“Come on out to the main room,” he said. “I have a few things to talk over with everyone.”
But when they made it to the main room, Honey was still getting dressed in Elizaveta’s room. Smith was in the suite, and from the wide-eyed look he gave Adam, he’d heard about the vampire scent-marking him. Adam was pretty sure there was a glint of something in Smith’s eyes, too, but the other wolf dropped his head like a good submissive, so Adam couldn’t be sure.
Given that there were no bite marks, Adam could see why they found it funny that he, a werewolf, had been marked as prey by the stupid vampire.
The two goblins were pointedly looking at the window, their backs to the room. Presumably so that Adam couldn’t see their wide grins.
Elizaveta looked from Adam to Smith to the goblins and said, in a voice with virtually no Russian accent at all so that Adam knew she was really angry, “Please tell me the joke so that I know what you and the vampires were conversing about. It seems that I am the only who did not hear what went on.”
Adam bowed to her and said in Russian, “My apologies. It is a joke on me, I am afraid. Please let us wait until Honey is here, and I will tell everyone some information I’ve gotten while you’ve slept. And I think you may provide us with important information about what I have to say.”
She arched an eyebrow at him, but he knew that by addressing her in Russian—which everyone here did not understand—he had given her a sop to her pride, because, in that case, she was not the one left out of the information flow. And letting her know she held vital information was a boost to her ego. She knew he was manipulating her, but she decided to allow it.
“Very well,” she said in English, her accent back in place. “I can wait for Honey.”
Honey came out, her short hair a little damp and her face freshly made up. She smelled, just a little, of rose petals. A human might not catch it, but the vampires would. She wore a rose-colored tank top without a bra and jeans that looked as though she wouldn’t be able to draw a deep breath. Around her neck was a gold chain with a small wolf charm. He knew that Peter, her dead mate, had gotten her the necklace, because Adam had gone with him to pick it out for her birthday.
She looked like bait.
He smiled at her, and she gave him a toothy smile back. He was glad he’d brought her, fierce and strong. She was a good wolf to have at your back.
He told them about Mercy. Told them that Guccio had been walking around the villa with a spell bag that allowed him to roam during the day. And he told them that he’d been marked so that all the vampires would think that he was Guccio’s food.
Honey stepped closer and sniffed him. “I don’t smell anything?” She gave the vampires a suspicious look.
“I don’t, either,” said Larry. “But I know that vampires have a way of marking their prey. It’s seen as crude, because usually, unless it’s a Master Vampire, it’s an accident. Proof that a vampire lost control when he”—he glanced at Marsilia and said—“or she found some food that appealed to her. Sort of like spitting into a drink that isn’t yours.”
Adam smiled grimly at the goblin. “Thank you. I’ll store that image.” He turned to Elizaveta. “The bag Guccio wore around his neck—it looked and smelled like a gris-gris bag. He said it gave him the ability to stay awake during the day, but it wouldn’t protect him from the sun.”
He closed his eyes and described it in as minute detail as he could manage, including a list of herbs and the other things he had picked up. “Whatever was rotting in the bag smelled vaguely rodent-like to me, but it had been dead and covered in herbs for too long. Mostly it just smelled rotten. He claimed that a witch Bonarata had once had made it and that it allowed him to walk during the day.”
Elizaveta grunted. “Such a thing could be managed that way.”
“Oh?” said Marsilia, a little too neutrally.
“I can do it for you for a fee,” she acknowledged. “But such things are limited. A certain amount of time per day—and only for so many days.”
“Could you do one for sunlight?” asked Stefan, but he didn’t sound hungry, just thoughtful. “It would really suck eggs if Bonarata has access to something that allows him to run around in the sunlight.”
He’d gotten that “suck eggs” expression from Mercy.
Elizaveta gave Stefan a shrewd look. “I can make you a gris-gris that will allow you to walk in the sun,” she said gently. “Would you wear it?”
Stefan gave her an arrested look. “Never,” he said slowly. “No tarnish to your honor, donna, but I would have to trust you a lot further than I trust anyone to venture out into the sunlight with a gris-gris.”
Not at all insulted, Elizaveta gave him a slow smile. “That is good, Soldier. You are wise. I think that any vampire who has lived as long as Bonarata has lived would feel the same.” She looked thoughtful. “Truthfully, I don’t know that it could be done in any case. I would have to understand more about why sunlight—and not, say, full-spectrum light from lightbulbs—is fatal to your kind. The other—allowing you to walk during the daytime—would be a variant on part of zombie animation.”
“So the gris-gris is a consumable,” Adam said.
Elizaveta smiled at him. “A very expensive consumable, I think. It would take time to make, and its maker would have to be of a certain level of power. A lot of power and a lot of skill—you said the vampire claimed that Bonarata no longer has access to this witch?”
“That’s what it sounded like,” Adam said. “If this is a nonrenewable consumable and valuable magic item, then Guccio was not casually strolling by Harris’s room.”
“No,” agreed Marsilia. “It is a good thing that you were there, and a good thing you brought them back with you. Or maybe we wouldn’t have had pilots to take us home.”
“On Bonarata’s orders?” asked Adam.
She shrugged. “Maybe. Guccio might just be trying to curry favor. Iacopo—Jacob—Jacob has always had a fondness for innovation.”
“He probably marked you for spite,” said Stefan. “It was a dumb thing to do, though. And dumb people don’t tend to last long enough around Bonarata to climb the power hierarchy.”
“A gris-gris such as the one he carried can affect people adversely,” Elizaveta observed. “That is true black magic, and it tends to stain the user as well as the one who casts it.” She glanced at her watch. “If we are to meet with Bonarata at the time specified, we should leave.”
11
Adam
I could wish that Adam were more concerned with his own life than with saving everyone else’s. Since it is a wish Adam has expressed (often) about me, I suppose I have no grounds to complain. I do anyway, of course.
BONARATA WAS DRESSED IN SLACKS AND A TURQUOISE silk shirt that had been made for him. He was seated, doing paperwork, at a desk Adam had barely noticed the first time he’d been here. “A moment, please,” he said, without glancing up.
Adam’s dad had liked to do that when Adam had transgressed in some way. Invite him into his study, then sit down and do some other work for a while so that Adam could think very hard about whatever it had been that he (or one of his brothers) had done to get called into the study. And let him know that neither he nor his transgressions were as important as whatever else his father was working on.
It had worked quite well on Adam when he was eleven.