Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

lot of sense out of the vampire who did. She read a note, then giggled a lot.”
    â€œLily?” I looked at Warren.
    â€œThat’s what Samuel said.” He pulled a shirt off his shoulder, where I must have thrown it, and dropped it on the floor.
    â€œShe called him, too?”
    He shrugged. “Yes. Marsilia wanted him there, too. No, I don’t know what it’s about, and neither does Adam. However, it’s unlikely that she’s going to annihilate us once we get there. Adam sent me here to bring you when you got back. I think he wanted you dressed, though.”
    â€œSmart aleck,” I told him, hopping into my jeans. I found a decent bra and put that on. I finally found a clean shirt folded in the shirt drawer. I wondered who’d but it there.
    It’s not that I’m not neat. In my garage, every tool is exactly where it belongs at the end of the day. Sometimes there’s a little friction when Zee has been in there because he and I have a different idea of where some of the tools should be.
    Someday, when time presents itself, I’ll clean my room. Having a roommate forces me to keep the rest of the house reasonably clean. But no one cares about my room, and that puts it pretty far down on my list of to-dos. It’s below, for instance, keeping solvent, saving Amber from Blackwood, and attending the meeting with Marsilia. I’ll almost certainly get to it before I get around to planting a garden, though.
    I pulled on the clean shirt. It was dark blue and emblazoned with BOSCH GENUINE GERMAN AUTO PARTS. Not the shirt I’d have picked out to pay a formal call on the Vampire Queen, but I supposed she’d have to take it or leave it. At least it didn’t have any oil stains.
    Warren picked up a handful of jeans and unburied my shoes. “Now all you need is socks, and we can go.”
    His cell phone rang, and he tossed the shoes at me and answered. “Yes, boss. She’s here and almost dressed.”
    Adam’s voice was a little muffled, and he was talking very quietly—but I still heard him. He sounded a little wistful.
    â€œAlmost, eh?”
    Warren grinned. “Yep. Sorry, boss.”
    â€œMercy, get a wiggle on,” Adam said in a louder voice. “Marsilia’s holding things up until you’re here—since you were a material part of the recent unrest.”
    He hung up.
    â€œI’m wiggling. I’m wiggling,” I muttered, pulling on socks and shoes. I wished I’d had a chance to replace my necklace.
    â€œYour socks don’t match.”
    I marched out the door. “Thank you. Since when did you become a fashionista?”
    â€œSince you decided to wear a green sock and a white sock,” he said, following me. “We can take my truck.”
    â€œI have another pair just like it, too,” I said. “Somewhere.” Except I thought I’d thrown out the mate to the green sock last week.
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    THE WROUGHT-IRON GATES AROUND THE SEETHE WERE open, but the driveway was clogged with cars, so we parked off the gravel driveway. The Spanish-style adobe compound was lit with orangish lantern-style lights that flickered almost like the real thing.
    I didn’t know the vampire at the door, and, very unvampirelike, he simply opened the door, and said, “Down the hall to the stairway at the end and downstairs to the bottom.”
    I hadn’t remembered there being a stairway at the end of the hall when I’d been here before. Probably because the huge, full-length-and-then-some painting of a Spanish villa had been in front of it instead of leaning against a side wall.
    Although we’d entered on the ground floor, the stairway we were on took us down two full flights. I can see in the dark almost as well as a cat, and the stairwell was dark for me—a human would be almost helpless. As we descended, the smell of vampire clogged my nose.
    There was a small anteroom with a single vampire—another one I didn’t recognize. I didn’t actually know more than a handful of Marsilia’s vampires by sight. This one had silvery gray hair and a very young-looking face, and was dressed in a traditional black funeral suit. He’d been seated behind a very small table, but as we came down the last three steps, he stood up.
    He ignored Warren entirely, and said, “You are Mercedes Thompson.” He wasn’t quite asking a question, but his statement was far