Polite vampire. It was a good thing that Adam and I had come, that we hadn’t sent a pair of werewolves who could have misread Thomas and tried to issue threats—assuming Thomas would have been polite to other werewolves.

“Water,” Adam said. “Thank you.”

Thomas looked at me. “Water is good for me, too,” I said. “Thank you.” We all had good manners here, yes, we did.

He served us the water and took a glass and filled it from an already opened bottle of red wine. He took a sip of wine and smiled politely. “To what do I owe this visit?”

“I’m afraid that is our question,” Adam replied.

“You were expecting Marsilia or Wulfe, right?” I asked.

“I called them when we got in,” he said. “And Wulfe assured me that someone would be over before long. I did not expect to see the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack and his wife running errands.”

Marsilia had known who was here all right.

“Errands,” said Adam thoughtfully.

None of us had taken a seat, I realized.

“Marsilia can’t send us on errands,” I told Thomas. “We inherited this job.” I thought about that. “‘Inherited’ is the wrong word. Co-opted. Not quite the right word, either. Had it dumped on us unexpectedly.”

Thomas frowned thoughtfully. “I saw a news program earlier,” he said. “You killed a troll and proclaimed the Tri-Cities your territory.”

He was looking at me. I cleared my throat. “I didn’t kill the troll. That was Adam and some of the pack. And, technically speaking, the whole of the Tri-Cities has always been our territory.”

I caught something in Thomas’s gaze, and I realized that he was highly amused—though it didn’t show on his face except for a quirk of his eyebrow. But I was positive I was right.

“As you saw”—I was going to have to find the news clip myself so I would know exactly what people knew about it—“I made a true but unpolitic declaration on the bridge yesterday. The fallout of that is still settling.” I pinched the bridge of my nose hard to distract myself from that thought. No need to panic in front of a vampire. Adam’s hand touched the small of my back.

“So when one of the vampire’s snitches called us to tell us there was a vampire visiting,” I continued. Adam was letting me do a lot of the talking, and I wondered why. “We contacted the seethe. Wulfe indicated that Marsilia was ceding the job of policing stray vampires to us. He didn’t say you had called them, just that his minions had found a strange vampire who’d checked into this hotel.”

“We’ll have to discuss that with him,” murmured Adam.