“Why does he listen to Stefan, when none of the rest of us could get through?” Adam heard Auriele ask someone quietly.

“Because the vampire smells a little of Mercy,” Darryl replied.

Adam snarled because it was true, then took a deep breath to draw in the scent again. If the vampire still smelled of Mercy, Adam decided, it was because Mercy was still alive. Mercy was alive, and he would believe that until presented with absolute proof that she was not.

Adam bowed his head, reasserted his, the human’s, ownership of his own damned mouth, and looked at Stefan. “What does he want, this ex-lover of your Mistress?”

“Not my Mistress anymore,” said Stefan, but with more sorrow than heat. “I don’t know.” He looked around to the pack, now mostly wolves, until his gaze landed near Darryl. “Any of you have a cell phone I can use?”

And that was when Adam noticed that his phone was crushed in his hand. Some of the glass was sticking into the flesh, which had healed over the top. He busied himself picking it out with his pocketknife while Stefan used Darryl’s phone to call Marsilia.

The negotiations, conducted with Stefan as an intermediary, made Adam dangerously impatient.

Marsilia thought that inviting Adam to her house was not a good idea. Adam concurred with a grunt.

Entering the vampire’s seethe meant confusing the immediate issue with outdated manners and games that he was in no mood to play. There was no time. Dawn would arrive soon, and the vampires would retire to slumber or whatever they did during the day, taking the knowledge of who had Mercy with them.

As a compromise, Marsilia proposed Uncle Mike’s Tavern, a traditional place for hostile or nearly hostile negotiations until it closed when the fae had retreated to their reservations because they thought that Underhill had reopened to them. When she proved less welcoming than they expected, they had backed down from their initial silence and began arrangements to make peace . . . or at least not war with the humans. As part of that trend, Uncle Mike’s had reopened a few weeks ago.

Adam had no desire to involve the fae in pack business that was already ass deep in vampires, and he told them so.

“So where?” asked Stefan impatiently.

“Not my house,” Adam said. “I have no intention of inviting Marsilia over my threshold. Once you invite a vampire into your house, it is very difficult to uninvite them. Easier to kill them.”

Stefan, who had an open invitation to Adam’s house, rolled his eyes. “Could you, please, for Mercy’s sake, come up with somewhere acceptable? I might remind you that Marsilia doesn’t share our fondness for your wife. She just doesn’t like losing a chess piece, so she is cooperating. And our time is limited.”

Marsilia would shoot Mercy as soon as look at her. Adam reined his wolf in and took over.

“My backyard,” he said. Mercy had littered the backyard with picnic tables and various seating arrangements that were annoying when he mowed but otherwise aesthetically pleasing and useful.