Stefan gave me a sick look.
"Disciplining me, she said.
But I think it was revenge as much as anything.
And I can feed off them from a distance.
She wanted me starving when I landed at your feet." "She wanted you to kill me." He nodded jerkily.
"That's right.
And if you hadn't had half of Adam's pack at your house, I would have." I thought of the obstinate look on his face.
"I think she underestimated you," I told him.
"Did she?" He smiled, just a little, and shook his head.
I leaned my head back against the wall.
"I'm..." Still angry with you didn't cover it.
He was a murderer of innocents, and here I was talking to him, worried about him.
I didn't know how to complete that thought, much less the sentence, so I went on to something else.
"So Marsilia knows I killed Andre, and you and Wulfe covered it up?" He shook his head.
"She knows something--she didn't talk much to me.
It was only me she punished, so I don't think she knows about Wulfe.
And maybe not me ..." He looked at me from under the cover of his bangs, which had grown in the last day--I'd heard a heavy feeding could cause that.
"I got the feeling I was being punished by association.
I was the seethe's contact with you.
I was the reason she went to you for help and gave you permission to kill Andre's pet.
I was the reason you succeeded.
You are my fault." "She's crazy." He shook his head.
"You don't know her.
She's trying to do what is best for her people." The Tri-City seethe of vampires had mostly been in the area before the towns were established.
Marsilia had been sent here as punishment for sleeping around with someone else's favorite.
She'd been a person of influence, so had come here with attendants-- mostly, as far as I knew, Stefan, Andre--the second vampire I'd killed--and a really creepy character named Wulfe.
Wulfe, who looked like a sixteen-year-old boy, had been a witch or wizard as a human, and sometimes dressed like a medieval peasant.
I supposed he could be faking it, but I suspected that he was older than Marsilia, who dated from the Renaissance, so the clothes fit.
Marsilia had been sent here to die, but she hadn't.
Instead, she'd seen to it that her people survived.