Wild Sign

CHAPTER 7

Anna stopped at the other campground, the one with the showers. She was not going to face Dr. Connors while smelling of fear, exertion, and sweat.

Charles might be able to take care of that for himself by shifting back and forth, and Tag smelled of nothing more noxious than the evergreen he’d apparently spent the night under. But Anna felt the need for hot water to clean herself physically and metaphysically. Showers, she informed Charles, despite the fact that he wasn’t arguing with her, were not a luxury but a necessity.

The shower building at the lower campground bore a large sign that read Bathrooms are for registered campers only. Anna, pulling towels out of one of the general supply bags in the back of the SUV and handing them out, reflected that she used to be a rule follower. She would once have gone dirty rather than ignore that sign. Being a werewolf had been good for her in many ways—from a certain perspective, anyway.

No one gave them a second look. By chance, Anna had the women’s side of the showers all to herself. She could have stayed under the hot water for a week, feeling clean inside and out as the water drained away by her feet. She contented herself with briskly scrubbing her hair and feet and everything in between.

The men’s side of the showers was silent by the time she turned off the water. But she didn’t hurry just because Tag and Charles were doubtless both done and waiting for her. Dr. Connors had sounded formidable, and, in Anna’s experience, women judged others by their appearance.

Anna briefly considered going for very casual, sending a message of “I’m so sure of myself I don’t care what I look like.” But the events of the past two days had left her unsettled. She felt like she needed all the armament at her disposal—that meant foundation and lipstick, as well as the carry gun tucked in the small of her back.

She was pretty sure that she was breaking California law with her gun. But Wild Sign looked as though it had been a colony of white witches. Dr. Connors’s father had been one of the people living there. It did not mean that he himself was a witch, but it did mean that he consorted with them. If his daughter did the same, if she was a witch, there was no guarantee that she was a white witch.

Anna had had enough dealings with witches not to go in unarmed if she could help it—breaking the law or not. Especially since it would take a foolhardy officer of the law to try to arrest Charles Cornick’s mate. She tried to feel guilty about the knowledge that there was no chance Charles would let her suffer for breaking the law. Or, if not guilty, at least not quite so smug about it. But she didn’t quite succeed.

She tucked her deep green silk shirt into black slacks, and then donned the holster and gun. To cover the P365, she slipped on a sandy linen jacket she’d brought along for that purpose. The jacket didn’t look entirely out of place, though it would have been better if she’d brought brown slacks instead of the black. She was just glad that she’d gotten into the habit of packing nice clothes wherever they went. Charles’s being the son of the Marrok meant that they often found themselves in unexpected formal situations.

Metaphorical armor and literal weaponry in place, she looked at herself in the mirror. Her hair was still wet and fell in loose curls. She considered putting her hair up to complete the look. But she wasn’t going on a job interview, so she left it down. It would dry better that way.

Charles was wearing a long-sleeved ivory shirt she’d bought for him, the stretchy fabric clinging lightly to bone and sinew. He’d rebraided his hair and tied it off with a piece of leather the same color as the shirt. The jeans and worn black boots shouldn’t have looked right, but they did.

He frowned at her.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him, trying to get another look at herself. She hadn’t seen anything out of place in the mirror, but maybe she had a pant leg tucked into a sock or something.

“You covered up the freckles,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

She felt her face light up. If she ever got a chance to really time travel, she’d go back and tell her thirteen-year-old self to quit worrying that her freckles would drive away any chance she had to date. The scariest and sexiest man in the universe was going to pout when she concealed them with foundation.

She put her hands on his forearms and used that to lever herself up and him down so she could kiss him.

“Sorry,” she told Charles. “But I’m trying for a professional look today.”

She rubbed her lipstick off his mouth with her thumb.

“Even without freckles, she still outclasses us,” Tag said.

Anna had to laugh. She was . . . ordinary. Something that neither of the men she was with would ever be. She turned to say something smart-assed back but shut her mouth when she got a good look at Tag.

His bright hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. He’d lost the stubble on his face, which had a tendency to lengthen into a bedraggled beard before he did anything about it. He wore slacks and a casual jacket over a button-up shirt.

Other than the long hair—and the outrageous color—he would not have looked out of place working at a bank. Or at least he didn’t look as though he intended to rob one at gunpoint—which was an improvement. And then he produced a pair of mirrored sunglasses straight out of the costume design for a 1970s antiestablishment movie sheriff and put them on.

Anna got into the SUV and started it, thinking about those sunglasses. She looked over her shoulder at Tag and cleared her throat.

“Um, why the cool shades?” she asked.

Charles belted himself in and snorted. “Vanity,” he said.

“Hey,” complained Tag, shutting his door. “I resemble that remark.”

“Don’t you mean resent?” Anna asked, pulling out of the campground.

Tag smiled and she got the full effect of all his white teeth—almost the only thing she could see of his features between the facial hair and the sunglasses. “Not at all,” he told her.

“The shades come off before you leave this car,” she warned.

Tag’s smile got sharper. “Of course.”

“If you laugh,” said Charles, “you only encourage him.”

And that made her laugh.

She found it interesting that she wasn’t the only one who had dressed up to face Dr. Connors—outside of Tag’s sunglasses. She knew why she had. She suspected that the men had done the exact same thing—for exactly the opposite reason: to look less dangerous. Or at least more civilized.

Happy Camp, California, was a very small town—about the size of Aspen Creek, though Anna was pretty sure that it had been bigger at one time.

Tag frowned, looking at a cleared area beside the highway. “Used to be a damn big lumber mill over there,” he said, sounding a little disconcerted.

“Things change,” said Charles. “When I was last here, there wasn’t a real town at all. More a series of small encampments while people sluiced and dug and mined for gold.” He turned his head to Tag. “Towns have life cycles, just like people do. They just take longer. It’s not any easier when they grow than when they shrink. Just talk to Asil about why he left Spain.”

Tag seemed to shrug off the odd mood. “Not on your life,” he said. “He and I deal better when we stick to events of the present time. We were on opposite sides of too many wars to discuss the past. Here’s a gas station, Anna. Might as well fuel the pig up.”

He was right; the SUV got better mileage than she’d expected, but it wasn’t a hybrid. The man working the gas station was a Native American somewhere in his fifties. He gave Charles a narrow-eyed look.

“Salish,” said Charles.

The clerk smiled. “Fishermen,” he said in satisfaction. “Karuk.”

“Fishermen,” agreed Charles gravely. “We drove down from Montana to do a little hiking. I’m Charles.”

“Rob,” offered the clerk.

They shook hands. Rob rang up their purchases—mostly water and Tag’s junk food.

“Lots of hiking around here,” he said. “Careful of fires. We’ve got one going about twenty miles away—started this morning. If you stay south or east of town, you should be okay.”

“Appreciate it,” Charles said gravely.

“Watch out for Sasquatch,” said Rob, tapping the side of his nose.

“I always do,” Charles agreed. “But I’m more concerned with the Singer in the Woods.”

Rob’s eyebrows went up. “That old story? Stay on the trails and you should be all right.”

“I’ve heard that some people built a town up thataway,” Anna said, unfurling her power a bit. Being Omega didn’t have as much of an effect on normal people as it did on the werewolves. But it did seem to lower hostility. She didn’t clarify where “thataway” was.

She hadn’t needed to. Rob gave her a warm smile and shook his head.

“I heard that, too,” he said confidentially. “One born every minute, isn’t there? I heard that something happened to them, they disappeared like that Virginia colony of Roanoke. Smart people don’t travel that way. My grandfather, he took me up near that place one time. Showed me a drawing someone had made on a rock—told me that if I saw that symbol, I should take it as a warning, like when you come upon a tree that a grizzly has marked. Something we didn’t want to meet has that territory claimed.”

“What did it look like?” Charles asked.

“Like an upside-down capital V with lines hashed over both sides. I heard that the place where those people put their camp had those marks all over it. Lots of beautiful country around here, beautiful river, good places. Don’t know why people have to go poking hornet’s nests.”

He paused a second, then frowned at Charles with sudden suspicion. “If you folks intend to go hunting for Wild Sign, you’d better have good weapons.”

Charles smiled. “Thank you for the warning.”

Rob shook his head, but he had a smile on his face. “Young people always think they know best.”

“It’s a hazard,” agreed Charles.

THEY CALLED DR. Connors from the gas station. She gave them directions to the cabin where she was staying at an RV park in town.

“The RV park has a cabin,” said Anna cautiously.

“Don’t they all,” agreed Tag with a grin.

“Place like this,” said Charles, “you get creative about making a living—or you move on.”

The town showed signs of struggling, for sure, Anna thought. But it was set down in the heart of the mountains—she could see why people would fight to stay in a place like this.

Tag said solemnly, “You can feed your wallet, or you can feed your soul, but you seldom can do both at the same time.” He took in a deep breath out his open window.

They turned, as Dr. Connors had directed, in front of the Bigfoot statue.

“Do you reckon they got the size just right?” asked Tag, looking up at the scrap-metal giant. “I admit the only time I saw them in their real shape, they looked at least that big to me. But I expect that was more terror than reality.”

“Most men overestimate size,” said Anna, deadpan.

Tag sighed dramatically. “I disappointed her in that department, that’s for sure. She expected someone taller.” He gave Anna a wicked grin from the backseat.

They pulled into the RV campground and drove around until they found the cabin Dr. Connors had described to them, parking next to an aging but immaculate Volvo station wagon.

As they got out of the car, a woman opened the door of the small cabin and stood on the porch, watching them. She was a little taller than average. Her skin was tanned dark and her shoulder-length brown hair was sun-faded and caught back in an indifferent ponytail. She wore cutoffs that actually looked like they had begun life as jeans, rather than having been bought that way, and a gray tank top that showed just how lean and muscled she was. Her bare arms sported a few scars, mostly thin stripes.

If Anna had to pick out a word for her, it would have been “tough.” She remembered ruefully that she’d thought about going in jeans and a T-shirt instead of dressing for a boardroom. This woman evidently had had the same thought and made the other choice—or possibly not worried about it at all.

“Hello,” she said as they approached. “I’m Dr. Connors. You must be Anna Cornick.”

Anna nodded. “This is my husband, Charles. And our—” She hesitated too long and gave Tag time to chime in.

“Henchman,” he said with a grin that widened as Anna frowned at him. At least the sunglasses were nowhere in sight.

She shrugged. “Henchman, Colin Taggart.”

“Call me Tag,” he told Dr. Connors, who did not appear to be charmed.

Well, thought Anna, at least she didn’t run screaming. People who met Tag tended to one reaction or the other.

“We would like to talk to you about Wild Sign,” Anna said.

“There’s a picnic table around the back.” Dr. Connors didn’t give much away with her body posture. Nothing other than hostility. Anna couldn’t decide if the hostility was a normal thing for Dr. Connors or if she was still mad about their opening her father’s letters.

They followed her around the little cabin. Anna took the opportunity of pointing a finger at Tag and shaking her head. His grin didn’t make her optimistic that he’d behave anytime soon.

The picnic table was right next to the back of the cabin, on the edge of a grassy expanse that stretched down between the various RV sites to create a park where guests could cook, sunbathe, walk their dogs, or anything else they’d like to do. Currently, they were the only occupants who weren’t squirrels or birds.

Dr. Connors was staring at the picnic table she’d promised with an unhappy frown. Anna got it. Picnic tables were fine for eating with friends—but they were a little close quarters for strangers. Anna didn’t think Charles or Tag would willingly sit at them the way they were intended anyway, because the table would get in the way of their rising to their feet in case of an attack.

Charles walked to the far side of the table and picked up the bench, carrying it around and placing it opposite the other bench with considerably more distance between them than the mere table had offered. He then made a soundless gesture that invited Dr. Connors to pick her bench.

She took the one nearest the table, Anna and Charles sat on the other—and Tag sprawled out on the grass, as a henchman, presumably, would.

Anna dug into her purse and brought out the letters. Charles had taken photos of them, so they had electronic copies. She handed all of the originals and their envelopes to Dr. Connors. Anna had to half stand to stretch across the distance. Dr. Connors took the letters carefully and set them beside her on the bench, tucking them under one leg to hold them against any chance wind. She made no move to look at them.

If Anna had been easily intimidated by awkward atmospheres, she would have been totally tongue-tied by now. But she’d been playing her cello solo since elementary school, and she’d performed before tougher audiences than a grumpy, antisocial white witch who, according to the FBI report on her, spent most of her time in the jungles of South America. The FBI hadn’t known about the white witch part, of course.

Anna hadn’t caught the scent herself, but Brother Wolf had whispered White witch as soon as the wind blew past them as they had been walking around the cabin.

“We”—Anna gestured at herself, her husband, and Tag, who was playing with a strand of grass—“are werewolves.” Which was something she wouldn’t have told Dr. Connors without Brother Wolf’s information.

The only reason Anna knew she’d scared Dr. Connors was the change in her scent. Anna decided to let Dr. Connors believe she’d kept her reaction to herself. So Anna didn’t offer reassurances.

“Around two hundred years ago,” she said, “one of our kind encountered a being in the mountains northeast of here. He thought it had been killed, but he acquired the land, just in case. Ownership has remained with our pack. And the thing—we have heard it referred to as the Singer in the Woods—was inactive so far as we knew from that time until this. A few days ago, the FBI landed on our doorstep to tell us that there had been an entire town built on our land. Some damn fools apparently decided that a parcel of land in the mountains that was neither federal land nor tribal was a wonderful place to build an off-grid town. They were, as far as we could tell, mostly white witches like you.”

She let the words hit Dr. Connors and then said gently, “And those foolish witches woke it up.”

“I don’t know about all of that,” said Dr. Connors, sounding suddenly weary. “I am out of the country for months at a time, Ms. Cornick. The last trip should have been two months and turned into ten for—” She shook her head. “For reasons that have no bearing on today. By the time I got back, my father had been out of contact for months. That’s not like him. Nor is writing to me every day for the better part of a week. He writes a letter to me every week on Wednesday. My mother, his ex-wife, gets a letter once a month. My little brother gets a letter written on each Thursday.”

She raised her chin and stared straight ahead, swallowed visibly, and said, “Got. We all got letters.”

“In code,” said Anna neutrally.

“In code,” Dr. Connors agreed.

“We are here to take care of whatever is up in those mountains,” Anna told her. “But it would really help if we knew what happened in Wild Sign. We don’t know what we are dealing with. My mother-in-law—who was here two centuries ago—only remembers bits and pieces. Those letters are possibly our only eyewitness accounts to a threat we need to neutralize.”

“I don’t know anything about a Singer,” Dr. Connors said. “I sometimes stayed with my dad for a few weeks, but I had never been to Wild Sign until I hiked in looking for him and found the place deserted.”

“At this point,” said Charles, “we don’t know that all of those people are dead or if they are just missing.”

It was apparent in his voice that he didn’t think they were missing. Anna caught Dr. Connors’s flinch.

Charles caught it, too, and his tone was gentler as he said, “We need to find out what happened to them. So far, your father’s letters look like they might be the best clue we have, but anything you know about Wild Sign could be useful.”

Dr. Connors’s jaw firmed.

Anna said, “We can do things that the sheriff’s department cannot. We have the money and the personnel to throw at this investigation. Your best chance to find out what happened to your father is to help us.”

Dr. Connors looked down at the letters, as if reorienting herself. “They are in code because his family has been hunting him since he ran away at sixteen. Off and on.” She looked at Charles. “Connors is not the name he was born with. His family is one of the families. I won’t tell you which one. If it was black witches who found them up there, I imagine you’ll figure it out. If it wasn’t, I won’t speak their name where anything might hear me.”

Her voice shook a little. Charles nodded, eyes a little narrow. Anna wondered if he could make a guess.

“It doesn’t matter which one it was,” he said.

Dr. Connors cleared her throat and continued her story. “From the time he was eighteen until he was thirty-two, they seemed to forget about him. He got his PhD in applied mathematics and went to work in the aerospace industry. Got married. Had me and my brother. Enjoyed a normal life until my aunt Diana, his sister, showed up in the middle of a lunch. I was five and my brother was two. We were having a picnic in the backyard. My mom ran and my dad tried to keep us safe from his sister. She did something that had him on the ground, and then she pulled a knife and started cutting him—as if we weren’t there.”

Her mouth was tight and the edges of her lips were white. “My mother was a police officer. She came back with her service weapon and shot Diana in the head. She kept my dad alive until the EMTs got there. He still has the scars.” She stopped and swallowed. “Had the scars the last time I saw him. The shooting was ruled self-defense. But my dad left us that afternoon—left the hospital, left his job, left his life. And he never got it back.”

She looked at Anna. “You know about witches. I found out later that he could have gone gray and stayed with us. But my dad . . . he was a gentle soul. He made my mom divorce him. Came to visit sometimes for a day or two when he felt it was safe. When we all figured out I was witchborn, too, he collected me for a whole year when I was about twelve or so. I don’t have a lot of power. He taught me to hide it.” She gave the three of them a sour look that didn’t quite mask the fear in her eyes. “Apparently it doesn’t work.”

She’d be safe from witches, said Brother Wolf. Witches can’t smell a rabbit at five inches. She doesn’t feel like a witch, she just smells like one.

Anna was happy to repeat Brother Wolf’s assessment. “As long as they don’t have a pet werewolf, you’re still safe from witches. Witches don’t identify each other by scent.”

There was a woman walking a big dog on the far side of the parklike area they sat in. The first person they’d seen up and moving anywhere near them.

“He’d found a group of white witches to travel with by then,” continued Dr. Connors. Anna couldn’t tell if Brother Wolf’s reassurance had helped or not. “They were safer together—up to a point. If there were too many of them, their combined power could attract attention. So in small groups they would hike into remote places and set up camp, moving around a few miles here or there to avoid getting pushed out. Winters were rough up north or high in the mountains, but they learned how to manage because those places were safer.”

The woman with the dog was closer. She was African American. Her dark hair hung past her shoulders, cornrowed and beaded with lapis lazuli–colored beads that matched the blue in the blue-and-gold shirt she wore. Raw linen pants stopped midcalf to reveal muscled legs and bright blue flip-flops. She had lots of curves, but the end effect was of general fitness.

The dog, who looked like he had a German shepherd somewhere not too far up his family tree, had been roving around her on a loose leash. As they neared, he walked alertly at her side, his intent gaze upon the werewolves.

“Audience approaching,” murmured Tag.

Dr. Connors looked over her shoulder and her whole demeanor changed. Her face relaxed and the lines around her eyes softened. The other woman smiled at her, a joyous, bigger-than-life smile.

“Tanya, this is Anna Cornick; her husband, Charles; and their henchman, Colin Taggart.” Dr. Connors didn’t slow down or hesitate on the word “henchman,” though it made both Tanya and Tag, who had come to his feet, grin.

“This is my wife, Tanya, Dr. Bonsu to her students, who fear her.”

“As you are not my students, please call me Tanya,” she said, taking a seat next to her wife. The dog sat alertly next to her, his eyes on Tag, his ruff slightly raised.

“We are werewolves,” Anna told her, ignoring the way Dr. Bonsu’s—Tanya’s—eyes widened and she suddenly smelled of fear. Smart people worry when they are confronted with werewolves. Time would take care of that—but there were easier methods for dogs. “We should put your dog at ease with us before we go on.”

Charles got up and the dog started to snarl at him—and then Charles met his eyes. The dog licked his lips and dropped all the way to the ground. Charles put his hand on the dog’s forehead and waited. First the dog’s tail started to wag and then he wiggled happily, licking at Charles’s hand.

“Good dog,” crooned Charles, giving the dog a pat before returning to his seat.

“That didn’t take very long,” Dr. Connors said thoughtfully, and a little unhappily. “I would have thought he would be more wary.”

“No reason,” Anna said. “We aren’t going to hurt him—and my husband just told him that.”

“As simple as that?” Dr. Connors sounded a little spooked.

Was she worrying about how easily a witch could subdue this means of defense? She should be. But that couldn’t be Anna’s problem.

“Dogs don’t lie,” Anna said. “Dr. Connors—”

“Oh, call me Sissy, please,” said Dr. Connors, who was the least Sissy-like person Anna had ever met.

She smiled suddenly at Anna’s expression and it took years off her face. “I know, I know. But I was cute when I was a baby.”

She glanced at her wife, her dog, the letters on the bench beside her. Then she sighed.

“You want to know about Wild Sign. Okay. About a year and a half ago, one of my dad’s people contacted him about this place in the Marble Mountains of Northern California where they’d put together a colony where they were safe from the black witches hunting them. He never told me why it was safer. I don’t think he knew when he headed out. And he never told me in any of his letters—though I could tell that he felt safe there. That’s the first time he’d felt safe since my mother killed his sister in our backyard.”

She looked at Charles, having clued in, Anna thought, to the person who was really in charge. “Do you think that there is any way he could be alive?”

“We have not found human bodies,” he told her. “Until we do, it is premature to write them off. But nearly six months is a long time to be missing.”

Anna thought about what the Angel Hills doctor had said about Daniel Green knowing that Carrie wasn’t going to be visiting anymore.

“What do you mean, human bodies?” asked Tanya. “Did you find other bodies?”

“Pets,” Anna said. “All laid out in a row. Not sacrificed—we don’t think. It didn’t have that feel. But all of them dead—cats and dogs. Eighteen that we counted. We didn’t excavate, so it is possible that we missed some.” She paused. “Did your father like old Germanic tales?”

“Kriemhild?” said Sissy. “Kriemhild is dead?” She swore. “Dad wouldn’t get a pet. He said he couldn’t keep himself safe, so he had no business taking responsibility for another being. Except for the pets, Dad never referred to anyone by name in his letters. He didn’t want to be inadvertently responsible for someone being hunted down. So Kriemhild belonged to the person he called the Opera Singer. I don’t know if she actually sang opera or just liked it.” She smiled wistfully. “My dad loved that dog.”

She wiped her eyes furtively, then continued in a brusque voice, “There was also the Family of Hellions, who were Mommy Hellion, Daddy Hellion, Hell Bringer, Doom Slayer, and Baby Demon. Baby Demon turned six in December. There was the Sign Maker. He’s deaf, I think, and was dad’s lover for a while.” She frowned defensively at the three werewolves, waiting for a reaction that didn’t come.

“I’m pretty sure that the Hellion family are—were—the Tottlefords,” she continued. “I met Malachi Tottleford the year I spent with Dad. And I met his wife and two of their children later on.” She gave a small shrug. “I would have called the bunch of them hellions, too.

“Anyway,” she continued, “the Hellion family found the place first, so Mommy and Daddy Hellion were treated as de facto leaders.” She hesitated. “I have all of the letters Dad ever sent me, but they are in storage. I won’t be able to access them until we head back home next week—we need to get back because Tanya’s teaching job resumes the following Monday. Anyway, I’ll print them off and give you copies. I don’t know that you’ll find anything in them that will help.”

“We were hopeful about the ones we brought you,” Anna said. “They seem to be mostly the same—copies of each other. Only the handwriting changes between them. If you look at them in time order, you can see it.”

Sissy pulled the letters out and looked at them. Her hands shook as she saw for herself what Anna had pointed out. After a minute, her wife put a hand on her shoulder.

“I see what you mean,” Sissy said, sliding them back into their envelopes with hands that were still unsteady. “I can’t translate them here. This is an older code we haven’t used in years—I don’t know why he switched back. If my brother still has his code key, I can get you a translation tomorrow. If not, I’ll have to go to my storage locker in Colorado and sort through boxes of stuff to find it.”

She frowned. “If you are looking for general information about the community, Tanya’s boy crush spent some time up there last fall. Dad called him Snow Cone.”

“That’s right,” Tanya said with a quick grin—though her eyes were worried. “Over on the far side of town there’s a coffee shop in a little hut. And more days than not there’s a snow cone stand. The kid—okay, I’m showing my age. He’s in his early twenties and a little different. He’s another traveler”—she gave her wife a warm smile—“like Sissy. He’s a photographer.” She held up a hand. “Wait a minute.”

She handed the dog’s leash to Sissy and trotted off to their cabin.

“He’s been traveling for years,” Sissy said. “He makes a little bit of money working as a ski instructor, fisherman, or guide. Things like that. But what he really does is take photos. He has three or four books out. I mentioned his name to an artist friend of mine, and he says he’s the real thing—and of course Tanya is a huge fan. He is apparently a well-known photographer of remote places—and a mystery himself. There are no photos of him, no biographical information.”

Anna knew of a photographer who did that. She straightened involuntarily and Charles slanted a glance at her.

“All that is calculated,” said Tanya, bearing a large coffee-table-type book under her arm. “Mysterious photographers sell better than wet-behind-the-ears kids. Like that artist—the one who sold a piece of art for over a million dollars and then it self-destructed.”

Anna recognized that book. She couldn’t stop the anticipatory smile.

“Banksy,” Sissy was saying. “One point four million dollars. Girl with Balloon.”

“Right,” agreed Tanya. “The oldest of this kid’s books was copyrighted six years ago. He must have been sixteen—you’ll see what I mean when you meet him.”

She handed Tag the book because he was the one who held a hand out for it. On the cover was an albino stag standing in a dark forest with fog rising from the ground around him, like a scene out of a fairy tale. The title of the book was Bright Things, the photographer listed only as Zander.

Anna had a copy of that book—and the other five, too.

“Zander is here?” Anna asked, feeling breathless.

Tanya grinned and nodded. “I know, right? Sissy had no idea, either.” She patted her wife’s leg. “Yes, he is here—selling snow cones.” She rolled her eyes.

“My dad mentioned Snow Cone, that he came up to visit them last fall, though he didn’t say much about him. But Tanya is the one who thought to stop and talk to the young man selling snow cones.” Sissy shook her head. “If he had been Lady Gaga, it would have been Tanya scratching her head and wondering what the fuss was about.”

“I know who Lady Gaga is,” Tanya said indignantly. “I do live in the real world. Anyway, if you’re looking for an eyewitness who lived up there for a while, Zander might be useful. But he’s shy. If you take my advice, one of you should go talk to him.” She looked at the two men and shook her head. “Anna should go talk to him. It took me five snow cones before he said more than ten words to me. If Sissy comes, too, he still won’t talk to me.”

IN THE END, Anna dropped Charles and Tag off at Happy Camp Mini Storage armed with the number of Carrie Green’s storage unit. Meanwhile, she went to buy a snow cone from the stand, which was within sight of the storage facility.

The coffee shop was one of those miniature house–looking places. It was covered with cedar shake shingles that made it look vaguely hairy, appropriate for a shop called Sasquatch Express-O. It was set up as a drive-through, but the car lane had an A-frame signboard blocking it that read Sasquatch hunting. Back at 4 p.m. so you can be up all night.

There were two metal picnic tables between the coffee shop and the snow cone stand. The stand itself was a ridiculous thing. The functional part, a circular workstation about six feet in diameter, was covered with a cone-shaped plastic top painted a bright rainbow of color.

Anna thought the stand was supposed to look like a snow cone. Or maybe an ice cream cone. Hard to say. A cardboard sign duct-taped to the side listed the prices for small and large cones in wide black Sharpie written in an even and readable hand.

On the top of the picnic table nearest the snow cone stand, a young man sat cross-legged with a guitar in his lap, the case open behind him. He looked like he was about Anna’s age, maybe a year or two younger, but not much. He hadn’t looked up when she parked next to the coffee shop. He didn’t look up while she walked over.

Like his photographs, Zander—assuming this was Zander—was fascinating. Beautiful, too. But more than that. His hair was an odd shade between white and wheat, almost silvery. His eyes were deep blue. For some reason, after Tanya’s description, Anna had expected someone small and slender—but he was the size of a proverbial lumberjack, a lean lumberjack without a beard.

He was singing the Cranberries’ “Zombie.”

He had a very good voice—not as good as Charles’s; he lacked the timbre of her husband’s voice, but he had range. And someone somewhere had taught him how to sing.

The guitar he played was a Gibson that was probably older than either of them. It looked a little battered, and someone who didn’t know as much about music as Anna did might think it was a cheap guitar. But his old Gibson cost at least as much as the Martin rotting in the amphitheater, possibly more, though Anna’s understanding of collectible guitar prices and models was hazy, beginning and ending with “old Gibsons are valuable.”

He didn’t stop singing when she walked up, so she belted out the song with him. He looked up at that and smiled widely. He sang better than he played, but he didn’t play badly. When he was through with “Zombie,” he transitioned into the old folk song “Molly Bawn” without a pause. Though he called it “Polly Vaughn” and had a few other variants to the lyrics she knew. Folk music was like that.

He grinned when she started the first verse with him, as if she’d passed a test of some sort. She followed his version of the old song with little trouble.

When they finished, Anna said, “I’ve always found that song to be pretty unsatisfactory. Man shoots wife. Claims he thought she was a swan. Oops.” She blinked at him, then continued in sickly sweet sympathy, “That poor man, poor, poor man. Everyone feels sorry for him. How could he know it wasn’t a swan he shot? The end.”

“It should end with a hanging, do you think?” he asked, almost seriously. “But what if he really just shot her by mistake? The guilt he must feel.”

“If he can’t tell the difference between his wife and a bird, he needs to be hanged before he shoots someone else,” she said dryly. “And that would put paid to his guilt, too.”

“But it’s a pretty song,” he coaxed, his fingers dancing lightly over the strings as he played a few random chords. He glanced up at her through his lashes in a look she didn’t think was supposed to be flirtatious. “A fun song.”

“Yes,” she said, though she didn’t really agree.

“The Ash Grove” was a pretty song. “Mary Mack” was a fun song. “Molly Bawn” was a song about a bastard who murdered his wife and got away with it. But arguing with someone she wanted to extract information from didn’t seem useful, so she moved the conversation along.

“Cool guitar.”

He lit up with enthusiasm. “She’s pretty awesome. I paid too much for her, but it’s not like these ladies grow on trees.” He nodded his head to the coffee shop. “If you came for coffee, I’m sorry. Dana closes up from two to four.”

“I don’t look like the snow cone type?” she asked.

He glanced at her silk shirt and jacket, shook his head, and laughed, an appreciative male sound. “No.”

So her protective camouflage had worked on him, at least. But honestly, she didn’t want a snow cone, so there was that.

“No,” she told him. “You are right. Excellent snow cone customer sensing. I am not here for coffee, either. I’m here to talk to you. A friend told me that you’d spent some time up at Wild Sign last fall.”

His face closed down, all the warmth gone.

“There’s no one there now,” he said.

“I know that,” she told him. “I was just up there. The land they were on is owned by my family. We’re trying to figure out what happened. Why the people abandoned Wild Sign and where they went.”

“You hiked all the way in?” he asked.

“The day before yesterday,” she confirmed.

“The day before yesterday,” he said, then gave her a sweet smile, as friendly as if he’d never shut down.

She didn’t know what about that made him change his mind about talking to her, but she was willing to run with it.

“Yes. And found a place that people put a lot of work into—and then abandoned. We—I feel responsible. It is our land. I need to find out what happened to them.”

“I can’t tell you that,” he warned her.

“I didn’t expect that you could solve the mystery for us. For me,” she told him. “But the more information we can get, the more likely we are to discover what happened, how a whole town of people just disappeared. To that end, I’d like to know a little about what folks up there were like.”

“People,” he said after strumming a few bars of “Stairway to Heaven.” Anna knew guitarists (especially guitarists who had worked in music stores) who would run screaming at the sound of the opening bars to that song.

“They were just people,” he told his guitar strings.

Anna, who had learned to listen from her mate, waited.

“There was an air of euphoria, of joy, about Wild Sign,” he said. “It felt like a little bit of paradise.” He played a few measures that sounded half-familiar, but Anna couldn’t place the song. “They didn’t have a lot—not money or things. But it didn’t matter. They had what they needed. A safe place to raise their children.” He smiled gently, his eyes distant, and spun out a few more bars.

In the manner of guitarists the world over, he talked a little bit as he played, drawing a picture of Wild Sign for her using words rather than his camera. At first the images came slowly, but as he talked, the picture became richer, nuanced and clear.

She would have been happier to just listen, but she dutifully noted down names. Like Dr. Connors, Zander didn’t know last names. But he did use actual first names—mostly. Dr. Connors Senior was Doc.

While he talked, his eyes on his fretboard, Anna brought forward her wolf self to check him out. He smelled of days camping in the sun and a little like cotton candy. He did not smell like witchcraft.

She thought, though, that there might be a little of that old earth magic—the kind that Wellesley, their painter, had. But to check that out, she’d have had to be on four feet, which would defeat the purpose of her visit—to get Zander to talk. It wasn’t worth it for something so faint, maybe some sort of good luck piece that carried a bit of magic. The important thing was that, not being a witch, he could not tell her about any magic that happened in Wild Sign. She was probably not going to learn anything important from him.

Listening to his soft-voiced storytelling, she had the sudden thought that, other than his talent for music, he could not have been more different from her intense mate if he had deliberately tried. There was a sweet, almost innocent air about him. Sensual, but in the way of the birds in the air and the beasts of the field. Earthy.

Zander liked to talk—once he got started. Even with her, most of the time Charles preferred to be quiet. She thought that was one reason her mate liked horses so much. They didn’t require words to communicate—they listened to his hands and body, and he heard them with more than his ears.

Zander might be shy, but he liked people. Though most of his photography was nature themed, he’d done one chapter in his Alaskan book on the people he’d worked with at the fisheries in Ketchikan. She could see it in the verbal sketches he drew of the people who lived in Wild Sign. She found out that Emily—who must have been Mommy Hellion—loved to cook and never went out without something purple on. Deaf from birth, Jack made signs to spread joy.

Charles liked very few people.

If she had met Zander before she’d been Changed, she might have fallen for him. Not just because she loved his art but because he was sexy and sweet. He reminded her of one of Wellesley’s paintings—deep and rich with meaning. Every time she looked, she saw something new. Something that made her think.

But she wasn’t that woman anymore. It was Charles, with his darkness, his violence and contrasting gentleness, whom she wanted to take to her bed, to share her life with.

She had gone through some truly awful times, but without them, she would not have had the courage to love someone like Charles. Charles, who had reached out of his own darkness to catch her. She had the strong feeling that Charles’s act had taken even greater courage on his part, though he had never told her so.

“Sounds like you knew some of the people in Wild Sign before you went up?” Anna asked, focusing once more on Zander’s words instead of his person.

“Sure,” he said easily. “The world’s wildernesses are finite, you know? There aren’t many of us who are driven to explore them. After a while, some faces are familiar. Emily and her family—the Tottlefords—I met a few years ago in Alaska. But they’re not the only ones I knew. I stayed a couple of weeks with Jenny and her husband at the time in the Andes.”

Anna was pretty sure that Jenny had been Dr. Connors Senior’s “Opera Singer” from the stories that Zander had shared. But she didn’t want Zander to know that they had another source for information about Wild Sign, so she didn’t try to confirm that.

“The Andes?” Anna asked. “In South America?”

He nodded. “Peru.” But something about the music he was playing had caught her ear.

“What is that song?” she asked.

He smiled. “Do you like it?” He played a few more measures before he spoke. “It’s something I’ve been working on. My only problem is that it sounds familiar to me. I don’t want to take credit for someone else’s work.”

“I hear you,” Anna said. “It sounds familiar to me, too.” She sighed. “Doubtless I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with the title, singer, and where I heard it last in my head. But it’s not coming to me now.”

There was a wordless call behind her. She turned to see Tag and Charles jogging across the street. Charles was carrying two fair-sized boxes, and Tag had a box and a bright-colored fabric bag.

She turned back to Zander. He’d closed up again, like a flower when the sun goes down. He did not look like someone who could be observant and funny or take world-class photographs. He wasn’t playing that odd song anymore—he’d switched to “The Ash Grove.”

She’d been thinking about “The Ash Grove” a little earlier. Music was like that, though; a chord progression could call up a dozen songs to any experienced musician. They’d probably both picked up on a chord progression in something he’d played earlier that was also in “The Ash Grove.”

“Thank you,” she told him sincerely. “I appreciate your help.”

He nodded without looking up. “Let me know if you find any of them? I’ll be here until the snow flies—October or thereabouts. Then I’ll follow the wind.” He looked thoughtful. “Colorado, maybe.”

“I’ll let you know,” she promised. “Safe travels.”

She met Charles and Tag at the SUV, where they were off-loading their burdens.

“Found some things?” she asked.

Charles nodded.

Tag said, “Good thing we went there. Or else when the owner of the storage facility had his next sale, someone would be the proud owner of the Green family grimoires.”

Wide-eyed, Anna looked at the boxes and bag. “That’s a lot of grimoires, right? They have to be handwritten?”

Charles shut the back of the Suburban. “It’s the largest collection I’ve run across in one place.” He glanced over at the storage facility. “They have a presence all by themselves.” And that would explain the heavy feeling in Anna’s chest as soon as she had approached. “Carrie had spelled the locker, or someone—or something—would have come looking for them.”

Anna got into the SUV. “What are we going to do with them?”

“Make my da happy, I’d guess,” said Charles. “Though between this and the fae artifacts we’ve been acquiring, Da is going to have to come up with an alternative storage plan. Eventually we’re going to run into some things that shouldn’t be stored together.”

In her rearview mirror, Tag soundlessly mouthed Boom and made exploding signs with his hands.

Out loud he suggested, “Maybe we should turn the fae artifacts over to the fae.”

Charles looked at him.

Tag raised both hands and said, “It was just a suggestion.”

“What did you learn?” Charles asked Anna.

She shook her head. “Nothing useful, except that I won’t ever be able to think about the people of Wild Sign as anonymous dead people anymore. Zander is observant and a good storyteller, but he’s not a witch. He didn’t notice anything odd.”

“We should find a place to spend the night,” Charles said. “We could stop here and get going early tomorrow. Or we can drive back to Yreka and stay there.”

“I saw a place as we were coming into town. On the river,” Anna said, suddenly exhausted and ready to be done for the day, even though it was only midafternoon.

“I saw it,” said Charles. “That sounds good. Tag?”

“Don’t care,” he said. “Find me a bed and I’ll sleep in it. Otherwise, I’ll sleep on the floor. As long as you ward those books. If you don’t, I’m through sleeping until this trip is over. My hands are still tingling and I don’t think a shower is going to clean me up.” He looked at Anna, meeting her eyes briefly in the rearview mirror. “The Klamath might just do it, though. Let’s stay on the river.”

Anna was suddenly parked in front of a building bearing a sign that read Resort. The engine was running and both of her hands were on the wheel, but she didn’t remember getting here. It was just like the sudden dislocation from Chicago to the Wild Sign amphitheater, but instead of losing years, she’d just lost a few minutes. She hoped.

“Anna?” Charles asked, but not like he was worried.

She shook her head. “Just thinking.”

“Tag,” Charles said, opening his door, “why don’t you stay here and keep an eye on those grimoires. Anna and I will book the rooms.”

Yes, she thought with relief, only a few minutes—ten or fifteen at the most. Not enough to worry Charles with.

They took three rooms. One for Charles and Anna, one for Tag, and a third for the grimoires, which Charles deemed too dangerous to leave in the car.

“What ought to happen with them is burning,” Charles said as they carried them in. “But that brings its own set of dangers.”

Even Anna—who, like Zander, had not been witchborn—felt as if there was something crawling up her arms as she took the bag in. It was uncomfortable enough to distract her from what had happened driving here. What she carried was a lot scarier than her little memory lapse. She was careful to keep the bag from brushing against her leg.

“Is keeping them here going to cause problems for people trying to sleep here after we’re gone?” she asked, putting the bag in the middle of the floor, where Charles directed.

“Not if I do my job,” he said absently, seeing something that she could not.

“Do we make your job easier or harder?” she asked.

“Harder,” he said.

She brushed a kiss on his shoulder—but didn’t touch him with the hand that had held the bag. “I’ll go take a shower, then.”

RENDERING THE BOOKS harmless took longer than he’d expected. They had been ignored for a long time, and they did not want to be hidden again. He would suggest burning to his da. Strongly.

Anna had not been wrong. Someone sensitive might have trouble sleeping in this room if they left the books here very long. But a few days should be fine. He’d smudge the room afterward and that should take care of any permanent trouble the grimoires might try to cause.

Anna wasn’t in their room, though she’d obviously showered. He wondered what she felt she had to clean off. She didn’t usually shower twice a day. The room was steamy and smelled like the things she used in the shower: body wash, shampoo, and conditioner. He took in the scent and . . . Brother Wolf stirred uneasily.

Charles wasn’t going to give in to that. He pulled off the shirt Anna had gotten for him and exchanged it for a red T-shirt. If Tag threw him in the river, he didn’t want to tear up his good shirt.

But when he took the path to the river, he found Anna alone. She was sitting on a big rock, facing the river, her arms slung around one of her legs that she’d pulled up to her chest. Like Charles, she had discarded her good clothes and now wore jeans and a black tank top.

“Hey,” he said to her, because she hadn’t turned around when he’d come up to her. The river was loud and the wind blew in his face, but she still should have heard him.

She turned to look at him—and for a moment he would have sworn she didn’t know him. Then her smile filled her face and her eyes came alive. “Sorry,” she said. “I was just trying to remember a song.”