Dead Heat

by Patricia Briggs

  “Neither do I,” he said in the same gentle tone. “But everyone dies, Maggie. This is not the worst death I have seen. He is not afraid, not of death, anyway.”

  She let go of him and took two steps backward. “Joseph has never been afraid of death,” she agreed. “I think it surprises him that he has lived this long.”

  The intense intimacy of their conversation faded, caused by some trick of Maggie’s body language: she was once again the gracious hostess.

  “Food is ready downstairs,” she said. “Kage said that after dinner, he’d take you to see some horses.” She smiled suddenly, “He is grateful for Chelsea, and my son can see no greater reward than to take you to see his horses.” She started down the hallway. “In that way, he and his father are just alike. Horse-mad idiots.”

  “You, too,” Charles said, his hand on the small of Anna’s back as he followed. “Remember that poor skinny pinto you saved from that pair of cowboys, Maggie?” He looked at Anna, his eyes smiling. “One woman against two armed men, and she took after them with a broom for the way they’d half starved a mare. Only it turns out, when the dust settled, that they’d just bought that mare from another guy because they didn’t like the way he wasn’t feeding her.”

  “I apologized and fed them my burritos,” Maggie said. “They didn’t care about a few bruises after that.”

  “Won’t it be too dark to ride?” asked Anna.

  “The main barn has lights,” Maggie said shortly. “You won’t have any trouble seeing.”

  They ate in the big dining room because there were too many to fit around the kitchen table. Ernestine had roasted a huge beef brisket and topped the meal off with corn bread and a green salad. She ate with the family, deliberately sitting next to the kids and helping Max and Maggie keep a normal conversation going.

  Anna sat next to Charles and watched everyone (except for her husband) try not to stare at Chelsea.

  Chelsea, when she was not dying on a bathroom floor, was a strikingly attractive, if not beautiful, woman. She was tall, half a head taller than Kage, and built like an athlete. Her hair was a Nordic blond that complemented her icy-gray eyes and was cut very expensively to frame her expressive and rather bony face.

  Max had given Anna a picture of a charming and funny woman. But Chelsea didn’t engage with anyone, not even when someone spoke to her directly. She would eat a few bites quickly, then set her utensils down as if they were puzzle pieces she had to fit into place. Then she would take a gulp of water, stare at the wall or the table or her hands—and then suddenly grab her silverware and eat another two or three mouthfuls with ravenous intensity. Every once in a while she’d try to eat something besides the meat, and Anna could see her fight to get the food down.

  It was probably something from the Change, Anna thought. She didn’t like to think about the weeks shortly after she had been Changed. There were large gaps in her memory—

  She curled around herself shivering, cold and hot by turns. The bars of the cage burned her skin, but without something against her back she felt vulnerable to attack. She smelled grease from a fast-food box …

  Okay, so some things she remembered just fine, but she could choose not to dwell upon them. There was no cage here, no one to throw a cardboard box of fried chicken at Chelsea. To this day, Anna couldn’t eat chicken from that particular chain.

  There were no rapists here.

  Suddenly Chelsea’s eyes met Anna’s from across the table and held them. Icy gray became even more pale, and Chelsea’s nostrils flared.

  “Who hurt you?” she asked, slicing through the two other conversations going on at the table.

  “He’s dead,” said Charles, his hand sliding up Anna’s back reassuringly. “I killed him. If I could, I would bring him back to life so I could kill him again.”

  Chelsea turned her gaze to Charles for a moment. “Good,” she said, before she had to drop her eyes. Her intensity faded. “That’s good.”

  Charles put his lips against Anna’s ear. “He’s very dead.”

  Anna nodded jerkily. “Sorry.”

  “No,” he said, his breath warm against her neck. “Don’t be sorry. Just know if anyone ever tries to hurt you again—they will be dead, too.”

  And some people had tried, hadn’t they. And yes, she realized, they were all dead. Charles was a big warm presence at her back, better than a solid wall or bars.

  She picked up her fork and took a bite of brisket. “Okay,” she told Charles.

  They cleaned the table collectively, Ernestine directing traffic. Anna found herself in the kitchen washing pots and pans as Maggie put them away.

  “Do you suppose Ernestine made us work together on purpose?” asked Anna.

  “Undoubtedly,” Maggie agreed.

  She didn’t say anything more for a moment. It wasn’t exactly private—people were in and out with food and dishes. Max had taken up the post at the dishwasher, where he scraped and loaded dishes.

  “I loved your husband once,” said Maggie.

  “I gathered that,” Anna said. “He cares a lot about you.” She forced herself not to add and Joseph, too. It was true, but it made her sound as though she were jealous. She wasn’t. Territorial, yes. Jealous, no.

  “I was not as courageous as you,” Maggie said. “Twenty or thirty years later I would not have made the same choice, but I was young and he frightened me when I found out what he was.” She glanced at Anna. “I was about your age. Werewolf side effects aside, Joseph said that Charles is buying you a horse for your twenty-sixth birthday. You were younger than I was when he found you. And you weren’t afraid of him.”

  It was a big concession, implying that Anna was somehow better than Maggie for not running away.

  “Yeah. I had already met the real monsters,” she told Maggie. “It gave me some basis for comparison.”

  “If I had not been afraid I would have picked Charles,” Maggie said. She headed off to a pantry space with a handful of pots. When she came back she said, “Joseph suited me better. Charles and I are both too serious. Even now, Joseph is a breath of pure sunshine. I’ll send you home with my recipe for burritos. Charles and Joseph both love them.”

  And after that they finished up the pots and pans and serving dishes in utter harmony.

  “Hosteen is pretty distracted,” said Max, when the dishwasher was loaded and running. He took the big pan out of Maggie’s hand with a smile. “He wouldn’t have let Ernestine put you to work if he’d been paying attention. Why don’t you let me finish this and go sit down as though you’d been doing it all along?”

  Maggie exchanged a grin with him and left the kitchen to younger hands.

  “Hosteen has been more protective of her since Joseph got sick,” Max told Anna. “She knows he’s feeling bad, so she indulges him.” He smiled. “She’s a tough old broad, is Maggie. He’d better lay off because she’s going to get tired of it pretty soon.”

  When the kitchen was clean, Hosteen organized a war council. He began by evicting the innocent bystanders.

  “Hey, kids,” said Ernestine in response to Hosteen’s raised eyebrow. “Why don’t you come watch some TV with me up in the gold guest suite?” She took Michael and Mackie by the hand. “Coming, Max?”

  Max gave Kage a half-pleading, half-defiant look. “I think I’ll stay,” he said.

  Kage nodded. Ernestine smiled at Max and then led the children away as the rest of them reseated themselves around the dining room.

  “I’m proud of you,” Anna overheard Kage tell Max. “You’ve been extraordinarily useful today. It’s always hard to be on the support staff when there’s action elsewhere. Thank you for taking care of the kids this afternoon.”

  “I did it under protest,” said Max, apologetically.

  “But you did it well,” Kage replied. “Good enough for me.”

  Hosteen sat at the head of the table and looked down its gleaming surface at Chelsea. “We need to know what happened to you,” he said, not unkindly. �
��Are you up to answering questions?”

  She nodded. “I don’t know how much help I’ll be.”

  “You are witchborn,” said Charles. “Did you sense anything wrong? Do you know when you were bespelled?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t have much training. My mother taught me how to hide myself, but that’s it.”

  “When did you notice something was wrong?” Hosteen said, his voice a little impatient.

  “In the bathroom,” Chelsea said, sounding a little lost. Kage scooted his chair nearer and put his arm around her. “I was looking for something stronger, for my headache. I knocked the toothbrush holder into the sink and it broke. It cut my hand when I cleaned it up, and I could think for a moment.” She looked at Kage. “That’s how I figured it out, that I could stop myself if I was bleeding.”

  “That’s why you stabbed yourself in the hand?” Max asked. Chelsea’s left hand still had a scab on it.

  She nodded. “You or me,” she told him. “I picked me.”

  He nodded and then said, “I’m not a kid anymore, Mom. Next time—pick me, okay?”

  “Not going to happen,” said Maggie. She was sitting next to Max, and she patted his hand. “Nothing to do with your age. Mothers protect their children.”

  “When did the headache start?” asked Charles.

  “After I picked up the kids, I think,” Chelsea said. “That’s when I noticed it anyway. I left the kids on their own and ran up to take something for it.” She paused. “I took too many pills and then went looking for something stronger. If I’d found the pills instead of getting a cut, would the kids have been safe?”

  Anna said, “Pain is a distraction; it can be used to break down your will.” She knew that. “So can certain drugs. Tylenol won’t do it—but what kind of stronger were you looking for?”

  “I had some leftover Vicodin,” she said. “But I was just trying to stop the headache.”

  “Vicodin would have made it harder for you to fight the geas,” said Charles. “But now we are talking a very complicated magic. ‘Kill your children and then yourself’ is, essentially, two commands. ‘Kill your children if you can, and if they are dead or if you fail to kill them, then kill yourself’ is more complicated. And the geas absolutely tried to make you kill yourself after I told you the kids were safe. If the magic drove you to do something that made you a better vessel to carry out your task … we’re getting into magic that is above the ability of most fae.”

  “How long would it have taken to put such a spell on her?” asked Hosteen.

  “A Gray Lord with the right magic could do it in an instant,” Charles said. “Or it could have taken hours.”

  “The only time I lost was while I was in the bathroom,” Chelsea said with some certainty. “I work off a schedule. I’d have noticed any gap through the day.”

  “I went through the house,” Charles said. “There was fae magic in plenty, but there was no fae in your house.”

  “Could they have put the spell on her earlier?” asked Max. “Left it inert for a while until the right conditions were met? Like Sleeping Beauty’s curse?”

  “Absolutely,” said Charles. “But if that’s what happened, it’s unlikely we’ll easily figure out who did this and why. So we should concentrate on scenarios that are more useful.”

  Chelsea frowned. “There was something odd—”

  “What was that?” asked Kage.

  She put one hand to her head and reached to the table with the other and collapsed. Hosteen jumped over the table and pulled her chair away so they could get to her.

  “Mom?” Max said.

  “It’s all right,” Anna told him at the same time Hosteen said, “It’s about time.”

  Kage picked his wife up from the floor. Hosteen said, “Take her into the apricot guest room.” He put a hand on Kage’s shoulder. “I know that’s not your usual rooms—but the kids are in your suite and we need to keep them safe. Probably there will be no trouble, but the Change is disorienting and werewolves are dangerous.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” asked Kage.

  “Her body is undergoing a lot of changes at the same time,” Charles said. “It’s pretty normal for her to seem to be fine directly after the Change heals the wounds that allowed the Change to take place. But after a few hours—sometimes a few days—everything will catch up with her.”

  “Anna told me about that,” Max said. “I just forgot.”

  Max had gone up to help Ernestine with the kids.

  Hosteen settled into Chelsea’s room with a book, and so had Maggie. When Hosteen tried to send her off to bed, she’d given him a sharp look. “You quit trying to make me into a useless old woman, Papa. I can sit with Chelsea while she sleeps. I’ve got a good mystery to read.”

  Kage hesitated, and his mother shooed him off. “You go on now,” she told him. “I know that you need to go do something. So take these two nice people out to the barn and give yourself something else to think about. Chelsea’s not going anywhere in the next few hours.”

  Kage looked at Anna and said, “Assuming you are really interested in looking at horses…”

  “Yes?” she said hopefully.

  Behind Kage’s back, his mother caught Charles’s eye and nodded at Kage, then at Charles. He bowed his head.

  Kage was examining Anna’s face. “Not much of a poker face,” he said.

  “Take her to Vegas and she’ll come back with a small fortune,” suggested Maggie warmly. “If she starts with—”

  “A large one,” Charles agreed, and ducked meekly when Anna pretended to hit him.

  Despite the slurs on her poker face, Anna decided to adopt an air of casual interest. She didn’t really know how she felt, anyway. She was excited, yes, but an odd unsettled feeling vied with excitement as they drove out to the barn.

  She’d never ridden much before she met Charles. Since then she’d ridden a million miles—well, a couple of hundred at least—in the mountains. They were a long way from the mountains. In a few minutes she was going to take her meager skills and demonstrate them.

  Sitting in the front passenger seat of the utility vehicle Kage drove, Anna felt the odd unease grow stronger as they approached a glorious building that could have been a luxury resort. It didn’t resemble any image of a “barn” that she held in her head. The rough topography had hidden the barn from the house, and supposedly there was another barn around somewhere, too. She was more impressed by the Arizona desert’s ability to make things disappear, because they weren’t more than a half mile from the house and the barn was huge.

  Spanish-style elegant, the massive structure sprawled in gracious lines that were lit like some gigantic Christmas tree with hundreds of small white lights. Behold, the expensive and tastefully illuminated xeriscaped combination of stone and exotic desert plants seemed to say. Here are the kings and queens of equines; prepare to bow down and worship them.

  Anna looked down at her battered riding boots, identifying that second, unhappy emotion. She was more excited than she’d have thought to be getting a horse of her own, but she had the sinking feeling that she was not good enough for these horses. Having her ride a horse that lived in a barn like this would be akin to a sixth grader playing a priceless Lupot cello.

  “Fancy,” said Charles from the backseat—he’d insisted on her riding in front—in dry tones. Kage laughed, pulling into a parking spot right next to an identical vehicle.

  “Yeah, Hosteen thinks it’s an eyesore, but it makes people spend more money than the tin mare motel that he claims he’d be happier with.” Kage looked at Anna and explained, “A mare motel is a metal roof that sits over a series of small runs. It looks horrible, but it keeps the sun and rain off the horses. Hosteen likes to gripe, but he made us build it a third larger than Dad had originally planned, and he was right. We are nearly at capacity.”

  Kage turned off the engine and tapped the steering wheel. “You saved my wife,” he told Charles without looking at him. “As
far as I’m concerned, you are welcome to any horse in the barn.”

  “Not necessary,” said Charles. “Besides, I do know Hosteen. I may not have seen him in two decades, but no one changes that much. He’d wash your mouth out with soap if he heard you offer to give a horse away.”

  Kage smiled when, Anna sensed, usually he would have laughed. He struck her as a man to whom laughter came easy, as if his natural state was happy—when no one was trying to kill his wife and children. Good for him. She hoped that he’d find his balance again soon.

  “Okay,” Kage said, hopping out of the utility vehicle. “Just keep my offer in mind. I am not afraid of the old man. If what you want is over budget, we can talk. Dad says you’re mostly looking for a trail horse, sensible and pretty.”

  Charles held out a courtesy hand to help Anna down. She didn’t need the help, but the reassurance of his hand on hers made her stomach settle down.

  “Anna has been riding a couple of years,” he told Kage. “Trail riding in the mountains. Maybe she might find herself interested in something else down the line, though, so we won’t rule anything out. But whatever else she decides to do with her horse, we do ride in the mountains. Anna has light hands and a decent seat. She doesn’t need a beginner’s horse—just nothing too apt to spook at shadows.”

  Kage laughed. “You know what they say about Arabs, right? They all spook. And half Arabs spook exactly half as much.” He looked at Anna. “It’s not really true, but they are easily bored. Most of the shying and other drama happens when they are looking for something interesting to do. They think they’re doing you a favor by making things a little exciting.”

  He shook his head. “When I was a kid, Dad had this mare he was going to by-golly turn into a kid’s horse for me. But the more he worked her in the arena, the more she shied and snorted. One day he got so frustrated he took her out on the trails for a week—a trial by fire, he said. He rode her through creeks, over hill and dale—they even got buzzed by some idiot on a motorcycle and she didn’t turn a hair.”

  He looked at Charles.

  “She was bored,” Charles said.