I raised my head and looked at him, but he was staring at something I couldn’t see.

“She’d gotten an e-mail,” he told me. “Implying that you were being held to persuade her to present herself before the . . .” He stopped here. “I am informed that speaking his name or title might allow him to eavesdrop because we are speaking via a witch’s spell rather than our bond. Do you know who I mean?”

I nodded, disconcerted by the idea of a witch spell. Adam’s hands tightened painfully.

“Does he have you?” Adam asked urgently, and I shook my head.

“You got away? Where are you? Are you all right? Are you safe?” he asked.

I would have said something then. But I was in coyote form—and I didn’t have the faintest idea how to answer any of his questions.

His nostrils flared, and he frowned at me. “I smell diesel. I thought it was just you . . . but, Mercy, are you on a bus?” he asked.

But he was gone before I could answer, the quiet dream blown to bits by the abrupt sound of hissing brakes. The noise and rough jolting brought me back to the dark underbelly of the luggage compartment, which was a cold substitute for Adam’s lap. I stood up. My legs had trouble compensating for the wallow as the bus rolled over speed bumps, curbs, bodies, or something that lifted up one side, then the other a couple of times.

I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep. Not very long, I thought. I would have been stiffer if it had been more than a half hour or so—not long enough to be safe from the Lord of Night. I waited, and when the bus stopped, I readied myself.

When the luggage doors opened, I dashed out as quickly as I could. The bus attendant cried out as I ran by him, but this was a huge station, and I quickly lost myself among the buses and passengers towing luggage.

A man reading a book crossed my path, and I slowed down, walking at his heel for a dozen yards until the pack magic settled lightly around me and I became less interesting. I could feel the lessened pressure at the back of my neck as people quit looking at me. Pack magic would help, but I’d have to do my best to blend in because it was weak.

We moved past a bright yellow bus just as a woman reached up to close the cargo area but paused as something caught her attention. It was too good a chance to miss. I broke smoothly away from the man I’d been trailing and slipped unseen into the luggage compartment. I found a pair of big beige duffel bags and stretched out between them, just another beige lump to human eyes. The luggage-bay doors closed.

I stayed still until the bus was moving, then stayed still some more as it turned a corner and picked up speed. I had to stay still, or I was afraid I would lose my battle with panic.

I’d assumed that the Lord of Night had taken me to Yakima or Walla Walla. Both were within a reasonable travel distance of the Tri-Cities, and both had gently rolling hills and vineyards. When I’d been running my hardest to stay ahead of the werewolf, I hadn’t been paying attention to much beyond generalities.

But the voices at the bus station hadn’t been speaking English. They’d been speaking Italian.

I wasn’t in Yakima or Walla Walla; I wasn’t in Washington or even in the US. The Lord of Night had taken me to Italy, and that was the reason I couldn’t reach Adam or the pack through the various bonds I had to them as soon as I was free of Bonarata’s magic circle.

I wasn’t sure how far Italy was from my home, but my liberal arts education told me that the world was roughly twenty-five thousand miles around and that Italy was about a quarter of the world away. I called it six thousand miles, give or take a thousand miles.

I was in the belly of a bus in Italy, alone, naked, and penniless.

Also without a passport.

In a place that a coyote was likely to be noticed because coyotes aren’t exactly native to Europe.

I thought a little more and added “can’t speak the language” to my woes. I’d never traveled out of the country—except that summer road trip to Mexico with Char, my college roommate. Char spoke fluent Spanish, so my bits and pieces hadn’t made me completely helpless. I put my head down and felt sorry for myself for a long while.

Then I pulled on my big-girl pants (which were figurative at this point) and started dealing with the situation as it stood. In front of me and behind me was the solution to my nakedness problem, and I had no room to be squeamish.

I shifted back to my human self and started opening luggage.

It took me a while to find someone who was reasonably close to me in size. I didn’t want to strand her with not enough clothes, so I took the bare minimum. I’d found a notebook and pen in someone else’s duffel bag and left a note and the address and phone number of Adam’s business as well as a detailed list of what I’d taken from the suitcase—a copy of which I kept. I found a pair of tennis shoes that fit in another suitcase, along with twenty euros. There had been maybe two hundred euros in the suitcase, but my conscience, already pushed to the brink, could only deal with twenty. I left a note for her, too.

I had no idea how long this bus ride was going to be—though the luggage suggested that most people weren’t planning on a short trip. Even so, I hurried, so that I wouldn’t be caught in the middle of my theft.

I found an empty backpack—not a sturdy can-hold-all-your-college-textbooks kind of pack, more of an I-don’t-want-to-carry-a-purse-and-think-pink-lace-and-flowers-are-pretty pack. I thought it was pretty, too—if not really appropriate to anyone over the age of seven. But my coyote self could carry it, and it would hold the fruits of my heist job, so I took it.