“Fair enough,” said Zee, settling back into the body language of his old-mechanic guise. I hadn’t realized until that moment that he’d dropped it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he gave us time to do our search and then went out and did his own.
“If Larry says the seethe is empty,” Darryl said, his voice a little sharp, “why are we going at all?”
Adam looked at him and said in an unfriendly voice, “Do you have anything better to do?”
Darryl’s nostrils flared. He didn’t like the vampires, and I didn’t blame him. I felt the same way about most of them. He didn’t like being put in his place, either.
“Marsilia’s our ally,” I told Darryl before the situation had a chance to get worse. “Someone spirited her and our vampires off. There may be clues. Emails, letters—something that tells us where they went and why.”
“Fair enough,” said Darryl. He had an easier time standing down with me than with Adam. I wasn’t an Omega like Anna, but I wasn’t a threat in any way, shape, or form, either. So his wolf didn’t bristle—and as the Alpha’s mate, I had enough authority that he didn’t feel the need to put me in my place.
Adam wasted no time loading two vehicles with the ten wolves. It might have been eagerness to get on with the task. But I wondered if it didn’t have something to do with Zee. Warren and Darryl ended up in Honey’s Suburban together. Usually this wouldn’t have been a problem. They liked each other. But Darryl was on edge because of the vampires, and whatever had been bothering Warren was still bothering him.
Adam saw it, caught Zack’s attention, and our pack submissive found a seat next to Warren in Honey’s car. Disaster hopefully averted, we loaded Adam’s car with the rest.
“Assuming I don’t die,” I told Zee as I stepped up to the shotgun seat of Adam’s SUV, “I’ll come back and relieve you this afternoon.”
Zee shook his head. “No, Mercy. It is all right. I have the shop today.”
“Okay,” I said. “Don’t drive off customers.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said innocently.
I pretended I hadn’t noticed him baiting me, waved my hand at him, and closed the door.
We got about half a block down the road when Ben, speaking from the far backseat, said, “Any of you sodding wankers know what’s done Warren’s nut for him?”
“Any of us sodding wankers know what Ben just asked?” George’s voice was very dry.
“On it,” Adam said, answering Ben, not George. “I’ve told him he has two days to tell me what his problem is. Just don’t push him before then.”
“Did you tell that to Darryl?” asked Mary Jo.
“I told Auriele,” Adam told her.
“Maybe he should take shotgun in your rig on the way home,” I suggested.
“No,” said Adam. “In my ride, that’s your spot.”
“Okay, then,” I said, a little surprised—and, unexpectedly, a little happy—at the growl in his voice.
* * *
—
It had been a while since I’d visited the seethe. A couple of years, maybe. It was in an area of town where I didn’t have much reason to go—and maybe I’d been avoiding it. Stefan was my friend, but I was with Darryl when it came to the rest of the vampires.
I’d been aware, peripherally, that there was a lot of building going on along 395, the highway that was the demarcation line between east Kennewick and the rest of town. But I hadn’t thought about what that meant to Marsilia’s home.
The last time I’d visited, it had still been surrounded by the shrub-steppe that was the TriCities’ version of virgin wilderness. Now the seethe was surrounded by new houses.
“Didn’t there used to be these weird two-story brick pillar-thingies around here?” I asked as we turned down the paved road that had replaced the single-lane gravel drive. I could see the gates of the seethe, so we should have already passed between the brick edifices.
“Taken down as a hazard,” George said. “About the same time as this housing development was built.”
Upscale houses surrounded the still-expansive grounds of the seethe. The eight-foot cement walls that marked out the vampires’ home ground were far more substantial than the walls that surrounded the seethe the last time I was here. The huge wrought-iron gates were the same, though.
“Some people have no sodding sense of self-preservation,” Ben marveled. “Look at how close the fucking houses are.”