They all stared at the result a moment. Charles rubbed his trigger finger, paying attention to the numbness that faded slowly.
“Witch blood is apparently necessary,” said Leah coolly after a moment. “Thank you for experimenting in my kitchen with that thing, Tag. Oh, and I’m not cleaning that up. Come into the living room when you’re finished.”
She left, pausing to collect the remaining two plates full of cookies. Sage and a grinning, unrepentant Tag followed behind her.
Anna grabbed a garbage bag while Charles got a dustpan and a roll of paper towels.
“So why didn’t it do that to you?” she asked, her voice tight as she snapped the bag out and opened it.
“I’m tougher than a basket of fruit?” suggested Charles, going back outside to work on the mess.
“Very funny,” she said in a broken voice that told him humor might not have been the best idea he’d had today. She put her hand out and touched the muck that smelled of fruit, rot, and blood magic. Her hand shook.
Oh my love, he thought. Quietly, he said, “I don’t know, Anna.” He ripped off a paper towel and watched as she used it to clean her hand. “Maybe adding my mother’s magic alters the effect of the gun, my blood makes it more powerful than his did. My mother’s magic is close to witchcraft—but more attuned to the turning of the earth. Maybe her blood offered some protection. I don’t know why. But I am alive and unharmed.”
She sucked in a deep breath. Nodded. She stuffed the wadded-up paper towel in the bag, then bent and held it open next to the step, so he could just push the mess into the bag.
“What did Boyd have to say?” she asked.
“We want to know, too,” called Leah’s voice clearly. “Wait to answer that until you are out here.”
“She meant to say ‘please,’” said Sage cheerily, when Brother Wolf let out a growl of annoyance.
Anna muttered something unhappily under her breath. Charles didn’t hear it all, but he knew it had to do with the lack of privacy at his da’s house.
“Exactly,” he told her.
? ? ?
“WHAT DID BOYD have to say?” asked Leah, as soon as he and Anna came into the living room.
Charles glanced around the room and saw that a good two-thirds of the pack was here. From their attentive eyes and the hyperprotective glints of wolf-eyes he caught here and there, he realized that they all knew about the dead man’s connection to Anna. He couldn’t see her telling them, so someone must have overheard them. Hard to stay quiet enough that any werewolf in sight couldn’t overhear you without trying.
So he told them what Boyd had said to him. When he finished, he looked around the room, and asked, “Do any of you know what Da did with the electronic files, financial and otherwise, that Boyd gave him?”
“Bran still has them,” said Leah. “He got them about a month back. He’s been working on them himself. He told me that you had enough on your shoulders, and he’d give them to you when the time was right.”
“Okay,” he said, quietly.
Da had taken the files to work on them himself? What did that mean? When the time was right? His da could run a spreadsheet or conduct an Internet search, but he wasn’t in Charles’s league. Had his da just forgotten about it? That didn’t sound like the Marrok at all.
Had Da found something in the books that he didn’t want Charles to know about? Was that something the reason Bran wasn’t here?
He wasn’t in Africa. The last call Charles had made, before coming into the house, was to his brother. Samuel had not heard from their da since he’d gotten a call that all was well with Mercy. He had not heard that Da was headed to Africa—and he’d not seen him.
That meant Bran had lied. Over the phone, Charles reflected, lying would have been easy enough.
Good that Boyd was sending the files to Charles, then. He’d told his father’s message app about that, so his da would know that Charles was about to receive whatever information that data held. If he really didn’t want Charles to see something, he could come home and take care of this matter himself.
Anna brought a plate with crumbs and two peanut-butter cookies on it. “Have a peanut-butter cookie,” she told him. “They’re good.”
He looked at the cookies, still lost in trying to follow his da’s Byzantine thought process with half the information he needed to come to any kind of accurate conclusion.
“I thought you were making brownies,” he said.
“Brownies?” said Tag, distracted from his quiet conversation with a couple of other pack members. “I like brownies.”
“They have orange peel in them,” Leah told Tag, and Charles could tell that she thought that was a bad thing.
“Mercy’s recipe?” Tag said happily. “Awesome. You should get those baked before you go, Anna. One of your brownies, and those recluses will be happy to come out of their hidey-holes to have a few more.”
“The brownies can wait,” said Leah firmly. There was something in her voice that told Charles that the brownie dough would be in the garbage before it ever saw an oven.
If a dog made the sound Tag made then, Charles would have called it whining. But Tag’s eyes were shrewd and focused on Leah.
It was, Charles thought, very easy to make the mistake of buying Tag’s cheery-barbarian appearance and miss the sharp man inside who knew very well whose brownies he was praising—over the peanut-butter cookies that Leah had evidently made. And, once recognizing that sharp man, it would be easy to make the mistake of thinking that the barbarian berserker was a disguise. Tag was both—and that was before his wolf entered into consideration.
? ? ?
“TELL ME HOW,” Charles said, “you managed to get stuck going out to warn the wildlings with Asil?”
Anna couldn’t see his face because he was in the process of stripping out of his soot-stained shirt, and she couldn’t read his neutral tone.
“It wasn’t me,” she said. “Asil spoke up at just the wrong moment and sparked Leah’s desire to stir up trouble. It’s a talent he has. To her credit, she’s right, we need to get them all warned as soon as possible. Three teams will do that better than one.”
Charles emerged, his face as neutral as his voice had been. “All right.” Anna winced in sympathy when he jerked at the band at the end of his braid, and it snapped.
“I know,” she said with a grimace. “I know you would be happier pairing me with a different wolf. Maybe Sage should come with me and Asil go with you?”
Charles considered her suggestion that they switch partners but finally shook his head. “No. Brother Wolf doesn’t like it, but it is better this way. Some of these wolves wouldn’t listen to a messenger they see as lower-ranking.” He snorted. “Some of them won’t listen to any of us, either. But if one of them decides to cause trouble … Asil is a better deterrent than Sage or you. No one sane would attack the Moor.”