She had come to him with nothing, but she had the feeling, given the pleasure he took in giving her things, that her collection of instruments might outpace his in time. She took the guitar when he handed it to her.
“Just what am I supposed to do with this?” she asked archly, but she reversed her position on the piano bench so the piano was at her back and gave the guitar strings an experimental strum, adjusting the high E until the pitch was true. They were new strings, and the E liked to slip.
He didn’t answer her, just pulled up a chair so he would face her when he sat in it. He dragged a low table over beside his chair and set the flute on it. Then he searched the cases and pulled out an instrument she hadn’t seen him use—a viola.
“Oooo,” she said. “Can I see?”
He raised an eyebrow but handed it over. “It’s Da’s,” he told her.
She glanced in the f-hole and found a maker’s ink signature and the date 1872. It didn’t tell her much. She reached out blindly and he gave her the bow. She tested it, tightened a peg an eighth of a turn, and stroked the bow across the strings, smiling at the rich tone.
“Bran has good taste,” she said, handing the viola and bow back to him.
He took more care in tuning it than she had with the guitar—as one does, she thought with amusement. Violas—like their little sister, the violin—were temperamental. When he was satisfied, he sat down, the viola held like a cello, instead of the more usual under-the-chin method.
“Ready?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes. “No? What are we playing? Or do I get to make something up? How about a key signature?”
He grinned. “I have faith. Join in when you are ready.”
He picked up the flute and … he was right, she recognized the tune.
She’d been making an effort at reconnecting with a few of her friends from Northwestern. A few months ago one of them had shared a link to a self-proclaimed Mongolian folk metal band. They called themselves the Hu. They played modified traditional Mongolian instruments in addition to those more commonly found in rock bands. They also used a type of throat singing in which a single singer produced more than one note at the same time.
They sounded exactly like what she’d have expected musicians from Genghis Khan’s troops to sound like if they’d been given the power of modern instruments. She loved it.
She’d shared their music with Charles, he’d listened to a couple of songs, nodded his head—and she’d thought that had been that. Apparently, she’d been wrong.
He began, as the original song did, with the flute, switching seam-lessly to the viola, which he used to mimic the traditional horsehead fiddle. When he sang, he used the throat-singing technique—in, as far as she could tell, the original Mongolian.
It was a gift. He’d done a great deal of work—and he was a busy man—to prepare this song for her. For a quiet man, Charles was very good at saying “I love you.”
When the song drew to an end, Anna, flushed with enjoyment and pleasure, applauded enthusiastically. “Holy cow. Just wow. I didn’t know you speak Mongolian. You are full of surprises.”
He put the viola away and gave her a lighthearted grin that lit up his face. “I just mimic. Doubtless my song would leave anyone who actually spoke Mongolian scratching their head. And I don’t have the throat singing down right. There’s a vibration technique I haven’t figured out yet. I had to do that on the viola.”
Anna hung her guitar up, shaking her head with mock reproof. “That’s it. You might as well give up music altogether and go live on the top of a mountain, where you can wallow in your shame.”
Big arms wrapped around her, pulling her back against him. She gave an exaggerated oof as if he’d squeezed out all of her air.
“Only if you come with me,” he crooned. “Then I won’t get bored as I wallow.”
“What makes you think I could help you with boredom?” she asked in an innocent voice, pushing her hips back against him suggestively as one of his hands moved down, an iron bar across her belly, while the other moved up, pushing her hair aside to bare the side of her throat for him. “What is it you think we can do all alone—”
Upstairs, the doorbell rang.
They both froze. It was late for casual visitors.
“The door isn’t locked,” Charles growled.
“And anyone who is pack is likely to just walk in,” she agreed reluctantly.
He didn’t release her.
“Charles?” she asked.
He inhaled her scent. “I am second in the pack,” he said with obvious reluctance. “If someone is ringing our doorbell, I have to answer.”
She twisted in his arms and stood on tiptoe to kiss his chin, liking that she was going to smell like him for a while. Jeez, being a werewolf had changed her point of view on a lot of things, she mused, turning to climb up the stairs, Charles at her heels.
The phone rang—the landline that never rang but hung from the wall above the light switch like a tribute to the past. Charles stopped beside it.
“It’s Da,” he told her, then answered the phone.
Bran could make his voice heard in the minds of his wolves (and probably anyone else he cared to). He maintained that he could not hear responses—which was, Anna assumed, why he had decided to use the phone.
“Tell Anna to get the door,” Bran said. “You need to let the wolf greet them.” And then he left them with a dial tone.
Huh, she thought, meeting Charles’s eyes.
He shrugged. He didn’t know why Bran had bothered calling, either. Maybe just to make whoever was at the door wait a bit longer. Trying to work out the hows and whys of Bran’s actions tended to leave Anna with a headache and no wiser for the struggle.
Anna obeyed her orders, walking the twelve feet or so to the door and opening it. She was still trying to work out what Bran’s call had been about, so she blinked a little at the unexpected visitors.
The nearest, illuminated by the porch light, was a fortysomething black woman, looking athletic and smart in a white polo shirt with the FBI logo on one shoulder and dark blue trousers. Beside her was a short, fine-boned white man who could have been anywhere from his midfifties to midseventies. His hair, which had been dark, had been shaved completely off. His tan jacket and blue slacks fit him well and were free of wrinkles or creases. Still, he struck her as more fragile than he’d been the last time she’d seen him, and she wondered if he had been sick. He didn’t smell sick.
For a moment she felt an automatic smile of welcome flow up toward her face, borne of a genuine liking for Special Agent Leslie Fisher and a generally favorable impression of Special Agent Craig Goldstein.
But they weren’t supposed to know who she was now or where she and Charles lived. A wide streak of wariness shoved her smile aside as she contemplated the two FBI agents and wondered what this visit was about to change in their world.
“This is unexpected,” she said.
As the daughter of a lawyer, Anna had a natural inclination to respect the law. But the FBI had no real jurisdiction over her. They would not be permitted to question her or arrest her or take her to trial without a great deal of trouble—maybe not even then. They were all on pack territory now.
She wondered if they understood just how dangerous that was for them. She certainly understood how dangerous their presence here was for the werewolves. This was above her pay grade, she thought. But it would not help matters to let Charles take over.