Wild Sign

by Briggs, Patricia

  “Sounds like you knew some of the people in Wild Sign before you went up?” Anna asked, focusing once more on Zander’s words instead of his person.

  “Sure,” he said easily. “The world’s wildernesses are finite, you know? There aren’t many of us who are driven to explore them. After a while, some faces are familiar. Emily and her family—the Tottlefords—I met a few years ago in Alaska. But they’re not the only ones I knew. I stayed a couple of weeks with Jenny and her husband at the time in the Andes.”

  Anna was pretty sure that Jenny had been Dr. Connors Senior’s “Opera Singer” from the stories that Zander had shared. But she didn’t want Zander to know that they had another source for information about Wild Sign, so she didn’t try to confirm that.

  “The Andes?” Anna asked. “In South America?”

  He nodded. “Peru.” But something about the music he was playing had caught her ear.

  “What is that song?” she asked.

  He smiled. “Do you like it?” He played a few more measures before he spoke. “It’s something I’ve been working on. My only problem is that it sounds familiar to me. I don’t want to take credit for someone else’s work.”

  “I hear you,” Anna said. “It sounds familiar to me, too.” She sighed. “Doubtless I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with the title, singer, and where I heard it last in my head. But it’s not coming to me now.”

  There was a wordless call behind her. She turned to see Tag and Charles jogging across the street. Charles was carrying two fair-sized boxes, and Tag had a box and a bright-colored fabric bag.

  She turned back to Zander. He’d closed up again, like a flower when the sun goes down. He did not look like someone who could be observant and funny or take world-class photographs. He wasn’t playing that odd song anymore—he’d switched to “The Ash Grove.”

  She’d been thinking about “The Ash Grove” a little earlier. Music was like that, though; a chord progression could call up a dozen songs to any experienced musician. They’d probably both picked up on a chord progression in something he’d played earlier that was also in “The Ash Grove.”

  “Thank you,” she told him sincerely. “I appreciate your help.”

  He nodded without looking up. “Let me know if you find any of them? I’ll be here until the snow flies—October or thereabouts. Then I’ll follow the wind.” He looked thoughtful. “Colorado, maybe.”

  “I’ll let you know,” she promised. “Safe travels.”

  She met Charles and Tag at the SUV, where they were off-loading their burdens.

  “Found some things?” she asked.

  Charles nodded.

  Tag said, “Good thing we went there. Or else when the owner of the storage facility had his next sale, someone would be the proud owner of the Green family grimoires.”

  Wide-eyed, Anna looked at the boxes and bag. “That’s a lot of grimoires, right? They have to be handwritten?”

  Charles shut the back of the Suburban. “It’s the largest collection I’ve run across in one place.” He glanced over at the storage facility. “They have a presence all by themselves.” And that would explain the heavy feeling in Anna’s chest as soon as she had approached. “Carrie had spelled the locker, or someone—or something—would have come looking for them.”

  Anna got into the SUV. “What are we going to do with them?”

  “Make my da happy, I’d guess,” said Charles. “Though between this and the fae artifacts we’ve been acquiring, Da is going to have to come up with an alternative storage plan. Eventually we’re going to run into some things that shouldn’t be stored together.”

  In her rearview mirror, Tag soundlessly mouthed Boom and made exploding signs with his hands.

  Out loud he suggested, “Maybe we should turn the fae artifacts over to the fae.”

  Charles looked at him.

  Tag raised both hands and said, “It was just a suggestion.”

  “What did you learn?” Charles asked Anna.

  She shook her head. “Nothing useful, except that I won’t ever be able to think about the people of Wild Sign as anonymous dead people anymore. Zander is observant and a good storyteller, but he’s not a witch. He didn’t notice anything odd.”

  “We should find a place to spend the night,” Charles said. “We could stop here and get going early tomorrow. Or we can drive back to Yreka and stay there.”

  “I saw a place as we were coming into town. On the river,” Anna said, suddenly exhausted and ready to be done for the day, even though it was only midafternoon.

  “I saw it,” said Charles. “That sounds good. Tag?”

  “Don’t care,” he said. “Find me a bed and I’ll sleep in it. Otherwise, I’ll sleep on the floor. As long as you ward those books. If you don’t, I’m through sleeping until this trip is over. My hands are still tingling and I don’t think a shower is going to clean me up.” He looked at Anna, meeting her eyes briefly in the rearview mirror. “The Klamath might just do it, though. Let’s stay on the river.”

  Anna was suddenly parked in front of a building bearing a sign that read Resort. The engine was running and both of her hands were on the wheel, but she didn’t remember getting here. It was just like the sudden dislocation from Chicago to the Wild Sign amphitheater, but instead of losing years, she’d just lost a few minutes. She hoped.

  “Anna?” Charles asked, but not like he was worried.

  She shook her head. “Just thinking.”

  “Tag,” Charles said, opening his door, “why don’t you stay here and keep an eye on those grimoires. Anna and I will book the rooms.”

  Yes, she thought with relief, only a few minutes—ten or fifteen at the most. Not enough to worry Charles with.

  They took three rooms. One for Charles and Anna, one for Tag, and a third for the grimoires, which Charles deemed too dangerous to leave in the car.

  “What ought to happen with them is burning,” Charles said as they carried them in. “But that brings its own set of dangers.”

  Even Anna—who, like Zander, had not been witchborn—felt as if there was something crawling up her arms as she took the bag in. It was uncomfortable enough to distract her from what had happened driving here. What she carried was a lot scarier than her little memory lapse. She was careful to keep the bag from brushing against her leg.

  “Is keeping them here going to cause problems for people trying to sleep here after we’re gone?” she asked, putting the bag in the middle of the floor, where Charles directed.

  “Not if I do my job,” he said absently, seeing something that she could not.

  “Do we make your job easier or harder?” she asked.

  “Harder,” he said.

  She brushed a kiss on his shoulder—but didn’t touch him with the hand that had held the bag. “I’ll go take a shower, then.”

  RENDERING THE BOOKS harmless took longer than he’d expected. They had been ignored for a long time, and they did not want to be hidden again. He would suggest burning to his da. Strongly.

  Anna had not been wrong. Someone sensitive might have trouble sleeping in this room if they left the books here very long. But a few days should be fine. He’d smudge the room afterward and that should take care of any permanent trouble the grimoires might try to cause.

  Anna wasn’t in their room, though she’d obviously showered. He wondered what she felt she had to clean off. She didn’t usually shower twice a day. The room was steamy and smelled like the things she used in the shower: body wash, shampoo, and conditioner. He took in the scent and … Brother Wolf stirred uneasily.

  Charles wasn’t going to give in to that. He pulled off the shirt Anna had gotten for him and exchanged it for a red T-shirt. If Tag threw him in the river, he didn’t want to tear up his good shirt.

  But when he took the path to the river, he found Anna alone. She was sitting on a big rock, facing the river, her arms slung around one of her legs that she’d pulled up to her chest. Like Charles, she had discarded h
er good clothes and now wore jeans and a black tank top.

  “Hey,” he said to her, because she hadn’t turned around when he’d come up to her. The river was loud and the wind blew in his face, but she still should have heard him.

  She turned to look at him—and for a moment he would have sworn she didn’t know him. Then her smile filled her face and her eyes came alive. “Sorry,” she said. “I was just trying to remember a song.”

  C H A P T E R

  8

  Anna still hadn’t talked to Charles about the weird glitch in her memory by the time they were getting ready to head out for Angel Hills Assisted Living.

  After a good night’s sleep, she’d begun to think that she’d made a mountain out of a molehill. Nothing bad had happened. It hadn’t felt like an attack—not like when something had been looking for a way into her head after they’d gotten back from Wild Sign. Maybe it had just been a leftover from her experiences with the Singer in the Woods, a hiccup.

  As she got dressed for the day, she decided she’d talk to Charles if she experienced something like that again.

  Charles came back into the room after his shower and said, “I think we should keep the rooms here at the hotel until we set out for home so we can leave the grimoires in their room.”

  Anna had noticed that he tended to speak about the books as if they were alive, which she found disturbing. She couldn’t see Charles doing that by accident. She wasn’t excited about driving all over Northern California dragging the books around with them like bait for any magically inclined whatsit who happened by.

  Still, there were problems with leaving them in the room while they ran around looking for clues. Doubtless Charles knew all of the pros and cons, but she couldn’t help worrying.

  “You want to leave them locked in a room that every maid and manager can just waltz into while we’re gone?”

  Charles nodded. “That’s a consideration, but they seem a little understaffed here.”

  Anna had gone back to the front desk for more towels the night before, because the only person on duty was the teenager at the front desk.

  “A ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign should keep their overworked staff out while we’re gone. And if they go in, all they will see is a box and a bag of old books. The warding should be enough to keep anyone from accidentally getting into trouble—and if someone tries to get to them through my wards on purpose …” Brother Wolf grinned eagerly. “We’ll have a nice hunt.” Charles dimmed the grin down a bit. “I think it’s unlikely—given that they sat undisturbed in a storage locker for half a year.” He frowned at the wall between their room and the grimoires’. “It’s not ideal, but it’s the best of bad options.”

  They left the books behind a door protected by the Do Not Disturb sign and a hotel lock anyone who worked at the hotel could open. None of them were happy about that except for Tag, who was visibly more cheerful the more distance they put between them and the books.

  Anna, who had been watching for it, noticed that the old gas station was deserted except for the decrepit Subaru.

  Charles must have seen her look, because he said, “It’s early for businesses to be open.”

  “I was just surprised it didn’t disappear after we left it,” she informed him. “Like any self-respecting Sasquatch dwelling would.”

  “They aren’t the fae,” Tag observed from his sprawled position in the backseat. “It’s too much work. They have to be really trying to impress you to do something like that.”

  Something in his voice made Anna suspect that he had been wondering if it would be gone, too.

  THEY ATE BREAKFAST in Yreka, then set out for Angel Hills Assisted Living, following the SUV’s GPS.

  “Are you sure we are heading to the right place?” Anna asked as they bumped over the rutted dirt road. “Most assisted living facilities are somewhere an ambulance can actually reach.”

  Yreka was edged with hill country, and they were nine miles up a road that ran around those hills. It had been four miles since they had seen the last house.

  “If we reach the GPS’s target and it’s not right, we can go back to Yreka and ask around,” Tag said.

  “Angel Hills doesn’t have a website,” said Charles. “Or much other information on the Internet.” He gave a thoughtful grunt.

  “That’s odd,” agreed Anna. She held the steering wheel steady as a rut tried to force the SUV to the side. “Most assisted living places have to advertise for clients. Maybe Yreka is small enough that word of—”

  They topped a rise and found themselves abruptly in the tamed greenness of a well-tended landscape. Two rows of trees lined a white vinyl fence line on either side of the suddenly paved road.

  The road curved gently up to an opening in the high stone wall that surrounded Angel Hills Assisted Living. In case passersby were in any doubt of where they were, there was an elegant, if large, brass sign on the metal gates that were open to welcome them.

  They drove through the impressive entry into a prosaic parking lot laid out before a large, graceful building that looked very much like a high-end private hospital or school. A very tall stone wall spread out from either side of the building and swept behind it, encasing something very securely. Anna gave a thoughtful look at the open gates.

  “All but shouts ‘expensive place to store unwanted relatives,’ doesn’t it?” observed Tag.

  “What do you do with grandma when she doesn’t remember who you are and starts trying to spend all of her money on QVC buying synthetic pearl brooches?” agreed Anna.

  “That was oddly specific,” said Tag, sounding intrigued.

  “My father represented just such a grandma after her intrepid teenaged grandchildren broke her out of a facility her son had locked her up in for her own good,” Anna said, her tone a bit grimmer than she had planned.

  She’d been doing homework when the two boys and their grandmother, still wearing stained hospital clothing and the remnants of plastic restraints, had knocked on her dad’s door.

  “From your face I gather that the son regretted his actions,” Charles murmured.

  “In his own way,” Anna said, “my dad is kind of a wolf, too.”

  Anna had been heading toward a place near the main building when Charles made a soft noise. She glanced up at him, but he was watching the building.

  “You think we should be wary?” she asked.

  He nodded, so she drove back toward the gates. “Should I park outside?”

  He gave the wall a look and shook his head. “We can get over the wall if we need to.”

  She took a parking place just inside the gates. They got out, and Charles took a slow, sweeping look around. Anna wondered what he saw. She knew that he didn’t usually see ghosts, but she got the feeling he saw something here.

  “Tag,” he said slowly. “I think you should stay with the car.”

  “Watching our escape route,” said Tag, sounding a bit more Celtic than normal. “Oh, aye.”

  “Magic?” Anna asked.

  Charles jerked his head toward a light post. “We’re being watched—and maybe listened to.” Which wasn’t a no, she noted.

  She narrowed her eyes and finally saw what he had. An extra little bump on the bottom side of the post that arched over to hold the light—camera.

  “Reasonable enough,” she observed, “at a place that might have Alzheimer’s patients, and—” Her breath caught. She had been so worried about her memory lapses and the grimoires that she hadn’t actually thought about what it meant that Daniel was a relative of Carrie’s the same way Dr. Sissy Connors was the daughter of Dr. Connors Senior. Witches tended to occur along family lines. “And maybe especially a patient related to Carrie Green,” she said slowly.

  If they were being watched, she couldn’t ask Charles if he thought they were being stupid for going into a place designed to keep people in, maybe even to detain witches against their will. They didn’t know if Daniel could tell them anything. Charles has thought of all of this
, she told herself, and forced her shoulders to relax. All she had to do was not let him know that she hadn’t figured it out until just now.

  She wished she hadn’t given the facility her real name. If this place was run by witches, that surname would alert people. Cornick was a good Welsh name, and there were doubtless hundreds of Cornick families in the US that were no relation to the Wolf Who Rules. But still …

  In lieu of words, she reached out to Charles and stopped him when he would have walked toward the doors. He gave her a reassuring smile and covered her hand with his briefly. He didn’t think that they were in any danger he couldn’t handle. She slid her hand into the crook of his arm.

  As they walked to the building, she saw that most of the windows were the kind with a metal mesh embedded in the glass, more discreet than bars but no less effective unless you were keeping in werewolves. She wondered how many of their patients were incarcerated here rather than held for treatment. Probably the same percentage of patients in any assisted living home, she thought. But the isolation of the place made it feel more like a prison than a place of healing.

  Well, that and the surveillance equipment and escape-proof windows.

  As if to make up for the imposing exterior, the glass-and-bronze entry would have done credit to a high-end hotel, an effect not lessened by the imposing reception desk. Anna gave their names to the young man behind the counter and told him they were there to see Daniel Green. He checked a list and gave them a bright smile.

  “Dr. Underwood left a note that he wanted to escort you. Normally you would not be allowed in to see him at all. Daniel’s one of our special guests—that means that he can be obstreperous if he is in a mood.”

  There was a hesitation before “obstreperous.” Anna would have bet that the word he’d been going to say was “dangerous.”

  “It’s not Daniel’s fault.” The young man looked suddenly serious. “Dementia is a terrible thing—scary for those who suffer from it.”