“Heck yes! Be like Julie!”

“But in case something goes wrong, I’m going to camouflage you and leave you here. If I have to retreat I will come back this way, and I want you to knock down the first person who’s following me. Don’t bite or engage them, just knock them over, and then catch up with me.”

“Got it. I can do that! And then you can goulash me.”

With Oberon kept safe—which was truly my intention in leaving him there, not that he protect my retreat—I proceeded to the double doors of the Grand Bohemia and cast camouflage to give me some time to scope out the place, unobserved.

The outer doors opened into an unusual glass-enclosed foyer, with five angled panels, two of which were doors leading to the left and right of the center panel. The reception desk and staircase waited straight ahead across a tiled floor, and flush with the front of the building to either side were carpeted sitting areas with little cocktail tables. The furniture was upholstered in rich red and gold frilly patterns, with matching heavy drapes framing the large arched windows. A huge portrait of Karl IV, the 14th-century Holy Roman Emperor who ruled from Bohemia, gazed benevolently upon the hotel guests and reminded them that Prague had once been the capital of the Western world. In the back of the room, to the left of reception and the staircase, a doorway with CAFÉ/BAR emblazoned above it announced that potables could be had, and I glimpsed a bored bartender behind the taps.

The seating areas on either side of the lobby were occupied by six individuals each, and once I switched my vision to the magical spectrum, I saw that every single one of them was a vampire. I pulled out the stake and wondered where to begin. Which, if any of them, was Theophilus?

I didn’t get a chance to find out. One of the vampires on the right was wearing slightly odd glasses that I first dismissed as pretentious fashion, but they were modern infrared goggles. He couldn’t see through my camouflage binding, but he could sure see my heat signature standing there and not actually entering the lobby. He could no doubt smell me too. I caught this as he pulled out a phone, thumbed a speed-dial number, and then said in German, “Er ist am Eingang. Ja. Machen wir.” He rang off, nodded at the others on his right, and they rose together. A quick glance at the left side of the lobby confirmed that the vampires there were doing the same, and my bad feeling got infinitely worse. German Goggle Vamp shouted, “Schießt auf die Tür!” and the guns came out from under jackets and I ducked just in time to avoid the worst of the fire. They wound up shooting each other more than me, but I still took a bullet in the left hamstring as I threw myself at the door and crawled out to the sidewalk. Once there, I realized I couldn’t stand up—not only because of the bullet in my leg but because if I did, the goggles guy would see me in infrared and have a clear shot as I ran by the front windows to where Oberon was. My scent would help them find me too, so the best option was to stop being human for a bit until I could ditch them. I triggered the charm that changed my shape to a sea otter and wriggled out of my clothes on three limbs instead of four, leaving them on the sidewalk for the vampires to smell, then I scampered as quickly as I could manage, hobbled as I was, along the base of the building so that my heat signature could not be seen through the windows, carrying the stake in my mouth. I hoped no one but vampires had been hurt. Just as I reached the corner, vampires burst out of the hotel entrance accompanied by a human—one whose voice I knew too well.

“O’Sullivan!” he called, and I peeked back around the corner to confirm it was him. Werner Drasche stood among his vampire entourage, looking up and down the intersection, plainly not in custody in Toronto anymore. And while he was no longer an arcane lifeleech, he was still a gigantic thorn in my side and showed a disturbing talent for outfoxing me. He must have been waiting out of sight, perhaps in the bar somewhere, and that was who the goggled vampire had called when he spotted me. I really should have killed him when I had the chance.

Well, Drasche could have this round; I was so extremely outgunned that there was no use in trying to tilt a lopsided battleground in my favor. I should count avoiding the ambush as a win.

Oberon, let’s go, I said to him through our mental link. Don’t wait to stop anyone. I’m going to fly out of here, and you follow along on the streets, okay? Try not to knock any tourists over.

“Okay.”

I shifted directly from otter to owl, since my arms were in good shape and I wouldn’t have to depend on that damaged left leg. I’d worry about healing it later. As I took wing in the direction of the Vltava River, I heard Drasche launch into a series of taunts.

“You can’t win this war, O’Sullivan! One way or another, we’ll get to you!”

He made a good point: My goal was still a good one, but I couldn’t win using current methods. I’d have to try another way to get to Theophilus, because they had been waiting for me at the Grand Hotel Bohemia with guns and infrared and Drasche’s personal force of undead Austrian muscle. Which meant that Leif had betrayed me again.

CHAPTER 18

There is a certain freedom granted in privacy—a sense of fulfillment and ease that comes with the simple knowledge that no one is watching. It’s why we feel all right about singing in the shower. And in this modern world, where we are constantly under surveillance of one kind or another, I suppose a compelling argument could be made that both our privacy and our freedom are illusions. Atticus and I don’t worry about conventional surveillance too much; stay off the Internet, use burner phones, and pay cash for everything you can, and that will at least make them work to find you. Using assumed identities is a huge help as well. But I haven’t had true privacy—true freedom—until now, with a divination cloak shielding me from the prying eyes of gods and seers of all kinds. And I know just how I want to celebrate that freedom.

I want to pluck out the metaphorical thorn that’s been embedded in my psyche for years and then see if I can’t find my way back to a happy place. Laksha’s question about where I am on my own spiritual journey has lingered in my mind, and I’ve been thinking about it—there was a rebuke there, and a well-deserved one. It put me in mind of Whitman’s rhetorical question about judgment in I Sing the Body Electric: Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?

Nope. I certainly do not. And the primary problem is that I do not know enough of myself. I have old wounds that have never fully healed, and I need to address them before I can move to help others. And in truth there is no balance that I can achieve but my own.

I have long delayed seeking that balance, in favor of more-pressing business, but I feel that it’s finally time to take care of it. Being able to take care of it was one of the primary reasons I became a Druid, but I have purposely waited since becoming bound to Gaia, to ensure that I would not act rashly. Instead, I have coolly planned a course of action that will serve Gaia and also serve my personal need to give my stepfather the finger.

As a child, when I came to live at his place in Kansas—the slightly smaller one, not the sprawling monstrosity he bought my senior year—I quickly saw that my mother was a prize instead of a person to him, and I was a burden he had to tolerate if he wanted the prize. He never laid a finger on me—I’m more fortunate than so many others in that regard—but the most love I was able to ever wring out of his face was a look of mild disgust. Never a kind word. Maybe it was because I was a tangible reminder that he had not always possessed my mother. Any interest he gave me was feigned, and that was only in the presence of others. I know my mom must have seen something good in him besides his bank account; her regard for him, at least, wasn’t feigned. I think she admires single-minded determination. My real dad had it and so does Beau—and I suppose I possess a fair measure of it myself.