The last few days had given Anna a visceral understanding of how frightening having undependable memories was. “Of course,” she said.
“If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll go get him.”
Dr. Underwood did not keep them waiting long. He was short, slender, and bearded, with warm blue eyes and a Mickey Mouse tie. He saw Anna’s glance and laughed.
“My daughter gives me ties,” he said. “She is eight. Yesterday’s tie was from Frozen. One of our clients sang ‘Do You Want to Build a Snowman?’ to me every time I checked in on her.” It didn’t sound as though it particularly bothered him.
“Daniel enjoys the gardens in the morning,” he said. “He’s more lucid outside; we find that is true of many of our clients. Indoors can feel a little alien, with strange noises and smells, but a garden is always filled with familiar things.”
He led them down a too-shiny-floored hall full of oversized solid-looking doors, most of which had dead bolts that locked the patients inside. The air smelled of cleaners that burned Anna’s sensitive nose, so it could give her no further hint of what lay beyond those doors.
“Daniel was as cheerful as he gets this morning,” Dr. Underwood said. “He had a good breakfast. I have every expectation you’ll have a good visit. But if you don’t mind, I will hover in view but out of earshot to make sure. Afterward, we should talk about Daniel’s future.”
“Of course,” Anna murmured, wondering how they were going to manage that part. Maybe she’d just give him the check and Leslie’s phone number and tell him to take it to the FBI.
The gardens were lower than the building, so when they stepped outside, Anna got a fair look at the whole thing. Five or six acres, she judged, completely enclosed by what looked to be a ten-foot wall. Hedges and the natural rise and fall of the land had been utilized to create small pockets of privacy. In the center of the garden was a good-sized water feature with a waterfall on one end and a natural-looking (other than it being aboveground) pond on the other end.
Charles gave her a thoughtful look as she started down the stairs ahead of him, following Dr. Underwood. She wasn’t sure what that look was about, but she thought she was missing something. She tried to figure out what that could be.
Outside, her nose should have been of use to figure out what Charles had noticed, but she didn’t find anything that shouldn’t be there: plants, birds, insects, and presumably Dr. Underwood’s aftershave or shampoo or something. He must have used a brand she didn’t know that smelled spicy and …
She frowned, closing the distance between them so she could get a better sniff. It didn’t smell like anything she had smelled before—and by now she was familiar with a lot of different scents. It was a blend of scents, she could tell that much—but none of the blend was anything she could pinpoint.
She couldn’t imagine that look on Charles’s face was because Dr. Underwood’s cologne/aftershave/whatever was complex. She decided she should stay alert. Which was, she noticed, harder to do than it should have been. The aura in the garden was very soothing. Perhaps too soothing.
She eyed Underwood as she considered that. Assuming Daniel Green was witchborn—it definitely ran in families—it followed that any assisted living home that could keep him safe would not be a normal facility. It might, for instance, have an unusually peaceful garden.
Anna couldn’t detect witchcraft anywhere around her, but she wasn’t good at it on her own—she needed her inner wolf for that. But she was sure as damn it that something was trying to pacify her with unnatural persistence. That was her job, and she could tell when someone else had put their hand in to have a try at it.
She coaxed her wolfish nature out—which was a bit harder than normal. As soon as she did so, the effects of the garden’s magic fell away. Her wolf told her that they were surrounded by magic so thick it felt as though she were breathing it. That was what she’d been smelling, but some spellcrafting had misdirected her into believing it was Underwood’s cologne or the flowers or anything else with a scent she wouldn’t pay too much attention to.
No wonder Charles had been wary.
Not all witches were evil. But she could not tell what branch of witchcraft had created the magic here, and there was something flattening out the smell. Even without her wolf close to the surface, she should have detected black magic under most circumstances. And if it was white magic they were using, there would have been no reason to hide what its origins were. It could have been gray magic.
But she didn’t think gray witches would go to so much effort to hide what kind of magic was at work here—that was a fair amount of power to waste if all you were hiding was gray magic.
As they wound around hedges and down steep flagstone steps, she wondered if that soothing spell had been meant specifically for them—and decided that was unlikely. There were all sorts of reasons that someone would want to calm the powerful residents of an assisted living home, and not a likely magic they would throw at a pair of werewolves.
She reached for her bond with Charles and felt his high-alert status and also a touch of “Not now.” Like the garden, Anna broadcast a soothing atmosphere almost unintentionally. Normally it was a useful—the most useful—aspect of her Omega condition. But calming Brother Wolf when he might have to fight was not ideal.
But his response gave her an answer of sorts. Charles felt that they were in danger. She probably should have been more worried about that. Maybe it was just the residual effects of the garden spell, but she thought it was probably her mate’s solid presence at her back.
Underwood led them down to a seating area that overlooked the pond side of the water feature. Stone benches edged the concrete platform where a single figure sat in a wheelchair that was angled to give him a view of the handful of black swans drifting amidst lily pads and a scattering of low fountains that burbled around the edge of the pond.
The king in exile, Anna thought, taking in the proud cant to his head and the straightness of his shoulders. Power had once rested upon him, and his body remembered.
A nurse sat on a stone bench that angled toward Daniel Green, her back mostly to the pond. Anna could catch the cheerful chatter of her voice as she knitted something pink with yarn emerging from a woven basket at her feet. She was a tall woman, big-boned and gaunt, with a mouth that smiled easily. She looked up and saw them coming, and her smile disappeared.
“Daniel,” she said, “you have visitors. I’m going to leave you with them for a while so you can have some privacy. But Dr. Underwood is here. If you feel any distress, you can call for him and he’ll come.”
She looked at Anna and Charles. “It is important for our clients to feel safe,” she said. There wasn’t active dislike in her voice, but she wasn’t friendly, either.
Daniel growled something, but he didn’t look around—or at the nurse, either. If Anna, with her werewolf ears, couldn’t hear exactly what he’d said, she figured no one could.
“Of course,” Anna told the nurse warmly, because her dad had been big on “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”
“Well,” said the nurse, whose name tag read Mary Frank, LPN, apparently taken aback by Anna’s open friendliness. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes to take Mr. Green back to his room.”
She frowned at Dr. Underwood and he bowed. Deferentially. A doctor to a nurse. Among the witches, it was usually the women who had the most power. Between Dr. Underwood and Ms. Frank, clearly Ms. Frank was in charge. Something in Underwood’s posture, respectful as it was, told Anna he resented that.
Interesting, she thought, and wondered what unconscious social behaviors might betray the fact that a person was a werewolf.
Mr. Green made another noise, a grunt this time. Anna couldn’t tell what kind of a grunt it was. He was facing away from her, and even with Charles she usually had to see his face to interpret his grunts.
“I’ll be back to get you,” the nurse said. “You behave yourself, Daniel, and we’ll go have some ice cream aft
erward. Won’t that be nice, dear?”
Dr. Underwood bent his knees a little so that he could look into Daniel’s eyes. “I’ll leave you with Anna and her husband, but if you need me, you can just call out.” He stood up and said to Anna, “I’ll just be on the other side of the fountain. I can see you—and hear you if you shout.” It sounded like he knew that from experience.
She nodded—and waited until the doctor was well on his way before moving around the chair to where Daniel could see her. And she could see him.
Daniel Green’s face was deeply lined, making his already prominent features seem larger—he reminded her of the ents in The Lord of the Rings movies. He’d been built nearly on the scale of Tag at one time, but age had winnowed away his bulk and left only the crags behind. His jaw was solid and his deep-set black eyes burned fever-bright. He had the eyes of a roadside evangelist, she thought—intense and slightly mad.
“I don’t know you,” he said, his voice surprisingly soft. He looked like a man who should have had a battlefield voice. “They said you are Carrie’s sister-in-law. Carrie was an only child and she never married.”
“I lied to them,” Anna agreed. He was talking about Carrie as if she were dead, she noticed. If he was witchborn, maybe he could tell.
Based only on the way the young man at the reception desk had talked about him, she would place the odds of him being witchborn at about 95 percent. The way he carried himself made her think that he had been one of the rare men who were powerful witches. That made her very glad Charles was with her.
She sat on the bench that the nurse had abandoned, because it put her on eye level with him. “I’m Anna Cornick and this is my husband, Charles.”
At her gesture, Charles, who had been casting restless eyes around the garden, came around so Daniel could see him without moving his chair.
“Cornick,” the old man said, narrowing his eyes at Charles, who had moved to stand behind Anna. “I wondered if it was your family when they told me that name. But I did not really expect it. What do you think I’ve done this time?” He grinned suddenly at Charles, a wicked expression giving Anna a glimpse at the charisma this man must have once commanded.
He knew Charles and Charles knew him. She was sure that if Charles had known that coming here, he would have told her. She supposed that Daniel Green was a common name, or maybe Charles had known him under a different name.
“Plenty, I imagine,” answered Charles, his voice equally soft.
“Don’t worry,” Daniel Green said, and waved his fingers. There was a popping noise, and something small and dark that might have been a miniaturized camera bounced through the air and rolled on the ground.
“That’ll ensure our privacy. There will be a fuss behind the scenes. Look down there—he’s getting the call.” He gestured toward Underwood, who was putting his phone to his ear. “I have no intention of giving you away. They don’t need to know that the son of the werewolf king is here in their power. Not yet, anyway. Have you come to kill me?”
He sounded, Anna noticed, almost hopeful.
“Not this time,” Charles told him, and even Anna couldn’t tell if he was just humoring the old witch or if he really regretted that Daniel’s death wasn’t Charles’s aim today.
“We are here trying to find out what happened to Carrie Green and the rest of the people in the camp she lived in,” Anna said, deciding that it was time to bring the conversation around to what they needed.
“Wild Sign,” said Daniel. “She’s dead. They are all dead.” He didn’t sound particularly broken up about it. “I suppose you’ve found the bodies.”
Anna shook her head. “No. But the whole town is empty. We hiked in a few days ago to see it for ourselves. Do you know what happened? Are you sure everyone is dead?”
“She was a fool,” he bit out, though he was still keeping his voice soft. “That’s what happened. She was a fool living with a whole bunch of do-gooder, pansy-assed twits trafficking with powers they had no business dealing with. If my Jennifer had survived, she’d never have let Carrie grow up such a mealymouthed puling idiot. Now, that was a witch worthy of the Green name.”
He rocked a little, lost in thought. Then he sighed. “But our only child was a son. He had no power at all, despite my own capabilities. He married a woman of good birth—it wasn’t until later we found out she was a throwback, with no power, either. Jude knew, though, and kept it to himself. My Jennifer died when Carrie was six years old, and Jude and the damned fool woman he married turned their daughter into a ‘moral’ woman.
“Moral,” he said again, his voice shaking with rage. “She had so much promise. She could have been a Power—but she was a Wiccan and would not break Wiccan precepts. ‘An it harm none’ and all that rot.”
He made “Wiccan” sound like a swear word.
He took a long breath and seemed to regain some control.
“So she died,” he said. “My only granddaughter. My only living kin. She died because she was a white witch, the last of our family—a mewling, moralistic weakling. Arrogant. I told her that they were all fools, but she wouldn’t listen to me.” He leaned over and spat on the ground. “I could forgive the rest, but not the stupid.”
“Something happened in Wild Sign,” Anna said. “What power did they traffic with?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Wild Sign was that place she lived in the mountains.” He sounded a little worried—as if he needed her reassurance that he’d remembered it correctly.
Anna nodded. “That’s right.”
He rubbed the back of his wrist with the top of the other, as if there was something bothering him. A vague look crossed his face, but when he spoke, he sounded lucid enough. “They met a being there … a primordial spirit of some sort. Carrie called it the Singer in the Woods—which is a stupid name.”
He watched her with suspicion, apparently waiting for her opinion.
“It sounds more like a description than a name,” she said.
He grunted and gave a sharp nod. “A pretty name,” he said. “And it made them think it was a friendly creature.”
“It wasn’t,” Anna said.
“They bargained with it,” he sneered. “Bargain with demons, bargain with the fae. That’s usually fatal, too, but at least you know the rules. They treated this Singer creature as if it followed the rules of the fae.”
“What was the bargain?” Anna asked the old man.
“Power,” he said. “And safety. You know what life is like for a white witch. Carrie might as well have painted a target on her back and held up a sign saying ‘All-you-can-eat buffet.’” He scowled, fisting his hand. “It promised them a safe place to live, free from being hunted.” Green’s face contorted. “A second bargain was that if they fed it, it would give them power.”
He looked off at the pond—or maybe at Underwood—or possibly at nothing.
“Fed it with music?” asked Anna, remembering what Leah had said, also remembering what it had felt like to play music in the amphitheater.
“What?” he asked, turning his head to frown at her. “What are you on about? Who are you? Where is my nurse?” With each question, he became more querulous.
CHARLES KNEW THAT Carrie Green’s dependent—be he father, brother, uncle, or lover—was a witch. It had only been a possibility until he put his feet on the asphalt of the parking lot, but at that moment he knew. This was a place of witchcraft.
The witches who ruled here must have done something to disguise it. He could tell that neither Anna nor Tag felt anything. But to him the very ground vibrated.
It was a prison, he thought, looking up at the carefully beautiful facade of the “assisted living” facility. Witches were practical people; they would not waste the power of family members just because those people could no longer be left loose to roam freely.
This place was, to the witches, what his da’s pack was for the werewolves. The difference was that his da didn’t feed on their old wolves. He’d heard r
umors of places like this, but the witches knew how to keep secrets. He’d never managed to run one down.
When Underwood came to greet them, Charles let Anna take point, leaving him to guard her back. He was happier when they moved on to the garden. He was pretty sure that if they wanted to leave, the walls of the garden, spelled to keep witches in, would not be effective against a pair of werewolves.
He also let the spell be that Underwood had laid upon Anna, designed, Charles was certain, to bind her—and thus him—to talk to Underwood after they spoke to Daniel Green. If he had dispelled Underwood’s will, it would only have warned him that he was not facing someone helpless against witchcraft. The Cornick name should have told the good doctor that much, and if it had not … well, Charles was happy to let his enemies make mistakes.
If he’d been thinking clearly when Anna had called, he would have had Anna use “Smith” or something else. But at that time, he hadn’t yet found the grimoires that proved Carrie Green was a witch. Just because there were witches in Wild Sign didn’t mean everyone living there had been a witch. Even knowing that Carrie had been a witch, until Charles had put his feet on the ground in the parking lot, he hadn’t been certain that Daniel Green was a witch, too.
He still should have cautioned Anna to use a pseudonym.
Should have, would have. Matters are as they are, snorted Brother Wolf, impatient with Charles for trying to see how they could have worked harder to avoid conflict.
Brother Wolf enjoyed conflict, and his happy anticipation lingered in the back of Charles’s mind up until the moment Charles got a good scent off the old man in the wheelchair.
Charles couldn’t tell if the instant white-hot rage was all his or if some of it belonged to his wolf brother. He had long ago thought that his vow to hunt down and kill this witch was going to go unfulfilled.
Most witchborn men were far less powerful than their female counterparts. The man Charles had known as Daniel Erasmus was one of the exceptions.
Back in the 1980s, the Wasatch Pack had been subject to a series of attacks that had started out so subtly it had taken weeks for their Alpha, a cunning old lobo named Aaron Simpleman, to figure out they were attacks. Only when Simpleman’s second, a wolf named Fin Donnelly, was found dead in his house with no sign of what killed him did the old wolf call the Marrok for help. There were, he’d told the Marrok, witches trying to take over his territory.
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