I took a deep breath, properly supported with my diaphragm, and began singing. "O holy night, the stars are brightly shining..."
So in the sweltering heat of a July night, I sang a Christmas carol to a room full of fae, who had been driven out of their homelands by Christians and their cold-iron swords.
I've heard that song sung softly, until the magic of that first Christmas seems to hang in the air. I wish I could sing it that way. Instead, I belted it out, because that's what my voice does best. I closed my eyes to my audience and let the simple belief of the words run through me like a prayer until I got to, "Fall on your knees." Then I opened my eyes and glared at the woman who had started all of this and I sang the rest of the song at her.
When the last note died away, the big woman threw back her head and laughed. She turned to Uncle Mike and patted him on the shoulder, sending him half a step forward.
"Good forfeit," she said. "Huh." Then she stomped off back through the crowd toward a corner of the room.
If I'd been expecting applause, I'd have been disappointed. The room settled down and the fae went back to doing whatever they'd been doing before I'd become so interesting. Still, it hadn't been any worse than singing at the Friday night performance in front of Bran at Aspen Springs.
One of the musicians, the one who'd offered his guitar, grinned at me as we switched places.
"A little thin on the highest notes," he said. "But not bad."
I grinned back at him, a little ruefully. "Tough crowd."
"You're still alive, ducks, aren't you then?" he said imitating the cadences of the woman's voice.
I gave him a half wave and made a direct line for the exit. I didn't see Andre, but Uncle Mike met me at the door and held it open for me.
Standing on the porch I caught the door and looked back at him. "How did you know I could even carry a note?"
He smiled. "You were raised by a Welshman, Mercedes Thompson. And isn't that a Welsh name, Thompson? Then, too, one of the names for the coyote is the Prairie Songbird." He shrugged. "Of course, it wasn't my life on the line."
I snorted in appreciation. He touched a finger to his forehead and closed the door firmly between us.
CHAPTER 9
Andre was waiting for me in the parking lot, standing beside one of the seethe's interchangeable black Mercedes, ready to drive me to Stefan's home--as if I were stupid enough to hop into a car driven by a vampire I didn't know.
Despite Andre's objections, I followed him in my car rather than letting him drive me. Aside from being safer, when we were done, I could drive straight home instead of waiting for him to drive me back out to Uncle Mike's.
He was right, it might have been useful to talk and come up with a game plan--if I had trusted him a little more or if I hadn't had to go to work in the morning. Bills don't wait just because my friend was cut to hamburger and the vampire's mistress wants me to find a sorcerer who has killed more than forty people.
I took a tighter grip on the wheel and tried not to look at the broken dash, where Stefan, calm, quiet Stefan, had put his fist. What had made him so angry? That the sorcerer had beaten him?
What had Stefan said? That he knew there was something wrong with his memories because he hadn't remembered me. That I was not unimportant to him.
Stefan was a vampire, I reminded myself. Vampires are evil.
I reached out and touched the dash. He did it because I had been hurt, I thought. He wasn't unimportant to me either--I didn't want him to be gone forever.
Stefan's house was in the hills in Kennewick, in one of the newer subdivisions on the west side of Highway 395. It was a big, sprawling brick house on a large lot with a circular drive, the kind of house that should have generations of children growing up in it. Surrounded by buildings with fake columns and two-story-high windows, it should have looked out of place. Instead it looked content with what it was. I could see Stefan in this house.
"You'd better knock on the door," Andre said as I got out of my car. "They've already refused to admit me once tonight--with every justification. Stefan might forgive me Daniel, but his flock will remember." He sounded mildly regretful, about on the level of a child who'd thrown a baseball through a window.
Despite the late hour, there were lights on all over the house. When I thought about it, it made sense that a vampire's people kept late hours.
Coming here had sounded logical when Marsilia had directed us here. I hadn't really thought about what it would mean.
I hesitated before I knocked. I didn't want to meet Stefan's people, didn't want to know that he kept them the way a farmer keeps a herd of cattle. I liked Stefan, and I wanted to keep it that way.
The curtain in the window next to the door moved a little. They already knew we were here.
I rang the doorbell.
I heard a scramble behind the door as if a lot of people were moving around, but when it opened, there was only one person in the entryway.