Fair Game

6

Anna locked their door and took the collar off Charles, laying both it and the leash on a small table against the wall.

‘If her father is an old and powerful fae, why can’t he find her?’ Anna asked.

Perhaps his power doesn’t lie in that direction, answered Brother Wolf. Or there is something blocking him. I do not know a lot about fae magic, other than to say that no magic has answers for everything. It is a tool. A hammer is a good tool, but not useful for removing screws.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll buy that.’ She pulled off her shoes and finger-combed her hair. She was tired. ‘Can you tell me what’s wrong with Charles?’

Brother Wolf looked at her and said nothing.

‘I didn’t think so,’ she said. ‘Charles, how can I help if you don’t let me in?’

You cannot help, Charles replied.

She sucked in a breath. ‘Did you just lie to me?’ She wasn’t sure, but it hadn’t felt like the truth, either.

Brother Wolf looked away. Charles will not let you help.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘There. I lied to you, too.’ It wasn’t fine, not even close to fine.

We should be human when the fae lord comes, Brother Wolf said, finally.

Anna didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything. After a moment, Charles began changing back. It wouldn’t take him long, five or ten minutes. The blood of a Flathead shaman meant that it took him a lot less time to change than any other wolf she’d met.

It hurt to change, hurt more when you did it back and forth in only a couple of hours – and Charles hadn’t been in a good place when he’d started. Anna could feel the pain he was in – faintly, because he’d never let her feel it all if he could help it.

It was better to leave him alone for a few minutes. It was better to remove herself from the temptation of a real fight, especially when they could have visitors at any time. And they weren’t back to square one, either. Their bond lay open between them, a testimony that he was better than he had been.

It was four in the morning. She debated showering and getting dressed – or brushing her teeth and going back to sleep. She didn’t make it to the bathroom. The bed was still rumpled from when she’d left it earlier, and it was too inviting to resist.

She crawled under the blankets and buried her head in Charles’s pillow. She felt more than heard when Charles came into the room. He paused by the bed and patted her rump lightly, and something inside her relaxed. ‘Don’t get too comfortable, Sleeping Beauty,’ he rumbled teasingly, sounding like his old self. He might not be letting her help, but he was making progress just the same, despite his decision to retreat behind Brother Wolf earlier. ‘We’ll have company sooner rather than later. You made the fae an obvious offer to give him information the FBI won’t, and he won’t wait until a polite time of day to come calling. I doubt he’ll sleep much as long as his daughter’s fate is uncertain – I wouldn’t.’

She waited until the shower started before pulling her head out from under the blankets. No. Charles wouldn’t rest while a child of his was in danger. If he had children.

Female werewolves couldn’t carry babies to term. The moon called and they changed to wolves, the violence of it too much for the forming child. She’d asked Samuel, who was a doctor, about staying in wolf form for the full term instead. He’d paled and shaken his head.

‘The longer you stay a wolf, the less the human rules. If you stay wolf too long, there is no coming back.’

‘I’m an Omega,’ Anna had told him. ‘My wolf is different. We could try it.’

‘It always ends badly,’ her mate’s brother had said roughly. ‘Don’t, please, talk to Charles or Da about it. The last one was brutal. There was a woman … She managed to hide from Bran until it was too late. A werewolf isn’t a wolf, Anna, who will care and protect its young. When we finally tracked her down, Charles had to kill her because there was nothing of humanity left, only a beast. He backtracked her to the cave where she’d established her den. She’d given birth, all right. And then she’d killed the baby.’

His eyes had been raw and wild, so she’d changed the subject. But Anna had her own thoughts on the matter – Brother Wolf was no unthinking creature who would eat his young, and she was pretty sure her own wolf was gentler still. But there was no need for desperate measures yet.

The werewolves were out to the world now with no further need to hide. There were ways for couples who could not have biological children for one reason or another that would work for werewolves as well as humans. Right now, with the public so ambivalent about werewolves, it would be difficult to try to use a surrogate to carry their child. But they could afford to wait awhile for public opinion to change.

‘For public opinion to change about what?’ asked Charles as he opened the door of the bathroom to let the steam roll out. He had a towel wrapped around his waist and was drying his long hair with another.

She didn’t have to answer him because someone rang their doorbell. The fae was supposed to call them; she’d left her number. Apparently he’d decided to drop in uninvited instead.

Anna hadn’t undressed, so she ran her fingers through her hair and started toward the door. Charles moved in front of her and dropped the towel he held to the floor.

‘No,’ he said.

She rolled her eyes, but said, ‘Fine. I’ll wait for you.’

He dressed quickly without apparently rushing while she watched him. Watching Charles dress and undress was one of her favorite things to do – better than wrapping and unwrapping Christmas presents. Werewolves were, as a whole, young, healthy, and muscled – all of which were attractive characteristics. But they all weren’t Charles. His shoulders were wide and his dark skin had a silklike sheen that invited her fingers to touch. His long, black-as-midnight hair smelled—

‘If you don’t stop that,’ he said mildly, though he paused with his shirt just over his shoulders so she could see the way the smooth muscles of his back slid down into well-fitted jeans, ‘our gentleman caller might have to wait awhile longer.’

Anna smiled and reached out to run a finger down his backbone. She pressed her face against his cotton T-shirt and inhaled. ‘I missed you,’ she confessed.

‘Yes?’ he said, his voice soft. It got even softer when he said, ‘I’m not fixed yet.’

‘Broken or whole,’ she told him, her voice dropping to a growl, ‘you’re mine. Better not forget that again.’

Charles laughed – a small, happy sound. ‘All right. I surrender. Just don’t go after me with that rolling pin.’

Anna tugged the shirt down and smoothed it. ‘Then don’t do anything to deserve it.’ She smacked him lightly on the shoulder. ‘That’s for disrespecting my grandmother’s rolling pin.’

He turned around to face her, wet hair in a tangled mess around his shoulders. Eyes serious, though his mouth was curved up, he said, ‘I would never disrespect your grandmother’s rolling pin. Your old pack did everything in their power to turn you into a victim, and when that crazy wolf started for me, you still grabbed the rolling pin to defend me from him, even though you were terrified of him. I think it is the bravest thing I have ever seen. And possibly the only time anyone has tried to defend me since I reached adulthood.’

He touched her nose, bent down—

The doorbell rang, an extended buzz, as if someone was getting impatient.

Eyes at half-mast, Charles looked at the front door the same way he would a grizzly or a raccoon that had interfered with his hunt.

‘I love you, too,’ murmured Anna, though she found herself at least as grumpy about the interruption as Charles could possibly be. ‘Let’s go see what Lizzie’s father has to say.’

The doorbell rang again.

Charles sucked in a breath of air, ran his fingers through his wet hair to get rid of the worst of the tangles, glanced in the mirror on the wall, and froze.

‘Charles?’

His side of their bond slammed down so fast she couldn’t help a faint gasp, but not so quickly that she didn’t see that his motivation was singular and huge: he wanted to protect her. Charles didn’t look at her, and when the doorbell rang again, he stalked out of the bedroom.

She stood where he had, in front of the mirror, and tried to see what it was that had disturbed him so much. Men’s voices and a woman’s rushed past her ears. The mirror was beveled, set in a plain but well-made frame, and in it she saw herself and a reflection of the walls of the room behind her. There was an original oil painting of a mountain on the wall to the right of her, next to the door to the bathroom. Directly behind her, cream-colored lace curtains hung over the window, still dark with night’s reign.

What had he seen that he wanted to protect her from?

By the time she got out to the living room, Alistair Beauclaire was already inside the condo – and so were Special Agents Fisher and Goldstein.

‘I thought,’ Beauclaire was saying, ‘it would save time to have us all meet together and put all the cards on the table. My daughter’s life is more important than politics and secrets.’ It was, from a fae, a shocking move. Anna hadn’t had much to do with fae, but even she knew that they never gave a shred of information to anyone if they could help it.

Beauclaire looked at Charles; he had to look up.

‘I know who you are,’ the fae told Charles. ‘You just might have a chance of finding her, but not if we’re all tripping over the secrets we cannot tell.’ He glanced over to pull the FBI agents into the conversation. ‘If you withhold something that would have allowed us to find Elizabeth one minute sooner, you will regret it. We will talk this morning about things that outsiders do not know – trusting you to use this to stop the killer.’

Leslie’s eyes tightened at the threat, but Goldstein absorbed it without a reaction, not even an increase in heartbeat: he just looked tired and more frail than the last time Anna had seen him.

‘I assure you,’ Goldstein told Beauclaire, ‘that it is our mission to see that your daughter is found quickly. If we didn’t agree with you, we wouldn’t be here. No matter what favors you called in.’

Anna wondered how the FBI or Beauclaire had figured out where she and Charles were staying. The condo belonged to a small company that was wholly owned by a larger company, and so on ad infinitum. The whole thing was owned in turn by Aspen Creek, Inc., which was the Marrok.

Appearing unannounced was a power move, saying You can’t hide from us. It seemed a little too aggressive for the FBI: she and Charles weren’t suspects. Anna thought it was more likely that Beauclaire was responsible for the early-morning visit, looking to establish dominance with his unannounced invasion of their territory – claiming the point position on the hunt for his daughter. She could see what he was trying to do, but it wouldn’t work on Charles, though it might make her mate more dangerous if he decided to take offense. Charles’s public face was too good for her to read right now, which told her that he was feeling a whole lot of things he didn’t want her to know about.

He’d closed their bond to protect her.

Anna tried to get mad about it, so she wouldn’t have to be worried or hurt, but he was a dominant wolf and part of being dominant was taking care of what was his. His wife, his mate, headed that list. So Charles would protect her from whatever he thought would attack her through their connection.

But he had forgotten something along the way. He was hers. Hers. He was hurting himself to protect her and she was going to put a stop to it – but not now. Not in public. A good hunter is patient.

Charles glanced at Anna, and she narrowed her eyes to tell him that the anger he sensed from her was aimed at him. He raised an eyebrow and she raised her chin.

Redirecting his attention to the intruders, Charles soundlessly gestured everyone to the big sectional sofa in front of the TV. He pulled a hardwood chair away from the dining table for himself and set it to face them over the coffee table.

The FBI agents perched on the edge of the sofa. Goldstein appeared more tired than interested, but Leslie Fisher watched Charles intently, not looking him in the eyes, not challenging him, just cataloging. Such intent interest would have put Anna on edge except there was no heat in Leslie’s gaze. It was more of an ‘observing the subject in his native habitat’ than a ‘he’s really hot’ kind of thing.

Beauclaire, for his part, sank back in the soft material of the couch as if the thought that it would impede him should he have to move quickly had never occurred to him. I’m not afraid of anyone here, his body posture said. Charles’ s – relaxed, arms folded loosely, chin slightly tilted – said, You’re boring me; either fight and die – or back off.

Anna grabbed another of the hardwood chairs and parked it next to Charles, then sat down. ‘All right,’ she said, to break the testosterone fest before it could really get going. ‘Who goes first?’

Charles looked at Beauclaire. ‘Do the fae know that there’s been someone hunting them since the eighties?’

‘We are here to share information,’ Beauclaire said, spreading his hand magnanimously. ‘I am happy to begin. Yes, of course we knew. But he’s only been hunting the nobodies, the half-bloods, the solitary fae. No one with family to protect them. No one of real power.’ His voice was cool.

‘No one worth putting themselves at risk for,’ said Charles.

Beauclaire gave Charles a polite look that was as clear as any adolescent raising his middle finger. ‘We are not pack. We are not all good friends. Mostly we are polite enemies. When a fae dies, if it is not one of power – who are valuable to us, just because there are so few left – if it is not someone who has family or allies with power, mostly other fae look upon that death with a sigh of relief. First, it was not they who died. Second, it didn’t cause anyone else harm, and that fae is no longer free to make alliances with someone who might be an enemy.’ His voice deepened just a little on the last sentence.

‘It bothers you,’ said Leslie.

Anna liked competent people. Not many humans were as good at reading others as the wolves were. Leslie was very good to be able to read Beauclaire so well.

Beauclaire looked at the agent, started to say something, hesitated, then said, ‘Yes, Agent Fisher, it bothers me that a killer was allowed to continue picking off those he chose for nearly half a century. Had I known of it, I would have done something – which was probably why I was not informed. A mistake I have taken steps to correct. What should have been is, in this case, superseded by what is: a killer who tortures his victims before he kills them has my daughter.’

‘Do you know who or what we are hunting, Mr Beauclaire?’ asked Goldstein. ‘Is it a fae?’

‘Yes. I know what kind of fae could get into a building without leaving a scent trail that a werewolf could follow, and could hide so that people who walked past him could not discern that he was there.’

‘It is unusual,’ said Anna. ‘Most glamour doesn’t work on scent.’

‘You can’t hide what you don’t perceive,’ agreed Beauclaire. ‘Most of the fae who could follow a scent as well as a werewolf were beast-minded – like the giant in “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Those fae couldn’t hide themselves from the cold-iron-carrying Christians who drove us from our homes – so they perished, most of them. But there are a few left who would be capable of perceiving and hiding their scents. Among those who have these abilities, the only one who would also be strong enough to carry my daughter out of her home in a satchel and be mistaken for someone carrying laundry is a horned lord.’

Goldstein narrowed his eyes. ‘The old term for a man who was cuckolded? That’s not what you mean.’

‘Horned,’ said Charles. ‘You mean antlered.’

Beauclaire nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Herne the Hunter,’ suggested Charles.

‘Like Herne,’ agreed Beauclaire. ‘There were never many of them, less than a handful that I’m aware of. The last one on this side of the Atlantic was killed in 1981, hit by a car in Vermont. The driver thought he killed a very large deer, but the accident was witnessed by one of us who could see the fae inside the deer’s skin. When no one was looking, we stole the body away.’

‘You think there is another one?’ Leslie asked.

The fae nodded. ‘That is what the evidence suggests.’

‘If the killer is fae, then why didn’t he start hunting fae victims before the fae came out?’ Anna asked.

That the UNSUB was fae would explain why he was still active after so many years, why he could take down a werewolf without anyone noticing. But it didn’t explain why he began targeting fae only after they admitted their existence.

‘I am not the killer to know his motivations, Ms Smith,’ said Beauclaire. He bit off the ‘Smith’ to show that he knew what their last name really was – still jockeying for top dog in the room. ‘Coincidences do happen.’

‘Call me Anna,’ she told him in a friendly voice. ‘Most people do.’

He stared at her a moment. Charles growled and the fae jerked his eyes off of hers, then frowned in irritation at losing the upper hand. But Anna could feel the whole atmosphere of the living room lighten up as the fight for dominance was lost and won.

Beauclaire gave a bow of his head to Charles, then smiled at Anna, and she thought that she’d never seen such a sad expression in her life. In that look she understood what he was doing and why – he thought his daughter was lost, she saw. He hadn’t, not when they were at his daughter’s apartment, but something – maybe that the killer was fae – had changed his mind. He was hunting her killer now, not trying to save his daughter. Perhaps that was why he’d given in to Charles so easily.

‘Coincidence,’ Beauclaire admitted, ‘is highly overrated. I have an alternative explanation about how a fae could not know what he was until he knew that there were such things as fae.’

He glanced around the room, but Anna couldn’t tell what he was looking for.

‘In the height of the Victorian era,’ Beauclaire said finally, in a quiet, calm voice that belied what her nose told her, ‘when iron horses crossed and crisscrossed Europe, several things became obvious. There was no longer a place for the fae in the old world – and we were too few. From 1908 until just a few years ago, it was the policy of the Gray Lords, those who rule the fae, to find fae of scarce but useful types and force them to marry and interbreed with humans since humans breed so much more rapidly than we do.’

Anna knew about that, but she hadn’t realized how long it had gone on. From Leslie’s face, Anna was pretty sure that the FBI agent hadn’t known about the crossbreeding policy. That was interesting, because her face hadn’t changed at all when Beauclaire had mentioned the Gray Lords, who were also a deep secret.

Goldstein might have been listening to the weather report for all the change in his face. There was no telling what he knew or didn’t know about the fae.

‘It was believed,’ continued Beauclaire, ‘that humans were of weaker bloodlines and the fae blood would prevail – and humans breed so very easily, even with the fae for a partner.’ He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. ‘The wisdom of these forced interbreedings is now being re-examined. Half-blood fae face many challenges. They, for the most part, are not accepted by the other fae. And too many of them exhibit … odd properties – birth defects are very high. Once fathered or mothered, a high percentage of the halflings were abandoned by their fae parent altogether, which left them to discover who and what they were on their own – to sometimes disastrous results. And a large number of the children have turned out to be entirely human.’

Charles sat back. ‘Like your daughter?’ he said in a soft voice.

‘Like my daughter. The only thing she gets from me is my mother’s love of dance – and she has to train hours every day to do what my mother did effortlessly.’ Beauclaire looked down, then back at Charles. ‘You are old, but not so old as your father. Maybe you can understand why I fought this dictate as hard as anything I’ve ever fought against. To deceive a human woman for the purpose of fathering a child upon her … it is dishonorable. Yes. And yet it gave me someone I care deeply about.’

He drew in a breath and then looked Charles in the eye. It was not a challenge, more a way of showing how serious he was. ‘It is not wise,’ Beauclaire said, his voice clipped, and somewhere in the vowels Anna heard an accent not too far from Bran’s when he was angered. ‘It is not wise to give something old and powerful something they care about. And I am very old.’ He looked at the FBI agents. ‘Even, possibly, older than your father. We haven’t compared notes.’

Leslie reacted to the idea that a werewolf could be older than an old fae – an immortal old fae. Goldstein just looked more tired, and maybe that was a reaction, too.

‘Don’t get the wrong idea,’ Anna told them. ‘The average life expectancy for someone from the time they are Changed and become a werewolf is about ten years.’

‘Eight,’ said Charles, sounding as weary as Goldstein looked. Anna knew her data had been correct last year. She reached out and touched his thigh, but he didn’t look at her. Charles wasn’t, she thought, totally involved with the proceedings. He kept glancing over the couch to the wall of windows beyond. She frowned, noting how, with the sky still dark outside, the window reflected the room back at them. He was seeing something in the reflection.

‘Four out of ten of our halfling children survive to adulthood,’ Beauclaire was saying. ‘They are a favorite prey of other fae if they are not protected. My daughter is twenty-three in two weeks.’

Anna glanced at Charles. He didn’t appear to be listening, and whatever he was seeing in the window-mirrors was making him more and more remote.

‘What kind of dancer is your daughter?’ Anna asked suddenly. ‘I saw ballet shoes, but also ballroom costumes.’ She hadn’t, not really, but Brother Wolf had and had kept her informed.

‘Ballet,’ Lizzie’s father said. ‘Ballet and modern. One of her friends is into ballroom dancing and she partnered with him for a while a couple of years back. Ballroom is for fun and ballet for serious, she told me.’ Beauclaire smiled at Anna. ‘When she was six, she dressed for Halloween as a fairy princess complete with wings. She was dancing around the room and I asked her why she wasn’t flying. She stopped and told me quite earnestly that her wings were make-believe. That dancing was the closest she could do to flying. And she loved to fly.’

It wasn’t enough. Charles was still preoccupied.

Anna touched Charles’s face and waited until he turned from the window. ‘Lizzie Beauclaire is not quite twenty-three. She loves to dance. And she’s all alone with a monster who will torture and kill her if we don’t find her soon. You are her best hope.’ She didn’t add, ‘So suck it up and pay attention,’ but she trusted that he heard it in her voice.

Charles tilted his head, though his face was quiet. At least he wasn’t looking in the windows anymore.

‘Remember that,’ Anna told him fiercely as she dropped her hand. ‘You can’t change the past, but this we can do. Beauclaire answered first; it’s our turn. What do we know that would help the hunt?’

She met Charles’s gaze and held it until he shifted his weight forward and gave a brief nod.

‘The bodies that the police have been finding are cut up.’ Charles turned to the FBI agents. ‘I smelled black magic – blood magic – on the man who took Lizzie Beauclaire. That makes me think witches, and that those cuts on the victims might be significant. The fae have no use for blood magic.’

‘It doesn’t work for us,’ said Beauclaire, but his voice was absentminded. He was watching Charles. Not looking him in the eye, not quite.

Goldstein said, ‘I have more details on that.’ He opened up his briefcase and handed Charles a thick file of photographs. ‘Most of the victims have shapes carved into their skin – we’ve been looking at the witchcraft or voodoo angle for the past ten years. But the witches willing to talk to us only say that it’s not anything they know. Not voodoo or hoodoo. It’s not runes. It’s not hieroglyphs, nor any other symbolic language used by witches.’

Charles opened up the folder and then spread the photos out on the coffee table. These were mostly blowups or close-ups, some in black and white, some in color. Names, dates, and numbers were written in white marking pen on the upper left corner. The photos documented symbols, ragged and dark around the edges. Some of the markings were ripped down the middle by angry slashes; others were distorted by degradation of the flesh they had been carved in.

‘They lied to you,’ said Charles, bending over to get a closer look at one.

‘Who?’

‘The witches,’ said Beauclaire. He pulled one out of the mix, then set it back down quickly. He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again they were hot with … rage or terror; Anna’s nose wasn’t sure which.

‘The symbols witches use,’ Beauclaire told Goldstein in polite, formal tones, ‘follow family lines, for the most part. I can’t, but the witches should have been able to tell you what family line these came from. There’s something wrong with the way they’re placed or the shape … In a very long life, I have seen many things. I do not perform blood magic, but I’ve seen it often enough.’

Charles turned one of the photos to view it from a different angle and frowned. He took his phone out of his pocket and took a close-up of one of the photos. He hit a few more buttons and put the phone to his ear.

‘Charles,’ said Bran.

‘Ears might hear,’ warned Charles, telling his father that there was someone else in the room who could overhear their phone call. ‘I sent you a photo. Looks like witchcraft to me. What do you think?’

‘I’ll call you back,’ Bran said and hung up.

Goldstein rubbed his face tiredly. ‘We’re supposed to be holding these back from the public,’ he said. ‘Can I ask that the photo won’t hit the Internet or the news services?’

‘You’re safe,’ Anna reassured him. ‘We’re calling in an expert opinion.’

The phone rang before anyone could say anything. Charles put it on speaker as he answered it.

‘Everyone can hear you now,’ he said.

There was a little pause before Bran spoke. ‘You need to get a witch to look at that. It appears to be something from the Irish clans to me, but it doesn’t look quite right. Some of those symbols are nonsense and a few others are drawn wrong. It would be best if the witch could see the real thing, not just the photos. There’s more to a spell than only the visual can tell you.’

‘Thanks,’ Charles said, hanging up without ceremony. ‘So, anyone know a local witch we can talk to?’

‘I know a witch,’ said Leslie. ‘But she’s in Florida.’

Charles shook his head. ‘If we’re going to bring someone up, I know a reliable one or two. Do you know any in Boston?’ He looked at Beauclaire, who shook his head.

‘I know of none who would help.’

‘If we find someone,’ Anna said, ‘could we get her in to see one of the bodies?’

‘We can arrange it,’ said Leslie.

‘All right, then, let’s call the local Alpha and see if he has a witch who will cooperate with us.’

Charles dialed and then gave Anna his phone. ‘He likes you better. You ask him.’

‘He’s scared of me,’ Anna said, feeling a little smug.

‘This is Owens.’

‘Isaac, this is Anna,’ she said. ‘We need a witch.’

The FBI agents left to arrange a viewing for the witch, who wouldn’t be available until ten in the morning. Beauclaire told them he was going to see if he could find anyone who might know if the horned lord who died in 1981 had left any half-blood children behind.

Anna waited until Charles had closed the door. ‘What do you see in the mirror?’ she asked him.

He closed his eyes and did not turn to look at her.

‘Charles?’

‘There are things,’ he said slowly, ‘that are made better by talking them out. There are things that are given more power when you speak of them. These are of the second variety.’

She thought about that for a moment and then went to him. The muscles of his back were tight when she touched them with her fingertips.

‘It doesn’t appear,’ she said slowly, ‘that being silent about whatever it is has helped, either.’ What kinds of things did he not like to talk about? Evil, she remembered. ‘Is it like a Harry Potter thing?’

He turned his head then. ‘A what?’

‘A Harry Potter thing,’ she said again. ‘You know, don’t say Voldemort’s name because you might attract his attention?’

He considered it. ‘You mean the children’s book.’

‘I have got to get you to watch more movies,’ she said. ‘You’d enjoy these. Yes, I mean the children’s book.’

He shook his head. ‘Not quite. Noticing some things make them more real. They are already real to me. If you notice them, they might become real to you as well, and that would not be good.’

Suddenly she knew. Charles had told her once that he didn’t speak his mother’s name for fear that it would tie her to this world and not let her go on to the next. Ghosts, he’d told her, need to be mourned and then released. If you keep them with you, they become unhappy and tainted.

‘Ghosts,’ she said, and he drew in a sharp breath and stepped away from her, closer to the window.

‘Don’t,’ he said sharply. She’d have snapped back at him if she hadn’t remembered that when he’d closed down their bond he’d been worried about her.

‘All right,’ she said slowly. ‘You feel better than before we came here, though. Right?’ If he was getting better, he was dealing with it.

He had to think about that one before he answered her. ‘Yes. Not good, but better.’

She wrapped her arms around his waist from behind and breathed him in. ‘I’ll leave it alone if you promise me one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘If it starts getting worse again, you’ll tell me – and you’ll tell Bran.’

‘I can do that.’

‘All right.’ She brushed off the back of his shirt, as if there were some lint or something on it and not as though her hands were hungry for the warmth of his skin. ‘Sleep or breakfast?’ she asked briskly. ‘We have two hours before the FBI picks us up and takes us to the morgue.’

The small, sheet-covered body on the table smelled of rotting flesh, salt, and fish. None of which managed to quite cover up the lingering scent of terror. From the size of the corpse, Anna thought he might have been seven or eight.

Anna had been Changed by rape both physical and metaphorical. She had served three years in a pack led by a madwoman, during which time death had become something to look forward to, an end to pain. Charles had changed all of that – and Anna appreciated the irony that the Marrok’s Wolfkiller, arguably the most feared werewolf in the world, had made her safe and made her want to live.

Irony aside, Anna knew death. The morgue smelled of it, as well as a healthy dose of antiseptic, latex gloves, and body fluids. When they had entered the small viewing room, the scent of a little boy added itself to the mix, a boy who rightfully should be out playing with his friends and instead bore the unmistakable signs of autopsy.

Beside her, Brother Wolf growled, the sound low enough that she didn’t think any of the humans heard it. He’d come as wolf – again. Anna dug her fingers through the fur of his neck and swallowed hard, trying to focus on something besides the little body on the table. Even worry about her mate was better than a dead child.

Charles promised that he’d let her know if it got worse – but he hadn’t reopened the bond between them, not even wide enough that he could talk to her while he was in wolf shape.

‘His family were supposed to pick him up today,’ said the man who’d let them in. He was dressed in scrubs that were clean and fresh – either he was just beginning his day, or he’d changed for them. ‘When I explained to them that a werewolf had offered to look for clues we couldn’t find, it was not difficult to persuade them to leave him here until tomorrow.’

‘You didn’t tell his parents they were bringing me, too?’ said the witch, who looked like she’d come right out of a 1970s sitcom – middle-aged, a little dumpy, a little rumpled, hair an improbable shade of red, and wearing clothes that didn’t quite fit. ‘The werewolf is incidental and, I might add, begged the witch to come – and you didn’t think to mention me?’ The death threat in her voice did a fair job of removing any sense of comedy, though Anna couldn’t help but think of Sleeping Beauty and the evil fairy who was offended because she wasn’t invited.

Anna didn’t like witches on the whole. They smelled of other people’s pain and they liked causing problems. But even if this one hadn’t been a witch, she doubted she’d have liked her.

Dr Fuller – Anna had missed Leslie’s introduction of their contact at the morgue while absorbing the smells of the place, but he wore a name tag – frowned. ‘He comes from a staunch Baptist family. Werewolves were a big stretch for them already. I didn’t think they’d have taken to the idea of a witch at all well.’

The witch smiled. ‘Probably not,’ she agreed cheerfully, just as if she hadn’t taken offense a moment before.

Isaac had warned Anna that his witch of choice was a little unstable. He’d also told her that the witch wasn’t all that powerful, so the harm she could do was minimal. He had another witch who worked upon occasion for his pack, but that one was secretive and a lot more dangerous. The witch here now, Caitlin (last name withheld), would tell them everything she found out, just to prove how much she knew. The other would keep it to herself for later use or just for her own amusement, which wouldn’t do Lizzie any good at all.

‘Tell them we appreciate their cooperation,’ said Heuter, the younger Cantrip agent, who had shown up as they were waiting for the witch in front of the building where the county morgue resided. He’d claimed that someone told him that they were going to visit the body, but from Leslie’s attitude (polite but distant) it hadn’t been her.

Goldstein had been called away to discuss the case with someone in the Boston Police Department, so Heuter’s addition made them five. Had there been any more of them, they’d have had to leave the door to the small room open.

Dr Fuller pulled back the sheet. ‘Jacob Mott, age eight. Water in his lungs tells us that he drowned. Joggers found him washed up on Castle Island early in the morning. His parents tell us that he did not have pierced ears, so the killer must have pierced both – though only the left ear was tagged. The tag is in evidence.’

Anna let the words run in one ear and out the other. They were unimportant next to the small body laid out before them. Besides, Charles would remember every word – and she didn’t want to.

Jacob had been in the water and the fishes had nibbled, though he wouldn’t have cared at that point. Compared to what had been done to this boy, the fish were only a footnote. Death had nothing much to teach Anna, but dying … dying could be so hard. Jacob’s dying had been very hard.

The witch reached out and touched the body with a lust Anna could smell even with her human nose.

‘Ooh,’ she crooned, and the doctor’s clinical recitation stumbled to a halt. ‘Didn’t you make someone a lovely meal, child?’ She put her face down on the boy’s chest, and Anna wanted to grab her and rip her off. Anna folded her arms across her chest instead. No use ticking the witch off before they got what they needed from her. Jacob was past caring what the witch did.

‘Someone’s been a naughty girl,’ the witch said to herself as her fingers traced a series of symbols incised into the boy’s thigh. She pulled her face away and began humming ‘It’s a Small World’ as her fingers continued to trace the marks on the body. ‘There’s surely more on the back,’ she said, looking at the doctor.

Mutely he nodded, and she picked up the body and rolled Jacob on his face. She was strong, for all that she looked lumpy and dumpy, because she didn’t have to struggle particularly. Dead bodies were, mostly, harder to move than live ones.

More on the back, the witch had said, and there were. More symbols and more marks of abuse. Anna swallowed hard.

‘Before death,’ said the witch happily. ‘All of it was done before death. Someone harvested your pain and your ending, didn’t they, little one? But they were sloppy, sloppy with it. Not professional, not at all.’ Her hands caressed the dead boy. ‘I recognize this. Bad Sally Reilly. She wasn’t a very talented witch, was she? But she wrote a book and went on TV and wrote more books and became famous. Pretty, pretty Sally sold her services and then – poof, she went. Just like a witch who was bad and broke all the rules should.’

‘Sally Reilly carved these symbols?’ asked Agent Fisher, her voice only a little sharp.

‘Sally Reilly is dead. Twenty years or more dead, because she gave mundane people a way to do this.’ Caitlin bent down and licked the dead boy’s skin, and Heuter drew in a harsh breath. ‘But they did it wrong and they didn’t get it all, did they? They left all this lovely magic behind instead of eating it.’

‘Precious,’ murmured Anna.

The witch tilted her head. ‘What did you say?’

‘You forgot the “my precious,” ’ Anna said dryly. ‘If you want to act like a freaking nutcase, you have to do it right.’

The witch lowered her eyelashes, flicked her hands at Anna, and said something that sounded almost like a sneeze. Brother Wolf bumped Anna aside, flexed a little as if he were absorbing a hit, and then hopped over the table, pushing the witch away from Jacob Mott’s body and onto the floor. Neat and precise as a cat, he did it without touching Jacob at all, though he knocked Heuter and the doctor back a few paces.

Anna ran around the table so she could see what was going on, and so she saw Brother Wolf bare his ivory fangs at the witch – who immediately quit struggling.

‘Charles has a grandmother who was a witch and a grandfather who was a shaman – on opposite sides of his lineage,’ Anna said calmly into the silence. ‘You’re outmatched. Now, why don’t you tell us everything you know about the markings?’

A low growl worked its way out of Brother Wolf’s chest and she added, ‘Before he thinks too hard about whatever it was you tried to do to me.’ Anna wasn’t sure if Brother Wolf was really playing along with her or if he truly wanted to kill the witch, but she’d use what she had. Though space was tight in the room, the other people present managed to crowd together with the table between them and Brother Wolf. It might have been the witch they were trying to get away from.

‘The symbols inscribed are meant to increase the power of whoever is named in the ceremony,’ the witch Caitlin said, her voice somewhat higher and tighter than it had been. Sweat dripped down her forehead and into her eyes and she blinked it away.

‘You know,’ Anna told her. ‘If you quit staring him in the eye, he won’t be so likely to eat you.’ The witch turned to stare at Anna instead, and Brother Wolf increased the span of teeth he was showing and the threatening noise he was making. ‘Probably.’

‘So the symbols will increase a witch’s power?’ Leslie asked unexpectedly.

‘Yes.’

Brother Wolf snapped his teeth just short of Caitlin’s nose and the witch shrieked, jumped, and struggled involuntarily before forcing herself limp.

‘Werewolves,’ Anna said blandly, ‘can smell lies and half-truths, witch. I’d be very careful of what you say next. Now, answer Agent Fisher’s question, please. Will the symbols increase a witch’s power?’

Caitlin swallowed, her breathing rapid. ‘Yes – anyone’s magic abilities. Fae, witch, sorcerer, wizard, mage. Anything. You can store it. For use later. To power a spell or some magic.’

‘What could you store it in?’ Anna asked.

‘Something dense. Metal or crystal. Most of us use something that can be worn or carried easily.’ She hesitated, looked at Brother Wolf’s big teeth, and said, ‘But that’s not what happened with this spell, specifically. This is designed to feed the magic of a fae.’

‘So this boy was marked by a witch,’ Heuter said.

Caitlin snorted despite her terror of Brother Wolf and answered Heuter as if he’d asked a question instead of making a statement. ‘She only wishes she were a witch.’

‘What do you mean?’ Leslie’s voice was cool, as if she questioned witches who were flat on their backs being threatened by werewolves every day.

‘Some of the symbols are done wrong, and a couple of them are complete nonsense.’ The witch’s voice was laced with contempt. ‘Sally’s been gone since the late eighties. Maybe someone copied them wrong. A real witch would have been able to feel that they were off, and could have fine-tuned them on the spot. So someone’s playing make-believe witch.’ Caitlin spoke as if the boy’s life were less than nothing, that the worst thing the person carving on Jacob Mott had done was to get the symbols wrong.

‘Tell us about Sally Reilly,’ Anna suggested. ‘If she’s dead, what does she have to do with this?’

The witch set her jaw. ‘We don’t talk to outsiders about her.’

Brother Wolf gave her a little more fang to look at.

She swallowed.

‘If it makes you feel better,’ Anna murmured, ‘we do know some witches who will tell us what we want to know.’

‘Fine,’ said Caitlin. ‘Sally Reilly figured out a way to let mundane people use our spells. If someone paid her enough, she’d teach them how to write the symbols. She’d give them a charm that, if they wore it while they worked the magic – usually only one specific spell – behaved for them as if they were a real witch. Like playing a tape recorder instead of a violin, she liked to say. It’s been a long time since she was killed, and mostly people have lost either the symbols or the charms that allowed them to use the spell. This one was done wrong. It might have been drawn that way on purpose, though Sally had the reputation for delivering what she said she would. Probably they thought they had it memorized.’

Caitlin smiled maliciously. ‘Spells don’t like the wrong people using them; they tend to fight back when they can. Maybe in a couple of decades it will be wrong enough that they’ll be cutting into someone and it will kill them all.’ Then she looked at Charles and stiffened. ‘I’m telling the truth,’ she said, sounding a little hysterical. ‘I’m telling the truth.’

Muscles flexed in Brother Wolf’s back and Anna thought it might be a good idea to get him off the witch before Caitlin really ticked him off – though part of her was happy to see that he was involved in the hunt again.

‘She’s cooperating, Charles,’ Anna told him. ‘Let’s let her up before you scare her to death.’

The werewolf snarled at Anna.

‘Really,’ she told him, tapping him on the nose. ‘It’s enough already. You aren’t a cat. No playing with something you aren’t going to eat.’ It wasn’t the words she hoped to persuade him with; it was the calming touch.

Brother Wolf stepped almost delicately off the witch and watched with yellow eyes as the woman scrambled untidily to her feet.

‘Better?’ Anna asked, and then, without waiting for her to respond, continued with another question. ‘How do you know it’s a she? The one who is trying to be a witch?’

Caitlin straightened her hair with shaky hands. ‘Witches strong enough to do this are women.’

‘You just said that whoever put these symbols on the boy wasn’t a witch.’

‘Did I?’

Brother Wolf growled.

‘I really wouldn’t push him much more,’ Anna advised. ‘He’s not very happy with you right now.’ Brother Wolf gave Anna an amused look and then went back to being scary.

The witch snorted archly. She reached out to touch Jacob’s body again and stopped when Brother Wolf took a step closer, his eyes on her hand. She pulled it back and answered Anna’s question. ‘Anyone could have drawn this and made it work. There’s no reason but habit to assume it was a woman. I suppose that the rape means it was probably a man, doesn’t it?’

‘And it did work, even though some of the symbols are wrong?’ It was Heuter who asked. Anna had been so focused on the witch and Brother Wolf that she had almost forgotten the others in the room.

‘I can feel that it did,’ Caitlin said. ‘Not as well as if the symbols had been inscribed correctly, but yes.’

‘Which symbols are wrong? How would you have done this better?’ Heuter’s voice was a little too eager.

Caitlin gave him a cool gaze. She did psycho suburban housewife about as well as Anna had ever seen it done. ‘I am not here to instruct the FBI in witchcraft.’

Leslie cleared her throat. ‘I’m Special Agent Fisher of the FBI. He’s Agent Heuter of Cantrip.’

‘Cantrip,’ Caitlin snorted contemptuously. She took a card out of her purse and handed it to him. ‘If you have questions, you can call me at this number. But I’m not Sally Reilly, Agent Heuter. I don’t intend to disappear, so I probably won’t help you at all. And I’ll charge you a lot for not doing so.’

Brother Wolf sneezed, but Anna wasn’t about to laugh because the witch was stepping toward the boy’s body again.

‘Is there anything else we should know about this?’ asked Anna.

Caitlin looked at the table. ‘The sex isn’t part of the ritual.’ She pursed her lips. ‘I don’t know if that’s useful.’

‘The killer keeps the victims alive for a while,’ Leslie said. ‘Seven days, usually. Sometimes a few more or less. Is that important?’

Caitlin frowned. ‘That’s probably why the magic functioned, even though he screwed up. He cut the symbols in and left them to work – like a Crock-Pot, you know? Can’t cook very fast at a low temperature, but give it enough time and it gets the job done.’ She huffed. ‘Maybe the sex is because he got bored waiting. If we’re done here, I’d like to go. I have an appointment in half an hour.’

Leslie handed her a card. ‘If you think of anything more, please call me.’

‘Sure,’ Caitlin said. Then she turned to Anna. ‘I’m going to tell Isaac what your wolf did to me.’ She smiled archly. ‘He’s not going to be pleased with you.’

‘Tell him I’ll buy him dinner at The Irish Wolfhound to make up for the offense,’ Anna suggested, holding the door open.

Caitlin looked disappointed at Anna’s lack of reaction. ‘He’s the Alpha of the Olde Towne Pack, and he owes me. You’ll be sorry.’

‘You’re going to be late for your appointment if you don’t hurry,’ Anna told her.

The witch scowled, turned on her heel, and marched out the door. Before she was out of sight, Dr Fuller had the boy’s body back flat on the table and covered protectively. ‘That …’ He sputtered a little, trying to keep his voice down.

‘There are reasons we don’t like witches much,’ Anna told him, when she was sure Caitlin was well out of earshot. ‘I know it’s upsetting. But Jacob’s killer has another victim right now. She’s probably alive. And something the witch told us might help us find Lizzie Beauclaire.’

She thinks the witches killed Sally Reilly.

Anna looked at Brother Wolf. Their mate bond was still as frozen as a Popsicle in Antarctica, but it was his voice in her head.

‘You think differently,’ she said.

Shaman’s eyes looked at her, Charles’s eyes, then he closed them and shook himself, as if trying to shake off water after a dip in a lake. I think that she gave a spell to a killer who didn’t want her to talk. The witches wouldn’t have been the only ones to want her dead.

‘Anna?’ asked Leslie. ‘What’s he saying to you?’

‘Nothing we can prove just yet,’ Anna told her. ‘Though it might be interesting to see if Sally Reilly disappeared in one of the years that all of the bodies weren’t found.’

‘We don’t know anything about Sally Reilly,’ Leslie reminded her. ‘Let alone that she disappeared.’

‘Witchcraft and fae in the same case,’ said Heuter, sounding fascinated and a little excited.

In the small examination room with a dead little boy on the table, Anna found his excitement distasteful.