Harris gave his copilot a sharp look.
Adam smiled at the goblin’s surprise. “Remember that werewolves can live a long time, and just because one is submissive doesn’t make them stupid. My experience has suggested the opposite. We have a saying, ‘Listen when the soft ones speak.’”
Smith smiled with only a little irony. “Your mate has a reputation of her own,” said Smith. “Do you think she needs your help? My feeling after the dinner was that Bonarata intends to diplomatically forget about Mercy.”
“Did you overhear something?” Adam asked alertly.
Smith ran his hands though his hair. Glanced up at Adam and then away. “He told one of his vampires, the woman with red-and-gold hair, to call off the hunt. Unless he’s found someone else to hunt, I suspect that’s the hunt for your wife.”
“I heard that, too,” said Harris. “Didn’t make the connection. He said the hunting had lost its joy this season—or something flowery like that. Decided to cancel the hunt. My Italian is pretty bare-bones.”
“I should have said something,” Smith said after a glance up at Adam’s face.
Yes, but there hadn’t been a very good time to do it. It wasn’t anything that he hadn’t expected—it was just a relief to hear.
“All right.” Adam let out his breath. “Mercy should be fine until we can get her. We’ll talk to Bonarata tonight—and then we’ll go find my wife.”
Smith said, “There are some stories you should know that I’ve heard about Prague.”
“Like the stories about Libor?” asked Harris.
Smith shook his head. “Libor is difficult, but there’s not an Alpha on the planet who isn’t difficult one way or the other.” He paused. “Present company excepted, I’m sure.”
Adam snorted.
Smith continued, “At any rate, there are two vampire seethes in the heart of Prague.”
Adam frowned. “They’re even more territorial than we wolves. Is there room for two seethes in Prague?”
“Exactly,” Smith said. “Nothing really wrong but . . . I think it would have been better if your mate had found her way to Munich or Paris. London, even.”
“Up to you, Hauptman,” Harris said. “We could fly to Prague, collect your mate, fly back. Depending upon how long it takes to find her, we might make it back before dark.”
Adam considered it. But it would still mean abandoning Marsilia and Stefan—and that was wrong.
Smith said, in a low voice, “You’d be bringing your mate back into his clutches. He’d see your going as an insult or a challenge. It might make him do something interesting. If you leave her in Prague—and let him know you have her location—he’ll know you respect her ability to take care of herself. It will leave you in a more powerful position in the end.”
“Mercy can take care of herself,” Adam growled, because it was his privilege to take care of her anyway. He took a deep breath and turned to Harris. “Be ready to leave anytime after nightfall tonight. I’ll let Marsilia handle the negotiations. She knows how the bastard’s mind works.”
“No one knows how Bonarata’s mind works,” murmured Smith. “That’s why he’s still around.”
“Get some sleep,” said Adam. He was starting to feel the long day, too. He hadn’t done anything more than catnap since Mercy had been taken. He had a course in front of him now, and even if the monster inside him wasn’t happy with his decision, it was made.
He closed the door and started down the stairs but paused because someone was walking down the hallway from another wing of the villa. He couldn’t see him, but he heard his footsteps. Inside him, Adam’s wolf alerted, because the other was walking softly, like a trained fighter who doesn’t want to be noticed.
He trotted back up the stairs he’d just come down. Unlike the other man, Adam made no sound. He timed his approach so that he stepped into the hallway about five feet in front of the other man.
In front of the vampire.
Guccio’s pretty face broke into a pretty smile that didn’t show his teeth. “Adam,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Were they on a first-name basis? Adam’s wolf said no, but Adam swallowed it because all he knew was the vampire’s first name.
He managed a casual raised eyebrow when the wolf wanted to eliminate the threat to his people.
“Vampire,” Adam said, tipping his head toward Guccio in something that the vampire was welcome to read as greeting. “Should you be out in the day?”
There were vampires who could move about in dusk or twilight, but Adam reckoned they were close upon midafternoon.
Even though the inner halls of the villa were windowless and lit by artificial lights, it was the sun that mattered. When the sun rose, a vampire’s spirit or soul or whatever left their body and no longer animated it. The corpse left behind smelled and felt like a corpse. Vampires were dead every day; wolf noses don’t lie.
Guccio’s smile widened. “The Lord of Night once had a very powerful witch.” He held up a hand-stitched cloth bag tied around his neck.
It appeared, to Adam’s Southern-bred eyes and nose, like a gris-gris bag. He smelled a number of herbs, but the main scent was something organic decaying. Maybe Bonarata’s witch followed voodoo or hoodoo practices. Or maybe she (because strong witches were mostly women) was African, which was where the practice of making gris-gris originated.