Dead Heat

CHAPTER 6

After putting Joseph to bed, Charles checked in with Anna, who was sitting in the rocking chair in Chelsea’s room working on her current knitting project. Hosteen was in the room, too. Chelsea would need a dominant werewolf around for a while, until they were certain she could control her wolf. The most dangerous time would be when she woke up after the first deep sleep.

“Maggie needed to take a break,” Anna said, looking up at him. “She went up to check on Joseph.” She paused, but he thought it was because she’d done something wrong to her knitting while she was looking at him, because she pulled out a few stitches before continuing.

“She’s up there now,” he told Anna. “He’s sleeping. We tired him out.”

“I told her that he’d come down to the barn,” Anna said. “She wasn’t pleased. We sent Kage away, though. Chelsea’s been showing signs that she might be waking up. Have to get the fragile humans out of the room, just in case.”

“I told Anna that one person watching another sleep was plenty,” said Hosteen. “Maybe you can persuade her.”

“I’m just fine,” said Anna. “I have to get this knitted before Christmas, anyway.”

“It’s February,” said Hosteen.

“Yes, I know,” his Anna deadpanned. “I should have given myself a little more time. Now I have to speed up my knitting to compensate.”

She didn’t want to leave Hosteen alone with Chelsea, thought Charles. He saw Maggie’s touch in this, but Maggie knew Hosteen better than Charles did. If she thought it would be good not to leave the Salt River Alpha alone with Chelsea, she was probably right.

“I need to call Da, anyway,” Charles told Anna. “You stay here and knit. I’ll come back when I’m done.” He didn’t tell her to be careful. His da used her all the time to help wolves who were awaking from that first sleep. She knew the dangers, and she was better equipped, even than Charles or Hosteen, to deal with any trouble.

He kissed Anna on the cheek and headed up to their rooms. His father needed to know how closely Charles had walked the line of the law they all lived by.

“You Changed her without her consent,” the Marrok said softly when Charles finished. “Without talking to me. And she is witchborn.”

His da was just repeating what Charles had already told him, so he saw no reason to say anything more. He also knew it would annoy the Marrok, and decided it served him right for the implied chastisement. Da knew that Charles wouldn’t Change someone lightly.

Silence played loudly between them. Until he heard his father take a deep breath and release it. When he spoke he sounded more willing to discuss the matter.

“You are certain she was bespelled by a fae?”

“Absolutely,” Charles replied. And that was the real cause of his da’s temper.

When Bran spoke again, he didn’t sound happy, but he wasn’t playing the chastising Alpha, either. “You got her husband’s consent, which will appease the worst of the letter-of-the-law crowd. Most of them are old enough to believe that a husband’s word is good enough for his wife. I will give my retroactive permission—it was an emergency situation. The witchborn part can stay between us. It may not be against our law to Change a witchborn, but it is frowned upon. There is no sense in making a nasty monster into a nastier one.”

Charles listened for irony, but he didn’t hear it. That didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Bran was witchborn and he certainly considered himself a very nasty monster. So did Charles. He’d glimpsed what lurked inside his da, and if he never saw it again it would be too soon.

“She’s not a black witch,” Charles told his da, because that was important. “She hid her witch blood pretty well. I got only a faint scent until I tasted it in her blood. It might have been what attracted the fae’s attention to her, though. Or she might have seen something that a human would have overlooked, and the fae tried to get rid of her.”

“It sounds as though the fae was trying to get rid of her children.”

Charles grunted. “That’s a fae thing, going after children. But she was supposed to kill herself, too.”

His father sighed. “I suppose you’re going to go looking for the fae.”

There was a long silence, because Charles seldom bothered answering stupid questions.

His da swore, taking a good long time about it. That he used Welsh made it softer sounding—and might fool someone who didn’t know him about just how frustrated he was. The drop into Welsh meant he was really unhappy.

“It took us a long time to hammer out that agreement,” he complained, his voice a little bitter. “And it’s been in place not even six months. My whole intent was to keep our people safe.”

“It attacked children,” Charles said. He wasn’t pleading, not really. Because whatever his da said, he was going after it.

“Mortal children,” growled his father harshly. “Human.” When he heaved a big sigh Charles knew he’d won, even before his father spoke. “The first trespass was theirs. They attacked the great-grandchildren of the Salt River Pack Alpha. You won’t be breaking the treaty because they already did. Maybe I can salvage something from this. Find out who it is and stop them.”

“By whatever means necessary,” Charles clarified.

“This is a fae capable of making a woman kill her children,” his da snapped. “Assuming that she didn’t have a hidden desire to kill them?”

“No,” said Charles. “Quite the opposite.”

“Then this is a powerful fae. Mind control, forcing someone to act against their nature and perform a specific task, especially a task repugnant to them, is rare. At least outside Underhill it is rare. Leaving such an enemy alive is stupid. Find this one and kill him if you can.” He snorted, and his voice was full of self-directed amusement. “I’ll deal with the Gray Lords. You go kill whatever is attacking children. And tell Hosteen that I authorized it.” He muttered, “Not that he’d wait for my approbation, either.”

The Marrok ended the call.

Charles loosened his shoulders to lessen the tension of Brother Wolf’s eagerness. “I told you he would not object,” he murmured. They would hunt, but it would take patience and care. Hunting a fae was different from hunting a deer or elk. More challenging—and more satisfying.

Then his phone rang.

“You couldn’t tell she was witchborn until you tasted her blood?” asked his father.

“You can leave,” Hosteen told Anna. He’d been pacing for the better part of the twenty minutes that had passed since he’d driven Kage and Maggie out of the guest room, with a brief pause when Charles had come in.

He stopped moving, possibly accidentally, between Anna and the bed where Chelsea lay in the comalike sleep that marked the Change from human to werewolf. He put his hands on his hips, stared at Anna, and waited for her to obey him.

Alphas were used to people obeying them.

Anna raised her eyebrow at him and continued to knit, rocking herself in a dark wooden rocking chair that was a lot more comfortable than it had looked when she sat down in it. Knitting was new for her.

She’d started with quilting. She loved the feel and looks of the fabric. It was like making stained-glass pictures with cloth, and it was an effective gateway drug. Weekly lessons with one of the people who kept the little craft store in Aspen Creek had led her into a whole world. She’d found knitting particularly useful because it let her wait without being restless.

“I’m not going to hurt her,” Hosteen said, nodding toward the bed.

“Okay,” Anna said, continuing to work on the sweater she was making for Charles.

The last one had not turned out very well, and she was determined that this one would be better. It was red, his favorite color. She wasn’t ready to try any kind of fancy pattern yet, but so far the sweater was looking like the picture in her how-to book, so she was encouraged. Except, that is, for those weird little holes that crept in here and there.

“Go,” Hosteen said with power.

She gave him a chiding click of her tongue, though it wasn’t diplomatic. But she wasn’t feeling very charitable toward him because he thought she was stupid. Anna could tell when someone was trying to lie with the truth. It didn’t tingle her magic werewolf senses, but her plain old body language skills were plenty adequate. Sure, he wouldn’t hurt Chelsea: death can be painless.

The idea that Hosteen would kill Chelsea would never have occurred to her. For one thing, murder was murder, even among werewolves. But Kage had been worried, and Maggie had been emphatic. Hosteen’s actions since then weren’t exactly subtle. She didn’t know Chelsea, but she wasn’t going to let anyone be murdered on her watch.

“Charles asked me to stay here,” she said, rather than confronting Hosteen with his lie. “You aren’t my Alpha—and even if you were, he can’t make me do anything, either.” She tapped herself in the chest with one of her needles and half sang, “Omega. Me.” Dropping into her own voice, she said, “As an Omega wolf, I don’t have the urge to obey you. At all. Not even the tiniest bit. Don’t worry, it makes the Marrok crazy, too.” There was another of those funny holes in the row of otherwise neat stitches she’d just finished.

“What do you think I’m going to do to her?” he asked. “She’s the mother of my great-grandchildren.”

Anna met his eyes. “Then why do you want to be alone with her so badly?”

He flinched from her gaze. “Two wolves aren’t necessary,” he said. “I can keep her wolf in line, and you are, forgive me, not family.”

“I can help her keep herself in line,” she told him, “because I am an Omega wolf.” She quit speaking, holding up her knitting again. There was another stupid hole. “But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here to protect her from you.”

He turned his back to her altogether, Anna wasn’t sure why. Alphas, she’d noticed, had weird reactions to Omega wolves. He could be ashamed, or he could be fighting off his temper.

“Witches are evil,” he said without turning around. He was telling the truth as he knew it. Mostly as Anna knew it, as well.

“So I’ve noticed,” she agreed.

He turned back to her, his surprise evident. Some idiot had been arguing that point, evidently. Anna hadn’t been in the supernatural world long, but the scariest person she’d encountered (other than the Marrok himself) had been a witch.

“Most of them, anyway,” she continued. “But you can tell when they’ve turned.” She tapped her nose with the end of one of her needles and went back to work.

“All witches are evil,” he told her.

She pursed her lips. “A fructibus eorum cognoscetis eos.”

“By their fruits shall you know them?” He didn’t have any trouble with her Latin—she must be getting better. “She tried to kill her own children. That is her fruit.”

“No,” she said patiently, though she didn’t know exactly why she was arguing with him. Kage had been married to Chelsea long enough to have two children. If his own grandson hadn’t changed Hosteen’s mind, she probably wasn’t going to be able to. Her job was just to keep Chelsea safe. “You know that. She didn’t kill her children, though she was under a strong fae compulsion. Charles thinks that it was her witch blood that let her resist. The fae don’t break their spells with ‘blood and spit,’ that’s a witch thing. She bled herself nearly to death to keep from doing evil. That is, in my book, the very opposite of evil.”

After a moment of silence, Hosteen came over to her and sat on his heels in front of the rocking chair, putting his head level with hers. “You’re doing it wrong.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“The knitting,” he told her, his face still serious. He indicated her beginning-of-a-sweater-for-Charles with a jerk of his chin. “You have holes. You’ve been letting your yarn get in front of your knitting. That’s why you aren’t getting a solid pattern.”

Anna brought her knitting up where she could examine it, as if she hadn’t already noticed the stupid holes—seven of them scattered irregularly.

“You aren’t paying attention to your yarn,” he said. “We all do it once in a while, pay so much attention to making things right that you make mistakes in the simple things. If the yarn is in front, between your needles while you’re knitting, you’re actually purling where you should be knitting. It leaves a hole. It’s a legitimate stitch, actually; it’s called a yarn over.”

“Son of a gun,” she said. “That’s where those little suckers are coming from.”

He laughed, sounding tired.

“You know how to knit?” Anna asked. She was going to have to unravel it down to the first few rows to get rid of them all.

Hosteen nodded. “My mother taught me to weave. I enjoy it; most of the rugs you see in this house are mine. But weaving takes a loom and sometimes it is good to have something to do with your hands. So I learned to knit and crochet and cross-stitch.”

“I thought that traditionally weaving was a woman’s thing among the Navajo?”

He snorted. “Navajo men did what there was to do—just as Navajo women did.”

Anna sighed, looked at the inches of sweater she’d managed, and then pulled on the loose yarn to unravel it.

Hosteen sighed, too, his sigh quieter than Anna’s had been.

“You think,” Anna said gently, “it might just be possible that you may have been paying so much attention to the duty that requires you to keep your pack and your family safe that you might have made a little, very important misjudgment?” she asked.

Hosteen said, “In my experience, either witches are evil, or they are victims waiting until one of their kind notices them and comes hunting. At which time many people who cared about the white witch die as well.”

“Okay,” agreed Anna easily, watching the unraveling piece in her lap instead of looking at Hosteen. She didn’t want to make him uncomfortable now that he was actually talking to her, but she wasn’t going to make a big thing about dropping her eyes for him, either. No sense in letting him think that he was her boss.

“I mostly agree,” she continued. “I know exactly four exceptions to that rule: Charles, the Marrok, Samuel, and a witch I know in Seattle.”

“Bran and his sons don’t count. If a witch has power enough to defend herself, she has sacrificed someone for it,” Hosteen said unequivocally.

“Sacrifice, yes,” Anna conceded. “But the witch I knew paid the price for her power herself rather than hurt anyone else. She isn’t evil, and she is very powerful.” It was discouraging how quickly the beginnings of a sweater turned into a loose pile of yarn. She took the ball and began winding, careful not to stretch the yarn out as she put it back on the ball. “Why do you think the Marrok and his sons don’t count?”

“They are werewolves,” he said, taking her bait.

She’d learned to argue from her father, a very good lawyer. “Let them argue themselves into your court if you can manage it,” he’d told her. “They’ll do a better job of convincing themselves than you ever could.”

Anna looked up at the Salt River Alpha blandly. Then she looked at Chelsea, who was beginning to look younger. The crow’s-feet were fading from around her eyes, and her skin, formerly Arizona tan, was paler. She couldn’t see any of the cuts Chelsea had made; most of those had been on her body and were covered with a quilt. But if the lycanthropy was healing the marks of aging, Anna assumed it would have already healed the other marks, too.

Anna didn’t state the obvious.

“Old werewolves,” he snarled. “Not new made.”

“Who were once young werewolves—witchborn,” she told him. “And not evil.”

“Evil is going against the nature of things, the way things should be,” he told her with painful exactness. “Evil twists and turns and smells of blood and disease and death. I am evil, too. I fight it every day, the evil inside me. But I fear that it has a hold on my heart, tempts me to force my son so that I won’t be alone. I fight it. But I don’t know if she will. How can anyone fight two monsters in their heart and win?”

He looked faintly surprised at his own words, but more dismayed that he’d told her so much. Anna had, well, not grown used to the peculiarity of having normally taciturn or repressed wolves suddenly spill their inner thoughts to her, exactly, but she was no longer surprised. They talked to her of their pain or sorrow because their wolves knew that she was no threat.

Looking at Hosteen’s dismay, she decided that in addition to quilting and knitting, she needed to learn something about counseling, too. If people were going to air their darkest sorrows to her, she ought to know how to help them. All she could do now was run with her instincts and gather the wisdom her twenty-odd years on the planet had given her to counsel a man five times her age.

“We all carry within us the seeds of the child we were,” she said slowly. “The ideas of right and wrong and proper behavior. Charles will not speak the name of the dead if he can help it.” For Charles, she fervently believed, that taboo was a good one. His ghosts were dangerous. “The ways of the culture we were born into stay with us, even if we live as long as Bran or the Moor have. Some of those ideas are right and good, but others are modes of survival outdated by the passing of time. Like the idea that men shouldn’t weave or knit, or … wear pink and flowers unless it’s on a Hawaiian shirt. The trouble seems to be sorting one from the other.”

“You think the monster I see in Chelsea is a remnant of some outmoded cultural leftover,” he said neutrally.

“Oh, no,” Anna said, her voice so definite she almost winced. She continued more carefully. “Most people carry a monster within. Not just werewolves or fae, most people. That monster has nothing to do with our wolf except that the wolf makes it more dangerous. It’s a monster born of our own selfish desires and the wounds that life leaves on all of us. Whether those lives are a couple of decades or a couple of centuries long, living means that we get hurt, and some of those wounds don’t heal or they don’t heal completely.”

She had her own monster, didn’t she? Her own darkness that she tried to keep out of sight. A monster that would surprise her mate with its ferocity. Born of helplessness that was made worse by the understanding that there had been help just waiting for her if she’d known how to reach for it.

She hid that monster from everyone because it would hurt Charles if he knew that she carried those scars still. But since she was admitting her weaknesses here, if only to herself, she also worried that it would interfere with his image of the person he thought she was. He thought she was brave and true and good, and she wasn’t. Inside, she was dark and ferocious. If he truly understood that she had this twisted and broken part, maybe he could not love her.

But this wasn’t about her. Hosteen needed to see what she carried, so he’d understand he was not alone. And so he would not remember this conversation and feel humiliated because he’d told her so many things and she had not left herself as vulnerable to him. So she let that darkness fill her and looked him in the eye.

He stepped back, involuntarily.

She stopped it, swallowing her broken pieces until she had them tucked out of sight, where she kept them unless she needed to draw on that rage and viciousness.

“We all fight to be better than our base instincts, Hosteen,” she told him, her voice a little rough.

“What happened?” he asked. She saw the protective instinct that made his Alpha kick in: it wasn’t the response she’d expected.

“Do you think that Charles would not have taken care of any problems I might have faced?” she asked.

He nodded solemnly. “Chicago. I heard that Charles killed Leo over his treatment of a newly Changed wolf.” He paused. “That’s what he was talking about over dinner.”

She was losing control of the conversation; time to put it back where it belonged. “Leo didn’t fight his monster. It is not only witches who are tempted by darkness. When we werewolves fail to contain that monster, then it is up to our pack to make sure we don’t hurt anyone. Up to our Alpha, really. For Chelsea, that will be you.”

He nodded. His responsibility. Alphas, she had noticed, were very responsible people. That was it, that was the key. The reason he felt he had to take care of Chelsea, in the hit-man sense of the phrase.

“But we don’t all fail, do we?” Anna said softly. “Too many of us, yes, but not all.” She looked at the unconscious woman. “Brother Wolf doesn’t think that she will fail. That’s why Charles Changed her. It was not impulse, it was inspiration that drove him. His inspiration is more accurate than most people’s.”

Hosteen rose to his feet and looked down upon his daughter-in-law. “She is strong-minded,” he said, then smiled a little. “I’ve never had anyone argue with me by listening before. You must drive Bran wild. You listen and tug a little, and listen and push a little, and in the end you persuade me not to do—”

“—something you never wanted to do.” Anna finished winding her yarn and began knitting again, paying special attention to which side of her knitting the yarn fell on. “My dad always says it’s easier to convince someone of something they already want to believe.”

“She saved Kage’s children.” He reached out and touched Chelsea’s cheek. She stirred under his touch and then quieted. He left his hand there.

Anna tensed. She was too far away to stop him, assuming she could stop him. But she didn’t think she’d have to.

He bowed his head and then looked over his shoulder at Anna. “You—” His voice broke. Probably because the Marrok was talking to him, too.

Anna, get out of there. The witchborn don’t always make the transition from witch to wolf easily. If she was strong enough to hide herself from Charles’s wolf, then she’s strong enough to be dangerous. Strong enough to hide if she is a dark witch. Charles is coming, but you and Hosteen get out of there right now.

She couldn’t respond to him. The Marrok couldn’t hear her if she talked back to him.

Hosteen looked at her. “A fructibus eorum cognoscetis eos,” he quoted back at her softly. “How strongly do you believe that, now? What do you think the Marrok told Charles to do to her? What can he do that you and I could not?”

Anna put her knitting down and walked over to the bed. Chelsea had been restless for the past half hour or so. Bran’s message had spiked the adrenaline in both Anna and Hosteen, and that was enough. Chelsea’s heartbeat was picking up; Anna could smell fear and helpless frustration in a growing wave. That first deep sleep often reset the newly rising werewolves’ memories to the moments right before they were bitten. That was why it was such a dangerous moment.

She took one more deep breath just as magic, a lot of magic, flooded the room. Bran was right; Chelsea Sani was not a weak witch. Not at all.

Chelsea sat up in one explosive movement, staring at Hosteen without recognition or sanity in her eyes. Panicked, she rose to a crouch, crying out involuntarily, a harsh wolflike sound. The magic, which had been strong, suddenly made it hard to breathe in the room, as if the magic had replaced the oxygen.

Anna met Hosteen’s eyes and then showed him what being an Omega really meant as she flooded the room with her own particular and peculiar power.

Charles jumped rather than ran down the stairs, conscious of startling Kage when he landed beside Joseph’s son at the foot of the stairs with more sound than he usually allowed himself. But just now Charles was more interested in speed than stealth.

He threw open the door to the room where Hosteen had stashed Kage’s wife. And jumped back like a scalded cat almost before he felt the touch of Anna’s magic.

“Heyya, Charles,” slurred Hosteen as though he were drunk. He was leaning against the wall on the far side of where Anna had dropped her knitting in a deep red tangle of yarn and needles. “Come join the par-ty.” Then Hosteen giggled.

Anna gave Charles a helpless look, her back to the werewolf and the bed.

Charles grinned at Anna through the open door, but he didn’t approach any closer. Brother Wolf wanted to go in and roll in her power like a cat in catnip, but Charles kept him back. If the attack on Chelsea had been directed at the werewolves, then someone needed to be prepared to defend the people in this house. It wouldn’t be Hosteen, not for a few hours anyway. If he entered the sphere of his wife’s influence, it wouldn’t be Charles, either.

Kage came running down the hallway, not werewolf fast, but human athlete fast. He gave Charles an odd look but didn’t slow as he ran into the room.

Kage was human. He’d probably be okay. Anna’s most deadly weapon worked best on dominant werewolves, especially dominant werewolves whose wolf was kept tied up in little knots because his human half was still, after a century of being a werewolf, convinced that the wolf was something evil. At least Charles thought that might be why Hosteen’s reaction was this extreme.

“Grandson,” Hosteen intoned solemnly. “I’ve decided to let your wife live until she does something evil.”

A woman whom Charles couldn’t see from his hallway position snickered. It wasn’t Anna, who grimaced at Charles because she knew that there would be hell to pay for this tomorrow. They both knew a wolf like Hosteen wouldn’t forgive her lightly for doing this to him.

“Evil,” said the other woman, who could only be Chelsea, though she sounded quite different from the woman he’d heard talk at dinner. She spoke dramatically with a touch of comic flare that might or might not have been intentional. “I’d like to do some evil to you right now, you old bastard. But mostly I’d like to do something evil with my sweetie.” Her voice was relaxed and smoldering.

“Chelsea?” said Kage, in a poleaxed voice.

Charles couldn’t see the woman from his vantage point, and he wasn’t getting any closer until the effect lessened a bit. Hosteen’s stress level could explain the giggling Alpha, but Charles thought Chelsea had been hit hard, too. It was always possible Anna had put more oomph than usual into her “Omega superpower,” as she liked to call it.

Anna cleared her throat. “Sometimes people wake up from the first sleep after the Change and feel a little aroused. Nothing to worry about and it usually goes—”

There was a flash of motion that had Charles moving forward, even though he knew the danger of getting too close to Anna. But Chelsea fell onto the hardwood floor, finally in Charles’s line of sight. She fell softly, muscles relaxed, and lay where she’d landed, looking up at her husband with a pleased smile.

Charles recovered and retreated.

“—away,” continued Anna valiantly, “when they try to move and realize that they have to learn how to deal with muscles that are stronger and respond more quickly than they’re used to. It’s a good distraction, because sex is not a good place to experiment with augmented strength. Most people are back to normal in a day or so.”

Kage crouched down beside his wife and touched her cheek. Charles couldn’t see his expression but had no trouble reading the love and relief in the bend of his head and the softening of his shoulders.

“Hey, little rabbit,” he said huskily. “You okay?”

Chelsea blinked up at him, and then her whole body tightened. “The children … I … the children. Kage?”

“They are fine,” he told her. “Freaked-out. But fine. They are asleep as of ten minutes ago. Ernestine is staying in the suite with them tonight.”

Chelsea fought to stay focused, but Anna’s power was too much. It said something about how dominant her wolf was going to be that Anna affected her nearly as much as she affected Hosteen. Or maybe Anna was getting stronger. Chelsea’s body grew looser and her face softened into a smile. “That bastard wanted to kill me,” she said, pointing a wobbly finger at Hosteen. “I heard him.”

“Didn’t want to,” said Hosteen; he sounded as though he were talking to himself. “Never a good thing when you have to kill the mother of your great-grandchildren. Could scar them for life.” It didn’t sound as though it bothered him much. “But it’s like knitting and purling. I don’t have to. Not until you do something evil, witch.”

Kage’s head turned and he looked at Hosteen, hostility in every line of his body.

“Actually,” Anna said quietly, “I think he was trying very hard to find a reason not to kill her. Very hard. He wouldn’t have been so easy to talk out of it otherwise.”

Hosteen giggled again. “The Marrok told me to do it. After I decided not to. Spoke in my head. I hate it when he does that; creepy. I thought, ‘Geez, old man, if you want someone to do your dirty work, you get Charles to do it. I’m not going to follow orders and destroy my family for you.’” He sighed, a happy, contented sound, and slid down the wall until he was seated on the floor, his feet stretched out until they nearly touched Chelsea’s hair.

He looked at Anna and tried to frown. “What did you do to me, little girl? I haven’t felt like this since … since … since I was six and my father gave me a glass of whiskey to drink before he set my wrist. Got tossed off a horse and we lived out in the wild country. My ma, she didn’t trust those white doctors in town, anyway. They didn’t know about the evil spirits, didn’t know how to sing them out of a body. So my dad, he set it. Used to ache something fierce some days. But not since I became a werewolf.”

“What happened to him?” Kage asked Anna. “I’ve never seen him like this. I thought werewolves couldn’t get drunk.”

Chelsea reached up, grabbed her husband by the back of the neck, and dragged his startled head down to hers.

“Charles Cornick,” said Maggie in a soft voice from just behind him.

Charles realized that he’d stepped too close to the room because Maggie caught him by surprise. If he hadn’t been affected by Anna, no one, especially not a human, would have been able to sneak up on him. He turned his head to see Maggie with an odd expression on her face.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you laugh like that,” she said.

Anna woke up blearily, her knitting needles on her lap. It took her a moment to remember why she was sleeping in a rocking chair with Charles, in wolf form, curled up at her feet.

Chelsea slept on. She’d been awake for less than an hour, spending most of that time eating. When she’d fallen back asleep, Kage escorted his still-giddy grandfather upstairs. Maggie had gone back to Joseph’s room as soon as she was certain there was nothing to worry about.

Kage had come down to check his wife, and Anna had driven him gently back to his own room.

“No sex,” she’d told him, again. “Not until Chelsea truly understands her own strength. And that means separate beds, because the Change will increase Chelsea’s libido by a lot.”

He’d nodded, touched his wife’s face, and smiled when she moved toward him without opening her eyes. “You’ll watch over her?”

Charles said wryly, “Since Anna’s incapacitated the only other person who could do that, yes, we’ll stay here.”

“How did you manage that?” Kage asked.

She shrugged. “I’m an Omega wolf. I have a tranquilizing effect on other werewolves, but I have to admit I’ve never seen anything like what happened to Hosteen.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that, either.” He hesitated at the door. “She’ll be okay?”

Charles nodded. “For tonight, all is as it should be.”

He’d left then. She’d turned out the lights and Charles changed into Brother Wolf’s form, settling himself by her feet and keeping them warm with his dense fur. She knitted for a while; her eyes were good enough for it even in the dark. Eventually she must have fallen asleep.

Charles stirred, standing up and stretching.

“I hear them,” Anna assured him, because the sounds of someone getting serious in the kitchen was what had awakened her in the first place. She checked Chelsea, but the new wolf was sleeping deeply.

“Is it safe to leave her long enough to change and freshen up?” she asked Charles.

In answer he led the way out of the room and up to their own. While she showered, he changed and dressed in his preferred fashion statement of battered jeans and bright-colored T-shirt. This one was pumpkin orange and clung to his bone and sinew and made her want to pet him.

Instead she braided her damp hair and dressed herself.

“Wear something comfortable,” Charles told her. “We’ll probably go out to the barns again this morning.”

They walked into the kitchen just as Ernestine put a tray piled high with bacon on the table. Kage, his three kids, and a stranger were already seated at the table.

“Good,” said Ernestine. “I was about to send Max to find you and see if you wanted to come down. You can sit where the clean place settings are.”

“Good morning,” said Kage. “This is Hosteen’s second, Wade Koch. Hosteen brought him in to help with Chelsea. Wade, this is Charles and Anna Cornick.”

“I know Charles,” Wade said. “I’m pleased to meet you, Anna. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

He was a soft-spoken man, neither tall nor short. His eyes were intense when he looked at her.

“Wade,” said Charles, his tone of voice telling Anna that he liked this man.

“I’m going to call Chelsea’s work this morning,” Kage said. “Do you know how long it will take before she’s ready to go back to work?”

Charles shook his head. “That depends on her, and how stressful her work is. Not this week, but maybe next week.” He hesitated. “I’d keep all the kids around here for a week or so. Not because of Chelsea, but because whoever bespelled her in the first place is still out there.”

“That work okay for you and school, Max?” asked Kage.

Max nodded, swallowed, and then said, “I was going to stay home for the first few days of the show anyway. It’s only another couple of days on top of that. Most of my teachers post their assignments on the computer. You’ll have to call it in for me, though.”

“Okay,” said Kage. “I’ll make the calls, and then if you’d like, we can go out and try a few more horses.”

“Where’s Hosteen?” asked Charles.

“That man got up about two hours ago, saddled a horse, and rode off into the desert,” said Ernestine. “He told me he had some thinking to do.” She looked at Charles. “He said you were to keep his family safe until he got back.”

“He did, did he?” said Charles softly.

Ernestine had been walking toward the table. She stopped.

“Do you remember exactly what Hosteen said?” asked Kage.

“He said that the family would be safe with Charles here,” she said slowly. “He told me to ask you to keep an eye out for them.”

Charles nodded. “That’s fine.” He went back to eating.

Ernestine gave him a cautious look that he didn’t see. Anna smiled at her. “This is very good,” she said. “I don’t know when Chelsea will get up, but she’ll be hungry again. It might be a good idea to put together some food for her. Well-fed werewolves are easier to deal with than hungry ones.”

Anna rode three more horses. Her favorite of the morning was a quick-moving gelding named Ahmose who had a long scar down the length of his shoulder.

When Anna, Charles, and Kage, sweaty and smelling like horses, got back to the house, Chelsea was sitting at the table and eating ravenously. She looked up when they came in.

“Hey,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about yesterday. I felt just fine driving to the day care. But by the time I was belting the kids into the car, I had a killer headache. I don’t get headaches as a rule, and it seems to me that it was part of the whole compulsion that eventually pushed me to try to hurt the kids.”

“You are witchborn,” said Charles. “Trust your instincts. It happened at the day care?”

“Yes.”

“There’ve been some other bad things happening at the day care lately,” Anna said. “I had a long talk with Max about it yesterday. He said that they had a teacher commit suicide. And they also had a family killed in a car wreck.”

Chelsea nodded. “People do commit suicide, and they die in traffic accidents, but I am not naturally inclined to kill my children and then myself. If one of those was a spell, maybe all of them were?”

“I think,” said Charles, “that Anna and I will go visit the day care. If there is a fae there, one of us should be able to figure out who it is.”

“Should be?” asked Kage.

“This fae is strong,” Charles answered. “A powerful fae can disguise itself from a werewolf.”

“I’ll stay here,” Wade said. “I’ve taken the next few days off work.”