I SAT SHOTGUN IN THE SUBURBAN ADAM HAD DRIVEN over.
I didn't know if it was a rental or a new vehicle--which is what it smelled like.
Paul, Darryl, and Aurielle filled the first backseat.
Samuel drove his own car, a nifty new Mercedes in bing cherry red.
Mary Jo, who had been heading toward Adam's vehicle until she saw me, abruptly changed directions and got into Warren's old truck.
Alec, trailing her around like a lost puppy, followed.
"And I thought Bran could be Byzantine," I said finally, trying to relax in the safety of the leather upholstery as Adam drove through the gates.
"I didn't catch it all," said Darryl.
He must have been tired because his voice was even deeper than usual, buzzing my ears so I had to listen closely to catch all of his words.
"For some reason she had to convince Stefan that he was out of the seethe.
Then, when her traitors approached him, he had to refuse their offers before he could witness that they'd made them?" "That's what it sounded like to me," said Adam.
"And only with his witness and their maker's consent could she deal with her traitors." "Makes sense," offered Paul almost shyly.
"The way the seethe works, if he belonged to her--his witness is hers.
If those two were imposed on her, she couldn't have them killed at her word.
She'd need outside verification." I wondered if I'd been set up.
I thought of Wulfe's oh-so-convenient aid when I'd killed Andre.
He'd known I was looking for Andre--I'd stumbled upon his resting place before I found Andre's.
I'd thought he kept it from the Mistress for his own reasons ...
but maybe he hadn't.
Maybe Marsilia had planned it.
My head hurt.
"Maybe we were suspecting the wrong vampire of trying to take over Marsilia's seethe," Adam said.
I thought about the vampire who had been Bernard's maker and had stood to watch this ...
trial.
I didn't want to be sympathetic; I wanted to hate Marsilia cleanly for what she had done to Stefan.
But I'd become passing familiar with evil and all its shades, and that vampire, Bernard's maker, set off every alarm that I had.
Not that all vampires weren't evil ...
I wished suddenly that I could say except for Stefan.
But I couldn't.
I'd met his menagerie, the ones Marsilia had killed--and I knew that for most of them, except for the very few who became vampire, Stefan would be their death.