Dead Heat

CHAPTER 4

Anna drove with Charles and Max in the truck. Charles rode in the middle, which wasn’t comfortable for him; his long legs didn’t fit easily anywhere. But better, she thought, than forcing poor Max to squish between virtual strangers. Charles could have driven, of course, but he had just shaken his head when she’d suggested it. At a guess, Changing Chelsea had left him pretty raw. He wouldn’t say it, though, in front of Max.

Hosteen had packed the two youngest children, Kage, and Chelsea, pale but freshly showered, in the BMW. Anna followed them through the streets of Scottsdale.

“Mom looked okay,” said Max, not looking at Charles.

“It varies from person to person,” Anna said. “But I suspect she’s got about two hours before she sleeps like the dead for a good long while. She’ll wake up for a couple of hours and sleep the rest of the day for two or three days. Then she should be mostly back to normal.”

Charles grunted assent, and that unfriendly sound shut Max down completely. Rather than start more awkwardness, Anna chose to keep quiet, and they drove to the ranch in silence.

Maggie was waiting for them at the door with a tiny woman who was more or less Anna’s age. She had Navajo features and skin tone but honey-blond hair. Maggie followed Hosteen and Kage into the house, but the other woman waited for them.

“Ernestine,” said Max with relief and uncomplicated affection. He trotted over to her and gave her a hug.

“How’s the hoops?” she asked, returning the hug.

“Okay,” he said. “Is there food?”

“Isn’t there always?” she said. “Go on into the kitchen and help yourself.”

After he’d retreated, she greeted Anna and Charles. “How are you? You must be the Cornicks. Charles, I doubt you remember me, but I met you once when I was about Mackie’s age. I’m Maggie’s great-niece Ernestine. I’m usually only here from six to four every day, but today I’ll be here all day, all night, and all tomorrow. They’ve called me in as the heavy reinforcements.” She grinned and opened her arms to showcase all hundred pounds of her. Then she stepped forward, and from the high ground of two steps up she leaned forward and kissed Charles on the cheek.

“Chelsea is my friend,” she said when she was done. Her cheeks were a little red, but she spoke with dignity. “Hosteen would have let her die, so I know who to thank.”

Charles didn’t say anything, so Anna smiled. “Always glad to be of service.”

They retreated to their room. Charles heaved a sigh of relief as soon as the door closed behind them.

“Tough day at the office, sweetheart?” Anna asked.

“Better than it could have been,” he told her. “Nobody died. Any day with no deaths is a good day. I need to call Da and let him know what’s happened.”

When Anna came back from the bathroom, where she’d scrubbed off some blood she hadn’t realized she was wearing, he’d already put his phone away.

“That was a short call,” she said.

“He didn’t answer,” Charles told her. “So I left a message for him to call me back. If you’re done, I’m going to shower.”

He had more blood on him than she did. Not on his clothes, which had returned clean, as usual, when he’d changed back. And he’d washed his hands and face at Kage’s house. But there were rusty stains just under his collar.

“That would be good,” she said, and he smiled at her.

He came out fifteen minutes later, freshly shaved with his hair damp. He didn’t have a great deal of facial hair, but enough that he shaved every day. His eyes looked tired, but he’d lost that grim edge.

“I wonder,” he said, “if Joseph is around.”

They tracked down Ernestine in the kitchen. She glanced at the clock. “He’s usually awake by now. He’s still got the same suite as he was in the last time you were here. Do you remember how to get there?” She shook her head. “Don’t know what’s going to become of this family once he’s gone. He’s the glue holding everyone together. Kage and Hosteen have always paced around each other like a pair of gamecocks, but since Kage and Chelsea got married, the feathers fly a lot more often.”

Beside Anna, Charles went still.

“Gone?” asked Anna tentatively. “Is he sick?”

“Dying,” said Ernestine surprised, then a little horrified. “I thought you knew. I thought that’s why you came. I’m so sorry. He was diagnosed with lung cancer about five years ago. He fought it off with chemo for a while, but it came back with a vengeance a few months ago.”

Charles didn’t say anything, just turned and headed back through the kitchen door.

The house smelled of wolf and sage, but as they proceeded, the smells became more astringent. Disinfectants. Medicines. And beneath it all the scent of illness and dying. Charles’s face didn’t change, but his hand tightened on hers.

He knocked lightly on a door.

“Come in, come in,” said a shaky voice.

This suite was bigger than the one she shared with Charles, a full apartment within the house. The first room was a sitting room decorated in a sleekly modern Asian style—simple furniture built of glass and steel and dark wood. Here as throughout the house, the floor was a dark wood, but instead of throw rugs and the occasional Persian rug, there was a huge handwoven wool rug in a traditional Navajo pattern.

The walls were painted a slate gray that matched the shade in the rug too well for accident. On the wall opposite the door was a large framed black-and-white photograph of a young man on a bucking horse.

The horse was a dark dappled gray and all four of his feet were off the ground, back feet headed left and front feet right. The hooves were a little ragged, and no horse that was in Charles’s barn ever was that ungroomed. But on this horse, all the ragged hair was appropriate and oddly beautiful: he wasn’t a pampered pet, he was something wild. There was joy and power and grace in the thousand-pound animal as he was caught floating in the air.

On his back was a young man, a sweat-stained cowboy hat on his head and a foot-long black braid floating in the wind. His boot-clad feet were just ahead of the cinch that held the saddle on the horse, heels down. One hand was up in the air and the other gripped a thick rope that connected his hand to the bosal on the horse’s nose. The hat shadowed his eyes, but his grin was fierce and as wild as the horse he rode.

On the bottom right corner of the photo, someone had written “July 24, 1949.” The rider wasn’t Kage, obviously, but the resemblance was marked.

Charles had gone ahead while she paused to look at the photo, and she jogged through the rest of the room and caught up to him as he went through the next doorway.

The bedroom had been decorated with the same serene feel as the sitting room, but all that peace couldn’t compete with the hospital bed that squatted in the middle of the room. Various medical devices stacked around the bed wheezed and beeped and flashed lights, presumably doing their jobs.

A skeletally thin man lay in the center of the bed, his head raised so he could see intruders as they came in. His hair was iron gray, worn as Charles sometimes did, in two neat braids that lay over his shoulders. His face was layered in wrinkles, like a shar-pei, features obscured beneath the straps that held his oxygen tubes below his nose.

“Joseph,” said Charles softly.

The man in the bed moved his head and his eyes opened. For a moment he blinked foggily, as though he’d been lost in dreams, and then his gaze sharpened. “Charles.”

The voice was so quiet Anna didn’t know if a human would have heard it. “I should have told you, I know. But I didn’t want to make you come if you didn’t want to. Or I didn’t want the only reason you came to be because I was dying. Pride, you know.”

He spoke in rapid groups of words with pauses between to breathe. Charles didn’t say anything, but fathomless sorrow gathered in his eyes. Anna knew that Joseph really was his friend because he saw it, too.

The old man smiled. “I intended to be one of those sweet old people, you know the kind, who do exactly what they’re told and eventually they lie down and die when it’s convenient for everyone.”

“I remember,” said Charles, and his face softened into a reluctant smile. “As I recall, it was when you were getting on that rank stallion at the Half Moon on a dare. I told you that I’d feel bad burying you the next morning.”

“I rode that horse,” Joseph said.

“And herded cattle with him the next week,” Charles said. “It was still a stupid thing to do.”

Joseph started to speak, but he had to stop and breathe for a minute. Then he said, “Too much pride and stubbornness, you said.”

“More than once,” agreed Charles.

“You’ll be”—Joseph grinned—“happy. I’m proud and stubborn, as always. Won’t go to the hospital as Maggie wishes—too many evil spirits from all the dead people. I will die here and haunt this house until the old man lets Maggie burn the place down.”

He coughed lightly. “In the old days they’d have kissed my cheek and then left me in the desert to die. Then my family would hire some Hopi or white man too stupid to know the dangers of handling the dead to go deal with the body. Now we’re caught between modern ways and the old. If I die here, only fire will keep my evil ghost from making everyone miserable, and they are too rational to do that.” He laughed, a sound that tried hard to be a cackle, but he didn’t have the air to make that much noise.

Charles rocked back on his heels. “I could take you out to the desert, Joseph, but I don’t know about the kiss.”

Joseph laughed again. Then he started coughing and suddenly all sorts of equipment squealed and beeped. Charles gave the machines an irritated look and they all shut up. Anna, half-horrified, hoped that they had just gone back to their jobs of monitoring Joseph and pumping him full of medications for whatever he needed. But she was afraid not; their silence felt very permanent.

Charles waded through the wires and tubes to put his hands on Joseph’s chest. Joseph stiffened as his eyes met her mate’s, not a gentle stiffening, but like a person who’d stuck a table knife in a wall socket. All that was missing were the sparks and the smoke.

Charles narrowed his gaze and started chanting softly in a language that no one except for him had spoken for nearly two hundred years, a dialect of the Flathead tongue that had died when his mother’s tribe had succumbed to one of the sicknesses that the Europeans had brought with them to the New World, when he was a very young man.

He could have been saying anything, but Anna’s wolf stirred, called to attention by the sharp ozone breath of the sacred that Charles occasionally could tap into when, as Charles put it, the spirits so moved him.

Joseph stopped coughing eventually, leaving Charles’s soothing voice the dominant sound in the room. There were no plants here, but Anna could smell pine. Some impulse urged her to touch Charles, so she did. The back of his neck was the easiest skin to reach, so she put her fingertips there. She closed her eyes and felt his voice sink into her bones. Unable to resist, she lent her song to his.

She didn’t have the language, so she hummed an alto descant to his bass almost-song. The chant was Native American, so it didn’t follow European chords or patterns. But that didn’t bother her. She’d accompanied Charles when he played or sang the songs of his childhood before, though never had it summoned magic. As she found the right notes, it seemed to her that the chant grew stronger.

Charles stopped singing abruptly, and she fell silent at the same time. She may not have understood what he was doing, but the connection between them had told her when the song was finished. On the bed, Joseph’s breathing was no longer labored. He was relaxed and his color was better.

Anna let her arm fall away from her mate and flexed her fingers to rid herself of a last sharp tingle of some sort of magic that had nothing to do with pack and everything to do with her husband’s odd and possibly unique heritage of witch, shaman, and werewolf.

“What did you do to me?” Joseph asked in a hushed voice. His eyes were wide.

“I have no idea,” admitted Charles. “You know how it is when the spirits kick me in the direction they want me to run. Whatever it is, it probably won’t last long.” He paused. “Or do anyone here any good.”

“You have always been such an optimist,” said Joseph, amusement lighting his eyes. “I remember that about you.”

Charles frowned at him. “I didn’t heal you. If you didn’t want to die of lung cancer, you could have quit smoking fifty years ago, when I told you to.”

Joseph laughed, but there was compassion in his expression. “I am eighty-odd years old, my friend. Something is going to kill me soon, it might as well be cancer.” Then the laughter left his face. “Unless you’ve been listening to my father and intend to change that.”

“Being a werewolf is not a panacea to death,” said Charles. “Quite the opposite, in fact. I would never force it upon anyone. Even if I were so lost to right and wrong to try, such an act carries a death penalty. Being my father’s son means I have no defense against charges of Changing someone against his will.”

“My father thinks that you need no such defense, since you are your father’s son.”

Which was almost what Hosteen had said to Charles when he’d driven them in from the landing strip. How terrible, Anna thought, to watch your child die, knowing you had the means to save him and he wouldn’t let you do so.

“Then he does not know my father,” Charles said as he had to Hosteen. “I am the last person he would make allowances for. Because I am his son, the Marrok could not allow me to break his laws.”

“Yes,” said Joseph. “So I told him. But I also know you, and not even a death sentence would stop you from doing what you think is right.”

“You don’t want this,” said Charles, gesturing to himself. “You never did. If you have changed your mind, I’ll be very happy to help.”

Charles had offered to Change Joseph before. Neither man said it, but Anna heard it all the same.

There was a little silence, and then Joseph, who had relaxed against the pillow, gave a small smile. “So you are here to buy a horse for your wife’s birthday.”

“I have come here to see my old friend,” Charles said. “To introduce my wife to him, and to say good-bye.”

Joseph sighed deeply. “First good breath I’ve drawn in months. Thank you.” He took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. “My father is a good man. I love him. He tries to do what is best for everyone—and he leads his family and his pack with his heart. But he also thinks that he is right and doesn’t always give weight to the opinions of others. I will die when my time is here, and it is very near. What you have done for me does not change that.”

It wasn’t a question, not quite.

Charles said, “No.”

Joseph said, “I can feel death’s wind in my face, and I heard an owl cry every night this past week. My father’s will cannot change that.” He drew in another breath and smiled directly at Anna. “Enough of my drama, I am tired of it. Charles, you have not introduced me to the pretty lady.”

She hadn’t felt ignored. Both men had been aware of her; Joseph had been studying her. But they had had unfinished business to wade through before bringing her into it.

Charles nodded gravely. “Anna, this is my good friend Joseph, who pulled me into more mischief than he should have been able to. Joseph, this is my mate, Anna, who is a gift an old foolish wolf like me doesn’t deserve.”

“Heaven forbid that we should get what we deserve,” Joseph said, examining Anna. “You have a beautiful song in your heart,” he said at last. “I am grateful that my old friend would find such as you because he is too often alone. Don’t break his heart or my ghost will haunt you for the rest of your days.”

“It isn’t me who is breaking his heart right now,” she told him.

Joseph nodded. “But that is the dual gift of love, isn’t it? The joy of greeting and the sorrow of good-bye.” He narrowed his eyes at Charles. “You came here to buy this woman a pretty horse? Something exotic? A horse that will be living art?” He didn’t sound like he approved.

“Arabians,” said Charles, following Joseph’s conversational trail without protest, “are the cats of the horse world. Anna doesn’t need to dominate. She will enjoy having a partner rather than a servant.”

“An Arabian,” said Joseph to Anna, “can be your best friend. He will not desert you when you need him. He will come to your call and be the wings that take you where you need to go.”

Charles laughed. She’d thought he laughed like that only with her, and she was grateful to be wrong. How terrible to live centuries and never laugh with your whole body.

“Wasn’t Jasper an Arabian?” he asked. “Your ‘best friend’ dumped you by the roadside to walk home plenty of times.”

Joseph grinned, but said, “Hush. I’m making a point. If you spend time with them and treat them with justice, they will reward you.” He cleared his throat. “Jasper excepted.”

“I can do justice,” Anna said.

“My father likes horses,” Joseph confided to Anna. “But he also likes money. There’s a reason this farm kept making money after the market for Arabs crashed in the eighties and breeding farms were abandoned to banks by the dozens. He knows that Charles can afford to indulge you. Unless you want to show, you don’t need a twenty-thousand-dollar horse, which is what he’ll try to sell you. My son, Kage, he loves the horses. He loves the five-hundred-dollar geldings as much as the million-dollar stallions. You listen to my son Kage about the horses we have, and not my father.”

“All right,” she agreed.

Joseph’s eyes closed. “It’s been a long time since I had no pain. It’s hard to sleep when you hurt.”

“Go ahead and sleep,” Charles told him. “You won’t die today.”

Joseph nodded, but opened his clear eyes to meet Anna’s. “Don’t let Dad talk you into Hephzibah. She’s a witch who only looks like a horse.”

“I thought Arabs are all friendly except for Jasper,” said Charles.

Joseph grinned—and it was the same expression that he’d worn when someone had taken a photo of him as he rode a bucking horse. “Hephzibah will kill someone someday. There’s something wrong with her spirit.” He shut his eyes again and his voice slurred. “Maybe the evil dead have touched her. Maybe she is really a skinwalker. You keep your wife away from her.”

“I’m a werewolf,” Anna said. “I’m not in danger from a horse.” But Joseph was already asleep.

Maggie met them at the door to the hallway.

“It is good that you’ve come to see him,” she said to Charles. Anna suddenly realized that Joseph’s apartment had been entirely masculine. Didn’t Maggie share the apartment with him? “Are you going to do as Hosteen asks now? Do you see what has happened to Joseph? He is gone already, that man I married.” She brushed an impatient hand over her face, and Anna realized Maggie was crying.

“No,” Charles said, but he said it gently. “Joseph does not want to be a werewolf. He has no need to live forever. And whatever the rest of us feel like we need, that is, it must be, his choice.”

She grabbed his arm, swift and sudden. Anna instinctively moved to intercept her but caught herself before Maggie noticed.

“I don’t want him to die, Charles,” Maggie told him intensely.

“Neither do I,” he said in the same gentle tone. “But everyone dies, Maggie. This is not the worst death I have seen. He is not afraid, not of death, anyway.”

She let go of him and took two steps backward. “Joseph has never been afraid of death,” she agreed. “I think it surprises him that he has lived this long.”

The intense intimacy of their conversation faded, caused by some trick of Maggie’s body language: she was once again the gracious hostess.

“Food is ready downstairs,” she said. “Kage said that after dinner, he’d take you to see some horses.” She smiled suddenly, “He is grateful for Chelsea, and my son can see no greater reward than to take you to see his horses.” She started down the hallway. “In that way, he and his father are just alike. Horse-mad idiots.”

“You, too,” Charles said, his hand on the small of Anna’s back as he followed. “Remember that poor skinny pinto you saved from that pair of cowboys, Maggie?” He looked at Anna, his eyes smiling. “One woman against two armed men, and she took after them with a broom for the way they’d half starved a mare. Only it turns out, when the dust settled, that they’d just bought that mare from another guy because they didn’t like the way he wasn’t feeding her.”

“I apologized and fed them my burritos,” Maggie said. “They didn’t care about a few bruises after that.”

“Won’t it be too dark to ride?” asked Anna.

“The main barn has lights,” Maggie said shortly. “You won’t have any trouble seeing.”

They ate in the big dining room because there were too many to fit around the kitchen table. Ernestine had roasted a huge beef brisket and topped the meal off with corn bread and a green salad. She ate with the family, deliberately sitting next to the kids and helping Max and Maggie keep a normal conversation going.

Anna sat next to Charles and watched everyone (except for her husband) try not to stare at Chelsea.

Chelsea, when she was not dying on a bathroom floor, was a strikingly attractive, if not beautiful, woman. She was tall, half a head taller than Kage, and built like an athlete. Her hair was a Nordic blond that complemented her icy-gray eyes and was cut very expensively to frame her expressive and rather bony face.

Max had given Anna a picture of a charming and funny woman. But Chelsea didn’t engage with anyone, not even when someone spoke to her directly. She would eat a few bites quickly, then set her utensils down as if they were puzzle pieces she had to fit into place. Then she would take a gulp of water, stare at the wall or the table or her hands—and then suddenly grab her silverware and eat another two or three mouthfuls with ravenous intensity. Every once in a while she’d try to eat something besides the meat, and Anna could see her fight to get the food down.

It was probably something from the Change, Anna thought. She didn’t like to think about the weeks shortly after she had been Changed. There were large gaps in her memory—

She curled around herself shivering, cold and hot by turns. The bars of the cage burned her skin, but without something against her back she felt vulnerable to attack. She smelled grease from a fast-food box …

Okay, so some things she remembered just fine, but she could choose not to dwell upon them. There was no cage here, no one to throw a cardboard box of fried chicken at Chelsea. To this day, Anna couldn’t eat chicken from that particular chain.

There were no rapists here.

Suddenly Chelsea’s eyes met Anna’s from across the table and held them. Icy gray became even more pale, and Chelsea’s nostrils flared.

“Who hurt you?” she asked, slicing through the two other conversations going on at the table.

“He’s dead,” said Charles, his hand sliding up Anna’s back reassuringly. “I killed him. If I could, I would bring him back to life so I could kill him again.”

Chelsea turned her gaze to Charles for a moment. “Good,” she said, before she had to drop her eyes. Her intensity faded. “That’s good.”

Charles put his lips against Anna’s ear. “He’s very dead.”

Anna nodded jerkily. “Sorry.”

“No,” he said, his breath warm against her neck. “Don’t be sorry. Just know if anyone ever tries to hurt you again—they will be dead, too.”

And some people had tried, hadn’t they. And yes, she realized, they were all dead. Charles was a big warm presence at her back, better than a solid wall or bars.

She picked up her fork and took a bite of brisket. “Okay,” she told Charles.

They cleaned the table collectively, Ernestine directing traffic. Anna found herself in the kitchen washing pots and pans as Maggie put them away.

“Do you suppose Ernestine made us work together on purpose?” asked Anna.

“Undoubtedly,” Maggie agreed.

She didn’t say anything more for a moment. It wasn’t exactly private—people were in and out with food and dishes. Max had taken up the post at the dishwasher, where he scraped and loaded dishes.

“I loved your husband once,” said Maggie.

“I gathered that,” Anna said. “He cares a lot about you.” She forced herself not to add and Joseph, too. It was true, but it made her sound as though she were jealous. She wasn’t. Territorial, yes. Jealous, no.

“I was not as courageous as you,” Maggie said. “Twenty or thirty years later I would not have made the same choice, but I was young and he frightened me when I found out what he was.” She glanced at Anna. “I was about your age. Werewolf side effects aside, Joseph said that Charles is buying you a horse for your twenty-sixth birthday. You were younger than I was when he found you. And you weren’t afraid of him.”

It was a big concession, implying that Anna was somehow better than Maggie for not running away.

“Yeah. I had already met the real monsters,” she told Maggie. “It gave me some basis for comparison.”

“If I had not been afraid I would have picked Charles,” Maggie said. She headed off to a pantry space with a handful of pots. When she came back she said, “Joseph suited me better. Charles and I are both too serious. Even now, Joseph is a breath of pure sunshine. I’ll send you home with my recipe for burritos. Charles and Joseph both love them.”

And after that they finished up the pots and pans and serving dishes in utter harmony.

“Hosteen is pretty distracted,” said Max, when the dishwasher was loaded and running. He took the big pan out of Maggie’s hand with a smile. “He wouldn’t have let Ernestine put you to work if he’d been paying attention. Why don’t you let me finish this and go sit down as though you’d been doing it all along?”

Maggie exchanged a grin with him and left the kitchen to younger hands.

“Hosteen has been more protective of her since Joseph got sick,” Max told Anna. “She knows he’s feeling bad, so she indulges him.” He smiled. “She’s a tough old broad, is Maggie. He’d better lay off because she’s going to get tired of it pretty soon.”

When the kitchen was clean, Hosteen organized a war council. He began by evicting the innocent bystanders.

“Hey, kids,” said Ernestine in response to Hosteen’s raised eyebrow. “Why don’t you come watch some TV with me up in the gold guest suite?” She took Michael and Mackie by the hand. “Coming, Max?”

Max gave Kage a half-pleading, half-defiant look. “I think I’ll stay,” he said.

Kage nodded. Ernestine smiled at Max and then led the children away as the rest of them reseated themselves around the dining room.

“I’m proud of you,” Anna overheard Kage tell Max. “You’ve been extraordinarily useful today. It’s always hard to be on the support staff when there’s action elsewhere. Thank you for taking care of the kids this afternoon.”

“I did it under protest,” said Max, apologetically.

“But you did it well,” Kage replied. “Good enough for me.”

Hosteen sat at the head of the table and looked down its gleaming surface at Chelsea. “We need to know what happened to you,” he said, not unkindly. “Are you up to answering questions?”

She nodded. “I don’t know how much help I’ll be.”

“You are witchborn,” said Charles. “Did you sense anything wrong? Do you know when you were bespelled?”

She shook her head. “I don’t have much training. My mother taught me how to hide myself, but that’s it.”

“When did you notice something was wrong?” Hosteen said, his voice a little impatient.

“In the bathroom,” Chelsea said, sounding a little lost. Kage scooted his chair nearer and put his arm around her. “I was looking for something stronger, for my headache. I knocked the toothbrush holder into the sink and it broke. It cut my hand when I cleaned it up, and I could think for a moment.” She looked at Kage. “That’s how I figured it out, that I could stop myself if I was bleeding.”

“That’s why you stabbed yourself in the hand?” Max asked. Chelsea’s left hand still had a scab on it.

She nodded. “You or me,” she told him. “I picked me.”

He nodded and then said, “I’m not a kid anymore, Mom. Next time—pick me, okay?”

“Not going to happen,” said Maggie. She was sitting next to Max, and she patted his hand. “Nothing to do with your age. Mothers protect their children.”

“When did the headache start?” asked Charles.

“After I picked up the kids, I think,” Chelsea said. “That’s when I noticed it anyway. I left the kids on their own and ran up to take something for it.” She paused. “I took too many pills and then went looking for something stronger. If I’d found the pills instead of getting a cut, would the kids have been safe?”

Anna said, “Pain is a distraction; it can be used to break down your will.” She knew that. “So can certain drugs. Tylenol won’t do it—but what kind of stronger were you looking for?”

“I had some leftover Vicodin,” she said. “But I was just trying to stop the headache.”

“Vicodin would have made it harder for you to fight the geas,” said Charles. “But now we are talking a very complicated magic. ‘Kill your children and then yourself’ is, essentially, two commands. ‘Kill your children if you can, and if they are dead or if you fail to kill them, then kill yourself’ is more complicated. And the geas absolutely tried to make you kill yourself after I told you the kids were safe. If the magic drove you to do something that made you a better vessel to carry out your task … we’re getting into magic that is above the ability of most fae.”

“How long would it have taken to put such a spell on her?” asked Hosteen.

“A Gray Lord with the right magic could do it in an instant,” Charles said. “Or it could have taken hours.”

“The only time I lost was while I was in the bathroom,” Chelsea said with some certainty. “I work off a schedule. I’d have noticed any gap through the day.”

“I went through the house,” Charles said. “There was fae magic in plenty, but there was no fae in your house.”

“Could they have put the spell on her earlier?” asked Max. “Left it inert for a while until the right conditions were met? Like Sleeping Beauty’s curse?”

“Absolutely,” said Charles. “But if that’s what happened, it’s unlikely we’ll easily figure out who did this and why. So we should concentrate on scenarios that are more useful.”

Chelsea frowned. “There was something odd—”

“What was that?” asked Kage.

She put one hand to her head and reached to the table with the other and collapsed. Hosteen jumped over the table and pulled her chair away so they could get to her.

“Mom?” Max said.

“It’s all right,” Anna told him at the same time Hosteen said, “It’s about time.”

Kage picked his wife up from the floor. Hosteen said, “Take her into the apricot guest room.” He put a hand on Kage’s shoulder. “I know that’s not your usual rooms—but the kids are in your suite and we need to keep them safe. Probably there will be no trouble, but the Change is disorienting and werewolves are dangerous.”

“What’s wrong with her?” asked Kage.

“Her body is undergoing a lot of changes at the same time,” Charles said. “It’s pretty normal for her to seem to be fine directly after the Change heals the wounds that allowed the Change to take place. But after a few hours—sometimes a few days—everything will catch up with her.”

“Anna told me about that,” Max said. “I just forgot.”

Max had gone up to help Ernestine with the kids.

Hosteen settled into Chelsea’s room with a book, and so had Maggie. When Hosteen tried to send her off to bed, she’d given him a sharp look. “You quit trying to make me into a useless old woman, Papa. I can sit with Chelsea while she sleeps. I’ve got a good mystery to read.”

Kage hesitated, and his mother shooed him off. “You go on now,” she told him. “I know that you need to go do something. So take these two nice people out to the barn and give yourself something else to think about. Chelsea’s not going anywhere in the next few hours.”

Kage looked at Anna and said, “Assuming you are really interested in looking at horses…”

“Yes?” she said hopefully.

Behind Kage’s back, his mother caught Charles’s eye and nodded at Kage, then at Charles. He bowed his head.

Kage was examining Anna’s face. “Not much of a poker face,” he said.

“Take her to Vegas and she’ll come back with a small fortune,” suggested Maggie warmly. “If she starts with—”

“A large one,” Charles agreed, and ducked meekly when Anna pretended to hit him.

Despite the slurs on her poker face, Anna decided to adopt an air of casual interest. She didn’t really know how she felt, anyway. She was excited, yes, but an odd unsettled feeling vied with excitement as they drove out to the barn.

She’d never ridden much before she met Charles. Since then she’d ridden a million miles—well, a couple of hundred at least—in the mountains. They were a long way from the mountains. In a few minutes she was going to take her meager skills and demonstrate them.

Sitting in the front passenger seat of the utility vehicle Kage drove, Anna felt the odd unease grow stronger as they approached a glorious building that could have been a luxury resort. It didn’t resemble any image of a “barn” that she held in her head. The rough topography had hidden the barn from the house, and supposedly there was another barn around somewhere, too. She was more impressed by the Arizona desert’s ability to make things disappear, because they weren’t more than a half mile from the house and the barn was huge.

Spanish-style elegant, the massive structure sprawled in gracious lines that were lit like some gigantic Christmas tree with hundreds of small white lights. Behold, the expensive and tastefully illuminated xeriscaped combination of stone and exotic desert plants seemed to say. Here are the kings and queens of equines; prepare to bow down and worship them.

Anna looked down at her battered riding boots, identifying that second, unhappy emotion. She was more excited than she’d have thought to be getting a horse of her own, but she had the sinking feeling that she was not good enough for these horses. Having her ride a horse that lived in a barn like this would be akin to a sixth grader playing a priceless Lupot cello.

“Fancy,” said Charles from the backseat—he’d insisted on her riding in front—in dry tones. Kage laughed, pulling into a parking spot right next to an identical vehicle.

“Yeah, Hosteen thinks it’s an eyesore, but it makes people spend more money than the tin mare motel that he claims he’d be happier with.” Kage looked at Anna and explained, “A mare motel is a metal roof that sits over a series of small runs. It looks horrible, but it keeps the sun and rain off the horses. Hosteen likes to gripe, but he made us build it a third larger than Dad had originally planned, and he was right. We are nearly at capacity.”

Kage turned off the engine and tapped the steering wheel. “You saved my wife,” he told Charles without looking at him. “As far as I’m concerned, you are welcome to any horse in the barn.”

“Not necessary,” said Charles. “Besides, I do know Hosteen. I may not have seen him in two decades, but no one changes that much. He’d wash your mouth out with soap if he heard you offer to give a horse away.”

Kage smiled when, Anna sensed, usually he would have laughed. He struck her as a man to whom laughter came easy, as if his natural state was happy—when no one was trying to kill his wife and children. Good for him. She hoped that he’d find his balance again soon.

“Okay,” Kage said, hopping out of the utility vehicle. “Just keep my offer in mind. I am not afraid of the old man. If what you want is over budget, we can talk. Dad says you’re mostly looking for a trail horse, sensible and pretty.”

Charles held out a courtesy hand to help Anna down. She didn’t need the help, but the reassurance of his hand on hers made her stomach settle down.

“Anna has been riding a couple of years,” he told Kage. “Trail riding in the mountains. Maybe she might find herself interested in something else down the line, though, so we won’t rule anything out. But whatever else she decides to do with her horse, we do ride in the mountains. Anna has light hands and a decent seat. She doesn’t need a beginner’s horse—just nothing too apt to spook at shadows.”

Kage laughed. “You know what they say about Arabs, right? They all spook. And half Arabs spook exactly half as much.” He looked at Anna. “It’s not really true, but they are easily bored. Most of the shying and other drama happens when they are looking for something interesting to do. They think they’re doing you a favor by making things a little exciting.”

He shook his head. “When I was a kid, Dad had this mare he was going to by-golly turn into a kid’s horse for me. But the more he worked her in the arena, the more she shied and snorted. One day he got so frustrated he took her out on the trails for a week—a trial by fire, he said. He rode her through creeks, over hill and dale—they even got buzzed by some idiot on a motorcycle and she didn’t turn a hair.”

He looked at Charles.

“She was bored,” Charles said.

“She taught me to ride,” Kage said. “A fire truck with sirens and lights blazing didn’t bother her a bit, but let a piece of straw blow across her path? I learned to pay attention and stay in the saddle.”

Kage led them through the front doors, through an airy reception room decorated Southwestern casual complete with an Old West–style wet bar. Glass double doors took them to a viewing stand that looked out over a large arena two-thirds the size of a football field. There was a tractor wetting down the arena with a water tank and spray rig. The woman on the tractor waved to Kage and continued working.

“Pretty late for chores,” said Charles.

Kage nodded. “Staff is usually done by five, except for the foaling managers, who rotate on twenty-four-hour shifts this time of year. But we’re gearing up for the big horse show. Lots of people come to the show specifically to buy horses. We’ll have a presentation or ten out here during the show, so we’ve got to get the barn ready and groom all hundred and sixty horses and not just the thirty we are showing. That means overtime for everyone.”

He looked at Charles. “You ought to take her out to the show. It’s not as over-the-top as it was thirty years ago.” He grinned at Anna. “We had all sorts of celebrities and entertainment industry people then, and people came to look at them as much as the horses. Millions changed hands both in real money and on paper to dodge the tax man, and the Arab industry attracted a different crowd. But the show is still spectacular. Lots of pretty horses and horse-mad people.”

They entered the stabling area. It smelled of cedar shavings and horses, with a faint tang of urine and leather. On the inside of the three of them, when Anna turned the corner she was next to the first stall.

A copper-colored horse thrust his head toward her, and she found herself nose to nose with him.

Not just any horse, either, but a fairy-tale horse. Every hair in his mane and forelock lay as though someone had separated them from each other and put them exactly where they would look best. The narrow stripe that ran from between his eyes down to between his nostrils looked as though someone had powdered it with baby powder to get it white-white, except for a small triangle of pink on the end of his nose. His chestnut coat was flame-brilliant, and, when she reached out to touch his cheek, the skin under her fingers was soft and sleek.

“Careful,” cautioned Kage. “He’s only a two-year-old and a stallion, which means he’s lippy. He’s not mean, just looking for handouts. But he will bite if you aren’t watching.”

“Like you, boss,” someone shouted from a nearby stall.

“And I fire people who get above themselves, too,” Kage called back with a grin.

“Yeah, I’m worried, boss,” said the same guy. He was hidden somewhere in the row of stalls. “If you fire me, you’ll have to muck out twenty stalls before you can go to bed. I’ve got job se-cu-ri-ty.”

“You go on thinking that way, Morales,” said someone else. “If you want more security you can clean my stalls, too.”

Anna petted the colt’s velvet cheek and sought out the spot just behind his ear to scratch. It was the right spot because he pressed his neck into her hand hard enough to bang it against the side of the stall opening, then twisted his neck to make her fingers hit exactly where he wanted them. His eyes closed and his lips waggled in ecstasy.

“Why aren’t horses more afraid of us?” Anna asked. “I mean, if I were a grizzly bear he wouldn’t be asking me to rub his neck, right?”

Charles’s stance had relaxed the moment they’d entered the stables; she didn’t think he knew it. Her man loved horses the way he loved music.

He smiled, but it was Kage who answered. “Horses are adaptable. I mean, I go out to some poor, half-grown colt smelling like the steak sandwich I ate for lunch. I throw a piece of dead cow on his back and tell him it won’t hurt him. Pretty amazing that they’ll let us get anywhere near them.”

He reached out and rubbed the other side of the horse’s face. “If you were in wolf form and all snarly and ready to attack, I suppose they’d freak, all right. This one might just try to trample you—he’s not got a lot of fear in him. Hosteen says they just think you smell like a funny kind of dog, and they know about dogs.” He paused. Looked at Charles. “So what do you think?”

“Pretty horse,” he said dryly. “Tippy ears.”

Kage choked back a laugh. “Dad said you’d do that.” He looked at Anna. “Gives a compliment that you know is an insult. Right now the Saudi billionaires are bolstering the Arabian market. They don’t care about bodies or legs, but they pay a lot for a pretty head.”

“Not just the Saudis,” grunted Charles. “The judges are rewarding longer and longer necks, taller and taller horses. If you reward the extremes, that’s where the breed heads.

“Long necks”—he nodded at the chestnut—“usually mean long backs. A lot of taller horses just have longer cannon bones, which weakens their legs. The Arabs I rode herding cattle with your father in the fifties and sixties would do a full day’s work for twenty years, seven days a week, and retire sound.” He snorted. “The drive now is for pretty lawn ornaments. The Arabian horses were originally bred as weapons of war, and now they are artwork. Those old Bedouins are rolling in their graves.”

“Nothing wrong with artwork,” growled Kage, really offended now.

Charles was doing it deliberately, Anna thought. Goading Kage into what? She narrowed her eyes at her husband, who looked back at her blandly.

Kage reached over and snagged a halter from where it hung on the wall next to the stall door. “Yes, he’s got a pretty head and neck, and that makes him valuable. Like those little tippy ears you’re so annoyed with. But you can have your cake and eat it just fine.”

Anna backed out of the way as Kage slid the stall door open and brought the two-year-old stallion out to stand in the broad aisle under the lights. She was watching the man, not the horse, though. He’d been wounded, she thought, from what had happened to his wife today. Stoic, but wounded. The anger burned all that away.

And her husband said he wasn’t good with people.

“You tell me that those old-time, round-barreled, cow-hocked Arabs had anything over this horse,” Kage growled as he somehow cued the colt to freeze in place and stretch his neck out and up. The irritation he’d demonstrated dropped away as he looked at the colt, too. Anna thought he couldn’t hold anger and the way he felt about the horse at the same time.

Passionately, Kage said, “This one would take you over the desert sands, sleep in your tent, and stand guard over your body. You look at him and you tell me his back is too long or his legs are weak.”

The horse looked spectacular to Anna, but she was no judge. The young stallion’s copper coat gleamed even in the artificial light. Large, dark eyes looked at them with arrogance, a healthy dose of vanity … and humor, she thought.

His body looked balanced to her and he had a nice slope to his shoulder that was echoed in his hip. His mane was pale and thick and emphasized the arch of his neck, and his tail would have reached the ground if it hadn’t been braided and wound up in a bag.

“What’s with his tail?” asked Anna. “Is there something wrong with it?”

“No,” Kage said with a wary look at Charles.

“Because even in a stall, a horse will rub and wear down his tail to a useful length instead of letting it grow long enough to trail behind him like a bridal veil,” Charles told her, but his real attention wasn’t on his words but on the horse. “Judges like a tail dragging the ground in the show ring.”

He paced around the horse slowly, stopping to pick up a foot. The longer he looked, the more smug Kage was. When her mate finished his examination, what Charles said wasn’t a judgment, but a question. “You’re taking him in the ring at the big show?”

“That’s our intention,” Kage said. “We didn’t show him last year because he was still going through the yearling fuglies. His butt was four inches higher than his withers. This year … he’s got a good chance. He certainly won’t look outclassed in his age group.”

“I don’t know about Arabian horse judging,” said Charles, raising a hand in surrender. “But I do know horses. This one is seriously good—assuming he has a brain between those tippy little ears.” He smiled at Kage. “Tragic if he ends up a lawn ornament or a piece of artwork brought out to make a rich man’s guests ooh and ahh.” He gave Kage a long look. “You’ve successfully defended him and your breeding program. Feel better?”

Kage gave him a sharp look, hesitated, and then said, “You picked an argument with me so I’d feel better?”

“Yes,” Charles said. “I also picked an argument with you so you could quit treating us like customers and talk to us about Chelsea. Your mother is pretty sure you won’t talk to Hosteen about her, and she thinks you need to talk to somebody.”

Anna couldn’t help letting her eyebrows climb up. Charles had gotten a lot of information from no more than two seconds of voiceless communication with Maggie.

Kage frowned at Charles. “She does, does she? I am very grateful to you for saving Chelsea, Mr. Cornick. But I assure you I’m fine.”

“Chelsea isn’t,” said Anna.

“Chelsea,” Kage said. The stallion butted him with his head, and he rubbed the horse’s forehead. He looked around and lowered his voice so that the people working around them wouldn’t hear what he said. “Her mother taught her that her witch blood taints her. And Hosteen never lets up about it. The idea that she’s a werewolf now and has to obey my grandfather, with whom she has been painfully feuding for eight years, hasn’t caught up with her yet. But it will. She is never going to forgive me.”

“If that’s the only problem, you’ll do okay,” Anna said. “If she honestly can’t stand him, then move. There are other packs.”

“And with your reputation you can get a job in any Arab barn in the country,” added Charles.

“Maybe so,” Kage said. “But she’s very big on being independent. I just changed her life without consulting her.”

“There was no way to bring her into it,” Charles pointed out. “I tried that first. If she really didn’t want to Change … It’s a lot easier to give up, Kage, than it is to fight for your life.”

“She’s not going to buy that as an argument,” said Kage, but at the same time, for the first time since he’d picked up his cell phone and heard his wife’s messages, he looked like he’d caught his balance. “You think that she would have made that choice herself? I didn’t force it on her?”

“If anyone forced it on her, it would be I,” corrected Charles. “But no. If I thought she really didn’t have a choice in the matter, I would not have done it even if you begged me to. She chose to die for her children, and she chose to live for all of you.”

“What about my dad, then?” Kage asked. “By that argument you couldn’t Change him unless he secretly wanted it. Which we all know he doesn’t. So why is Hosteen still after you to Change him, anyway?”

“Because he believes that he saw my father force a man through a Change. That man wasn’t unwilling, just unable, which is different. He thinks that I can do the same,” Charles said.

“Can you?”

“Chelsea needed a little help, but I did not force her,” Charles answered. “She saw a chance for survival and she wanted it.”

He wasn’t lying, Anna knew. But there was a sick feeling in her stomach. That was what Justin had said when she’d survived the Change—as if she’d wanted what was done to her and all that followed.

“Use that,” she told Kage, “to comfort yourself, because it is true that she had to fight to live. But don’t tell her that. Tell her you love her and need her. Tell her the kids need her. Tell her you tried to make the choice she might make. Tell her that you thought she’d want us to find the fae who did this to her so he couldn’t kill anyone else. But don’t tell her that her survival means that she really wanted this.” When she said “this” she motioned to herself. Werewolf, she meant, werewolf and all the things that went with it.

Kage’s voice was compassionate. “The voice of experience?”

“Yes.” Anna took in a deep breath. “Truth has many facets. Choose the ones that make her happy to be alive instead of the ones that make her want to smack you.”

“Are you happy?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said with total conviction. “But it took a while. It might take her a while, too.”

“Yes,” he said, but he didn’t sound nearly as upset about it as he had been when he’d started talking. “I expect it will.”

“It could be worse,” Charles said thoughtfully. “She could be dead.”

Kage nodded. “Yes. This may be difficult. That would have been unbearable. Difficult is better.”