But no amount of grooming, of cleaning, of polishing, could erase the gaunt woman she had been, more animal than human, with dirty hair so tangled they’d had to cut most of it off. She looked at her muscled forearms and saw instead how they had appeared when she’d been so thin that both bones had shown through the skin. Sleek, smooth nails polished glossy red seemed more unreal than the filthy nails broken down to the quick.
And the stupid part of that? As clear and as visceral as the vision of that haggard creature was, she couldn’t actually remember looking like that. By the time Bran had brought her here, she had been healthy in body and very nearly sane.
Very nearly.
She should go there instead of Charles, she thought. She had survived whatever it was once; she should be able to survive it again.
Her eyes turned to ice as her wolf nature rose.
“No,” said Bran very quietly from the doorway. “You can’t go.”
He had known she was listening—there was that question answered. She turned to look at him.
“While it is possible that previous exposure to whatever it was Sherwood met up in those mountains might shield you,” he said in a gentle voice she didn’t believe for a moment, “it is my expectation that it would have the opposite effect. Magic isn’t like a disease you can build up an immunity to. Mostly it works like a vampire bite. The first one usually has only a small effect, and that effect fades away over time. The second or third bite leaves their victims permanently trapped.”
He crossed the room to her, dropped to one knee, caught her hand, and brought it to his mouth. Then, keeping her hand against his lips, he bowed his head and said simply, “I am not willing to lose you.”
She raised her gaze from the top of his head and looked again in the mirror, where a rag-clothed, filthy, bony woman with empty eyes the color of a still lake stared back at her. That woman met Leah’s eyes and began to sing.
“WHERE HAVE YOU been?” asked Anna sleepily.
She’d been vaguely conscious of Charles getting out of bed, but she’d drifted off before she could ask him where he was going. He usually did one last check on the horses before they went to bed for the night, but her internal clock told her he’d been gone for a couple of hours.
“Talking things over with Da,” he told her.
She rolled over and watched him strip out of his clothes with lazy appreciation.
“Are we going to California?” she asked. “Do you want me to text Leslie?”
Charles climbed into bed beside her and pulled her into his arms. “No,” he said, “don’t contact the FBI. This is family business. Yes, we are going to California.” And he told her how Leah came to be the Marrok’s mate.
When he was finished, Anna said, “Your da should be shot. And I’m only withholding judgment on Sherwood because I don’t know his side of the story.”
“Yes,” Charles agreed. “He thought you would see it that way.” He paused and said, “I’m not sure I don’t see it that way myself.”
“I’ve only heard Leah discuss how she became a werewolf once,” Anna told him, then recounted as closely as she could remember what Leah had said at the restaurant in Missoula.
“Huh,” said Charles when she was done.
She gave him a mock punch in punishment, then flattened her hand on his bare chest. “So Sherwood Post is the only one who actually knows what happened? But your da never asked him what that was while Sherwood still remembered it?”
Charles grunted. “He told me he asked. But once Sherwood was cognizant again, he refused to talk about it. Da thinks Sherwood did not believe he had killed or destroyed whatever it was he fought. Sherwood believed merely talking about it was a problem.” He paused. “And Da is pretty sure it was Sherwood who made certain Leah wouldn’t remember it, either, that blocking her memory of it was part of how Sherwood was trying to free her from it.”
“Wait a minute,” Anna said. She’d known Sherwood for a while before he’d been shipped off to Adam Hauptman, but Charles’s story had revised her understanding of the quiet and stoic wolf a great deal. “Mind magic … that’s witchcraft, right? But Sherwood is a werewolf—and male witches are not usually powerful.”
Charles drew in a breath. “Sherwood … the person Sherwood was, was a Power in the way my father or Bonarata is a Power. If one spoke of him, one would probably not call him a werewolf, even. That he was a werewolf did not define him in the way it defines me or you. I don’t know what category he would fit into, but it would involve magic.” He paused. “I don’t know how he managed to get captured by the witches. My da is more than half convinced Sherwood let them take him in the arrogant belief they couldn’t keep him—and found out he was wrong.”
“So,” Anna said, feeling apprehension she wouldn’t have felt before hearing a bedtime story this serious, “are we going to California?”
“Yes,” said Charles. “We are taking Tag with us.”
“Because … ?”
“Because magic has trouble latching onto him for whatever reason.”
“Like Mercy,” Anna said in surprise.
Charles shook his head, but said, “Maybe. I don’t understand the mechanisms of Tag’s resistance. Mercy’s immunity seems to be from the same heritage that allows her to change into a coyote and is far less reliable—and more effective when it does work—than Tag’s.”
“So we three are going to venture into a situation that disappeared a village and brought a legendary werewolf—no,” she corrected herself, “a legendary legend to his knees and killed who knows how many people. You and I and Tag.”
“Information gathering,” Charles told her. “The idea is we go see what’s going on, and return to discuss what to do about it with Da. We are not to engage the enemy unless we cannot help doing so.”
Anna considered that. “Your father’s orders?”
“Yes,” confirmed Charles.
“Has he met Tag?” Anna queried.
Charles tightened his hold on her as he gave a huff of laughter.
More seriously she asked, “How many monsters can control people’s minds?”
Charles sighed. “Witches—but not all of them. There used to be a couple of families who specialized in that kind of magic, but they disappeared after the Inquisition. That doesn’t mean the rest of them can’t do it.”
“Sage was in the restaurant when Leah told her side of the story,” Anna said somberly. “She was very interested.”
They both contemplated that.
“Vampires can control minds, too,” Anna said, breaking the silence.
“All of the fae can work illusionary magic,” Charles said.
“And the music thing ties in pretty well with the fae, doesn’t it?” Anna said. “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.”
“That one just springs to mind, doesn’t it?” Charles said. “I can think of a few of my uncle’s stories, too—and creatures native to this land were far more plentiful than fae, witches, or vampires back in the day.”
“So we are clueless,” she said.
“Absolutely,” he answered.