“Bran is watching him?”

Hao shrugged. “I do not know Bran, Ms. Hauptman—that is your area of expertise. If he is watching William Frost, he isn’t doing anything about him. I suspect, though, Bran has enough on his mind without dabbling in—how did you put it earlier—vampire politics.”

“I am sorry if I offended you.” Nope. Not a bit, but it seemed politic to say so—or might have, if I’d used a different tone of voice.

He caught my lie and gave me an amused half bow. “Frost moved south from there instead of north to Seattle. I think it was because the werewolves in Seattle have a very strong hold on their territory, and the seethe there is small and weak. He would have had to import vampires from Portland to really control the city.”

I couldn’t remember who the Seattle Alpha was offhand. I’d have to ask Bran.

“He hit Los Angeles next. The vampires there are …” Hao’s voice trailed off, presumably because he was looking for the proper adjective.

“Barbaric,” supplied Marsilia. “Stupid. Weak. The Master of the Los Angeles seethe surrendered to Frost, practically gibbering in terror after seeing a demonstration of Frost’s power. William Frost, whoever he is, wherever he came from, has one of the rarest of vampire powers—he is a necromancer.”

“Not necessarily. Perhaps he was a necromancer before he was turned.” Hao’s nonexpression looked thoughtful, and I suddenly realized why I could read him. Charles had nonexpressions like that when his wife Anna wasn’t in the room. “A witch with an affinity for the dead. If so, he is very old, because the witch family who had those spells, that affinity, was among the first destroyed in the wars in Europe.”

He wasn’t talking about human wars, but about the vendettas and feuding that killed off most of the witch families in Europe and sparked the Inquisition and its softer, gentler brother, the witch hunts.

“By necromancer,” I said carefully, “you mean he controls the ghosts here. And he somehow reanimated the body of the fae assassin?”

“Yes,” Hao agreed. “At the very least, he can do such things—and there is no reason for anyone else to do so.”

James Blackwood, the Master of Spokane, had been able to control ghosts because he could absorb the powers of the creatures he fed from, and he had drunk the blood of a walker. Even the other vampires had been afraid of him—though not because he could control ghosts. He was just that crazy.

But a witch was different from a walker. A lot more powerful—if I could judge by the kind of power Elizaveta had. A necromancer witch would control the dead—and ghosts and zombies weren’t the only kind of dead. That was why Marsilia was afraid.

“Can he control vampires?” I asked.