I wondered how long I could keep everyone together, awkwardness being better than the stomach-churning panic that conversation with Adam or my mother was going to cause.
"I'm done in," Peter said.
Stefan wasn't any happier about changing donors this time.
But having an additional wolf did the trick and, with only minor damage done to my end table, he was soon feeding off Ben.
But only a few minutes later, Stefan went limp, his mouth falling away.
"Is he dead?" Peter asked and took a sip of his second glass of orange juice.
"Him?" asked Ben, extracting his wrist.
"He's been dead for years." Peter grunted.
"You know what I mean." Truthfully, it was difficult to tell.
He wasn't breathing, but vampires didn't, not unless they needed to talk or pass for human.
His heart wasn't beating, but again, that didn't mean much.
"We'll take him to my house," Adam said.
"The..." He glanced at Mom.
"My basement has a room without windows, where he'll be safer." He meant the cage where they locked up werewolves when they had control issues.
He frowned.
"Not that that will stop whoever dumped him in the middle of your living room, Mercy." He knew "whoever" all right.
Marsilia, I thought, though maybe it had been Stefan himself.
Or maybe some other vampire.
The one who'd explained that Marsilia and Stefan were the only ones who could teleport like that was Andre, the one I'd had to kill.
Hard to trust his information too far.
"I'll be careful," I told Adam.
"But you have to be careful, too.
There was a vampire watching the back of the house when I was out talking to Amber." "Who's Amber?" Adam's question was just a hair faster than my mother's "Amber? Charla's friend Amber from college?" I nodded at Mom.
"She read about ...
I've apparently made national news.
She decided that she should look me up to check into her haunted house." "That sounds like Amber," Mom said.
Char and Amber had spent a number of weekends at my parents' house in Portland while I was in college.
"She always was self-centered, and I don't suppose that would change.
Though why would she think that you could help her with a haunted house?" I had never told Mom about seeing ghosts.
I hadn't really thought it was anything unusual until recently.