"Stefan," Marsilia said. "You put the seethe in danger. How do you answer this?"
Stefan took a step forward, then hesitated, looking at the vampire he held in his arms.
"I can hold him," Warren offered.
Stefan shook his head. "Daniel has not fed in too long, he would be a danger to you. Andre?"
Andre frowned, but got up to take the starving vampire into his arms so that Stefan could go stand before the others. I expected Stefan to stand where Bernard had, but he sat in the wooden chair, instead. He slid until he was pressed against the back then grasped each of the brass-studded gracefully curved arms, closing his hands around the ends as if he hadn't seen the brass thorns sticking up.
Or maybe he had. The thrum of magic I'd been feeling stepped up in tempo and strength, making my rib cage buzz with power. I tried to swallow my gasp, but Marsilia turned to look at me as if I'd done something interesting.
Her regard didn't last more than an instant before she turned her attention to Stefan. "You choose to offer Truth willingly?"
"I do."
The chair reacted to his statement somehow. But before I could decide what the flare of energy had meant, the young looking vampire, the one who was still swaying to my heartbeat, said, "Truth."
Most werewolves could tell when someone lied, but it was based on the smell of perspiration and heartbeat-neither of which the vampires had. I knew that there were magical ways of telling if someone lied, too. It was appropriate that the vampire's truth spells would demand blood.
"Speak." I couldn't tell from Marsilia's voice whether she hoped he'd be able to excuse himself from the bloodbath at the hotel or not.
Stefan started with his suspicions that there was something odd in Daniel's tale of bloodlust. He explained that when the vampire Daniel had been supposed to contact had returned, he'd seen it as an opportunity to learn more.
"It occurred to me," he said in an unhurried storytelling kind of voice, "that if I was correct in my suspicions I was about to confront a vampire capable of enthralling one of our own kind-though Daniel is very young. I thought at the time that the vampire might have been a witch before he was brought over."
"So dangerous you brought her with you rather than another vampire?" Bernard's tone was heavy with contempt.
Stefan shrugged. "As I said, I thought Littleton was a witch. Nothing I haven't dealt with before. I did not really think I would be facing anything I could not handle. Mercedes was my insurance, but I did not think she would be necessary."
"Yes," said Marsilia sharply. "Let us tell the room why it is that Mercedes Thompson would be someone you would go to for help." Her eyes were narrowed and her fingers played with the fringe of the black Spanish shawl she wore. I didn't know what she was so angry about, she knew what I was.
"Mercedes is a walker," Stefan said.
The energy level in the room picked up remarkably, though none of them moved. I would have thought that all of the vampires had been told about me, but apparently not. Maybe she'd been angry because Stefan had forced her to reveal my existence to the rest of them. I wished I knew exactly why they were so worried about me-maybe then I wouldn't feel like a chicken in a den of foxes.
The boy next to Marsilia quit rocking. When he looked at me, I felt it, like a flash of ice running over my exposed skin. "How interesting," he said.
Stefan spoke hurriedly, as if he were trying to distract the boy from me. "She agreed to come with me as a coyote, so the vampire would not know that she was anything other than part of my costume. I thought the ruse would protect her, and her partial immunity would help me. I was both right and wrong."
His recount from that point was very detailed. When he told them that he'd smelled the demon's scent that told him Littleton was a sorcerer as soon as he'd parked my car at the hotel, Bernard broke in.
"There are no such things as sorcerers," he said.
The boy beside Marsilia shook his head and, in a light tenor voice that would never drop to adult tones said, "There are. I have met them-as have most of us who are more than a few centuries old. It would be a very bad thing, Mistress, if one of us were a sorcerer."
There was a heavy pause, a reaction to the boy's comment, but I couldn't tell what it meant.
"Continue, please," said Marsilia finally.
Stefan obeyed. He'd known that everyone in the hotel was dead when we entered the building. That's how he'd found Littleton so easily: it was the only room where someone was still alive. Stefan had known the woman was in the bathroom before I had. Vampire's senses, it seemed, were better than mine.
I expected Stefan to stop his account of his actions where Littleton had stopped him and changed his memory, but he didn't. He continued on as if the false memory were his true one until the boy next to Marsilia said, "Wait."
Stefan stopped.
The boy tilted his head and closed his eyes, humming softly. Finally he said, without opening his eyes, "This is what you remember, but you don't believe it."
"Yes," Stefan agreed.
"What is this?" asked Bernard. I was getting the distinct impression that Bernard wasn't Stefan's friend. "What is the purpose of volunteering for the chair if you are just going to lie?"
"He's not lying." The boy leaned forward. "Go on. Tell it as you remember it."
"As I remember it," agreed Stefan and continued. What he remembered of the maid's murder was worse than he'd told us this morning, worse even than what I'd seen, because in his version, he was the killer, bathing in her death as much as her blood. He seemed to be at some pains to remember every moment. I could have done with the short version he'd given me before. Some of the images he called up were going to come back in my nightmares.
When he'd finished, Marsilia stared at him, tapping her fingers on the chair arm, though the rest of her body was very still. "These are your memories of what happened, though Wulfe believes you no longer trust that they are true. Are we then to suppose that you believe this... this sorcerer tampered with your memories as well as Daniel's? You, who have never answered to your own maker, you believe a new-made vampire-excuse me- sorcerer was able to hold you in thrall?"
Bernard added. "And why didn't he give you memories of the other people who died in the hotel? If he wanted to place the fault with you, surely he would have given those deaths to you as well?"
Stefan tilted his head and said thoughtfully, "I don't know why he didn't give me memories of killing the others. Perhaps I would have had to be present for their deaths. I do have some evidence of his ability to tamper with another vampire's memories. I'd like to have Daniel speak."