Or what she'd demanded in return.
"You didn't tell me," Adam said.
"I'd have gone with you." The vampire smiled grimly.
"Then she would have told me nothing." "She knew where Blackwood denned?" Adam asked.
"That's what I hoped." Stefan picked up a pen and played with it.
I must have used it last because his fingers acquired a little black grease for his trouble.
"But no.
What she did know was that Mercy had a message for me with a blood-and-wax seal.
Her blood.
She could track the message.
Since it was just outside of Spokane, we were both pretty sure Mercy still had it with her." That reminded me.
I pulled the battered missive out of my back pocket.
It hadn't gone through the wash with my jeans--but only because Samuel had a habit of checking pockets before he did laundry.
Something about nuts and bolts in the dryer being irritatingly noisy--I thought that was directed at me, but I could have been paranoid.
Stefan took the letter like I was handing him a bottle of nitroglycerine.
He opened it and read.
When he was through, he balled it up in a fist and stared at the counter.
"She says," he told us in a low, controlled voice, "that my people are safe.
She and Wulfe took them and convinced me that they had died--so I would believe it.
It was necessary that I believe they were dead, that Marsilia no longer wanted me in the seethe.
She has them safe." He paused.
"She wants me to come home." "What are you going to do?" Adam asked.
I was pretty sure I knew.
But I hoped that he made her work like hell for it.
She might not have killed his people, but she'd hurt them-- Stefan had felt it.
"I'm going to take the matter under advisement," he said.
But he straightened out the note and read it again.
"Hey, Stefan," I said.
He looked up.
"You're pretty terrific, you know? I appreciate all the chances you took for me." He smiled, folded the letter carefully.