They looked more like the doll Anna’s mother had made her out of nylons, stuffed and stitched, than the remnants of people, of children. Anna’s nose told her the truth that her eyes wanted to deny. Some of the children were dressed in gowns like Amethyst’s, satin gleaming through layers of dust. Others wore dark suits. It looked as if they were all dressed for a wedding.
Anna thought that from now on, whenever the air was warm and still and smelled like leather and dead things, she would remember these children. She pressed against Charles, and his hand touched the top of her head to comfort them both.
“Is Amethyst up there?” That was Leeds.
“Yes,” said Charles. He moved then, toward the bed. Brave Charles.
Amethyst was silent, no breathing, no heartbeat. Anna whined at Charles. If he touched Amethyst, he’d be contaminating the scene. The other children were decades dead. Amethyst was the Doll Collector’s most recent victim. The one most likely to provide clues.
“Is she alive?” asked Marsden.
“She’s not breathing and her heart isn’t beating,” said Charles.
“I take that as a no,” said Marsden. “Damn it. Just once I’d like to be in time.”
“Don’t be too hasty.” Charles drew his boot knife. “It’s hot up here. She isn’t rotting. All the putrefaction I can smell is old. Death and heat equal rot. Either he killed her less than a half hour ago, or she’s not dead.”
Or she’s dead and the fae has found a way to preserve her body.
Charles nodded at Anna, but he didn’t relay her comment to anyone else. He used the blade of his knife to push the fabric aside, petals falling down like leaves in autumn, leaving Amethyst exposed. He put the back of his hand against her skin and pulled it back with a hiss, shaking it out.
“If the Doll Collector didn’t know we were here before, he does now,” said Charles.
“What’s going on?”
“I touched Amethyst and tripped some sort of magic,” Charles told them. “I’m going to try something.”
“Wait,” said Leeds. “We have an expert in fae magic who is flying in from Oakland tonight.”
“Might be too late,” Charles said. He rolled his knife in his hand.
Anna had had it custom-made for him last Christmas. It was a san mai knife, high-carbon steel sandwiched in stainless steel. The high carbon meant that it held an edge better, and should be effective against fae magic because it was closer to “cold iron” than straight stainless steel was.
He pressed the edge of the knife against Amethyst’s arm. It rested against her skin for half a breath and then cut through. As the first drop of red smeared the knife, Anna’s ears popped as if the air pressure dropped. Then Amethyst sat up and screamed in terror.
It wasn’t a pretty sound, raw and pitched like nails on a chalkboard. It hurt Anna’s ears. She hadn’t been happier to hear anything in a long time.
Charles gathered the girl into his arms and held her, face pressed against his shoulder. Anna wasn’t sure that was a good idea. A stranger, a male holding her? Who knew what the fae had done to her in the months since he took her?
“Shhh,” said Charles as the other three came boiling up the ladder. “Shh. It’s over. It’s done. We won’t let anyone hurt you again. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
And, perhaps because it was Charles, the little girl grabbed his T-shirt with both hands and buried her face against him. Her screams became sobs that were even worse than the screams. Anna whined, remembering the garden fae, the wearden, saying that the child the people in Scotland had saved had died anyway.
Leslie took a good look around and climbed back down out of the attic. After a few moments she said, “Hey, Hemmings, this is Fisher. Can you go pick up the Millers and bring them to this address in South Scottsdale”—she read them the address—“tell them we found her, but not until you have them in the car. I don’t want any tragic traffic accidents on the way here. There are enough dead people haunting this place already. Tell the team—FBI, Cantrip, and Scottsdale PD. Tell them to get down here ASAP: we have a crime scene to process. And tell someone to find out who owns this damned place.”
“Will do,” said a man, presumably Hemmings, on the other end. “And I have good news on the ownership. We have a name. A dozen officers are at his address as we speak. Sean McDermit. He’s mostly retired, but he works ten hours a week at Sunshine Fun Day Care.”
Charles took one good look around, skipped the ladder altogether, and jumped down to the main floor. He absorbed the fall by bending his knees. Anna was pretty sure Amethyst never noticed their descent at all. Anna jumped down after him. It was easier for her to jump than to climb down in the wolf’s body.
She followed Charles out of the house. Watching his body language, she suddenly was reminded of something she already knew. Alphas fancied themselves responsible for the safety and well-being of everyone around them. Charles wasn’t an Alpha—he ceded that rank to his father—but he was more dominant than any Alpha other than his father. The way he held Amethyst Miller said that he felt responsible for her.
At that moment something clicked, and she understood his reluctance to have children of his own. She’d noticed it herself, hadn’t she? That the people he cared about he could count on the fingers of one hand: herself, Bran, Samuel, probably Mercy. This trip had allowed her to add one more person to that list: Joseph. Five people, because he could not keep any more than that safe. And Joseph was dying.
Oh, Charles.
Charles held Amethyst until her parents came to claim her. It was a little like holding a puppy. Hot and wet and shivering, she breathed in ha-ha-ha jerks. He sang “Froggy Went a-Courtin’” because it was long, repetitive, and something his father had sung to him when he was Amethyst’s age. He didn’t know what parents sang to their children these days, but there was a fair chance that she might find it familiar.
He rubbed her back and walked in the shadows of the wall, hidden from the public and away from the noise and sirens. Anna paced beside him, cloaking herself in pack magic so that he was the only one who could see her. He didn’t think she was doing it on purpose. Pack magic didn’t always wait for someone to ask it to do something. He wondered, belatedly, if those photos Ms. Jamison had taken would come out, or if Anna would just be a blurry figure.
Amethyst was asleep by the time her parents arrived, and Leslie escorted them to the isolated corner of the yard where Charles paced. Dr. Miller hesitated when he saw the limp bundle cradled against Charles’s chest, but his wife made a low, moaning sound and pulled her daughter away from Charles.
“Baby?” Tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Mommy?” Amethyst blinked at her mom, who held her awkwardly because she was not a big woman and Amethyst was not a toddler. “Mommy? He said, he said you wouldn’t miss me. That you had a new daughter who looked like me only was better.”
“No,” said her father, picking her up without really removing her from her mother’s arms, so they were all in one little huddle. “He fooled us for a little while, but we knew all along that something was missing. The one he left in your place wasn’t our baby girl. It just took us a while, too long, to find you.”
“I want to go home,” she said. “Daddy, I want to go home, please?”
“Dr. Miller,” said Leslie. “I recommend you call her own doctor and have him meet you at the emergency room. One of my guys, the bald guy in the FBI jacket, is waiting to take you all there. He’ll make sure you get back home safely, too.”
They started to go, but then Dr. Miller stopped. He turned, releasing his daughter into her mother’s care. He wiped his face, then met Charles’s eyes and held them.
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t just me,” said Charles, the gratitude in the other man’s expression strong enough that even Brother Wolf couldn’t see a challenge in that gaze. “It took a lot of people to find her. And we don’t have the one who took her yet. We are not done until he’s out of business.” He’d heard what Leslie’s agent had said on the phone. But it was too soon to declare Amethyst’s kidnapper captured.
Dr. Miller looked at the house and said, “I’m a physician, sworn on my honor to do no harm. But I could kill him myself and never lose a wink of sleep over it. Not just for my daughter, but for all the daughters and sons. I heard what you found in that attic.”
Charles nodded once at him, then let Brother Wolf out so Dr. Miller could see the predator lurking in his eyes. “I’ll take care of him if I get the chance.”
Mrs. Miller said, “You are a werewolf.”
“Yes,” Charles said. He hadn’t intended for her to see the wolf, too, but he wasn’t going to lie to her.
“Good,” she said. “Kill him.”
“I intend to,” he told her, ignoring Leslie’s indrawn breath. Some people needed to die.
Dr. Miller looked down at his daughter. “I thought … She’s been gone months and we didn’t know. I thought it would be months and months more and … You found her in one day.”
He’d thought they’d find her dead. He’d said as much. Charles understood; he’d mostly thought that, too. It had been Anna who had hoped for them all.
“It’s not over,” Charles told him. “It’s going to continue to be bad for a long time.”
Amethyst’s father gave Charles an expression that wasn’t really a smile; there was too much experience in it. “I’m a doctor. A pediatrician. That’s usually my line. I know someone, a really good someone, who picks up the pieces and helps people put themselves back together. Amethyst will be all right.” He looked at his daughter and when he looked up again, his eyes were wet. “It’ll take years of therapy. Probably for all of us: a long uphill battle. But we’re still on the field fighting the good fight, battered and beaten though we are, and I understand just what a great gift that is.”
By the time Leslie drove them back to their car, it was nearly dinnertime.
“We don’t get that all the time,” Leslie told Charles as she turned onto the highway. Anna grunted as she slid from one side of the car to the other. It wasn’t a pained grunt, so Charles made do with a glance over his shoulder to make sure she was all right. “It’s why I joined up, you know, saving people.”
“She isn’t saved yet,” Charles told Leslie.
“I know, years of counseling and medication even, but much better than I thought they were going to get.”
“Yes,” he said, “but she isn’t going to be safe until that fae is dead.”
Leslie sucked in a breath. “We have the man who owns that property in custody. He lawyered up immediately, but my man on the ground says he is definitely fae. He couldn’t bear the touch of metal.”