I crouched low and wiggled my way into the underbrush, leaving the trail of the female vampire entirely. I had the sense that we weren’t very far from the parking garage where we’d started, though her trail had led all over Josefov.

Hidden in the greenery, I stared at the building, but the figure that had caught the coyote’s attention was gone. About that time, I realized that I was alone in the middle of vampire territory. Impossible that I’d lost two werewolves while I was doing nothing more taxing than following a trail at walking speed or a little less. Impossible that they hadn’t known about the seethe. Impossible, unless . . .

A cold chill slid across my spine as I realized what had happened and how much trouble I was in right now. Stupid, imprudent coyote had gotten me into the vampire seethe without backup.

I tried to be silent as I withdrew from the bushes I’d buried myself in. It took longer to get out than it had to get in, but as soon as I was out of the undergrowth, I spotted my werewolves. I’d traveled farther than I thought I had.

Martin and Jitka were pacing uneasily back and forth along the line that demarcated the change in territory from city park to vampire seethe, maybe half a football field away. I’d seen that sort of behavior, or something very like it, before, though the sheer power necessary was something I’d only seen from the fae lords, and the magic here reeked of vampire. And witchcraft. In fact, now that I was paying attention with my other senses instead of only my nose, there was a huge amount of witchcraft all around me.

I knew what this was.

Mary or one of her minions was a witch. I really hate it when the bad guys double up on powers. To my sure and certain knowledge, it was forbidden to turn anything other than a mundane human into a vampire. That witch had set up a barrier around the seethe that kept it safe from prying eyes, noses, and anything else. Martin and Jitka had not smelled the vampire seethe—or they hadn’t known that they were smelling a vampire seethe.

That sounded more like it.

A spell that affected anyone in the area, that kept them from realizing they were sensing the vampires, was much less magic intensive than an actual barrier of the type the Gray Lords of the fae had placed around the Walla Walla reservation. Anyone who ventured into the area wouldn’t sense vampires, wouldn’t pay attention to anything the witch who set the spell didn’t want them to notice. Passersby probably saw the battered apartment building—they just didn’t notice it.

I’d heard about witchcraft spells like this.

When I was growing up in Bran’s pack, he required the pack and their families to attend a regular musical night. We all participated.

I sometimes wondered at the control that it took for Bran, a musician born and bred, to listen to an unhappy eleven-year-old (me) fight the piano through a Beethoven piece that would not have been one of the great man’s better melodies even had it been played well.