Dead Heat

CHAPTER 11

Charles left a business card, one with only an e-mail address and a PO box, for Ms. Jamison to send the estimates for repairs. She wanted him to sign a release for the photographs, but he shook his head.

“I’m not the one you photographed,” he said.

“Photos showing people’s faces need release forms or I can’t use them,” Ms. Jamison complained sharply.

“Werewolves are in a gray area,” he told her. “Use them. If someone gives you trouble about it, write to the address on the card and we’ll take care of it.”

Leeds’s phone rang, and whoever was on the other end had news. The house at the address the wearden had given them was owned by the estate of a woman who’d died twenty years ago. It was cared for by a property management company for the past fifty years until, in fact, a few months ago when the renters had been asked to leave.

“Keep looking for the owner,” Leeds told them. “We’re headed over to that address. Three federal agents with two werewolves for backup. We’ll be okay.” He put his phone away. “Let’s go check this out.”

“Good luck,” said Ms. Jamison. “I hope you find her.”

Charles rode with Leslie, who followed Marsden and Leeds since they were local and knew the area. Anna stretched out in the backseat of Leslie’s car. She grumbled because there just wasn’t room in the backseat for a two-hundred-pound werewolf to be both comfortable and secure.

“Not designed for wolves,” he told Anna sympathetically.

Riding with Leslie was less troublesome than riding with the Cantrip agents. He liked them well enough, but Brother Wolf approved of Leslie, and she drove better.

They followed Marsden’s dark sedan for a few more miles, away from upscale houses and into neighborhoods a few notches further down on the economic scale, before Leslie spoke again. “Her change was very slow compared to yours.”

“We’re all different,” he said after a moment’s thought. “But I’m more different than most. And yes, there is a more detailed explanation for it that I’m not at liberty to tell you.”

She laughed unexpectedly. “My security clearance isn’t high enough?”

“You aren’t a werewolf,” he said, half apologetically.

“Yes, Mr. Smith,” she said. “Just remember, as many politicians can attest personally, secrets tend to come out at the worst possible time and blow up in your face.”

“We’re trying for a controlled release,” he said.

She laughed again, and he wondered how well she sang. Maybe she’d like to sing with Anna and him sometime. If her singing voice was like her laugh, it would blend very well with Anna’s. He was adding in Anna’s cello and a little piano … or maybe even guitar to the song in his head when Marsden pulled over in front of a mailbox that fronted a piece of property with a tagged and crumbling eight-foot cinder-block wall.

On the corner of the block stood a run-down apartment building with a full parking lot of cars that showed signs of spending a decade or two in the unforgiving Arizona sun. Next to it, across the street from where they had parked, was a small house with a fenced-in yard in which a puppy and two boys played a complicated game of fetch and tag.

“This is it,” said Marsden. “We have a search warrant fast-tracked because of the terrorist angle and endangered child. Leeds called the management company and they say as far as they know it has been empty since they were asked to remove the renter. The lady he talked to said she thought they were still managing it but had no record of any maintenance or interaction with the owners since last December. She did not know why they cleared out the previous renters—only that the owners requested it. Her boss is on vacation in Florida. She’s looking for the paperwork.”

The wooden gates were half-opened. The left-hand gate drooped sadly to the ground.

Marsden would have led, but Charles stepped in. “Let Anna and me lead. We don’t know what we’ll find, and the two of us are less likely to get hurt if it’s bad.”

Marsden retreated with his hands up. “All right.”

“And stay with us,” Charles added. “If this is the fae’s home, he is unlikely to run.” This was why he didn’t like working with humans: they died too easily. “Stay with us and we’ll do what we can to keep you alive if it attacks.”

Leslie pulled her weapon and held it down against her leg. “We’ll do the same for you,” she said dryly.

He smiled at her and then ducked through the person-sized gap between the tall gates, Anna at his side.

This was not the first dangerous situation Anna had strolled into at her husband’s side. She was, if she felt like being honest, pretty humiliated by her performance with the fae in Ms. Jamison’s garden. Big bad werewolf reduced to shivers by a wussy little garden fae. What was it Charles had called it? A wearden.

Humiliation was better than the shiver of horror that the thought of Justin called up. Funny, she didn’t remember being that terrified of him while he was alive. Terrified, yes, but reduced to shivering like a jellyfish, no. Maybe the wearden’s magic had done something to make her fear worse. But if so, why did her stomach still ache?

But she had a job to do, and she shoveled Justin to the dark dungeon in her mind where she kept him and he only bothered her in her nightmares.

Inside the walls, the yard was barren, not xeriscaped, but zero-scaped. Red soil with patches of dead vegetation provided no cover for anything to hide behind. She breathed in deeply but smelled nothing unusual: no magic, no fae, nothing but dust.

And yet … she put her nose down and half crept, half walked. Her ears drooped slightly in unease that was not, she didn’t think, spawned from her earlier fright.

Do you have anything? Charles asked her.

Her lips pulled up involuntarily, a threat display of teeth for— Nothing, she told him, and yet …

She shivered in the warmth of the high sun. It was not summer, but in Scottsdale that didn’t mean it wasn’t warm, nearly eighty degrees. She could smell the others’ sweat.

I let that fae spook me, she told him. I’m overreacting.

He shook his head. No birds, no insects, nothing living here at all. There are ghosts here; they burn my skin with their breath. Stay alert.

“In the front door?” asked Leslie.

“If he’s in there, he already knows we are here,” Charles told her. “Front door, back door, or down the chimney, we’re not going to have surprise on our side.” He added, “I don’t smell anyone. Anna?”

She jerked her head in a negative, but a growl rumbled in her chest. Do you feel it?

“Yes,” he said, putting his hand on her head. “The dead have a weight here. This place is haunted in the true Navajo sense. I can feel it try to cling.”

“Don’t try to give us courage, now,” said Marsden dryly. “I feel so much better after that speech.”

Her mate gave him a smile. He didn’t usually give people smiles until he had known them for a lot longer, at least not friendly smiles.

“I don’t think we’re going to find anyone alive here,” Charles said. “Does that help?”

“Not really,” said Leeds. “No.”

“No,” agreed Leslie.

The front door was locked. When no one answered Marsden’s vigorous knocking, Leeds took a roll of handy-dandy lockpick tools out of his pocket and went to work on the lock.

Anna conceived an instant desire to learn how. It didn’t look too complicated. Charles probably knew how. He could teach her.

“Get your nose back, ma’am, please,” said Leeds. “You aren’t in the way. But I have a hard time concentrating with a freaking werewolf breathing down my neck.”

“She won’t hurt you,” murmured Charles.

“I know that,” Leeds said calmly, still wiggling the delicate picks, one in each hand, his head tilted so one ear was nearer the lock than the other. “My brain does anyway. My gut says, ‘Run away, run away, you freaking moron. That’s a werewolf.’”

Anna backed up. She tried looking through the windows, but the blinds were down and turned so she couldn’t see anything. She could positively say that no living creature had been on this porch for a long time. She got a faint whiff of perfume, presumably belonging to whoever had rented the house, but nothing else. If the fae had been to this door, it hadn’t been for a long time.

The lock gave up and the door admitted them into an empty living room that smelled of dust and cleaners that made Anna sneeze. She trotted past Leslie and into the main house, which was as barren as the rest. She caught faint scents of humans who had once lived here: a girl in the pink room and someone who smoked cigarettes in the master bedroom. They’d had a dog, too. Helpfully, all of the doors were open, so she didn’t have to wait for someone with hands to let her into anywhere. The bedrooms and bathrooms were a bust, as far as her nose went, anyway. From the sounds in the living room, someone had found something.

In the kitchen there was a ladder nailed into the wall, painted cream with mint-green, tole-painted leaves to turn it into a decoration. At the top of the ladder was a locked trapdoor in the ceiling with a note taped to it: RENTERS NOT ALLOWED IN ATTIC.

She put her nose on the ladder and smelled nothing. But it wasn’t like the house was Hosteen’s mansion. There weren’t many places to hide things, and a locked door looked interesting. She climbed up to the trapdoor, digging her claws into the wood and leaving indentations behind. The narrow edge of the two-by-four ladder hurt her paws, and she thought maybe she should let one of the comfortably shod people try this. Not to mention, werewolf bodies were not exactly designed to climb ladders. It was an older house, and the ceilings were high, maybe ten feet or more.

She smelled nothing more up at the top than she had at the bottom. She pushed her nose against the trapdoor, and it wiggled a little. As soon as the edge of the door broke contact with the frame, scent wafted out of the attic only to disappear as soon as the door settled again.

But that was enough. She smelled the little girl whose grubby rabbit was in a plastic bag back in their room at the Sanis’ ranch.

She dropped to the ground and ran to Charles.

In the living room they had pulled up some stone around the fireplace and were looking into a metal-lined hole filled with not much.

I found her, she told Charles, and then ran back to the kitchen, claws catching on the tile floor. This time she bolted up the ladder and hit the trapdoor with her shoulder as hard as she could. Wood cracked and she bounced down to the ground. When she looked up, the door was still intact. She ran up and hit it again and this time when she landed, the door landed with her, in three pieces with a fourth still attached to the ceiling.

The reek of death, old death and new blood, billowed through the kitchen. Of the others, only Charles caught the full brunt of it.

He pulled his forearm up to his nose. “Stay down here,” he ordered.

Anna didn’t wait, though. There was a child up there who was bound to be hurt and scared, a child who had been held captive for months. She scrambled through the hole at the top of the ladder, ignoring Charles’s impassioned “Anna!”

The attic space was stuffy and hot, a room of maybe twenty by twenty with a ten-foot-tall ceiling that sloped down sharply with the slant of the roof until on two sides it was only three feet high. The old-fashioned linoleum, marbled army green, was cooler than the air and reminded Anna of photos of her grandmother’s house.

In the center of the room was a child’s princess bed, a four-poster painted white and trimmed in gold leaf—Louis XIV style, Anna thought, or maybe Louis XVI. Gauzy white fabric was artfully tangled around like—she remembered Ms. Jamison—a fashion shoot of some sort. Pale pink, dried rose petals littered the fabric, the bed, the floor around the bed, and the little girl who lay like Sleeping Beauty in a gown of pale pink silk. Her skin was milk white and she was not breathing.

Charles climbed up beside Anna and then called down, “No. Stay down. This is a crime scene and there’s not enough room up here. If you come up, too, we’ll compromise the scene.”

“What do you have up there?” asked Leslie. “I’ll call it in.”

“Multiple homicides,” said Charles, his voice steady, but his horror bled into and blended with Anna’s own. “I count twenty bodies, at least. All of them children. Most of them have been here awhile. At a guess, the murders took place before the fae came out and the Gray Lords put a stop to our Doll Collector’s habits.”

Bodies were stacked like cordwood against the three-foot wall between the floor and the ceiling along the edge of the room. Old bodies with skin like parchment and hair stiff and dry.

They looked more like the doll Anna’s mother had made her out of nylons, stuffed and stitched, than the remnants of people, of children. Anna’s nose told her the truth that her eyes wanted to deny. Some of the children were dressed in gowns like Amethyst’s, satin gleaming through layers of dust. Others wore dark suits. It looked as if they were all dressed for a wedding.

Anna thought that from now on, whenever the air was warm and still and smelled like leather and dead things, she would remember these children. She pressed against Charles, and his hand touched the top of her head to comfort them both.

“Is Amethyst up there?” That was Leeds.

“Yes,” said Charles. He moved then, toward the bed. Brave Charles.

Amethyst was silent, no breathing, no heartbeat. Anna whined at Charles. If he touched Amethyst, he’d be contaminating the scene. The other children were decades dead. Amethyst was the Doll Collector’s most recent victim. The one most likely to provide clues.

“Is she alive?” asked Marsden.

“She’s not breathing and her heart isn’t beating,” said Charles.

“I take that as a no,” said Marsden. “Damn it. Just once I’d like to be in time.”

“Don’t be too hasty.” Charles drew his boot knife. “It’s hot up here. She isn’t rotting. All the putrefaction I can smell is old. Death and heat equal rot. Either he killed her less than a half hour ago, or she’s not dead.”

Or she’s dead and the fae has found a way to preserve her body.

Charles nodded at Anna, but he didn’t relay her comment to anyone else. He used the blade of his knife to push the fabric aside, petals falling down like leaves in autumn, leaving Amethyst exposed. He put the back of his hand against her skin and pulled it back with a hiss, shaking it out.

“If the Doll Collector didn’t know we were here before, he does now,” said Charles.

“What’s going on?”

“I touched Amethyst and tripped some sort of magic,” Charles told them. “I’m going to try something.”

“Wait,” said Leeds. “We have an expert in fae magic who is flying in from Oakland tonight.”

“Might be too late,” Charles said. He rolled his knife in his hand.

Anna had had it custom-made for him last Christmas. It was a san mai knife, high-carbon steel sandwiched in stainless steel. The high carbon meant that it held an edge better, and should be effective against fae magic because it was closer to “cold iron” than straight stainless steel was.

He pressed the edge of the knife against Amethyst’s arm. It rested against her skin for half a breath and then cut through. As the first drop of red smeared the knife, Anna’s ears popped as if the air pressure dropped. Then Amethyst sat up and screamed in terror.

It wasn’t a pretty sound, raw and pitched like nails on a chalkboard. It hurt Anna’s ears. She hadn’t been happier to hear anything in a long time.

Charles gathered the girl into his arms and held her, face pressed against his shoulder. Anna wasn’t sure that was a good idea. A stranger, a male holding her? Who knew what the fae had done to her in the months since he took her?

“Shhh,” said Charles as the other three came boiling up the ladder. “Shh. It’s over. It’s done. We won’t let anyone hurt you again. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

And, perhaps because it was Charles, the little girl grabbed his T-shirt with both hands and buried her face against him. Her screams became sobs that were even worse than the screams. Anna whined, remembering the garden fae, the wearden, saying that the child the people in Scotland had saved had died anyway.

Leslie took a good look around and climbed back down out of the attic. After a few moments she said, “Hey, Hemmings, this is Fisher. Can you go pick up the Millers and bring them to this address in South Scottsdale”—she read them the address—“tell them we found her, but not until you have them in the car. I don’t want any tragic traffic accidents on the way here. There are enough dead people haunting this place already. Tell the team—FBI, Cantrip, and Scottsdale PD. Tell them to get down here ASAP: we have a crime scene to process. And tell someone to find out who owns this damned place.”

“Will do,” said a man, presumably Hemmings, on the other end. “And I have good news on the ownership. We have a name. A dozen officers are at his address as we speak. Sean McDermit. He’s mostly retired, but he works ten hours a week at Sunshine Fun Day Care.”

Charles took one good look around, skipped the ladder altogether, and jumped down to the main floor. He absorbed the fall by bending his knees. Anna was pretty sure Amethyst never noticed their descent at all. Anna jumped down after him. It was easier for her to jump than to climb down in the wolf’s body.

She followed Charles out of the house. Watching his body language, she suddenly was reminded of something she already knew. Alphas fancied themselves responsible for the safety and well-being of everyone around them. Charles wasn’t an Alpha—he ceded that rank to his father—but he was more dominant than any Alpha other than his father. The way he held Amethyst Miller said that he felt responsible for her.

At that moment something clicked, and she understood his reluctance to have children of his own. She’d noticed it herself, hadn’t she? That the people he cared about he could count on the fingers of one hand: herself, Bran, Samuel, probably Mercy. This trip had allowed her to add one more person to that list: Joseph. Five people, because he could not keep any more than that safe. And Joseph was dying.

Oh, Charles.

Charles held Amethyst until her parents came to claim her. It was a little like holding a puppy. Hot and wet and shivering, she breathed in ha-ha-ha jerks. He sang “Froggy Went a-Courtin’” because it was long, repetitive, and something his father had sung to him when he was Amethyst’s age. He didn’t know what parents sang to their children these days, but there was a fair chance that she might find it familiar.

He rubbed her back and walked in the shadows of the wall, hidden from the public and away from the noise and sirens. Anna paced beside him, cloaking herself in pack magic so that he was the only one who could see her. He didn’t think she was doing it on purpose. Pack magic didn’t always wait for someone to ask it to do something. He wondered, belatedly, if those photos Ms. Jamison had taken would come out, or if Anna would just be a blurry figure.

Amethyst was asleep by the time her parents arrived, and Leslie escorted them to the isolated corner of the yard where Charles paced. Dr. Miller hesitated when he saw the limp bundle cradled against Charles’s chest, but his wife made a low, moaning sound and pulled her daughter away from Charles.

“Baby?” Tears spilled down her cheeks.

“Mommy?” Amethyst blinked at her mom, who held her awkwardly because she was not a big woman and Amethyst was not a toddler. “Mommy? He said, he said you wouldn’t miss me. That you had a new daughter who looked like me only was better.”

“No,” said her father, picking her up without really removing her from her mother’s arms, so they were all in one little huddle. “He fooled us for a little while, but we knew all along that something was missing. The one he left in your place wasn’t our baby girl. It just took us a while, too long, to find you.”

“I want to go home,” she said. “Daddy, I want to go home, please?”

“Dr. Miller,” said Leslie. “I recommend you call her own doctor and have him meet you at the emergency room. One of my guys, the bald guy in the FBI jacket, is waiting to take you all there. He’ll make sure you get back home safely, too.”

They started to go, but then Dr. Miller stopped. He turned, releasing his daughter into her mother’s care. He wiped his face, then met Charles’s eyes and held them.

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t just me,” said Charles, the gratitude in the other man’s expression strong enough that even Brother Wolf couldn’t see a challenge in that gaze. “It took a lot of people to find her. And we don’t have the one who took her yet. We are not done until he’s out of business.” He’d heard what Leslie’s agent had said on the phone. But it was too soon to declare Amethyst’s kidnapper captured.

Dr. Miller looked at the house and said, “I’m a physician, sworn on my honor to do no harm. But I could kill him myself and never lose a wink of sleep over it. Not just for my daughter, but for all the daughters and sons. I heard what you found in that attic.”

Charles nodded once at him, then let Brother Wolf out so Dr. Miller could see the predator lurking in his eyes. “I’ll take care of him if I get the chance.”

Mrs. Miller said, “You are a werewolf.”

“Yes,” Charles said. He hadn’t intended for her to see the wolf, too, but he wasn’t going to lie to her.

“Good,” she said. “Kill him.”

“I intend to,” he told her, ignoring Leslie’s indrawn breath. Some people needed to die.

Dr. Miller looked down at his daughter. “I thought … She’s been gone months and we didn’t know. I thought it would be months and months more and … You found her in one day.”

He’d thought they’d find her dead. He’d said as much. Charles understood; he’d mostly thought that, too. It had been Anna who had hoped for them all.

“It’s not over,” Charles told him. “It’s going to continue to be bad for a long time.”

Amethyst’s father gave Charles an expression that wasn’t really a smile; there was too much experience in it. “I’m a doctor. A pediatrician. That’s usually my line. I know someone, a really good someone, who picks up the pieces and helps people put themselves back together. Amethyst will be all right.” He looked at his daughter and when he looked up again, his eyes were wet. “It’ll take years of therapy. Probably for all of us: a long uphill battle. But we’re still on the field fighting the good fight, battered and beaten though we are, and I understand just what a great gift that is.”

By the time Leslie drove them back to their car, it was nearly dinnertime.

“We don’t get that all the time,” Leslie told Charles as she turned onto the highway. Anna grunted as she slid from one side of the car to the other. It wasn’t a pained grunt, so Charles made do with a glance over his shoulder to make sure she was all right. “It’s why I joined up, you know, saving people.”

“She isn’t saved yet,” Charles told Leslie.

“I know, years of counseling and medication even, but much better than I thought they were going to get.”

“Yes,” he said, “but she isn’t going to be safe until that fae is dead.”

Leslie sucked in a breath. “We have the man who owns that property in custody. He lawyered up immediately, but my man on the ground says he is definitely fae. He couldn’t bear the touch of metal.”

“The current justice system is not up to handling a fae of this caliber. Not if the Gray Lords have removed his restrictions. If he is not killed, that poor pile of bodies in the attic won’t be a drop in the bucket. Fae don’t die on their own; you have to help them along.”

“I think,” she said, “that we’re going to have to agree to disagree.”

“Just make sure you don’t let him slip through your fingers,” said Charles.

Anna changed in the back of the car, while Charles leaned against it and made sure no one got close enough to look in the back window. When she was human again and dressed, she got out of the car and just hugged him.

He hugged her back and let himself admit just how much he needed her touch.

“All those children,” she said. “All of those children dead. And that was just here, in this town. How long ago did he start? One a year for what? A thousand years? Two thousand years? And Amethyst? Do you think…?”

She couldn’t even make herself say the words. All he could give her was the truth.

“I don’t know. Probably.” He kissed the top of her head and found that he was comforting himself as much as he was her. “But we stopped him and she’ll grow up strong and true. Her parents will see to it. And she’s tough.”

Amethyst had grabbed on to him, he thought. Grabbed on with both hands, and held on because she had known he’d keep her safe. She wanted to be okay, and that was a good step.

“She’ll survive, Anna. He won’t win—we have him now. Let the human justice system do what it can. When he leaves it, I’ll hunt him unto the ends of the earth if I have to.” Cliché words—and they sounded hollow to him, though he absolutely meant them.

Absurdly, they seemed to be what Anna needed. She took a deep breath and said, “Yes. Yes. That. How fortunate for the world that you are in it.” She pulled back, wiped her eyes, gave him a smile.

He didn’t know what she meant. He was a killer with bloodstained hands. He was necessary, though. Maybe that was what she meant.

“Part of the solution,” she said. “My dad always told us to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. You are always part of the solution.”

“Solution to what?”

“Anything. Everything. Me.” Her smile brightened and then died. Her voice was dead serious when she spoke again. “There is evil in the world, Charles. I know I’m not telling you anything that you don’t know. But those people out there?” She swept a hand out toward the bustling rush-hour traffic on the road running past the parking lot where they stood. “Those people have no idea. And the reason they have no idea is because you are around to keep them safe. You and Bran and Leslie—and Leeds and Marsden, too. But mostly you. Where you are, there hope is also. The hope that good is strong enough to prevail.” She took a big breath and let it out. “I want your child.”

His stomach plummeted. He didn’t know that he could have that conversation right now. Not when his shirt was still damp from Amethyst’s tears and the stink of the dead was still in his nose.

Anna turned away from him, rocking up on her toes and back. He wondered if she was thinking about running away. Or wishing she could run back to the Anna she had been before she learned about the evil in the world.

“I understand now, I think,” she told him in a low voice, her back still turned. “You know what’s out here. You think that if you, if we, have a child, then they will come after him or her. Those who serve evil. You see a child as a hostage to fate. Isn’t that Shakespeare? Evil always goes after the innocents, Charles. But no innocent will be safer than one under your protection. You brought hope into my world when I had given up.”

She turned back to him, and she was wiping her cheeks again. She hesitated, her eyes widening—and then she reached up and gently wiped his, too.

“But I saw you today,” she whispered. “I do think you are wrong. I think your child would be the safest person in the universe. But I’m done hurting you. I saw your face and I know why you’re scared. That was a lot of pain you felt for her. It’s okay. I don’t like the way this discussion has come between us. When you are ready, you just let me know, okay? Don’t wait until forever.”

Children die, he thought. He was pretty sure he kept those words to himself and hadn’t given them to Anna.

She stood on tiptoe, waiting for him to duck down to her. When he did, she kissed him, first on the nose and then, hotly, on the mouth.

“Get in the car, sweetcheeks,” she said briskly, though her voice was husky. “I have horses to look at.”

“Anna,” he said as he buckled himself into the passenger seat.

“Yes?” She hit the gas and drove out of the parking lot headed north.

“Don’t ever call me sweetcheeks.”

She grinned at him, then paid strict attention to her driving. As she took them out to the Sanis’ ranch, he wondered that she could look at him, who had hands that would never, could never come clean, and she saw hope.

Hosteen was there when they got back. He frowned warily at Anna. But Anna had seen terrible things today. Having a grumpy old werewolf who freaked out because she could send his wolf to sleep was barely a blip on her radar. Not when she was worried about Charles, who hadn’t said a single word all the way to the ranch.

His hand was on the small of her back, though. So they had to be good, right?

“Wade told me that Cantrip and the FBI are letting you help go after the fae who tried to kill my great-grandchildren,” Hosteen growled.

He was talking to Charles, but it was the wrong attitude to throw at her husband just now. Anna said, “We worked with the FBI and Cantrip today. We found the girl who’d been replaced by the changeling. She’s alive, and I think she’ll be okay. Wade or Kage told you about the changeling, right? Also, the FBI think they have the person who took her and spelled Chelsea in custody. He was the janitor at the day care.”

She waited, the tension in the air rising as her husband started to get angry. It was like the whole hallway started to smell of ozone—the smell was imaginary, but the energy crackled.

“You know what?” she said suddenly. “This is not the time for this. We just found the bodies of dozens of children stacked up like forgotten dolls. You two go ahead and have your fight. This is not my problem to fix.”

Charles’s hand curled around the nape of her neck.

Hosteen said, “Feisty, isn’t she?”

“Tired of drama today,” said Charles. “So am I.”

Something happened between them; Anna was sure of it. Something she missed because Charles was behind her, or maybe it was some guy thing. But the air cleared.

Charles said, “Are we going to have drama here?”

Hosteen rubbed his face with both hands. “Hell, Charles, there is always some sort of drama going on here. If you think wolf packs are big on drama, you should try the horse crowd for a while.” He looked at Anna. “My problem with you is just that, my problem. I’ve never met a real Omega before. I didn’t understand what that meant. I don’t like making a fool out of myself; my father was a drunkard and I swore never to be one.”

He wasn’t the first werewolf to freak out about what Omega really meant. She suspected he wouldn’t be the last. He was being gracious, so she could be gracious, too.

“Yes,” she said. “It hits the dominant wolves harder, I’m told. For what it’s worth, I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t know I could affect someone like that; if I had, I’d have warned you.” She’d have apologized earlier, but he hadn’t given her the chance.

She was hungry. Changing always left her starving, and so did drama. “I smell food. Is there any left?”

Hosteen smiled, and bowed. She saw some martial arts training in that bow. “I think they left you some,” he said, his face lit with mischief. “We could go see.”

Chelsea came out of her room to eat with them, making it a late supper for four. Kage was out working in the stables with all three kids. They had taken some horses to the show grounds that night and were planning on taking more in the morning. Maggie and Joseph had eaten in Joseph’s suite earlier in the day. Ernestine was in her room taking a break.

Chelsea had accepted the news that they’d found Amethyst and, probably, the fae responsible for all the trouble with a faint smile and a quiet “That’s good.”

Anna worried that she was being too quiet, like the calm before the storm.

Bran had developed a method designed to minimize the problems of the Change as much as they could be minimized. People who wanted to become werewolves petitioned Bran, the Marrok. They would fill out questionnaires, get testimonials from people they knew (werewolves), and write essays on why they wanted to be werewolves. Those with good enough reasons and stable personalities (although Anna had argued that anyone who wanted to be a werewolf on purpose could not be deemed “stable” on any level) were granted their petition.

The actual Change was done at the same time every year, complete with a set of ceremonies intended to weed out the bad seeds and the weak willed, the latter of whom would not survive the Change they were seeking.

Bran’s intention was to increase the survivability of werewolves. And it worked. Those who attended Bran’s version of the Change were much more likely to live, long-term, than those who were simply Changed by accident or attack.

They knew what to expect, they knew the costs, and they understood what they were getting into. The others, those like Anna and Chelsea, had to deal with the reality of being a werewolf on the fly. Chelsea looked as though she was having trouble adjusting. Maybe Anna could help with that.

She took a bite of very good lasagna and said, in as conversational a tone as she could manage, “I was trying to gently tell this guy that I had decided that we shouldn’t go on any more dates when he attacked me and turned me into a werewolf.” She looked at Hosteen. “This is very good; did Ernestine make it?”

He shook his head. “No. I did.” He smiled. “Part of my penance for riding off in the middle of things.”

“I’d love your recipe.” She took another bite.

“I’ll write it down for you before you go,” he said.

She nodded. “I’d like that.” She looked at Chelsea. “They had been looking for some time for an Omega wolf, because Omegas, among other things, can calm werewolves. The Alpha in Chicago, where I lived, was desperately in love with his mate. She was getting more and more violent; that sometimes happens to old werewolves. Anyway”—she forced herself to eat another bite and swallow it—“this was before werewolves had come out. I didn’t even know they were real when I turned into one.” The next bite stuck in her throat and she couldn’t talk.

“They kept her prisoner,” Charles said in a low voice. “Abused her because that was the only way they could control her. You know that packs are very hierarchical. An Omega is outside the pack structure like that. She—or he—doesn’t feel the same need to obey.”

Charles gave Chelsea a compassionate look, though Anna didn’t know if anyone but she could read him well enough to see the sympathy in his eyes. “Like the way that you felt you needed to come here and eat with us, only because Hosteen asked you to.”

Chelsea looked down at her plate, her jaw tight. Anna had thought she had a handle on what Chelsea was going through, but she’d missed that part of it. Maybe because, as an Omega, she’d never felt that need to obey someone more dominant. Yeah, she thought, that would rankle a woman like Chelsea.

Charles continued. “The Alpha is, or should be, the one most capable of protecting his pack. Not just the safety of the pack, but the well-being of each of its members. But Anna’s first Alpha only cared about his mate. He needed Anna to keep his mate from attracting my father’s attention. He knew that my father would have her killed because Isabelle was a danger to everyone around her, human and wolf alike. He couldn’t dominate Anna as he did all the other wolves, so he brutalized her. He taught her to fear him in an effort to keep her under his thumb.” Charles and Hosteen exchanged a look.

It was Hosteen who said, “That was a betrayal of everything an Alpha is supposed to be.”

“Yes,” said Anna. “I’m telling you this story, not as a one-upmanship kind of thing.” She dropped her voice and added a little radio announcer. “You think you have it bad, you have it easy compared to me.” And then returned to her own voice. “Because that isn’t true. You have it different. But you need to know that you aren’t alone; I do understand what you’re going through.”

She set down her fork because eating was beyond her. “Yesterday you woke up and were just grateful you were alive. That your kids were okay. Tonight you are beginning to understand the price that you are going to pay for that. You aren’t entirely sure it is worth it.”

“Dying is easy,” said Hosteen. “Living is brutal.”

“There are a lot of downsides,” Anna said. “You probably know what most of those are.” She wasn’t going to enumerate them. Nothing like taking a person who feels bad already and telling them how horrible their life might be to turn mild depression into suicidal. “The people who go to Bran to be Changed know what they’re getting into and they have time to make a choice. You and I? We didn’t get time to make a choice. But the downsides are only there because you’re alive. You have people who love you. And you have what will hopefully be a very long time to come to terms with what you are.”

Under the table, Charles put his hand on her knee. She swallowed hard. “You’re going through a period of mourning what you once were because there is no going back. Just keep in mind that there are good things, too.”

“One of the good things is that you don’t have to be afraid of the dark witches anymore,” said Hosteen casually.

Chelsea stiffened and looked up at him.

“You’re not dumb. Of course you are afraid of them.” He turned his coffee cup around between his hands, watching it instead of Chelsea. “If you’re born a witch and you don’t want to kill and torture for power, then you’re ripe for being killed and tortured yourself. That’s why you worked so hard to keep what you are secret. Kage worried for you. He didn’t talk to me about it, but he told Joseph, who came to me. I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t offer my help.”

“Maybe I am a dark witch,” she said hostilely.

“No,” said Hosteen, raising his eyes. “I can smell a dark witch from a mile away. No. You were hiding. But now you belong to a pack, and our pack can and will protect you from the dark witches.”

“Why now?” she asked, her blue-gray eyes lightening to near-Arctic white, like those of Charles’s brother, Samuel. “Wasn’t I worthy of protection when I was just Kage’s wife?”

“Yes,” said Hosteen slowly. “But I was not worthy of protecting you.”

“What does that even mean?” asked Chelsea, pushing away from the table abruptly. She stood up, clenching her hands into fists.

“It means that I am a stubborn old wolf,” Hosteen said. “And maybe I am more interested in my own opinions than listening to my grandson, who is a smart man. That is my failure. Perhaps one of the things that will be a good thing about your becoming a werewolf is that it has changed me, too. And that will mean our family is more welcoming, as it should have been from the beginning.”

“I can’t think,” said Chelsea, breathing hard. “Why can’t I think?”

“Mom?”

Anna had been so distracted by Chelsea that she hadn’t heard Max until he spoke from the doorway.

Chelsea turned wild eyes to her son and fell to the ground, convulsing.