• • •

CHARLES STOOD BEFORE the door to his da’s house, the witch gun in one hand and the basket of fruit that had been meant as a gift for Hester in the other. He centered himself, promising Brother Wolf that they would take care of business, then retreat—

Retreat? Brother Wolf did not retreat.

There were whole weeks when Brother Wolf was just a silent presence. Hester’s death had brought him very close to the surface. Which meant that Charles needed to guard his thoughts and keep control of his temper.

Escort Anna into the peace and quiet of the guest suite, he amended.

Brother Wolf knew Charles’s initial word was the one he meant, but he allowed himself to be pacified. Probably because Charles included Anna in the second version of his intentions.

Anna was watching for him as he walked by the biggest of the three gathering places in his da’s home, now filled with restless wolves. She ducked out and followed him into the kitchen, which was unoccupied.

The whole kitchen smelled of peanut butter, and there were plates of cookies sitting on the countertop.

“We are going out tomorrow to warn all the wildlings,” Anna told him, taking the basket with a grimace. She stared at it a moment, looked around, then set it down on the nearest flat surface.

A good idea, he thought. So why was Anna acting as if there was something he wasn’t going to like about the situation.

She continued without pause explaining plans to tighten defenses, to make sure the rest of those under their care were as safe as possible. Finishing by saying, “Tag says he’ll try to contact the wildlings, but it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to get more than one or two of them to pick up their phone.”

Charles nodded at this. He sympathized with the general resistance that the older wolves had to modern technology. Da had insisted that everyone had to have phones in case of emergencies. Unless he was present, though, he could not insist that they answer their phones.

And since the point was for Anna and him to meet with them all, the fewer wildlings who answered their phones the better.

“Ten days is a long time to maintain high alert,” he said.

“Shutting barn doors after the cows are already out,” agreed Tag, rounding the corner. “But it would be stupider not to shut ’em if we still have a few cows inside.”

“Sometimes I’m glad I don’t know how your mind works,” Sage said, trailing behind Tag.

If he were the opposition team, Charles thought, he’d wait two weeks—two months, assuming time wasn’t a factor—before moving again. Maybe Charles would get lucky, and their enemy was impatient, or time was a factor.

Hopefully, in ten days, Da would be back, and this would be his problem. The traitor would be his da’s problem. And the artifacts currently in the back of Charles’s truck would be Bran’s problem.

The dead bodies, also in his truck, would still end up on Charles’s plate, he was pretty sure.

Figuratively speaking, he told Brother Wolf before that one could get any ideas.

“Is that the witch gun?” asked Tag.

Charles held it up—and when Tag reached for it, he handed it over.

“Is that wise?” asked Sage.

Tag aimed it at the fruit basket and pulled the trigger.

“Possibly not,” admitted Charles ruefully. Though nothing had happened to the fruit basket.

Tag pulled his hand off the grip, holding the gun by the barrel, and he shook the hand that had held the trigger. “Bites,” he said. “That’s how it’s powered? It doesn’t seem to do much.”

“Don’t you think that setting off a weapon you know nothing about in the house is a little stupid?” asked Sage.

At those words, there was a sharp exclamation, and Leah bustled into the kitchen carrying an empty plate. Tag abruptly set the weapon on the counter and tried to look as though he had nothing to do with it.

Leah snorted, but instead of berating Tag, she asked Charles, “Are you going to stay in here until the whole pack follows you?”

Without answering her, Charles picked the gun back up, frowning at it. He took the basket outside and set it on the porch, aware that Tag, Sage, Leah, and Anna trailed behind him. He aimed at the basket of fruit.

He pulled the trigger. Nausea rose in his stomach, a tingling ran through his body, and the fruit and basket dissolved into a revolting, stinking mass of grayish mud, leaving the cement it sat upon unharmed.

They all stared at the result a moment. Charles rubbed his trigger finger, paying attention to the numbness that faded slowly.

“Witch blood is apparently necessary,” said Leah coolly after a moment. “Thank you for experimenting in my kitchen with that thing, Tag. Oh, and I’m not cleaning that up. Come into the living room when you’re finished.”

She left, pausing to collect the remaining two plates full of cookies. Sage and a grinning, unrepentant Tag followed behind her.

Anna grabbed a garbage bag while Charles got a dustpan and a roll of paper towels.

“So why didn’t it do that to you?” she asked, her voice tight as she snapped the bag out and opened it.

“I’m tougher than a basket of fruit?” suggested Charles, going back outside to work on the mess.

“Very funny,” she said in a broken voice that told him humor might not have been the best idea he’d had today. She put her hand out and touched the muck that smelled of fruit, rot, and blood magic. Her hand shook.

Oh my love, he thought. Quietly, he said, “I don’t know, Anna.” He ripped off a paper towel and watched as she used it to clean her hand. “Maybe adding my mother’s magic alters the effect of the gun, my blood makes it more powerful than his did. My mother’s magic is close to witchcraft—but more attuned to the turning of the earth. Maybe her blood offered some protection. I don’t know why. But I am alive and unharmed.”

She sucked in a deep breath. Nodded. She stuffed the wadded-up paper towel in the bag, then bent and held it open next to the step, so he could just push the mess into the bag.

“What did Boyd have to say?” she asked.

“We want to know, too,” called Leah’s voice clearly. “Wait to answer that until you are out here.”

“She meant to say ‘please,’” said Sage cheerily, when Brother Wolf let out a growl of annoyance.

Anna muttered something unhappily under her breath. Charles didn’t hear it all, but he knew it had to do with the lack of privacy at his da’s house.

“Exactly,” he told her.

• • •

“WHAT DID BOYD have to say?” asked Leah, as soon as he and Anna came into the living room.

Charles glanced around the room and saw that a good two-thirds of the pack was here. From their attentive eyes and the hyperprotective glints of wolf-eyes he caught here and there, he realized that they all knew about the dead man’s connection to Anna. He couldn’t see her telling them, so someone must have overheard them. Hard to stay quiet enough that any werewolf in sight couldn’t overhear you without trying.

So he told them what Boyd had said to him. When he finished, he looked around the room, and asked, “Do any of you know what Da did with the electronic files, financial and otherwise, that Boyd gave him?”

“Bran still has them,” said Leah. “He got them about a month back. He’s been working on them himself. He told me that you had enough on your shoulders, and he’d give them to you when the time was right.”

“Okay,” he said, quietly.

Da had taken the files to work on them himself? What did that mean? When the time was right? His da could run a spreadsheet or conduct an Internet search, but he wasn’t in Charles’s league. Had his da just forgotten about it? That didn’t sound like the Marrok at all.

Had Da found something in the books that he didn’t want Charles to know about? Was that something the reason Bran wasn’t here?

He wasn’t in Africa. The last call Charles had made, before coming into the house, was to his brother. Samuel had not heard from their da since he’d gotten a call that all was well with Mercy. He had not heard that Da was headed to Africa—and he’d not seen him.

That meant Bran had lied. Over the phone, Charles reflected, lying would have been easy enough.