Adam shook his head. “You heard Libor on the phone.” Adam had phoned the other Alpha to tell him they were on their way. Libor had merely told Adam his address and hung up. “Did that sound like a gleeful arrogant bastard who has successfully babysat the woman another Alpha managed to lose?”
“Then you may need all the people you have,” said Harris. “We’ll come.”
Bonarata had been speaking to Marsilia. He looked at Adam.
“It is nearly dawn,” he said. “I had intended to go speak with Kocourek, since he has not seen fit to answer his phone. But people I sent here last night tell me that his seethe is abandoned—and has been for a few days. There is no one to question there.” He smiled at Marsilia. “I did let this go too long. Kocourek was one of Guccio’s making. I had forgotten, because it was so long ago. But since it is empty, there is time for me to accompany you to Libor’s bakery, and I just happen to know the way there. We are old enemies, Libor and I. I can at least spare you the usual trouble when two Alphas meet. He’ll dislike me more than he dislikes you. I will deal with the vampire issues tomorrow night. If your woman is still not found, I will help you then.”
He seemed unworried about the coming dawn. Marsilia and Stefan could teleport. Maybe Bonarata could also. And wasn’t that just a lovely thought.
Adam called Libor to warn him that he was bringing Bonarata, too. Libor was worryingly nonchalant about the Lord of Night invading his den.
—
THE BAKERY WAS CLOSED, THOUGH IT WAS NEARLY dawn, as Bonarata had noted. Adam could smell the baked goods the whole quarter of a mile they walked from where they’d had to park the vans.
Honey and Smith both looked at Adam as they neared the front door. But Mercy was somewhere else. He couldn’t talk to her through their bond, but he could feel it pulling him away.
“Let’s go see what Libor has done with my wife,” he said, and knocked on the door.
Since Libor knew they were coming, it didn’t take a minute for someone to come to the door. A less dominant wolf—not quite submissive—answered, and he went white when he saw Bonarata.
“Libor knows I’m bringing him,” said Adam. “Take us on in to him, and your part is done.”
The heart of the building was the kitchen, and that was where the wolf led them. Neither Bonarata, nor Stefan and Marsilia, had needed an invitation—which was why Adam would never make his pack’s home out of a business.
The big room was filled with people, mostly wolves but not all, mixing, rolling, and baking. Huge electric fans in the ceiling sent the warm air on out, but it was still ten degrees warmer in this room than it had been outside.
It might have been full of people, but when the broadly built man stepped out of a storeroom with a fifty-pound bag of flour on his shoulder, there was no question who the Alpha was in here. He felt them, too. He looked at them, set the flour down, and strode toward them, wiping his hands on his apron.
He took the whole of them in at one glance, his eyes lingering a little here and there. When he took his apron off, the work in the kitchen slowed. He hung it up on a hook on the wall and said, gruffly, “Get to work. There are hungry people who will be here in a couple of hours, and they expect us to feed them.” He spoke in English, then switched to another tongue and, presumably, repeated himself. When he finished, his people went back to work, with only a few surreptitious looks at their visitors.
He caught the attention of the wolf who’d been their guide. “Go get Martin and Jitka, eh? Bring them to the garden.”
Then to Adam and his people, Libor said, “Follow me, gentlemen.” He saw Bonarata and grunted. “And you’ll have to let me know how it is that the vampire who was trying to kill your wife is now traveling about with you. Though I know Iacopo Bonarata well enough not to be surprised.”
Harris, Smith, and Larry took up the rear. The goblins liked it best when no one noticed them. Smith evidently felt the same.
The garden was an unexpectedly beautiful spot of nature in the center of the bakery. The Vltava Alpha walked to the end, then turned and faced them.
“I’m Libor of the Vltava,” he said.
“Adam of the Columbia Basin,” Adam responded. Then one by one he introduced his party, though he’d told Libor who would be coming and why. Since there were so many old beings in the courtyard, he began with the women, starting with Honey because she was the closest. Mercy would scold him for being old-fashioned.
“I have heard of you,” Libor told Honey. “Peter was a good man, a good werewolf. The world is a darker place without him in it.”
Honey blinked more rapidly than usual. “Yes,” she said.
“Honey killed Lenka,” Adam told Libor.
Libor looked at Bonarata with yellow eyes as he said, “Good. This is something that should have been done long ago. When I depart this world, not doing something about Lenka will be part of the cross I will bear on the way to Paradise.” He turned, took Honey’s hand in his, and kissed it. “If she could, she would thank you.”
Adam moved the introductions along. Bonarata was on his best behavior—but that might not last.
“You are Bonarata’s Blade,” Libor said, after Adam introduced Marsilia. “I have heard many stories, enough to make me regret that we never met while you were here.”
She nodded gravely. “I’ve heard stories about you, too, Libor. It is probably best that this is our first meeting.”