s voice in my ears. “Sit down.”
“What’s wrong?” I don’t take orders well: I stayed where I was.
“Andre was tried last night,” he said. “He confessed to turning Littleton, confessed to everything: the creation of Littleton, the incident with Daniel, setting me up to meet Littleton at that hotel.”
“It was about you,” I said. “He was jealous of you.”
“Yes. It was during a conversation with him that I decided there was something odd about Daniel’s experience. He made sure someone told me Littleton had registered at that hotel.”
“Littleton was supposed to kill you,” I said.
“Yes. He was supposed to kill me—but that was the night he broke Andre’s control. Andre thinks that all the killing strengthened the demon so Littleton didn’t have to listen to him anymore. Andre couldn’t find him after that night. But he wasn’t too worried until Littleton started leaving presents on his doorstep.”
“Presents?”
“Body parts.” When I didn’t say anything Stefan continued. “Andre was getting pretty desperate, and when Littleton captured Daniel, Warren, Ben and me, he convinced Marsilia that you were the only hope of finding Littleton. He was around when the walkers nearly drove the vampires out of the Western territories. It should please you that he was really shocked when you found Littleton so soon.”
“He confessed,” I said. “So what is bothering you?”
“There was no permanent harm done to the seethe,” he said, biting off the words.
I sat down on the floor of the kitchen. I’d heard those words before.
“She released him.” I couldn’t believe it. “Did she just let him go?”
Samuel had known it might happen, I thought. Both he and Stefan had known there was a good chance he’d be freed: that’s why Stefan had worked so hard to get evidence.
“I told them that by calling you into the hunt, the seethe was responsible for the damage to your trailer and for you missing work for almost two weeks. The seethe has retained the services of a contractor to replace the siding, though that may take a while—this is their busy season. In the next few days, though, our accountants will issue you a check to compensate you for your loss of work.”
“They just let him go.”
“He sent Littleton here, hoping to destroy those he perceived as Marsilia’s enemies. The chair witnessed his truthfulness.”