Anna used the bathroom, washed her face, and went back to the bedroom. Maggie was gone. Charles headed to the bathroom, presumably to do the same.
When he reemerged, she said as neutrally as she could, “Maggie likes you.”
He understood what she meant.
“We dated once upon a time,” he told her somberly. “Though ‘dating’ is too formal a word for it. Flirting is better, but too lighthearted. We didn’t suit in the end—and she and Joseph were married. 1962, I think. Though I could be off a year either way.”
Anna heard it all in his voice. The sorrow of friends who grew old and died when you did not. She hadn’t experienced it herself yet, but she knew that the probability was that she would live to see her father and brother grow old and die while she still looked like a woman in her twenties. Charles, she knew from talking to his father, had made a point of never getting involved with human women. Until Anna, he’d pretty much steered clear of any kind of real relationship with any woman. Maybe, she thought, Maggie had been one of the reasons why.
Charles knew the way around the house—it hadn’t changed much in the last twenty years. A few new pieces of art, different throw rugs, but mostly it was the same.
Despite what she’d said, Maggie met them at the top of the stairs. He could see her younger self superimposed in his imagination. Her fiery eyes were the same, and the straight spine that made people give way when she passed by.
Charles let the women lead the way down to the main rooms of the house, Maggie first, her back stiff and hostile. He was not unaware that Maggie had decided she didn’t like his Anna, a very unusual reaction to his Omega wife. Since it didn’t bother Anna, he let it ride. She had taught him that despite Brother Wolf’s determination to protect her from anything that would cause her discomfort, Anna was perfectly capable of protecting herself.
Brother Wolf had bowed to Charles’s belief that to protect Anna from everything would cause her more harm than good. It didn’t stop his wolf from being very unhappy with Maggie.
“I can’t find my phone,” said a half-familiar man’s voice in the kitchen. “I had it this morning. Have you seen it anywhere?”
“I don’t keep track of your toys, Kage,” said Hosteen. “But if I did, I might have seen it in the laundry room this morning.”
“I found it and put it on the phone table in the hallway,” Maggie announced as she entered the kitchen. “I thought you’d look there first. I’ll get it.”
Charles put a hand on Anna’s shoulder and walked into the capacious kitchen beside her.
Seeing a forty-year-old version of Joseph made Charles feel like a horse had kicked him in the stomach. The last time he’d seen Kage, he’d been a young man and the resemblance had not been so obvious. His attention on his mother, Kage grinned Joseph’s grin. “Thanks, Mom. I knew I could count on you. Now, as Chelsea likes to tell me, if I could only find my common sense, I’d be all set.”
Maggie shook her head. “If you had any common sense you’d have left this place to be a banker like your older brother. And you’d have been as unhappy for the rest of your life as he would have been if he’d stayed here. Be content that your phone is found.” She patted his shoulder and left by another doorway, presumably to get the phone.
“You find your rooms all right?” Hosteen asked them.
“Beautiful,” Anna answered for them.
Kage looked toward his visitors for the first time and stiffened warily. “Charles. Hosteen told me your names, of course, but I didn’t make the connection to you. I don’t think I ever heard Dad use your last name.” Charles wasn’t aware of anything he’d done to make Kage wary of him, but people often feared him. He had a sudden flash, an image of Kage as a young boy peering at him from around his mother’s back as Maggie sobbed, accusing him of …
He didn’t remember anymore.
Maggie was another reason that it had been such a long time since he’d last visited. It had not been her fault nor his, but his presence brought tension between Joseph and his wife. Oddly, the trouble wasn’t from Joseph, whom she had picked second. It was Maggie who couldn’t let the past rest. She had rejected Charles, but she was still possessive of him.
Anna smiled. “Lots of people named Charles around,” she said.
“Kage,” Charles said. “This is my wife, Anna. Anna, meet Joseph and Maggie’s son, Hashké Gaajii Sani. He goes by Kage.”
Anna smiled and moved forward, holding out her hand. “Pleased to meet you,” she said with the warmth that was so much a part of her. “I understand that you’re going to show us some horses.”
“That’s the plan,” Kage agreed, his face relaxing under Anna’s influence. “I just need to grab my phone—”
Maggie slid back into the kitchen from another direction and handed him an old-fashioned, battered flip phone.
“Thanks, Mom. Do you prefer mares or geldings?” Still paying attention to Anna, Kage flipped the phone open and glanced at the screen.
“I don’t know,” Anna said. “Mostly I’ve ridden geldings.”
“I understand you have a couple of weeks,” Kage said. “The big show starts in three days and I’ll have to spend most of my time there. I have a few horses in mind. I’ll show some to you today and then I’ll take you out on a trail ride tomorrow.”
Anna shot Charles a startled look, probably at the “couple of weeks.” But Charles needed time with Joseph. If the tension between Maggie and Anna got worse instead of better, they could find a hotel. Besides, choosing a horse was serious business; it was important to take the time to do it right.
“I’ve missed some calls from my wife,” said Kage with a frown. “She gets nervous when I don’t pick up. She rides pretty good for a city girl, but she knows that horses are big and things happen. I’ll give her a call and then we’ll go down to the barn.”
He hit a button and waited as the phone on the other end rang directly to a message. “This is Chelsea Sani. Please leave a—” He cut the message off and gave his phone an irritated look. “I have four new messages since this morning. I’m sorry, I’d better listen to them.”
“No trouble,” said Anna. “We have a couple of weeks. A few minutes isn’t going to make any difference.” She hesitated. “You should know this already, since Hosteen is a werewolf. But if you listen to the messages here, Charles and I will be able to hear them, too. So if they are private…”
He grinned at her. “No worries. We have a teenager and two younger children. There is no way either of us would leave private messages on our phones.”
“Kage, damn it. Pick up.” The voice was the same woman as before. But instead of being professional and cool it was irritated and … Charles didn’t know this woman well enough to do anything more than pick up some intense emotion.
The second message was more troubling. “Kage. You have to come home, please. I don’t feel well. Headache from hell.” She gave a laugh that was more like a sob. “And there’s a knife. It’s shiny and sharp.”
Kage was frowning when he called up the third message. This time his wife was whispering. “Something is wrong with me. Can you help me? Help them?”
The fourth message had them all bolting out of the house, all besides Maggie. She was left behind by an aging body that didn’t allow her to run with the rest of them. Brother Wolf grieved, but Charles was more worried about Kage’s children.
“I’ll drive,” Hosteen said shortly.
There wasn’t room for the four of them in the cab, and with a glance at Anna, Charles changed his direction and leapt into the truck bed. Anna landed gracefully beside him an instant later. Hosteen put the truck in reverse and burned rubber backing out of the parking area. He stopped and threw open the passenger door for Kage, who, human slow, was the last one to the truck.
It took them under ten minutes before Hosteen stopped in front of a pale stucco two-story house. A maroon BMW was parked in the driveway. As they all bailed out of the truck, Hosteen held one hand up. He looked at Charles and gestured toward the back of the house.
Brother Wolf hesitated but decided it was okay to take orders in this situation because it was Hosteen’s family in trouble. Hosteen would know best how to organize the hunt.
Anna, ignored by Hosteen, had chosen to come with Charles, and she had no more trouble than he did hopping to the top of the eight-foot cement wall that separated the public front yard from the private back. She waited on top of the wall with him while he took a quick but comprehensive impression of the situation.
The backyard was not extensive, consisting of a couple of small areas of arid-appropriate plants and a tile walk that surrounded a moderately large swimming pool. There was no sign, to any of his senses, that anyone was nearby. The nearest people were several kids playing in another swimming pool several yards to the west.
What he did notice was that someone was playing cartoons overly loudly in one of the upper-floor rooms in Kage’s house. He stood up and walked along the wall until he was fairly near the house. Someone had been safety conscious enough that there were no windows within easy human reach from the wall. But Charles had never been merely human.
He jumped toward the house, catching himself on the sill of the window and doing a chin-up so he could see inside the room the sound was coming from.
The bed was against the wall the window was on. He could see the backs of the heads of three people who were seated on the floor using the bed as a support. Two of them were young children cuddling as closely to the third as they could. One of the littler bodies still vibrated with the results of a bout of tears.
“Dad is coming, right?” asked one of the youngsters.
“Dad is coming,” said the one who was adult size. His voice was more hopeful than definite to Charles’s ears.