By leaping a few low stone fences, I found a chunk of ground next to the riverbank (I couldn’t remember the name of the river except that it began with a V and that the Germans called it something else that reminded me of mold) tucked next to and around the edge of a restaurant that was hidden from the view of street, restaurant, and boats on the river. It was not particularly clean or lovely, but it was hidden—and that’s all I would ask for tonight.

And I lay there in the hard-packed dirt for maybe an hour next to the river. After ten minutes or so, I remembered it was the Vltava. Three unlikely consonants in a row. I still couldn’t remember the name the Germans called it. It was full dark, but there were lights all over the city that gave the river’s graceful flow a surreal beauty.

I knew that Stefan had given me good advice. I should just lie low and wait to be found. But I’d slept most of the day cramped up in the belly of the bus, and I was now too restless to sleep.

There were werewolves in Prague. I knew that. The mad and powerful Beast of Gévaudan, who’d ruled most of Europe for centuries, had seen to it that the packs were few and far between, as he did not brook competition. In Spain, where Asil the Moor had ruled, the Beast had left them alone. But he had stayed away from certain other places, too. Milan, where the Lord of Night reigned supreme, had been one of them. I was pretty sure that Prague had been another.

There was something about the werewolves in Prague I couldn’t remember. Something that urged me to caution. I hadn’t expected to find myself in Europe . . . well, ever, really. So I hadn’t paid much attention to them.

The werewolf who ruled here was very, very old—like Marrok or Asil old, I could remember that much. For some reason, I had the picture of a very hairy man in a medieval kitchen with his hirsute arms folded on the top of a rough-hewn wooden table in my head—it made me want to smile. Likely someone had been talking about him when I was a child, and I’d formed an idea of what he looked like. To have been Alpha enough to keep Gévaudan at bay, he was doubtless a scary man. But I’d grown up with werewolves, and being a werewolf was an insufficient reason to be frightened of him.

Even so, running around Prague was probably a bad idea until I could remember what I had heard about the local Alpha that had worried me. I should stay where I was.

I’d lived more than half my life essentially alone. Sometimes in the past few years, I had longed to be alone, just for an hour or two. And here I was. Alone. Sometimes getting your wish really sucks.