Dead Heat

CHAPTER 8

So that was who Charles had been waiting for. Anna frowned at him. How had he known? He smiled at her, just a crinkle at the corner of his eye. He hadn’t known, just made a very good guess. She was almost sure.

“Leslie,” said Anna. “It’s very good to see you. Tell me you didn’t fly all the way over here from Boston.”

Leslie smiled. “Hey, Anna. Charles. Not from Boston, thank goodness. I’m stationed in Nevada now, in a town of two hundred that just happens to be the closest town to the James Earl Carter Jr. Fae Reservation. Apparently our little run-in made me one of the FBI’s experts in fae relations, so they moved me out there.”

“I’m sorry,” Anna apologized. That’s how Charles had known. He’d kept track of Leslie. Knowing that she was living nearby, he’d have figured she’d be brought in.

“Yeah, well.” Leslie shrugged without losing her smile. “That’s what it means to be FBI. We go where we’re needed.”

“How did Jude take that?” She had liked Leslie’s husband, a huge man with a sense of humor and a backbone of steel. He’d been a linebacker in college headed for the pros when an injury had changed the direction of his life. He taught elementary school.

“He was torn up about leaving his kids.” Leslie smiled, a private smile. “But he got a job right off. Apparently there aren’t a lot of teachers willing to live where it gets to be a hundred and twenty degrees in the shade and the nearest restaurant I would consider eating at is a four-hour drive. The kids out here need him a lot more than the kids in Boston did. Once he saw that, he was okay. Moving him out of there when the time comes is going to be harder than moving him in was.”

“I take it you both know Agent Fisher?” Marsden interrupted.

“Yes,” Leslie agreed. “We’ve worked together before. I haven’t met you, though.”

“Agent Jim Marsden, Cantrip, and this is my partner, Hollister Leeds. This is our investigation. What is the FBI’s interest here? We’re not even sure if we have a kidnapping.”

Leslie gave a quick, professional smile that was remarkable in the amount of information it imparted: I’m sorry, I respect you and the job you do, but I am competent, too, and this time you have to back me. It was such a good expression that the words felt like an afterthought.

She used them anyway. “Sorry, gentlemen. The DOJ has determined that this is part of a larger terrorist operation, and that puts me in the driver’s seat. I would be overjoyed to have your assistance.”

Marsden paused and looked at Leeds, who was still on his knees by the bundle of sticks. He’d taken out a sketchbook and was drawing it.

“Terrorists?” Marsden asked. “How do you figure?”

She smiled at the civilians in the room. “Did these gentlemen already take your statement?”

“Come, Miss Baird,” said Ms. Edison. “I think we are in the way. I’ll send Miss Baird home, but I have some work to do in my office. Please let me know when you leave and I’ll lock up.”

“That would be terrific,” Leslie told her. “Thank you.”

Miss Baird raised her chin. “That child was in my class,” she said. “I feel responsible for what happened. Is there any way I could be informed what happens?”

“Of course,” said Anna before anyone else could refuse her. She pulled out her card, the one with nothing but the name “Anna Smith” in calligraphic writing on it and an e-mail address, and handed it to her. “E-mail me, and I’ll tell you what I can.”

“This is Dr. and Mrs. Miller,” Anna told Leslie, not quite comfortable saying, I don’t think they are competent to get themselves home. Hopefully Leslie would notice on her own. “They are our victim’s parents. I think they’ve been questioned enough.”

“Maybe Ms. Edison and I should see them home,” said Miss Baird. “I’m not sure either of them should be driving.” She looked at Ms. Edison. “If you drive them, I’ll follow and bring you back here.”

“I think that would be a very good idea,” said Anna, relieved. She made sure that the Millers had cards for the Cantrip agents and Leslie so that they could call with any questions and walked the four of them down the hall and out the door.

“She’s really gone.” Sara Miller looked up at her husband. “Our little girl is gone.”

He put his arm around her and said, “She’s been gone for a while.”

“We need to get her back,” said his wife earnestly, but not as though the full impact of her daughter’s disappearance had really hit her.

Dr. Miller looked over his shoulder and met Anna’s eyes for an unsettling moment. “Yes,” he said.

“Dr. Miller, we cannot promise that,” Anna said. “I can promise that we will find the person responsible and make sure that it never happens to anyone else.”

Ms. Edison stopped to frown at Anna. “How can you promise that? It’s a fae. You don’t even know what it can do.”

“I’ve worked with Special Agent Fisher before,” Anna said. “And my husband … Charles gets things done.” She turned back to the Millers. “We’ll find out what happened to her, and we’ll take care of the fae who took her.”

“Okay,” said Dr. Miller. “Okay.” He led his wife out the door.

“I’ll be back,” Ms. Edison said after the doors closed behind the Millers. “But the doors are all locked from the outside, so if you need to leave before I get back, just make sure the door is latched.”

“Terrorists,” Leslie was saying when Anna returned, “are people who commit violent acts against people with the purpose of coercing a population or their government. Hey, Anna, welcome back.”

“They’re off to see the Millers safely home,” Anna said. “Did they bring you up to speed?”

“Yes,” Charles said.

Leslie nodded and then looked at Marsden. Leeds, Anna saw, was sliding the fetch-bundle into a large evidence bag.

“Marsden,” Leslie said. “I’ve done my homework on you, on both of you. You’re innovative and capable, even if the thing you’re best at is ticking off the higher-ups. It was your people, Cantrip analysts, who first alerted us—that would be the FBI—that the fae are sending out … a few individuals who have particularly nasty histories and letting them loose on the general population.”

Charles made one of his noises, and Leslie nodded at him. “Hah. I thought you might have noticed what the fae were doing. The FBI has been hoping that you people would contact us so that we can work together. Or at least talk about working together.”

He didn’t say anything, and Anna abided by his judgment. Marsden was staring at Charles like he was a puzzle.

Join the club. Anna hid her smile.

Leslie, apparently deciding she wasn’t going to get an answer yet, continued. “The fae want to get our attention. We took out someone … something in Florida, a kelpie we think. It was eating people who swam in its lake. There have been other incidents, too. Our analysts think it’s probably a negotiation tool, a ‘look what we’ve been saving you from all these years; you humans better start thinking about how the negotiations are going to proceed’ kind of thing. That’s the optimistic view. The pessimistic view is that this is the first wave of a war that we’re not sure we can win because the only thing that we know about the enemy comes from folktales and what they themselves have told us. They might not be able to lie, but they left a whole freaking lot out.”

She looked at Charles again and asked, “What do you know about it?”

Charles angled his face a little, considering her question. Finally he said, “About what you do.”

That was news to Anna. Though, to be fair, she wasn’t actively involved in everything he did for the packs or his father. She wasn’t honestly certain that Bran would be upset about the fae attacking regular people. She might love her father-in-law, but she was not blind to his faults. He was focused on the werewolves to the exclusion of anything else.

There was also the possibility that Charles hadn’t been aware of the attacks until Leslie told them. Some of his reputation for awesome cosmic powers came from not telling anyone how much he knew about anything. Thus leaving it to other people to assume the answer was “everything.” The rest of his reputation was wholly deserved.

Charles glanced at Leeds or maybe at the remains of the fake Amethyst Miller. “There was some question about what side we’d come down on, if any.”

“That’s what I thought,” Leslie said. She waved her arms around the room. “I’m hoping that your presence here means that you’ve decided to help?”

“All right, who are you people?” Marsden waved his hand vaguely at Charles and Anna.

“This thing is really pretty cool,” Leeds announced from the floor, as though he had entirely missed the conversation going on ten feet away. “I never thought I’d see one of these in person. Just think of the kind of power that can take a mannequin—something, anything, shaped to look vaguely human—and make it walk and talk and act human. Well, mostly human, anyway. And it fooled people for months. I suppose it could have been a doll or a clay figure, but a bundle of sticks is traditional. I think that this ribbon must have been something the original child wore. I also think, though I can’t swear to it without taking it apart, that there is some hair here as well.” He spoke with the intense enthusiasm of a miner discovering gold for the first time.

Leslie gave Leeds an assessing look. “Him I want on my team, especially. Geeks are really useful.”

“So am I,” said Marsden. “How do you know the Smiths, Special Agent Fisher? And who are they?”

“I worked with them last year—you probably heard about the case,” she said. “It culminated in Beauclaire, Prince of the Elves, beheading the son of a US senator. Charles and Anna Smith were sent to help in the investigation.”

Marsden frowned, but he wasn’t slow on the uptake. “Werewolves. There were a couple of werewolves called in to consult on that. They testified under pseudonyms by special dispensation—” He looked at Charles. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” he said. “I should have caught that.”

“Werewolves?” said Leeds, distracted at last from the now safely contained bundle of sticks.

Charles smiled at him, the smile that had teeth. “Werewolves, yes, both my wife and I. What you should know is that this fae launched a barely failed attack on a couple of children under the protection of the local Alpha. We were available, so we volunteered to see if we could find the culprit. We walked into the room with Miss Baird and found the fetch. It didn’t take long to realize what Amethyst, the thing wearing Amethyst Miller’s shape, had to be.”

He looked at Leslie and his face softened. “And yes, that the fae attacked some of ours means that we have chosen to work with the humans against the fae, in this instance. I cannot say that alliance will last, or that we won’t retreat back to being a neutral third party when this incident is resolved. My experience with the fae leads me to believe that such a retreat would be useless. I will convey my belief to … those higher up.”

“Who were the children who were attacked?” asked Marsden, prepared to write it down. “We should go talk to them, too.”

Charles just looked at him.

“No need to be rude,” Anna told Charles. To Marsden she said, “We know the details and we’ll tell you if anything would be useful, but mostly they just led us to the changeling. Some of the werewolves are out to the public, but some of them have chosen not to be. This is not our pack. I don’t know who is out and who is not, and we will not give their names out unless it becomes necessary.”

There was an awkward silence as Marsden clearly wanted to push the issue, but Charles was at his intimidating best. She could almost see the moment when Marsden remembered he was dealing with a werewolf, and that it wasn’t a smart idea to meet a werewolf’s eyes unless you were prepared for a dominance battle. Once he dropped his eyes from Charles’s, it was too late to push.

“So do you know what we’re dealing with?” asked Leslie.

“Fae,” said Charles. “But you know that much.”

“One that can build a fetch.” Marsden indicated the bundle of sticks with his chin.

“I thought that a fetch is an exact duplicate of yourself that warns you that you’re about to die,” said Leslie.

“Or kills you,” added Anna.

“Or a bundle of sticks that is magicked to look exactly like a child,” said Charles.

“Another word for ‘changeling,’” said Marsden.

Leeds shook his head. “No. Well, yes. But a fetch is specifically a changeling that isn’t a real living thing—” He pointed to the sticks. “Most changelings are fae who make themselves look like the child who’s been stolen away. That takes very little magic, just a variant of the glamour they use to appear like normal human beings. But this, this is very rare. I’ve seen six … seven changeling cases. None of them involved a fetch.”

Anna looked at Charles. She hadn’t known that the fae had been that … active before Beauclaire had killed his daughter’s attacker and then retreated with the rest of the fae behind the walls that everyone had believed to be jails. Those jails, as it turned out, were really fortresses. He gave a subtle shake of his head. He hadn’t known, either.

“Seven?” Leslie asked. “I haven’t heard of any.”

“Oh, two of them weren’t real. One was some parents who thought it would be convenient if the child they beat to death wasn’t really theirs. Another was, oddly enough in this day and age, an actual case of babies switched at birth. Resulted in a heck of a lawsuit and a lot of work running down just which babies had been switched and switching them back. But five changelings—” He gave them a wry smile. “One was me. My parents never knew. They died in a car wreck when I was twenty or so. I didn’t find out for a long time afterward, when I volunteered for a DNA sample to … let’s just say my human family has a number of people who would bring up the ratings of one of those Dr. Phil analogues. Turns out I’m half-human, half-fae. My human half has nothing in common with either of the people I always thought were my parents.” He looked down at the floor and muttered, “I found it to be kind of a relief, really. Not the being-half-fae part, but not being related to the people who raised me? That was outstanding.”

Marsden put himself between them and his partner. Anna didn’t think it was a conscious move. But he positioned himself in such a way to let them all know that anyone who wanted to take a potshot at his partner would have to go through Marsden to do it.

No one said anything. Leeds smiled gently at his partner’s back and shrugged. “My bosses give the changeling cases to me, for obvious reasons. The last one, the boy who was beaten to death, landed me in Phoenix. I was apparently more blunt than necessary.”

“Scared them into confessing,” said Marsden. “Useful, but not the approved method of coaxing the truth into the open.”

Leeds looked kind of harmless to Anna. Harmless people don’t scare people into confessing to murder.

“The changeling targeted my friend’s grandchildren,” Charles said. “Will the fae who made the fetch know what the fetch did? Does the fae use the changeling for ears and eyes?”

Leeds shook his head. “I don’t think so. Assuming the fae isn’t here, too. Everything that I’ve been able to dig up on them is that a fetch operates on its own. It is an inanimate object given intelligence and purpose.”

They all considered that a moment.

“How many of the stolen children were recovered?” asked Leslie.

Leeds sat back on his heels and gave her a half smile full of sympathy. “None of them. But then the ones I’ve seen, like me, were all adults when it was discovered. As far as I know, this is the first stolen child in two decades. Still, the fetch is really a hopeful sign, not that I’d have said so in front of the Millers. I don’t like to give false hope.”

“Why hopeful?” asked Leslie.

“Because a fetch costs a lot of magic, right?” Leeds told them. “And what is the primary purpose of a fetch?”

“To disguise the fact that a child is missing,” said Anna.

“And why disguise it, if not to keep people from looking for the missing girl.” Leeds nodded. “If she were dead, a body is easy to get rid of, easier to hide than a living child. The thing is, unlike a living changeling, a fetch has a finite life … animation period. Presumably, if Charles hadn’t forced the issue, it would have continued in her place until the real child died.”

“It could have been left to keep people from looking for the fae who stole Amethyst,” said Charles.

“And that right there is why I didn’t say anything while the Millers were here,” agreed Leeds.

He looked at Marsden. “If Special Agent Fisher is right, and the fae are really letting loose their bad guys upon us, you know what that means.”

“No,” Marsden said.

Leeds sighed. “Who are their favorite prey?”

“Children,” said Anna, a cold chill running down her spine. “It’s the children.”

“We should go to the Millers’ house,” Charles said to Anna as they walked toward their car. They’d borrowed it from the Sanis, and so they’d parked it in the parking lot of a strip mall a mile or so from the day care. It would be stupid to give the Sanis up to the fae, the FBI, or Cantrip with a license plate.

“Can you get their address?” she asked, and was rewarded by her mate’s smile.

“Will they let us in?” she asked.

“Their daughter is missing,” he said. “Now that they’re coming out of the fog of the fae’s spell, they will be looking for help from whoever offers it.”

It was dark by the time they found the right street. Every light in the house was on. Anna thought about how she’d feel knowing her child had been missing for months, hurting and afraid if not dead. And the whole while they’d believed that the fetch had been their daughter.

“It’s important they have hope,” she said, pulling into their driveway.

“We won’t take it away from them,” promised Charles.

Dr. Miller opened the door before they knocked.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“My husband and I are specialists of a sort,” Anna said. “Fae, werewolf, whatever. We get called in. We thought, if you don’t mind, that we might find something here to help find your daughter.”

“She’s dead,” he said heavily. “She’s been gone for months. Twenty-four hours is the usual time frame for recovering kidnapped children alive.”

“Maybe,” Anna said. She’d been wrong, she saw. There was no chance of taking away hope that wasn’t there. Maybe it was cruel to give it back to them, but she couldn’t help herself. “If she’d been abducted by humans, almost certainly. But the fae are funny creatures when it comes to children. Sometimes they kill them, but some kinds of fae take children to keep as their own. We don’t know enough about this one to know what happened to Amethyst.”

“Let them in,” said Mrs. Miller from behind her husband’s back.

Dr. Miller hesitated, then opened the door to welcome them inside. “Don’t hurt her,” he told them earnestly, and he wasn’t talking about Amethyst.

“Life hurts,” Charles said gently. “But we won’t lie to you or to your wife.”

Amethyst’s room was neat as a pin. Toys were organized by size, then by color on the white shelves along one wall. The bed was tidy and Anna suspected she could have bounced a quarter off the bedspread.

“Was she always this tidy?” Anna asked.

Sara shook her head. “No. I didn’t even notice when it changed. She’d get started on something and get distracted. So her bed would be half-made. She’d color part of a coloring book page.”

“She’d have one shoe on,” said Dr. Miller. “Because she remembered she wanted oatmeal for breakfast before she found the other shoe.”

Charles had his head tilted and his eyes half closed, a sure sign he was smelling the room.

“How could I not have noticed?” Amethyst’s mother said. “What kind of mother doesn’t notice that her child’s been replaced by a … a thing?”

“Fae can fog your perception,” said Anna. “If you started noticing something wrong, the fetch would have distracted you.” When Mackie had noticed something was wrong, the fetch tried to kill her.

“Is there something that Amethyst kept close to her?” Charles said. “A favorite toy she slept with? Something that the fetch didn’t associate with too much?”

“Something a dog could use to get a scent to track her with,” Anna supplied.

“You’re going to use dogs?” Dr. Miller frowned.

“We’ll use whatever we can,” Anna said. “Some of our methods are unorthodox—magic. And it would help to have something that belonged to Amethyst.”

“Her bunny,” Sara said. She went to the bookcase and picked out a grubby, one-eared rabbit and handed it to Anna. “Will this do?”

Anna held it to her forehead, as if she were a TV psychic. Her nose told her that if the fetch had touched it, it hadn’t been very often. Children didn’t have as much body odor as adults, but they also didn’t disguise it with soaps and perfumes the way adults did.

“This will do,” she said. “Do you have a plastic bag I can put it in?”

Sara looked as though she wasn’t sure she wanted them to take it.

“I promise we’ll bring it back,” said Anna.

“Go get a bag from the kitchen,” Dr. Miller told his wife gently.

As soon as she was out of the room, he looked at them. “Werewolves?” he asked.

Anna smiled at him. “We’re not psychics. Yes.”

“My wife would be afraid, if she knew,” he told Anna. “But I’ve had dealings with your people, when I was in the army, a lifetime ago. Why are you helping us?”

“Because children deserve to be safe,” Charles said.

Charles and Anna got back to the Sanis’ ranch well after dinner. Kage met them at the front door, making Charles think he’d been watching for them.

“Hosteen is still out riding somewhere,” he said, ushering them inside. “Dad ate better than he has in months and fell asleep. Chelsea has been sleeping most of the day.” Kage continued with his dogged recitation. “Kids are up in the TV room with my mom and Ernestine, watching some TV show about serial killers, zombies, or something equally healthy for them.”

Kage waited, but when it became obvious no one else was going to say anything, he continued. “There are leftovers from dinner in the kitchen I can fix if you need food.” He took a breath. “That’s what’s going on here. From you I get a text that says not to expect you for dinner. Not exactly helpful. Did you find out anything?”

“Fae,” Charles told him, pulling off his boots and setting them where all the other people’s shoes waited.

Anna rolled her eyes at her husband with, he hoped, a little fondness to go along with her mock exasperation. “Food would be lovely, thank you. We actually found out a lot—not enough, but a lot. Why don’t we go eat and I’ll tell you what we know.”

“Anna uses actual words,” murmured Charles tranquilly, holding her arm as she took off her shoes, too.

“Useful,” said Kage, leading the way to the kitchen.

“Some people think so,” Charles agreed, and Anna bumped him with her hip.

Dinner was fried chicken, biscuits, and a huge salad. Wade, Hosteen’s second, came in before the food was on the table. He was one of those quiet people who instilled order in those around them. He was obviously at home in the house, and he helped Kage pull out food and dishes. When Anna tried to help, Wade waved her off before Kage could.

“I’m the hired help,” he said. “Even with all the desperate life-and-death drama, you’re also here to look at horses, right? That makes you clients—sit down.”

“Wade has a real job,” Kage explained as they all settled around the table. “But his family has been in the business of breeding and showing Arabs nearly as long as mine. He comes and catch-rides for us when we need an extra rider in a show.”

“There was a changeling in Mackie’s class,” Anna began as soon as people were eating. “Apparently Mackie half figured out what she was and the changeling decided to get rid of her.”

Charles ate and listened as, between bites, Anna did her best to give Kage and Wade a thorough update. Wade had the right to hear it. The attack had been on his Alpha’s family, and the victim who suffered the most was likely to become a permanent member of the pack if Hosteen got his act together.

But as Charles listened, he also watched the other two men’s faces as they relaxed into his mate’s storytelling. Tension left Kage’s shoulders and Wade laughed helplessly as Anna described Leeds’s fascination with the bundle of sticks that had been a little girl, while everyone else was deciding who was in charge. She did it without making anyone think less of Leeds, because she clearly didn’t. Sure it was serious business, but humor in the face of evil robbed evil of some of its power. His Anna understood that better than most.

“You’re going to look for the missing girl, right?” asked Kage. But not like he was sure of it.

Anna nodded. “Charles and I stopped in at her house. The only real connection to the day care was the fetch. If we’re going to find the fae who took the girl, our best trail should be Amethyst’s. But she was taken so long ago. Charles says that from the faintness of her scent in her room, it’s been months. We also took a walk around several blocks near her house, but neither of us caught scent of a fae.”

“So what’s next?” asked Wade.

“The FBI, Cantrip, and a number of unlucky police officers spend the next few days sorting through police incident reports until they come up with something,” said Anna. “Leslie is going to call us if they need our help.”

“That sounds—”

“Like they are taking over the investigation and throwing us out of it,” growled Wade.

It was the pack’s hunt, as he would see it—as Charles saw it, for that matter. The entrance of the human organizations, useful as they were, annoyed him as well. He understood the necessity, but that didn’t mean he liked it.

“They have access to information we don’t have,” Anna soothed, articulating the reason Bran had decided to bring them in. “Let them do the legwork. Besides, we’re trying to keep the pack out of it. It’s likely there’ll be some publicity when this is all over—one way or another. I know the FBI agent and, better, she knows us. She’ll call for help when they have anything we can be useful for.”

“Cantrip? Call on a werewolf?” Wade looked like he wanted to spit on the floor.

“I know, right?” Anna nodded sympathetically. “But Special Agent Fisher, of the FBI, will call us in whether Cantrip wants us or not. Not many humans are really equipped to deal with a fae who has decided to prey openly upon humans. And, though Leeds is half-fae, I’m not sure they have anyone who can detect a fetch.” She tapped her nose.

“And because the humans want the werewolves at their back if the fae decide that this is war,” Charles said, getting up and scraping his plate before putting it into the dishwasher.

There was a little pause and Wade said, “Are we? Are we at war?”

“My father spent weeks in negotiations to ensure that we were not brought in on either side.” Charles paused, not wanting to criticize his father in public.

Bran saw humans as “other.” He was so far from his own days of being human that Charles doubted he could remember them without effort.

Charles, who had never been human, had nevertheless grown up surrounded by his mother’s family. The uncles and grandfather who helped raise him, aunts and grandmother who clothed him and indulged him. He understood, in a way that was a gift of his grandfather’s view of the world, that werewolves, humans, and fae were all a part of a greater community.

If a war broke out, everyone would lose. The fae were not fond of humans, and worse, they were contemptuous of them. That meant that war with humans scared only the more perceptive and less arrogant fae—which meant not many.

But the werewolves, the werewolves were respected. Not many fae would want to declare war if it meant fighting werewolves, too. So Charles forcing his father’s hand might have some unexpected benefits.

Charles sighed. “Look at us here in this room, in this house. We are human and werewolf, waiting to go deal with a fae who attacked the great-grandchildren of a werewolf. Most of us are connected to the human community with ties of love and loyalty that no treaty will stand up to. There is no question we’ll be drawn into any conflict. We cannot be separated from those we love because they are human—as in most ways are we.”

Kage smiled a predator’s smile. “Fair enough. As long as whatever hurt my Chelsea is made harmless, I don’t care if it’s us, werewolves, or Canadian Mounties. Though I’d like to have a hand in it.”

He put food back in the fridge and said, “This isn’t an attack on Hosteen or his pack, though. It sounds like Chelsea was a random victim. Or if she wasn’t, it was because of her witch heritage and nothing to do with werewolves.”

“Chelsea is Hosteen’s granddaughter by marriage,” growled Wade. “It is an attack on the pack whatever the motive of the fae.”

Charles nodded. “Agreed.”

“And,” said Anna, “if we had been aware of any child stolen by the fairies, we’d be out looking. Human child, witch child, or werewolf child.”

He heard the bone-deep protective instinct that drove her—instincts that had nothing to do with being a werewolf. She would, he acknowledged wistfully, be a wonderful mother.

Wade grinned at her fierceness. “You tell it like it is. Count me in.”

“At any rate,” Charles told Kage, “I think that the attack on Chelsea was directed at Mackie, not at the pack. A matter of opportunity and necessity rather than planning. However, the fae are notoriously persistent. I would not count your family safe until we find the perpetrator.”

Kage grunted. “I’ll keep the kids here, where Hosteen can keep an eye on them.” He paused. “When he gets over his snit and comes back, anyway. Chelsea…” His voice trailed off.

“Our pack will watch over Chelsea,” said Wade. He smiled at Kage’s carefully neutral grunt. “Hosteen occasionally ties himself up in knots, but I’ve known him a long time. He’ll get his head out of his—” He glanced at Anna and rephrased. “He’ll come through. He always does.”

“Yeah,” said Kage without conviction.

“Do you think we’ll find her?” asked Anna as she emerged from the bathroom, ready for bed.

“Yes,” Charles said after a moment. “Because we won’t stop until we do, even if we have to take this town apart stick by stick.”

She froze, then turned to him. “You feel it, too?”

“She’s five years old,” he said. “And the very best case is that she’s been in the hands of a fae for months. The very best case.”

Anna nodded. “I feel as though we should be out looking some more. But I don’t see that it would do any good because after we didn’t find anything at the Millers’ or the day care, there’s no place else to look.”

“Come here,” he said.

She crawled onto the bed and into his arms.

“We’ll find that fae,” he promised her. “I don’t know if we’ll be in time for Amethyst. But we’ll be in time for the next one.”

She burrowed against him. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

He felt Brother Wolf’s joy in his mate’s fierceness. He would never take the gift of her presence in his life for granted. He’d been alone so long, so certain that there would be no one for him. He scared even other werewolves. And a part of him—of Charles, not Brother Wolf—hadn’t wanted to find anyone. He’d understood that caring for another person the way he cared for Anna would leave him vulnerable. His father’s hatchet man could not afford any weaknesses. And one day, there she was, his Anna: strong and funny despite the harm that had been done to her. She had tamed Brother Wolf first, but before he’d been in her presence ten minutes, he’d known that she would be his. That he needed her to be his.

“You’re growling,” she said, her voice drowsy. “What are you thinking?”

“That I love you,” he said. “That I am grateful every day that you decided to let me keep you.”

She hmmed and rolled over on top of him with hard-won confidence. “Good,” she said. “Gratitude is good. Love is better.” She paused, her mouth almost touching his. “I love you, too.”

He told her, “The day I met you was the first day I ever felt joy.”

She drew in a surprised breath. “Me, too,” she said, her truth making his eyes burn. “Me, too.” Then her lips traveled the few millimeters that lay between them.

They made love. To his amusement she grabbed his hand and put it over her mouth to muffle the noises she made. He left it there until she was too involved to remember it, and then he used that hand, too.

She didn’t want anyone to hear her cries, but in this house, with Chelsea and Wade, the only werewolves, a full floor away and on the other side of the house, there was no chance of it.

When they were finished, she lay limply on him and slipped effortlessly into sleep. He lay awake awhile, listening to the rain pouring down outside.

The rain would have a salutary effect on Hosteen’s ruminations, he was certain. That’s right, old man, you think before you blow up at my wife, who saved Chelsea. Not her fault that it affected you like alcohol did your father, awakening old demons. Put them back to bed, old wolf.

And you get ready to welcome Chelsea into your pack with a whole heart. Or else you will lose your grandson and your son in the same year, because if Chelsea has to leave, he will, too. He’s as stubborn as either you or Joseph.

Charles never had the knack for sending his words into other people’s heads, except for sometimes Anna’s. But he figured that the rain would do the job for him.

Anna stirred in his arms. “We have to find her.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Yes,” said Brother Wolf.