Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(47)

“Some of them retain a lot of their predecessor’s personality,” I told him, though I’d wondered about the nature of ghosts for exactly the same kinds of reasons. All well and good to dismiss them as . . . as nothings when one of them wasn’t leaving you drawings or another one wasn’t trying to help you survive. But I gave him the only answer I had. “The ones who bear grudges or are extremely attached to someone who is still living seem to be the most independent of thought.”

The kitchens were huge, and there were two of them. The front half was modern and filled with ovens, various kinds of cooking surfaces, and giant mixing machines taller than I was, with bowls that sat on the ground. Everything was immaculate.

There was a half wall and a wider than the usual doorway opening that led into a room that looked as though it had been pulled directly from the Middle Ages. The far wall had a giant fireplace with a spit. Beside it was a stack of metal pots that looked as though they should have a witch throwing eyes of newts and snail tails or something in them. One of the long walls was covered by a giant brick oven with rows and columns of regularly spaced openings that were about two feet square.

My werewolf guide trotted right up to the farthest opening and climbed through. I did the same and found that the inside of the oven was a room in its own right. Against one of the inner walls was a narrow metal ladder, up which my guide was already climbing. I followed him up a couple of stories and out to the roof of the building.

The werewolf had quit talking and was making an effort to be silent, so I followed suit. We weaved our way between chimneys on the roof of the bakery. When we reached the end of the bakery, there was a narrow hop, and we kept going on the roof of the next building. We probably made a quarter of a mile before we jumped to the ground.

The werewolf, still quiet, didn’t speed up from the easy jog we’d begun on the rooftops, and he took us into a more residential and modern section of the town. In total, we ran maybe six miles, long enough for me to regret my lack of socks. He took me to a garage under an apartment building built in the last hundred years and stopped by a motorcycle. He started to get on it, then stopped.

“We’ll attract too much attention without helmets,” he said. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

He was as good as his word, returning with a pair of helmets. He tossed me one and put on the other himself.

Mine wasn’t a perfect fit—and I didn’t like the way it restricted my vision—but I didn’t complain. When he mounted the bike, I climbed on behind him and held on.

The last time I’d ridden behind someone on a motorcycle I’d been in college. Char, my roommate, had had a Harley. We’d taken it out and gone camping now and then, just to get away from school.

This bike was about half the size of Char’s and much quieter, but being a passenger behind the werewolf wasn’t much different than being a passenger behind Char had been.





7





Adam


Bonarata’s villa in Milan, in the wee small hours of the first night I spent in Prague. At this moment I was huddled next to the Vltava while a ghost dripped water on my head. So this chapter begins before the previous chapter started. I told you it was going to get tricksy.



THEY WERE GIVEN A LARGE SUITE WITH THREE bedrooms, each equipped with a king-sized bed and a bathroom. They looked pristine and newly remodeled, but this was a very old building, and it had seen a lot of violence. Adam could smell the faint musk of fear and the rotten iron of old blood as if it, like the stone, wood, and paint, was part of the material that made up the structure.

Their luggage had been piled tidily inside the main door of the suite when they got there. Adam figured that they’d been driven from the airfield the long way to allow the luggage to beat them.

“Dress for dinner, he says?” said Larry as soon as their escorting vampire guide had left. “It’s four in the morning Milan time.”

“You can hardly expect vampires to eat in the day,” said Marsilia.

“Or to eat at all,” offered Honey. “Are we going to be dinner?”

“They always have last meal at 5 A.M. here,” answered Stefan. “‘Dinner’ is a word used for guests—think of it as a very early breakfast if you’d like. There are usually guests who aren’t vampires. Bonarata uses it as a gathering for the seethe. There will be fresh blood for all the vampires and good food for everyone else.”

Elizaveta had paced around the room muttering to herself. She entered the first bedroom, and Larry moved to follow her.

“Leave her be,” said Stefan. “She’s checking for magic. Bonarata has a few witches in his employ, had a very good witch at one time, and, according to rumor, a fae half-blood. There are a lot of things a witch could do to us without breaking guesting laws. I don’t have to tell you to clean your hairbrushes and burn the stray hairs, do I?”

“Standard stuff,” grumbled Larry amiably. “Trimmed toenails get eaten, I know.”

Honey made a sound, and the goblin flashed a grin at her. “Of course, you can flush them if you’d like. I prefer to be certain. Witches are bitches and they’ll burn your britches sure as kittens have itches if you give ’em half a chance.”

Elizaveta was in one of the bedrooms. She might not have heard Larry. But Honey was standing right next to him.