If I wasn’t going to let myself be distracted, I might as well go curl up in a miserable ball and wait for Adam (or maybe Bonarata or Whateverhisname the Alpha of Prague) to find me. Wait to be rescued, Stefan had told me—not very flattering in retrospect. I don’t follow orders, even kindly given, and I wasn’t going to wait around to be rescued like some helpless princess when there was exploring to do.

Just then, I passed a restaurant or pub or something that had a sign in the window that said FREE WI-FI in about ten languages. It would open at 11. I made note of it because my stolen e-reader and I needed free Wi-Fi. But it was a long time until 11 A.M., so I kept going.

Eventually, I found myself in the famous Old Town Square, with its fabulous clock tower that looked as though it had been transplanted from the Middle Ages. The rest of the buildings were, even to my relatively uneducated eyes, a mishmash of eras—that seemed to blend together in a . . . well, a Bohemian style. My favorite was a glorious old church or cathedral with Gothic (I think) towers whose spiky tops reached for the heavens—and promised impalement to any angel who happened to fall down upon them.

There were still a few people meandering about the open-air restaurants, though the actual commerce seemed to be finishing up. I moved slowly and stuck to the shadows, and no one stood up and pointed at the coyote in the middle of the city, so I was pretty sure that the “see what you expect to see and don’t be alarmed” part of the pack spell was working okay.

Narrow cobblestone streets led off from the square in a higgledy-piggledy fashion that had nothing to do with convenience and everything to do with their medieval origin. Charmed, I started down one at random.

Like the square, the street was cobblestone, the “road” barely wide enough to accommodate a single car or small delivery van. My feet, still sore from running from the werewolf, would have preferred a nice grassy verge to the granite cobbles. But the rest of me? The only thing that would have made my first exposure to medieval Prague better would have been if Adam were by my side.

I was in Prague, walking down cobblestones through a street that probably looked a lot like this a thousand years ago. Granted, it wouldn’t have smelled like this. Medieval cities had to cope with the waste of horses, cattle, sheep, and geese, not to mention people, and mostly, by modern standards, they failed. I was most content with this version of the Middle Ages. My tongue lolled out in pleasure not even sore feet or being hunted by vampires could impact.

Cobblestones had been necessary in the Middle Ages—a huge upgrade from dirt/waste/mud. Cobbles could be washed clean and swept. They didn’t get the nasty ruts that could deepen until they trapped any cart with the misfortune to fall into them.