Apparently my coyoteness was close enough to wolf that the pack magic was willing to let me in.
Probably Adam should have discussed bringing me in with the Marrok, too.
Cars were pulling up in front of the house, more of the pack.
I could feel the weight of them, their unease and confusion.
Anger.
I rubbed my arms nervously.
"What's wrong?" asked Stefan in a quiet, sane voice that would have reassured me more if he'd moved or opened his eyes.
"Besides Marsilia?" I asked him.
He looked at me then, his lips curving faintly.
"That's enough, I suppose.
But Marsilia isn't the reason this house is filling with werewolves." I sat on the thickly carpeted basement floor and leaned my head against the bars of the cage.
The door was shut and locked, the key that sometimes hung on the wall across the hallway gone.
Adam would have it.
It didn't matter though.
I was pretty sure Stefan could leave anytime he chose--the same way he'd appeared in my living room.
"Right." I sighed.
"Well that's your fault, too, I expect." He sat up and leaned forward.
"What happened?" "When you jumped inside my head," I told him, "Adam took offense." I didn't tell him exactly how everything had played out.
Prudence suggested Adam wouldn't be pleased with me if I shared pack business with a vampire.
"What he did--and you'll have to ask him, I think--brought the pack down on his head." He frowned in obvious puzzlement, then slow comprehension dawned.
"I am sorry, Mercy.
You weren't meant to ...
I didn't mean to." He turned his head away.
"I'm not used to being so alone.
I was dreaming, and there you were, the only one left with a tie of blood to me.
I thought I dreamed that, too." "She really had them all killed?" I whispered it, remembering some of what he'd given me while he'd been in my head.
"All of your ..." Sheep wasn't really PC, and I didn't want to tick him off, even if sheep is what all the vampires called the mundane humans they kept to feed off.
"All of your people?" I knew some of them, and liked one or two.
For some reason, though, rather than the faces of the people I'd met living, it was the young vampire Danny I remembered, his ghost rocking in the corner of Stefan's kitchen.
Stefan hadn't been able to protect him either.