I didn’t say it very loudly, and the vampires were too busy talking to each other to pay attention to me. But Asil frowned at me and made a motion with his hand. I recognized the soundless instructions because Adam used the same ones with our pack. Asil thought we should leave.

But I had a feeling that leaving was not an option. For some reason, Marsilia had wanted me here.

“I have heard about you, Frost,” said Marsilia, sounding bored. “I had disregarded it as vindictive gossip, but I see that it is true. You are a show-off who wastes resources making himself look impressive. You talk and talk, and it is empty talk. You will bring in a new era of vampire freedom and power, and blah blah blah. And yet you have only puppets. When their strings are cut, you have nothing.”

The other vampire’s lips flattened, and he said silkily, “Marsilia, raise your right hand.”

Her lips tightened and both of her hands fisted.

Pay attention, coyote, whispered a voice in my ear. Can you see what he is doing? How he is doing it?

Stefan, to whom the voice belonged, was several feet away. My stomach clenched. He wasn’t supposed to be able to do that anymore. The blood bond between us had been broken when Adam brought me into the pack.

Stefan glared at me and tilted his chin toward Marsilia.

“Marsilia,” said Frost again, focusing his attention on her. “Raise your right hand.”

I felt it then, the thread of power he used—it was sort of like the power of Adam’s voice when he’d roll it over the pack and bring them to heel. I could almost see … I squinted at Frost and tried to look, as I’d learned to see pack bonds without meditation. I had used that method to see Peter. But this needed some of the part of me that ran on instinct. The same part of me that ran on four paws gave me a little push and left me using coyote’s eyes while still my human self.

And I could see magic.

Frost pushed his power at Marsilia. To me, his magic appeared to be a black spiderweb of nastiness that tried to stick to her. Greasy threads of power slithered from him to his puppet vampires. I wondered how much of the way I viewed his magic had been dictated by Marsilia’s comment about puppets, because Frost’s vampires had strings of his will tied around each hand and foot and a whole slender web around their heads. Or maybe Marsilia could see his magic, too. The vampires weren’t the only thing he was controlling. Fainter threads of power dripped from his hands to the ground, glistening faintly where they snaked across the floor and climbed the walls surrounding us, disappearing over the edges.