Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(46)

The clothing they had found me was typical of spare werewolf-pack clothes (apparently) the world over: running pants and a tank top—a little closer fitting than what our pack used, but still stretchy enough to fit a wide variety of body types, male or female.

I had a small room at the top of the stairs, a little isolated from the rest of the living space over the bakery. It was still daylight, I was surrounded by strangers—one of whom was pretty unhappy with me even if he did acknowledge that I had told him over and over that what he wanted was not a good idea. Even so, I think I was asleep before my body hit the mattress.

I woke in darkness, and someone was stroking my cheek gently. I rolled away from the touch and buried my head in the blankets.

“Leave me alone,” I said with force.

Then I realized that I was alone in the room—and had been while those fingers had been touching my cheek.

I hoped sincerely that it was still a residual effect of meeting the golem that left me such a magnet for the ghosts of Prague. I hoped even more fervently that whatever it was that had caused this would go away soon.

I also felt guilty.

I try not to give orders to the dead unless it’s important because they can’t refuse me, not if I focus my will strongly enough. I wouldn’t have done it except that I had been mostly asleep. But I had ordered the ghost to go away—and it had gone.

I think it had been trying to warn me because, a few minutes later, my door popped open.

I was up on my feet beside the bed, with my right hand still trying to close around a gun that wasn’t there, before I was aware enough to remember where I was.

“Wake up, woman,” said a gruff voice that belonged to a man I hadn’t seen before.

He was slender and compact, like a gymnast. If you saw him in a suit, you would never know how much muscle he carried. In the tight tank shirt and jeans, he emphasized it. He looked a little like the man who had followed me until I’d taken refuge in the garden of the friendly mastiff. Maybe they were related. He was one of those men who would look like a teenager until his hair started graying, but since he was a werewolf, that would never happen. I wondered if he’d learned to turn that into a strength yet.

I’d been raised in the Marrok’s pack. I never judged the strength of a person by their outward appearance. The Marrok didn’t look like a man who held the reins of thousands of werewolves who would die for him. He looked like a pizza delivery boy or a gas-station attendant—right up until he didn’t.

“What do you need?” I asked.

“Libor says to tell you that there are vampires here, looking for you and being forceful about it. We need to move you. Gather your things, and I’ll take you.” His voice was British-pure, though that wasn’t a guarantee that he was from the UK. Most English speakers in Europe, I was discovering, had learned to speak British English rather than the American version.

I turned on the table lamp and realized that my other set of clothing was in the wash. I put the borrowed shoes on without socks and took the pack that contained a very little money and a dead e-reader.

“Ready,” I said.

Danek met us at the base of the stairs and pointed in the opposite direction the werewolf was trying to take me. That left me in a quandary. Ghosts, like the fae, don’t lie. They are so literal, you have to be careful about believing anything they say. He might have been pointing us toward the bad guys instead of away.

Before I could ask him anything, Libor’s dead wife appeared and pointed the same way.

Tell him to take the way through the kitchens, she said. The vampires have the usual exits surrounded.

“The ghosts say that there are vampires at the usual exits,” I told the werewolf. “We need to use the way through the kitchens.”

He froze.

“I only get weirder the longer you know me,” I told him, quoting one of the T-shirts I’d gotten for my last birthday.

His nostrils flared, and he looked around a little wildly, trying to see the ghosts, I think. Danek brushed against a table, making it scrape across the floor, and the werewolf jumped.

I rolled my eyes (a gesture I’d caught from my teenage stepdaughter). Sometimes it was the only thing that properly expressed my opinion. Seriously? The werewolf was afraid of ghosts?

Ignoring him, I started down the route Libor’s dead wife was still indicating, across the room and down a dark hallway.

“I thought ghosts were just bits and pieces of the person who died,” said the werewolf very quietly as he passed me.

He seemed to suddenly know where we were going and led the way at a brisk pace.

“Yes,” I said. “No. Sometimes.” His words were close enough to what I’d said to Libor that I was pretty sure Libor had been talking to his wolves. And well he should, because though his wife had been relatively benign, I was pretty sure Danek was going to be a problem.

“Then why are they warning us about something happening right now?” he asked.

The hall floor suddenly dropped about three inches and took a jag to the right. A few paces farther on, there were three shallow stairs that took us up about a foot altogether. The wolf had continued speaking quietly as he held my arm to make sure I didn’t stumble up the steps. “If they are just bits and pieces, don’t you think they should be moaning here and tossing things about rather than giving warnings about vampires?”