Kage waited, but when it became obvious no one else was going to say anything, he continued. “There are leftovers from dinner in the kitchen I can fix if you need food.” He took a breath. “That’s what’s going on here. From you I get a text that says not to expect you for dinner. Not exactly helpful. Did you find out anything?”
“Fae,” Charles told him, pulling off his boots and setting them where all the other people’s shoes waited.
Anna rolled her eyes at her husband with, he hoped, a little fondness to go along with her mock exasperation. “Food would be lovely, thank you. We actually found out a lot—not enough, but a lot. Why don’t we go eat and I’ll tell you what we know.”
“Anna uses actual words,” murmured Charles tranquilly, holding her arm as she took off her shoes, too.
“Useful,” said Kage, leading the way to the kitchen.
“Some people think so,” Charles agreed, and Anna bumped him with her hip.
Dinner was fried chicken, biscuits, and a huge salad. Wade, Hosteen’s second, came in before the food was on the table. He was one of those quiet people who instilled order in those around them. He was obviously at home in the house, and he helped Kage pull out food and dishes. When Anna tried to help, Wade waved her off before Kage could.
“I’m the hired help,” he said. “Even with all the desperate life-and-death drama, you’re also here to look at horses, right? That makes you clients—sit down.”
“Wade has a real job,” Kage explained as they all settled around the table. “But his family has been in the business of breeding and showing Arabs nearly as long as mine. He comes and catch-rides for us when we need an extra rider in a show.”
“There was a changeling in Mackie’s class,” Anna began as soon as people were eating. “Apparently Mackie half figured out what she was and the changeling decided to get rid of her.”
Charles ate and listened as, between bites, Anna did her best to give Kage and Wade a thorough update. Wade had the right to hear it. The attack had been on his Alpha’s family, and the victim who suffered the most was likely to become a permanent member of the pack if Hosteen got his act together.
But as Charles listened, he also watched the other two men’s faces as they relaxed into his mate’s storytelling. Tension left Kage’s shoulders and Wade laughed helplessly as Anna described Leeds’s fascination with the bundle of sticks that had been a little girl, while everyone else was deciding who was in charge. She did it without making anyone think less of Leeds, because she clearly didn’t. Sure it was serious business, but humor in the face of evil robbed evil of some of its power. His Anna understood that better than most.
“You’re going to look for the missing girl, right?” asked Kage. But not like he was sure of it.
Anna nodded. “Charles and I stopped in at her house. The only real connection to the day care was the fetch. If we’re going to find the fae who took the girl, our best trail should be Amethyst’s. But she was taken so long ago. Charles says that from the faintness of her scent in her room, it’s been months. We also took a walk around several blocks near her house, but neither of us caught scent of a fae.”
“So what’s next?” asked Wade.
“The FBI, Cantrip, and a number of unlucky police officers spend the next few days sorting through police incident reports until they come up with something,” said Anna. “Leslie is going to call us if they need our help.”
“That sounds—”
“Like they are taking over the investigation and throwing us out of it,” growled Wade.
It was the pack’s hunt, as he would see it—as Charles saw it, for that matter. The entrance of the human organizations, useful as they were, annoyed him as well. He understood the necessity, but that didn’t mean he liked it.
“They have access to information we don’t have,” Anna soothed, articulating the reason Bran had decided to bring them in. “Let them do the legwork. Besides, we’re trying to keep the pack out of it. It’s likely there’ll be some publicity when this is all over—one way or another. I know the FBI agent and, better, she knows us. She’ll call for help when they have anything we can be useful for.”
“Cantrip? Call on a werewolf?” Wade looked like he wanted to spit on the floor.
“I know, right?” Anna nodded sympathetically. “But Special Agent Fisher, of the FBI, will call us in whether Cantrip wants us or not. Not many humans are really equipped to deal with a fae who has decided to prey openly upon humans. And, though Leeds is half-fae, I’m not sure they have anyone who can detect a fetch.” She tapped her nose.
“And because the humans want the werewolves at their back if the fae decide that this is war,” Charles said, getting up and scraping his plate before putting it into the dishwasher.
There was a little pause and Wade said, “Are we? Are we at war?”
“My father spent weeks in negotiations to ensure that we were not brought in on either side.” Charles paused, not wanting to criticize his father in public.
Bran saw humans as “other.” He was so far from his own days of being human that Charles doubted he could remember them without effort.
Charles, who had never been human, had nevertheless grown up surrounded by his mother’s family. The uncles and grandfather who helped raise him, aunts and grandmother who clothed him and indulged him. He understood, in a way that was a gift of his grandfather’s view of the world, that werewolves, humans, and fae were all a part of a greater community.
If a war broke out, everyone would lose. The fae were not fond of humans, and worse, they were contemptuous of them. That meant that war with humans scared only the more perceptive and less arrogant fae—which meant not many.
But the werewolves, the werewolves were respected. Not many fae would want to declare war if it meant fighting werewolves, too. So Charles forcing his father’s hand might have some unexpected benefits.
Charles sighed. “Look at us here in this room, in this house. We are human and werewolf, waiting to go deal with a fae who attacked the great-grandchildren of a werewolf. Most of us are connected to the human community with ties of love and loyalty that no treaty will stand up to. There is no question we’ll be drawn into any conflict. We cannot be separated from those we love because they are human—as in most ways are we.”
Kage smiled a predator’s smile. “Fair enough. As long as whatever hurt my Chelsea is made harmless, I don’t care if it’s us, werewolves, or Canadian Mounties. Though I’d like to have a hand in it.”
He put food back in the fridge and said, “This isn’t an attack on Hosteen or his pack, though. It sounds like Chelsea was a random victim. Or if she wasn’t, it was because of her witch heritage and nothing to do with werewolves.”
“Chelsea is Hosteen’s granddaughter by marriage,” growled Wade. “It is an attack on the pack whatever the motive of the fae.”
Charles nodded. “Agreed.”
“And,” said Anna, “if we had been aware of any child stolen by the fairies, we’d be out looking. Human child, witch child, or werewolf child.”
He heard the bone-deep protective instinct that drove her—instincts that had nothing to do with being a werewolf. She would, he acknowledged wistfully, be a wonderful mother.
Wade grinned at her fierceness. “You tell it like it is. Count me in.”
“At any rate,” Charles told Kage, “I think that the attack on Chelsea was directed at Mackie, not at the pack. A matter of opportunity and necessity rather than planning. However, the fae are notoriously persistent. I would not count your family safe until we find the perpetrator.”
Kage grunted. “I’ll keep the kids here, where Hosteen can keep an eye on them.” He paused. “When he gets over his snit and comes back, anyway. Chelsea…” His voice trailed off.
“Our pack will watch over Chelsea,” said Wade. He smiled at Kage’s carefully neutral grunt. “Hosteen occasionally ties himself up in knots, but I’ve known him a long time. He’ll get his head out of his—” He g
lanced at Anna and rephrased. “He’ll come through. He always does.”
“Yeah,” said Kage without conviction.
“Do you think we’ll find her?” asked Anna as she emerged from the bathroom, ready for bed.
“Yes,” Charles said after a moment. “Because we won’t stop until we do, even if we have to take this town apart stick by stick.”
She froze, then turned to him. “You feel it, too?”
“She’s five years old,” he said. “And the very best case is that she’s been in the hands of a fae for months. The very best case.”
Anna nodded. “I feel as though we should be out looking some more. But I don’t see that it would do any good because after we didn’t find anything at the Millers’ or the day care, there’s no place else to look.”
“Come here,” he said.
She crawled onto the bed and into his arms.
“We’ll find that fae,” he promised her. “I don’t know if we’ll be in time for Amethyst. But we’ll be in time for the next one.”
She burrowed against him. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
He felt Brother Wolf’s joy in his mate’s fierceness. He would never take the gift of her presence in his life for granted. He’d been alone so long, so certain that there would be no one for him. He scared even other werewolves. And a part of him—of Charles, not Brother Wolf—hadn’t wanted to find anyone. He’d understood that caring for another person the way he cared for Anna would leave him vulnerable. His father’s hatchet man could not afford any weaknesses. And one day, there she was, his Anna: strong and funny despite the harm that had been done to her. She had tamed Brother Wolf first, but before he’d been in her presence ten minutes, he’d known that she would be his. That he needed her to be his.
“You’re growling,” she said, her voice drowsy. “What are you thinking?”
“That I love you,” he said. “That I am grateful every day that you decided to let me keep you.”
She hmmed and rolled over on top of him with hard-won confidence. “Good,” she said. “Gratitude is good. Love is better.” She paused, her mouth almost touching his. “I love you, too.”
He told her, “The day I met you was the first day I ever felt joy.”
She drew in a surprised breath. “Me, too,” she said, her truth making his eyes burn. “Me, too.” Then her lips traveled the few millimeters that lay between them.
They made love. To his amusement she grabbed his hand and put it over her mouth to muffle the noises she made. He left it there until she was too involved to remember it, and then he used that hand, too.
She didn’t want anyone to hear her cries, but in this house, with Chelsea and Wade, the only werewolves, a full floor away and on the other side of the house, there was no chance of it.
When they were finished, she lay limply on him and slipped effortlessly into sleep. He lay awake awhile, listening to the rain pouring down outside.
The rain would have a salutary effect on Hosteen’s ruminations, he was certain. That’s right, old man, you think before you blow up at my wife, who saved Chelsea. Not her fault that it affected you like alcohol did your father, awakening old demons. Put them back to bed, old wolf.
And you get ready to welcome Chelsea into your pack with a whole heart. Or else you will lose your grandson and your son in the same year, because if Chelsea has to leave, he will, too. He’s as stubborn as either you or Joseph.
Charles never had the knack for sending his words into other people’s heads, except for sometimes Anna’s. But he figured that the rain would do the job for him.
Anna stirred in his arms. “We have to find her.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Yes,” said Brother Wolf.
CHAPTER
9
Leslie called them at seven in the morning. Anna answered Charles’s cell because Charles was just emerging from the shower.
“I heard you stopped in at the Millers’, about an hour before a pair of my FBI agents stopped in,” Leslie said. “Did you find anything?”
“Yes and no,” Anna told her. “We confirmed that Amethyst has been missing for months. We have one of her stuffed animals that Charles and I can use for scent if we get close enough. No one who lives nearby is a fae. Or else they’re hiding their scent trail all the time, which Charles assures me is unlikely. Most fae don’t expect to have werewolves on their trail.”
“Okay,” Leslie said. “I’d have preferred you talk to me before you go off hunting on your own.”
“Okay,” said Anna, deliberately unspecific about what she was okay about.
Leslie laughed tiredly. “So I have people doing background checks on anyone who has worked at the day care, but that’s not a priority. I think that the day care trouble was caused by the fetch. All of the people who died were connected in some way to Amethyst.”
“That’s what we think, too,” said Anna.
“What we have been doing is compiling two lists. The first is weird things that have happened in the vicinity of the day care. For the second, Leeds suggested that maybe the fetch was not the first or the last this fae has made. So we’ve made some calls to local counselors, psychologists, and anyone else we could think of, asking about children who have had sudden personality changes. We still have some calls coming in on that. What we’d like to do is have you ride with me for the weird things and Charles ride with Leeds and Marsden looking into the kids. I know you usually work together, but neither the Cantrip agents nor I could tell if someone was fae or fetch if they spit on us.”
“Leeds can’t tell if someone is fae or not?” Anna asked.
“He says he’s hit-and-miss, and we can’t afford a miss. We have eleven calls to make; with luck we can do most of those today.”
“Fast work,” Anna said. She heard a huff of breath that might have been a laugh, hard to tell over the phone.
“We have a kid in danger, Anna. We take that seriously. Lots of folks have been up all night putting this information together for us.”
“Yes,” said Anna. “So where do you want to meet up? I don’t know this area, so I’ll need a real address.”
When she hung up, she looked at Charles, who was toweling off his hair; he’d heard most of the call. “We get to go and make people talk.”
“Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll try not to scare some poor kid so badly he can’t talk for a year. You try not to get attacked by some fae who doesn’t understand how dangerous you are because you look so soft and sweet.”
She thought about her reply for a moment because his voice was just a little too neutral.
“Nah,” she said casually, answering him as if she thought her reply didn’t matter. “You scare adults pretty good—you’ve got that ‘I could kill you with my little finger’ thing going for you. But the kids or the adults who are hurt … you are safe and they know it. Doesn’t mean they aren’t shy with you, but they know they’re safe.” She’d known it.
Sure he’d scared her when she first met him—she wasn’t stupid. He was big and she knew all about how even between werewolves, big counts. But her instincts had told her that this one, this one would stand between her and anyone who would hurt her. That aura of guardianship—that was what made her mate such a powerful Alpha.
Charles just stared at her.
“You know that, right?” she said. “Most people stay out of your way, but the defenseless ones, the hurt ones, they just sort of gradually slide into your shadow. Not where you’ll notice them too much—but you keep the bad things away.”
He still didn’t say anything. She buttoned her jeans and then took the two steps to press against him. “We know,” she whispered to him. “We who have been hurt, we know what evil looks like. We know you make us safe.”
He didn’t say anything, but his arms came around her and she knew that she had told him something he didn’t know—and that it mattered.
Charles had one of Kage’s people drop them off at the airport, where he rented
a car as Mr. Smith. He took out the fake driver’s license with the credit card he kept for Mr. Smith. Anna watched him fill out the fake address without hesitation.
When they were walking toward the elevator in the parking garage that would take them to their car, she whispered, “For an honest man, you lie pretty smoothly, Mr. Smith.”
He gave her one of his eyes-only smiles.
There were four cars to choose from, identical except in color. Charles raised an eyebrow at Anna and she trotted around them, pondering.
“Gray, white, and silver would all blend in,” she told him.
“By all means let’s take the metallic orange,” he agreed somberly. She grinned at him.
She drove the orange car and he navigated. Brother Wolf didn’t like traffic, didn’t like driving at all, and was unpredictable enough in his road rage that Charles didn’t like to drive, either, if he could avoid it. And both of them trusted Anna, he’d told her.
She knew that she wasn’t a spectacular driver; the best she could do was steady and law-abiding. She didn’t take chances and she laughed about the rude drivers. Even Brother Wolf had to work to get upset about someone making Anna laugh, Charles told her.
She sincerely hoped that over the next few days they didn’t meet the guy who’d flipped her off as they left the airport. Only by slamming her brakes hard had she avoided hitting him. Why was it that the people who made idiots of themselves immediately felt it necessary to compound their sins by flipping off the people who saved them from possibly fatal mistakes?
Yes, she hoped that the moron didn’t come anywhere near Charles anytime soon.
With Charles running the car’s navigation system, they made it to the coffee shop exactly on time. They managed greetings all around—and coffee in great big cups.
“If I could get a permanent IV of this stuff into my veins,” Marsden murmured as they all filed out of the coffee shop and into the parking lot, “I’d go into a happy coffee coma and never come out again until I died of sheer contentment. Not just any coffee, you understand, only extra-dark mocha caramel from this shop.” He cupped it in both hands like it was something precious to him.