Keeping my mouth turned away from Chad, I said, "You're a nice man." Stefan patted my head.
I checked Chad's bedroom, but it looked as if nothing had happened, and not even a trace of dampness from the frost remained.
Only the two pieces of comforter on either side of Chad's bed gave any hint of trouble.
"There are a couple of vampires that can do stuff like this," Stefan said, waving his hand at Chad's room.
"Move things without touching them, kill people without being in the room.
But I've never heard of a ghost with this much power.
They tend to be pathetic things trying to pretend they are alive." I didn't smell vampire, only blood--fading as the frost had faded.
I had seen the ghost--not clearly, but it had been there.
Still, I turned so Chad couldn't read my lips.
"Do you think Blackwood is playing ghost?" Stefan shook his head.
"No, it's not the Monster.
Wrong heritage.
There was an Indian vampire in New York--" He looked at me and grinned.
He pressed a finger to his forehead.
"Indian with a dot, not a feather.
Anyway, he and his get all could have done something like what we saw tonight ...
except for the cold.
But only the vampires he made directly could do it--and he only made Indian women into vampires.
They were all killed a century or more ago, and I think Blackwood predated him anyway." Chad had been watching Stefan's mouth with every evidence of fascination.
He made a few gestures, and Stefan signed back, saying, "They're dead.
No.
Someone else killed them.
Yes, I'm sure it was someone else." He glanced at me.
"Want to explain to the kid that I'm more a Spike than a Buffy? A villain, not a superhero?" I batted my eyelashes at him.
"You're my hero." He jerked several steps back from me as if I'd hit him.
It made me wonder what Marsilia had said to him while she'd tortured him.
"Stefan?" He turned back to us with a hiss and an expression that made Chad back into me.
"I'm a vampire, Mercy." I wasn't going to let him get away with the morose, self-hating vampire act.
He deserved better than that.
"Yeah, we got that.