Silence Fallen (Mercy Thompson #10)(86)

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.”

“More than half,” Larry told him seriously. “Don’t let the fae know you have her here. She’d be useful to them, and I don’t think they’d treat her as well as you do. They’ve little patience with creatures who are not perfect.” He spoke, as he often did, as though he did not consider himself to be one of the fae.

“So I have always thought,” agreed Bonarata as he turned, presumably to take them to where they would be eating this evening.

He paused. Looked sharply at Adam and took a step closer and inhaled.

The vampire who’d brought drinks to their room earlier approached before Bonarata could comment on the scent he’d finally noticed.

“Your pardon,” she told them. “Our seating arrangements had to be rapidly rearranged. Ms. Arkadyevna, Mr. Harris, Mr. Sethaway, Mr. Smith. I have you seated over there, the little table with the peach-rose flower arrangement. There was not time to find a cordial dining companion, so I thought it was best to seat you among yourselves.”

Bonarata held up a hand. “One moment, Annabelle. Could you find Guccio, please, and bring him here?”

“Adam met Guccio wandering the hall with a witched bag that allowed him to walk in the day,” Marsilia told Bonarata in a low voice, because people were starting to look at them.

“Ah,” murmured Bonarata. “I’d been told that piece of witchcraft was no more.”

They all watched as Annabelle walked quickly through the room and found Guccio talking to a small group of vampires near the table where they’d eaten before. Guccio looked over at Bonarata, then said something to Annabelle and patted her shoulder before breaking off from the others and weaving his way to Bonarata’s side.

“Why is it that Adam carries your mark?” Bonarata’s voice was almost cheerful.

And now the whole room fell silent. No one looked at Bonarata, but they were listening as hard as they could.

Guccio blushed and swore. Then he said contritely, “I am sorry, Master. I had hoped to have a word before this meal, but I was distracted with some confusion about a delivery of—I suppose that part doesn’t matter. It was a stupid thing. I was going through an old trunk last night and happened upon this”—he pulled the gris-gris out of his shirt—“I didn’t even know if it worked or not anymore. Mary made it for me a long time ago. I thought I’d try it.” He took a deep breath, then said, in a voice that was raw, “I miss the sun.”

There was a sympathetic echo that had no sound, but it swept through the room just the same. Those words found a home with every vampire here. A human might not have noticed it, but Adam’s wolf was on high alert, and that left Adam taking note of everything.