She wasn't paying any attention at all to us.
"Do you know her?" We were on my road, just a few properties from our house, so Stefan's question was reasonable.
"No." He stopped about a dozen yards away, and she finally looked up.
The purr of the van's engine subsided, and Stefan glanced behind him, then opened the door and got out.
Trouble.
I stripped off my clothes, popped open my door, and shifted as I hopped out.
A coyote may not be big, but it has fangs and surprisingly effective claws.
I slipped under the van's side and out under the front bumper, where Stefan was leaning, his arms crossed casually across his chest.
The girl was no longer alone.
Three vampires stood beside her.
The first two I'd seen before, though I didn't know their names.
The third was Estelle.
In Marsilia's seethe there had once been five vampires who had reached some sort of power plateau so that they did not depend upon the Mistress of the seethe for survival: Stefan; Andre, whom I'd killed; Wulfe, the ?bercreepy wizard in a boy's body; Bernard, who reminded me of a merchant out of a Dickens novel; and Estelle, the Mary Poppins of the undead.
I'd never seen her when she wasn't dressed like an Edwardian governess, and tonight was no exception.
As if he'd been waiting for me to appear at his side, Stefan glanced down at me, then said, "Estelle, how nice to see you." "I'd heard she hadn't destroyed you," Estelle said in her prim English voice.
"She tortured you, starved you, banished you--then sent you to kill your little coyote bitch." Stefan spread his hands out as if to showcase his own living ...
undead flesh.
"It is as you heard it." There was a musical cadence to his voice, and he sounded more Italian than usual.
"Yet here you are, you and the bitch both." I growled at her, and I heard Stefan's smile in his reply.
"I don't think she likes being called a bitch." "Marsilia is mad.
She's been mad since she awoke twelve years ago, and she hasn't gotten better with time." Estelle's voice softened, and she stepped forward.
"If she weren't mad, she would never have tortured you--her favorite." She obviously waited for Stefan's reply, which didn't come.
"I have a proposition for you," she told him.
"Join with me, and we will put Marsilia out of her misery--you know that she'd have urged you to do just that if she were aware of what she's become.
She will see us all destroyed in her obsession with returning to Italy.
This is our home--our seethe bows to no other.
Italy holds nothing for us." "No," Stefan said.
"I will not move against the Mistress." "She is your Mistress no more," Estelle hissed.
She strode forward until I was pressed against Stefan's leg.
"She tortured you--I saw what she did.