And though she grilled him for ten minutes or more, that was all he would say.
Stefan appeared beside me.
His eyes were on the sleeve of his white dress shirt as he casually fixed a cuff link, then he pulled the sleeve of his subtly pin-striped gray suit over it with a just-right tug.
He looked at me, and Marsilia looked at him.
She waved her hand at Bernard.
"Get up--Wuife, put him somewhere obvious, would you?" Shaking and stumbling, Bernard rose, his hands dripping on the pale floor all the way to the stands, where Wulfe cleared out space on the bottom tier of seats for them both.
He began cleaning Bernard's hands, like a cat licking ice cream.
Stefan didn't say anything, just ran his eyes over me in a quick survey.
Then he looked at Adam, who nodded regally back, though he smiled a little, and I realized that he and Stefan were wearing the same thing, except that Adam wore a dark blue shirt.
Mary Jo saw the resemblance and grinned.
She turned to say something to Paul, I thought, when a surprised look came over her face, and she just dropped.
Alec caught her before she hit the floor as if this wasn't the first time she'd done something like that.
Leftovers from the close brush with death, I hoped, not something the vampires were doing.
Stefan left me for Mary Jo.
He touched her throat, ignoring Alec's silent snarl.
"Relax," Stefan told the wolf.
"She will take no harm from me." "She's been doing that a lot," Adam told him.
That he didn't step between his vulnerable pack member and the vampire was an unsubtle message.
"She's waking up," Stefan said just before her eyes fluttered open.
And only after Mary Jo was clearly awaken did Stefan look at Marsilia.
"Come to the chair, Soldier," she told him.
He stared at her for so long that I wondered if he would do it.
He might love her, but he didn't like her very much at the moment--and, I hoped, didn't trust her either.
But he patted Mary Jo's knee and walked out to where Marsilia waited for him.
"Wait," she told him before he sat down.
She looked at the stands across from us, where the vampires and their food sat.
"Do you want me to question Estelle, first? Would that make you happier?" I couldn't tell who she was speaking to.
"Fine," she said.
"Bring Estelle here." A door I hadn't noticed opened on the far side of the room and Lily, the gifted pianist and quite insane vampire who never left the seethe and Marsilia's protection, came in carrying Estelle like a new groom carried his bride over the threshold.
Lily was even dressed in a frothy white mass of lace that could have been a wedding dress to Estelle's dark suit.