He didn't want to answer. "Half full."
Stefan looked at Marsilia and waited.
Suddenly she smiled, a sweet smile that made her look like an innocent girl. "All right. I believe that there was someone with Daniel that night. You, I would believe, could drive twenty miles and fill up the car while under the burden of the bloodlust, but a new vampire like Daniel never could."
Daniel jerked his head toward Stefan. "That doesn't mean that I didn't kill those people. I remember it, Stefan."
"I know you do," he agreed. "You can leave the seat-if Wulfe is satisfied of your truth?" He glanced up.
The teenager next to Marsilia, who'd been cleaning something out from under his nail with his teeth, nodded his head.
"Master?" whispered Daniel.
Andre had been staring at the floor, but at Daniel's words he said. "You can leave the seat, Daniel."
"This doesn't prove anything except that there was another with Daniel that night. Someone who drove the car and filled it with gas," Bernard said.
"That's right," agreed Stefan mildly.
When Daniel tried to stand up, his legs wouldn't hold him. His hands also seemed to be stuck. Stefan helped him pry his hands free and then picked him up off the chair when it became apparent that despite the feeding, Daniel was still too weak to stand.
Stefan took a step toward Andre, but then he hesitated and brought him back to where the wolves and I were standing.
He set him down on the floor a few feet from Warren. "Stay there, Daniel," he said. "Can you do that?"
The young man nodded his head. "Yes." He held onto Stefan's arm though, and Stefan was forced to unwrap the other vampire's fingers before he could return to the chair. He took a handkerchief out of a back pocket and cleaned the arms of the chair until the brass tacks gleamed. No one complained about the time it took.
"Mercy," Stefan said, putting the handkerchief back in his pocket. "Would you please come and bear your truth before my mistress?"
He wanted me to go stick my hands on those sharp thorns. Not only did it seem somewhat sacrilegious, thorns and pierced palms, but it was going to hurt. Not that it came as a terrible surprise, not after Stefan and Daniel.
"Come," he said. "I've cleaned them so that you will suffer no taint."
The wood was cool and the seat a little too big, like my foster father's favorite chair had been. After he'd died, I'd spent hours in that chair, smelling his scent, ingrained into the polished wood by years of use. The thought of him steadied me, and I needed all the nerve I could get.
The thorns were longer and sharper than they'd looked when I wasn't about to push them into my flesh. Better to do it quickly than to stew about it. I closed my hands over the ends of the arms and pulled them tight.
It didn't hurt at first. Then hot tendrils of magic snaked in through the break in my skin, streaking up the veins in my arms and closing around my heart like a fiery fist.
"Are you all right, Mercy?" Warren asked, his voice rumbling with the first hint of challenge.
"Wolves have no tongues in our court," snapped Bernard. "If you cannot be silent you will leave."
I was glad that Bernard said something. He bought me time to understand that the magic wasn't hurting me. It was uncomfortable, but not painful. Not worth causing the fight Warren was ready to begin. Adam had sent him to guard me, not to start a war over a little discomfort.
"I'm fine," I said.
The teenager stirred. "Not true," he said.
Truth, huh? Fine. "My face hurts, my shoulder hurts, my neck hurts where the freaking demon-riding vampire bit me, and the magic of this chair is about as gentle as a lightning strike, but I'm not suffering from anything that will do irreparable harm."
The boy, Wulfe, resumed his catatonic rocking. "Yes," he said. "Truth."
"What happened last night?" Stefan asked. "Please begin with my phone call."
I found myself telling the story with far more detail than I'd intended to. Certainly they didn't need to know that Stefan's driving had scared me, or the smells of the woman's death. But I was unable to edit, the memories coming out of my mouth as they rushed through my head. It would seem that there was some of the vampire's magic that had no trouble dealing with my walker blood.
That didn't stop Bernard from claiming that it did. "You cannot have it both ways," he said when I was through. "We cannot believe that the seat has power over her and at the same time that she was able to resist a vampire who was able to feed memories into Stefan. Stefan, who of all of us, is able to resist the Mistress's, his maker 's, commands."
"The seat isn't dependant upon our power," Stefan said. "It functions by blood, but it was a witch who worked the magic. And I don't know if the sorcerer could have done the same to Mercedes as he did to me. He didn't know what she was, so he didn't try."
Bernard started to say something, but Marsilia held up her hand. "Enough."
"Even five hundred years ago, sorcerers were rare," she told Stefan. "I have not seen one since we came to this desert. The seat has shown us that you believe that there is a sorcerer, a sorcerer that some vampire turned. But you will have to forgive me for not believing along with you."
Bernard almost smiled. I wished I knew more of how justice worked in the seethe. I didn't know what I could say that would keep Stefan safe.
"The walker's testimony is compelling, but like Bernard, I have to question how well the seat works on her. I have seen walkers ignore far more dangerous magics."
"I can feel her truths," whispered the boy as he rocked. "Clearer than the others. Sharp and pungent. If you kill Stefan tonight, you'd better kill her, too. Coyotes sing in the daylight as well as the night. These are the truths she carries."