Hopefully I’d be home in a couple of weeks. That would mean I would have to fly back. I could fly back with Adam and see Prague properly. As long as we all survived.

—

HOT WATER AND SWEET-SMELLING SOAP DID A LOT for my spirits. I was still stuck in Prague without papers or money, but at least I was clean and had a change of clothes I hadn’t had to steal. I had a bed and a safe place to sleep.

The clothing they had found me was typical of spare werewolf-pack clothes (apparently) the world over: running pants and a tank top—a little closer fitting than what our pack used, but still stretchy enough to fit a wide variety of body types, male or female.

I had a small room at the top of the stairs, a little isolated from the rest of the living space over the bakery. It was still daylight, I was surrounded by strangers—one of whom was pretty unhappy with me even if he did acknowledge that I had told him over and over that what he wanted was not a good idea. Even so, I think I was asleep before my body hit the mattress.

I woke in darkness, and someone was stroking my cheek gently. I rolled away from the touch and buried my head in the blankets.

“Leave me alone,” I said with force.

Then I realized that I was alone in the room—and had been while those fingers had been touching my cheek.

I hoped sincerely that it was still a residual effect of meeting the golem that left me such a magnet for the ghosts of Prague. I hoped even more fervently that whatever it was that had caused this would go away soon.

I also felt guilty.

I try not to give orders to the dead unless it’s important because they can’t refuse me, not if I focus my will strongly enough. I wouldn’t have done it except that I had been mostly asleep. But I had ordered the ghost to go away—and it had gone.

I think it had been trying to warn me because, a few minutes later, my door popped open.

I was up on my feet beside the bed, with my right hand still trying to close around a gun that wasn’t there, before I was aware enough to remember where I was.

“Wake up, woman,” said a gruff voice that belonged to a man I hadn’t seen before.

He was slender and compact, like a gymnast. If you saw him in a suit, you would never know how much muscle he carried. In the tight tank shirt and jeans, he emphasized it. He looked a little like the man who had followed me until I’d taken refuge in the garden of the friendly mastiff. Maybe they were related. He was one of those men who would look like a teenager until his hair started graying, but since he was a werewolf, that would never happen. I wondered if he’d learned to turn that into a strength yet.