Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

Columbia Basin Pack’s mate—because he said so, and because I said so.
    If I looked down, I was acknowledging her superiority, and I wouldn’t do that. So I met her eyes, and she chose to allow me to do so.
    She lowered her eyelids, not so far as to lose our informal staring contest, but to veil her expression. “I think,” she said in a voice so soft that only Warren and I heard her, “I think that had we met at a different place and time, I could have liked you.” She smiled, her fangs showing. “Or killed you.”
    â€œEnough games,” she said, louder. “Call him for me.”
    I froze. That’s why she wanted me. She wanted Stefan back. For a moment all I could see was the blackened dead thing that she’d dropped in my living room. I remembered how long it had taken me to realize who it was.
    She’d done that to him—and now she wanted him back. Not if I could help it.
    Adam hadn’t moved from where he’d been standing, telling the room he trusted me to take care of myself. I wasn’t sure he really thought so—I knew I didn’t—but he needed me to stand on my own two feet. “Call whom?” he asked.
    She smiled at him without looking away from me. “Didn’t you know? Your mate belongs to Stefan.”
    He laughed, an oddly happy sound in this dirge-shadowed room. It was a good excuse to turn my back on Marsilia and quit playing the stare game. Turning my back meant that I didn’t lose—only that the contest was over.
    I tried not to let the sick fear I felt show on my face. I tried to be what Adam—and Stefan—needed me to be.
    â€œLike a coyote, Mercy is adaptable,” Adam told Marsilia. “She belongs to whom she decides. She belongs everywhere she wants to, for just as long as she wants to.” He made it sound like a good thing. Then he said, “I thought this was about preventing war.”
    â€œIt is,” said Marsilia. “Call Stefan.”
    I lifted my chin and glanced at her over my shoulder. “Stefan is my friend,” I told her. “I won’t bring him to his execution.”
    â€œAdmirable,” she told me briskly. “But your concern is misplaced. I can promise that he won’t be hurt physically by me or by mine tonight.”
    I slanted a glance at Warren, and he nodded. Vampires might be hard to read, but he was better at sensing lies than I was, and his nose agreed with mine: she was being truthful.
    â€œOr hold him here,” I said.
    The smell of her hatred had died away, and I couldn’t tell anything about how she felt. “Or hold him here,” she agreed. “Witness!”
    â€œWitnessed,” said the vampires. All of them. All at exactly the same time. Like puppets, only creepier.
    She waited. Finally, she said, “I mean him no harm.”
    I thought of earlier tonight, when he’d turned down Bernard even though I was pretty sure he agreed with Bernard’s assessment of her continued rule of the seethe. In the end, he loved her more than he loved his seethe, his menagerie of sheep, or his own life.
    â€œYou harm him by your continued existence,” I told her, as quietly as I could. And she flinched.
    I thought about that flinch ... and about the way she’d let him live even though he, of all her vampires, had reason to see her dead—and had the means to do so. Maybe Stefan wasn’t the only one who loved.
    It hadn’t kept her from torturing him, though.
    I closed my eyes, trusting Warren, trusting Adam to keep me safe. I only wished I could keep Stefan safe. But I knew what he would want me to do.
    Stefan, I called, just as I had earlier—because I knew he would want me to. Surely he knew where I was calling from and would come ready to protect himself.
    Nothing happened. No Stefan.
    I looked toward Marsilia and shrugged. “I called,” I told her. “But he doesn’t have to come when I call.”
    It didn’t seem to bother her. She just nodded—a surprisingly businesslike gesture from a woman who would have looked more at home in a Renaissance gown of silk and jewels than she did in her modern suit.
    â€œThen I call this meeting to order,” she said, strolling to the old thronelike chair in the center of the room. “First, I would call Bernard to the chair.”
    He came, reluctant and stiff. I recognized the pattern of his movement—he looked like