Bonarata came to a halt and turned back. Adam would swear the sadness on his face was genuine. “She served me well for a long time. We will bury her in the garden where she liked to rest in the sun when she could. I think she would have liked that, don’t you?”
Smith vibrated, his hand still on the dead wolf’s forehead. Adam waited. Finally, the wolf said, “It sounds peaceful, I think. Thank you.”
“Did you know her, too?” Harris asked.
Smith got up, sighed, and walked to the others. “Everyone knew about Lenka,” he said.
“Then someone should have done something sooner,” muttered Larry.
“Lots of someones tried,” said Bonarata. “We did not bury them in the garden.” His voice sounded amused. His public mask was back on and firmly in place.
Adam didn’t think that Bonarata would have been so sanguine if he’d been looking at Smith at that moment. But maybe he was wrong. People discount submissive wolves.
—
ADAM HAD HOPED TO BE GONE BEFORE THE FIRST meal, but that wasn’t going to happen now. Mercy was still on the other end of their bond, so he could manage another hour of negotiations as long as he wasn’t the one doing the negotiating. Now that they were being honest in their dealings with Bonarata, he trusted Marsilia to reclaim her role as diplomat.
And there was still Guccio, who had marked Adam as his food. To get to Mercy an hour sooner, Adam would have forgone the pleasure of teaching Guccio why vampires didn’t go about thinking of Alpha werewolves as prey. So he wasn’t altogether disappointed with the delay.
They crossed into the dining room, and Bonarata stopped to speak softly to one of his vampires, who then walked quickly off without appearing to rush.
“Your witch wasn’t careful,” said Elizaveta as they started forward again. “That collar would not have . . .” She paused. “I think it was already no longer keeping her obedient.”
Behind them, Smith growled again. It was a quiet thing, so maybe the vampire and witch didn’t hear it.
Bonarata nodded. “It was becoming a concern,” he said. “But I have not had a witch capable of that kind of work since before the Second World War.” He smiled at Elizaveta. “Would you be interested in a job?”
When she didn’t immediately respond, Adam looked at her thoughtfully.
“No,” she said at last. “Though if you let us leave with Honey, I’ll let you pay me to remove that unfortunate addiction you have.” She pursed her lips. “It won’t be cheap, I warn you.”
“He could not keep Honey,” Adam said coolly, because it had been obvious from Bonarata’s expression at Elizaveta’s reply that the vampire had been considering how he might do that very thing.
“No?” asked Bonarata silkily.
“No,” said Marsilia.
He turned on his heel so that he faced Marsilia. Her shoulders were back, her weight was balanced over the balls of her feet: she was ready for a fight.
Bonarata’s mask held for a heartbeat, then it was gone.
Adam realized that they had done what they set out to do—upset the Master Vampire in the middle of his own game. The bonhomie of their first meeting was no longer a solid disguise behind which Bonarata could run the show. Adam could see the monster quite clearly—and as Bonarata looked at Marsilia, Adam could see the man, too.
A man with a million regrets that mostly surrounded the woman who defied him.
Ironically, now that Adam knew where Mercy was and he just had to shake himself free of Bonarata, Adam would have been happier with the genial host. They could have taken care of business in a cool and logical fashion, and Adam would be on his way by now.
Instead, Adam could feel his wolf’s satisfaction as it settled itself for the brutal fight the beast foresaw. Something would happen. The energy of the room had tipped into potential violence. Because if Bonarata said the condescending pablum Adam could see his mouth forming—Marsilia was going to hit him.
No matter how happy that would make his wolf, it would be faster to go if a fight didn’t break out, so Adam broke up the moment between Marsilia and Bonarata by saying, “If you don’t have a witch of my Elizaveta’s power at your call, how did you heal Mercy from her ‘near-fatal’ wounds?”
His intention was to turn the vampire’s ire from Marsilia to himself and to force Bonarata to backtrack. Because, logically, either Bonarata had lied about what he’d done for Mercy—and Adam knew those wounds had been bad, he’d felt her pain and seen the blood—or just now Bonarata had lied about not having a witch.
Bonarata dragged his eyes from Marsilia, and the look he gave Adam was almost grateful. It was a guy thing. He, too, knew whatever he had been about to say to Marsilia wouldn’t have been useful. It had just been beyond his power to not say it. Adam was happy to help.
“We didn’t have a witch mend your wife,” Bonarata said. “A healer did it. Come and meet her.”
A healer?
Bonarata didn’t wait for questions. He looked around the dining room and led them to a back table with a soft-looking vampire male who was playing games designed to encourage the girl sitting next to him to eat. Adam recognized those games because he’d played them more than a time or two when Jesse was a toddler.
This girl was a lot older than a toddler. She was dark-haired and blue-eyed and oddly unfinished. A mundane human would look at her and think Down syndrome or something of the sort. Adam observed her and his nose told him that she was fae and human. She looked like she was fourteen or fifteen, but, having fae blood, she could have been four or five hundred years old and looked no different.
She was too thin, and there were circles under her eyes, but when she looked up and saw Bonarata, her face lit up. She left her place and trotted (there was no other word that fit the high-stepping shuffle) around the table and made happy noises as she raised her arms.
Bonarata laughed—a big booming laugh that suited him oddly well and was nothing any vampire had any business having—and wrapped his arms around her. He swung her around twice and set her down gently on the floor. He stopped her too-loud babbling that didn’t, to Adam’s ears, appear to actually be words.
She quieted and looked up at the vampire with the eagerness of a corgi awaiting orders.
“Stacia,” Bonarata said, “Stacia, these are my friends. Marsilia. Elizaveta. Adam. Larry. Austin. Matt. People, this is my friend Stacia.”
She gave each of them a cheerful wave until she got to Adam. She squinted, stuck out her tongue in thought—then clapped her hands suddenly and her mouth rounded in surprise. She looked at Bonarata and wiggled her fingers with such abandon it took Adam a moment to realize she was using a form of sign language.
She turned back to Adam and gave him a huge smile. She patted his arm, sending a zing of power all the way from the skin where she touched up to his nose. He didn’t flinch. He took her hand in his and kissed it.
He knew what he was looking at. This child was the single reason Bonarata’s machinations hadn’t killed Mercy.
She blushed and clasped her hands together, pressed close to her stomach. But the smile she gave Adam was pure delight.
“She says that you belong to the pretty lady she healed,” Bonarata said. “She thinks that you should go find her and give her a hug.”
The girl patted Bonarata. He laughed. “Okay. A very big hug.” She nodded firmly, apparently having no trouble understanding English, even though she apparently didn’t speak it—and maybe no other language except her own. “And you need to go eat, young lady. You are too thin.”
She gave him a sweet smile and took the hand of the vampire who was evidently her caretaker and let him lead her back to her food.
On the way through the dining hall, Bonarata said, “We found her in a ghetto in some little town in the middle of the Great War.”
World War I, Adam thought, a century ago.
“She is fae,” said Larry.
“Partly,” Bonarata said. “Or so we think.”