Dead Heat

  Katie had been nodding, but she held up a finger to stop Anna. “Point of fact. They dug up my garden and it took me three weeks to get it back into shape. One of my yuccas is, I’m afraid, doomed.”

  “And so you told them that there was a fairy living in your garden,” Leslie said.

  Katie held up a finger. “No. I called them back at one in the morning and said that there was something dangerous here. Something. The police came and asked me what was dangerous. I told them I’d seen a unicorn and two smallish dragons running down the street. Which I had. My neighbors have a trio of delightful children who like to dress up in last year’s Halloween costumes. I suppose they’d escaped the babysitter I saw chasing after them. Both of the dragons were carrying lighters—you know the kind I mean. Not the ones for cigarettes but the ones for lighting a charcoal grill. The unicorn was armed only with her horn.” She paused. “I may have left out a few things in my story. And I might have called it in five or six hours after I first saw the unicorn.”

  Anna saw Leslie’s face and didn’t laugh, though she wanted to.

  Leslie said coolly, “So you deliberately called police officers to your home because they inconvenienced you. And kept them here when they might have been needed elsewhere?”

  Katie’s eyes narrowed and she lost the soft, half-drunken act entirely. “No. I’m telling you that I called them on a possible threat. I never saw the babysitter actually corral the little hooligans, did I? Two ten-year-olds can do a lot of damage with fire lighters. It’s not my fault that the police officer didn’t ask the right questions.”

  Leslie sat up straighter, and Anna interrupted her. They were here for information. A lecture on the stupidity of crying wolf, no matter how well deserved, was not going to get them anywhere.

  “We are not actually here about the unicorn. We’re more interested in the green man in your garden,” Anna said.

  Katie stiffened more, and her scent spiked with anxiety that was not quite fear.

  “You needed to distract the police from your garden,” Anna said. “The unicorn and dragon story did that very nicely. They aren’t going to want to come back here anytime soon, are they? But they’ve written you off as a kook.” That had been quite a sacrifice for this woman who spent so much time and energy on her own appearance. “But that green man comment—just a throwaway, really—has the ring of truth and that’s what brought us here. What do you have living in your backyard, Ms. Jamison?”

  “I think I would like to call my lawyer,” said Katie.

  “We are here because we are looking for a five-year-old girl who was taken by a fae who left a changeling in her place,” Leslie said. “That fae kills children, Ms. Jamison.”

  “You can show yourselves out,” she said stonily.

  “Time matters,” Anna told her, not mentioning that Amethyst had been missing for months already. “How will you feel when we find that child’s body? Will you ask yourself if she might have survived if you had cooperated? Or will you be able to shrug it off?”

  “He has nothing to do with kidnapping children.” The older woman’s voice was harsh.

  “Maybe,” Anna said. “But maybe he would know who does. Maybe he could help us.”

  Katie looked up and Anna caught her eyes. Anna was no Alpha wolf to force people to do things that they would rather not. But she was honest and stubborn. It was Katie who looked away first.

  “If you put anything in writing, I will make you look like a fool,” Katie said.

  Anna tipped her head. “We have no intention of making you look foolish or getting you into trouble.”

  Leslie hesitated. “If this has nothing to do with the girl’s disappearance, there will be no need to record anything more than that we checked out your story and found it not germane to our investigation.”

  Katie was quiet a moment. “All right. All right. Fine. I have a touch of the Sight. My mother did, too, and her mother before her. My grandmother was a healer and wisewoman. My mother … she had migraines during which she would see things. Some of them happened, some of them didn’t. She thought she was getting glimpses of likely futures. Me? I can see the fae for what they are, whatever guise they are wearing. And I have hidden it from them because they don’t like sidhe-seers. If you give me away, my life will be very short.”

  “Understood,” Leslie agreed.

  Katie Jamison strode past the big pool with its attendant fountains, hot tub and assorted pool chairs, bar and barbecue: a full-service pool. Instead she aimed at the small green corner in the back of her yard.

  Three huge palm trees formed the upper canopy, and huge clumps of lavender nearly waist high lined the eight-foot stone wall that separated Katie’s yard from the next house over. There was some kind of bush in between the lavender with pretty orange flowers. But there was no denying that the most spectacular plant was a huge orange tree, craggy with age.

  It sprawled arrogantly over the wrought-iron fence into the jogging path, its branches laden with green fruits that were just starting to turn orange. It was obviously older than the yard it presided over, older than the housing development, the jogging path, and the three other fruit trees next to it, too. Anna, though no gardener, thought that the other fruit trees, though much smaller, were pretty old, too.

  She paid attention to the messages that her nose was giving her. Over the faint scent of lavender, though most of the lavender was not yet in bloom, over the unripe fruit, and the orange-flowered whatsit, she smelled something wild, something magic, something fae.

  “These people want to talk to you,” said Katie, staring directly at the decorative and effective gate between the yard and the canal-and-jogging-path. “It’s about a missing child. I don’t think they care about you being here at—Yes. I know it was stupid, but I didn’t torment that damned dog on purpose for months, either.”

  Apparently Katie was a sidhe-hearer as well as seer, because even Anna’s enhanced ears couldn’t hear the person she was talking to. Her eyes caught on the great orange tree and stayed there.

  The trunk was bent and twisted with knots where limbs had been cut years and years ago. The oranges were plum-sized and green. Anna didn’t know much about the vegetation in Arizona. A few quiet afternoons in Asil’s greenhouse in Montana had given her a working knowledge of rare roses and a handful of flowers and plants that appealed to the old wolf. The only fruit tree he had was a waist-high dwarf clementine that Asil said was a tribute to his Spanish heritage and the oranges he used to grow on some farm he’d owned at one time or another.

  Katie turned back to them. “He likes to play games,” she said. “He told me that if you can find him, he’ll answer three questions.”

  “Agreed,” said Anna. She pulled her cell phone out and texted a quick message to Charles so he wouldn’t worry when he felt her change.

  “I’m not my husband,” she told Leslie. “I’m going to change to my wolf shape. Unlike him, I probably won’t be able to change back for a couple of hours after this.”

  “You can’t just—” She tapped her finger to her nose.

  Anna shook her head. “If it were that easy, he wouldn’t be making a deal. Just remember to phrase your questions very carefully. Take your time. The fae always answer truthfully, but not always completely. If they can deceive you with the truth, they will. Don’t ask rhetorical questions, because those will count.”

  She stepped to the side of the big tree, where she was hidden from the sight of people outside the yard, and began stripping her clothes off. “This will take a while,” she warned them.

  “What are you doing?” Katie said as Anna kicked off her shoes.

  “I’m a werewolf,” Anna told her. “I’m changing into my wolf. The wolf’s nose is better and less easily confused.”

  The moon was almost full, so her change should have been easy. Pain, as her body rearranged itself, was now an old friend. It slid over her head with hot hands that dug in and cracked her jaw so forcibly that the pain of the res
t of her body seemed gentle by comparison—until her shoulders slipped out of their sockets at the same time.

  On a moon night, with the pack gathered together, pack magic shielded the sounds the changing wolves made in their pain, and the moon could sometimes change pain to ecstasy. But alone and in the full Arizona sun, Anna was obligated to make no noise that might attract attention. She was good at not attracting attention.

  Some changes were better than others, regardless of the moon’s phases, but this was much, much worse than any shift she’d done this near the moon’s call. Before pain drove her to the single determination of silence, Anna belatedly recognized the wariness her wolf felt that drove her to speed the change. The wolf could not adequately defend herself while caught between forms. Anna had chosen to change in front of a virtual stranger and a fae she could not see and knew nothing about. A fae who could be the very creature they were hunting.

  Anna trusted Leslie to have her back. But the wolf was more judicious in her trusts and Leslie was not pack, nor anyone they were long acquainted with. So speed was necessary and pain was a small cost to pay for safety.

  When it was over, Anna lay winded and shaky, which wasn’t exactly a safe thing, either. She rolled to her feet and shook off the last of the muscle twitches. She couldn’t tell how long it had taken. Pain made time subjective.

  She stretched, sliding her claws out until they dug into the soil. Satisfied that her body was working, she turned her head to look at the two women who stood carefully not looking at her.

  “Are you all right?” Leslie asked when Anna moved around so she could look the FBI agent in the face. “That looked … that sounded like it hurt. We could hear your bones break.”

  Anna sneezed and let her tail wag. Katie looked at Anna, and then quickly away again. Her hand over her mouth. “It’s not … it wasn’t…” Her voice stuttered to a stop—and then she made a break for her house.

  Anna sighed. Yes. Werewolves are monsters and the change isn’t pretty. Unfair to ask the mundanes to deal with it. She’d had no choice.

  “Can you find the fae?” Leslie asked. “I assume the deal is still in effect. If you find him and we can’t communicate, I’ll go back in the house and drag Ms. Jamison back out.”

  Yes. Finish this business, thought Anna.

  She checked out the big tree first, though it was too obvious. It smelled of fae magic, no question. But to her wolf nose, the whole yard smelled of fae.

  She trotted the circumference of the yard and played a little hot and cold with herself to make sure she was right that the fae was somewhere near that big orange tree. The scent of the fae, who did not smell like Chelsea’s house or the day care, faded as soon as she got to the house end of the swimming pool. She quartered the yard around the pool and ended up back by the orange tree.

  Not the butterfly bush, not the granite rock that was decorated with small pots of herbs where the sides of the boulder made natural shelves. Not the handful of tea rose bushes. Not the yuccas—which did indeed show signs of being dug up and replaced. Everything smelled of the fae, but not enough. Anna backed away and looked carefully for something she had missed.

  Where? she asked herself, asked her wolf spirit. Where is he?

  The wolf focused on one of the lemon trees, the smallest and scruffiest of them. Like the yuccas, it looked as though it was suffering from rough handling.

  She closed in on it, shut her eyes, and let her nose lead her across the stone walkway and onto the gravel that covered the earth around the plants. Her ears picked up the sound of a door opening in the house, a car pulling up on the street, and Leslie’s heartbeat twenty feet away. Her nose followed the elusive trail until fae was all she could smell.

  She opened her eyes—and fear, visceral and unexpected, turned her joints to water and closed her throat so she could neither breathe nor make a sound. Justin stood before her, the werewolf who had Changed her and then made her life a living hell.

  And all she could think was, You’re dead. You’re dead. I saw you die.

  The text message from Anna was simple. It said: Don’t worry. I need my wolf nose to find a fae. As Charles finished reading, he felt his mate’s shift begin.

  She knew him. She was worried that he’d come looking for her if she transformed to wolf, so she was reassuring him that she wasn’t in harm’s way. If she hadn’t added the last bit, he’d have let her text message reassure him.

  She was looking for a fae on her own? When the fae they were looking for was powerful and sophisticated enough to create a child from a bundle of sticks? Not without him, she wasn’t.

  “Pull over,” he told Marsden, interrupting whatever the agent had been saying about the next place they were headed, had been headed.

  “Excuse me?”

  Impatient, Charles caught the other man’s eye and said, low-voiced, “Pull over.”

  The car swerved out of traffic and came to a halt with a jerk.

  “What the freak, man?” said Marsden, staring at his hands as though he couldn’t believe what had happened. That he’d just obeyed orders.

  Humans weren’t used to following the hierarchy of the pack, but it still worked on them. At least it worked on them when Charles was giving the orders. It wasn’t magic. But there was a reason Charles was usually the most dominant in his world that was filled with dominant wolves. Even humans had that primitive brain that drill sergeants around the world tapped into, the part of the brain concerned with survival. That part heard an order and just obeyed.

  Charles got out and rounded the front of the car rapidly, so the spell of his order didn’t have a chance to fade. He opened the driver’s-side door and said, “Time for me to drive.” When that didn’t move Marsden, he met his eyes again and said, “Get out of the car, Agent Marsden. I’m driving.”

  “Jim?” Leeds said.

  Marsden unbuckled and got out, too slowly to suit Charles, but it was done. Charles sat down and belted in. While Marsden got into the passenger seat, Charles played with the tablet mounted in the dash of the car until it gave him a map to look at. He hadn’t used this particular version of a tablet before, but there was nothing related to a computer that didn’t eventually spill its secrets to him.

  Charles knew Phoenix of twenty years ago, but the new city and its suburbs were much changed. Anna’s pain echoed in his head, shivering shreds that were worse than usual. He felt her wolf’s anxiety, but Anna was okay.

  That knowledge gave him the patience to wait until Marsden was beside him, buckled in. Then he hit the gas, crossed four lanes of traffic, and slid sideways through the police emergency road that connected one side of the expressway to the other. There was a car in the nearest lane and the Cantrip agent’s car was undertorqued compared to his truck.

  The siren control bar had a switch helpfully marked LIGHTS NO SIREN. He tripped it, crossed the highway in front of the oncoming car, and then pulled into the next lane over, ignoring the sounds his passengers made.

  He put his foot down and wished the car had more power on the top end. He drove it a little slower than flat-out because he might need that extra speed to get them out of trouble. Every few minutes he glanced at the map on the tablet. He didn’t know where Anna was, but he could feel her and he headed that direction as quickly as he could.

  “I thought you said you couldn’t drive,” said Marsden tightly.

  In the backseat, Leeds was chanting fervently, “Not gonna die today, not today, Lord. Not gonna die today, not today, Lord.”

  Charles passed a four-car mobile roadblock by squeezing the car down the left-hand shoulder, which wasn’t quite wide enough, and he had to muscle it pretty good to keep the soft sand from pulling them into the ditch. Leeds’s half prayer sped up and got pretty loud until the car was traveling with all four wheels on the blacktop again.

  “I prefer not to,” Charles answered Marsden as he switched lanes over and back. “But it is better if I drive when my wolf is on the hunt.” And then he quit talk
ing, quit listening, and drove while his Anna completed her change, and her pain left him clearheaded.

  She didn’t need him. She was a werewolf and he’d spent the whole of their time together making sure she could take care of herself. She was tough and smart. She didn’t need him to deal with a fae.

  But he was coming anyway.

  The Cantrip agents did pretty well, he thought, given that they were used to human reaction times and he was not human. The biggest limitation on their speed and the path he took was the car. He skidded it pretty good as they came off the expressway and onto the city streets because its suspension was for crap. He had to drop speed a bit, but not much as they rocketed through red lights and crosswalks with kids and little old ladies.

  Leeds fell silent and Marsden closed his eyes with one hand on the oh-crap handle and the other braced on the dashboard. The quiet in the car was good. It allowed his ears to pick up the first hint of rubber slipping on pavement, even before he could feel it. That gave him a little more reaction time, so he sped up a bit.

  Even with the map, he circled her location twice before he found a road that led to the house where the orange car was parked. He pulled in behind and took a deep breath, opening the car door, and that was when Anna’s panic nearly dropped him to his knees.

  He’d never been more grateful for his ability to shed his human skin for wolf in moments, in a breath, instead of the long drawn-out process his father and the other wolves had to go through. It hurt, it hurt, but Anna was frightened and that made the other of no concern at all.

  On four paws, he bolted through the plate-glass window; the glass cut deeply, but he ignored the damage. He healed as he ran through the stone house, over a silly little fountain, and out the closed patio doors, shedding water, blood, and glass as he ran.

  The graceful black wolf who was his mate crouched, hindquarters and tail tucked, at the far side of the yard. She was better at controlling her responses in human form. The only time he’d ever seen her look scared was when she ran on four paws.