Marsilia said, “Wait.”

He stopped and looked at her.

“Please,” she said. Then she nodded to Stefan, who closed the door.

As soon as the door shut, she approached him. “Did you meet with a vampire in this house between the time we retired and awakened?”

“Guccio,” he said. “Mercy contacted Ben via e-mail using a stolen e-reader. She’s alive in Prague and likely to stay that way until we get there. I went to talk to Harris to let him know we’d be wheels up tonight as soon as you figure out what a proper leave-taking of Bonarata consists of. Sooner rather than later if you can manage.”

Marsilia absorbed all of that. While she did, Stefan said, “Guccio? In the day?”

“He had some sort of magical bag. Witchcraft. I want to ask Elizaveta about it.”

Stefan considered that. Then he said, “Did he do anything odd?”

“No bite marks,” Adam said. “I checked.” And he had. He knew about vampire mind tricks—and his wolf was even more agitated than it had been when he found out about Mercy.

Stefan nodded slowly. “Okay. Okay. You should be okay, then. You just—” He glanced over at Marsilia, who sighed.

“Vampires have scent markers,” she told him. “It’s not quite a secret, but not something we tell everyone about. We leave them involuntarily when we feed off a human, but we can also do it deliberately—a touch, a brush of skin on skin. A way of marking someone as ours. As soon as you walked into the bedroom, Stefan and I could tell you’d been marked by someone. I didn’t know Guccio well enough to remember how his scent marker smells.”

Adam sniffed himself, but he couldn’t detect anything different. It made him uneasy that the vampires could smell something he couldn’t, but that might be why his wolf was so upset.

“I showered,” he said, “and it’s still here?”

Stefan grinned. “Don’t worry, Mercy won’t smell it, either. Some kind of vampire magic designed to keep some poor fool from taking a bite of a Master Vampire’s prey. Vampires can smell it from the newest hatchling to the oldest doddering geriatric.” His smile was real, but his eyes were solemn. “It’s considered rude, unless it’s one of your own . . . people, someone who has to go out and about among our kind, and you want to protect them from other vampires.”

“What an interesting thing to do to a guest of Bonarata,” said Marsilia. “I wonder what it means?”

Adam felt his mouth quirk up. “I guess we’ll find out.”

Marsilia narrowed her eyes at him.

“Come on out to the main room,” he said. “I have a few things to talk over with everyone.”

But when they made it to the main room, Honey was still getting dressed in Elizaveta’s room. Smith was in the suite, and from the wide-eyed look he gave Adam, he’d heard about the vampire scent-marking him. Adam was pretty sure there was a glint of something in Smith’s eyes, too, but the other wolf dropped his head like a good submissive, so Adam couldn’t be sure.

Given that there were no bite marks, Adam could see why they found it funny that he, a werewolf, had been marked as prey by the stupid vampire.

The two goblins were pointedly looking at the window, their backs to the room. Presumably so that Adam couldn’t see their wide grins.

Elizaveta looked from Adam to Smith to the goblins and said, in a voice with virtually no Russian accent at all so that Adam knew she was really angry, “Please tell me the joke so that I know what you and the vampires were conversing about. It seems that I am the only who did not hear what went on.”

Adam bowed to her and said in Russian, “My apologies. It is a joke on me, I am afraid. Please let us wait until Honey is here, and I will tell everyone some information I’ve gotten while you’ve slept. And I think you may provide us with important information about what I have to say.”

She arched an eyebrow at him, but he knew that by addressing her in Russian—which everyone here did not understand—he had given her a sop to her pride, because, in that case, she was not the one left out of the information flow. And letting her know she held vital information was a boost to her ego. She knew he was manipulating her, but she decided to allow it.

“Very well,” she said in English, her accent back in place. “I can wait for Honey.”

Honey came out, her short hair a little damp and her face freshly made up. She smelled, just a little, of rose petals. A human might not catch it, but the vampires would. She wore a rose-colored tank top without a bra and jeans that looked as though she wouldn’t be able to draw a deep breath. Around her neck was a gold chain with a small wolf charm. He knew that Peter, her dead mate, had gotten her the necklace, because Adam had gone with him to pick it out for her birthday.

She looked like bait.

He smiled at her, and she gave him a toothy smile back. He was glad he’d brought her, fierce and strong. She was a good wolf to have at your back.

He told them about Mercy. Told them that Guccio had been walking around the villa with a spell bag that allowed him to roam during the day. And he told them that he’d been marked so that all the vampires would think that he was Guccio’s food.

Honey stepped closer and sniffed him. “I don’t smell anything?” She gave the vampires a suspicious look.

“I don’t, either,” said Larry. “But I know that vampires have a way of marking their prey. It’s seen as crude, because usually, unless it’s a Master Vampire, it’s an accident. Proof that a vampire lost control when he”—he glanced at Marsilia and said—“or she found some food that appealed to her. Sort of like spitting into a drink that isn’t yours.”