• • •

WITH ANNA THERE to remind Asil of his manners, Wellesley was eventually helped to a chair in his kitchen and fed sandwiches at a rate that made Asil complain about his new calling as a short-order cook. Anna snagged two or three herself and noticed that Asil had eaten maybe twice that many.

There were a lot of things that she wanted to know about what had just happened, but she found herself nodding off between one swallow and the next. The next thing she knew was her mate’s voice.

“Anna?” said Charles.

“Sorry,” she murmured, without opening her eyes. “Food coma. It happens when I get sucked into cartoons and do battle with evil thorn-things.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Charles said.

You need to wake up, said Brother Wolf. So that no one dies.

And that jump-started her adrenal gland just fine. She sat up and rubbed her face. Asil, Wellesley, and Sage were in the kitchen, none of them looking very happy.

Charles was kneeling beside the couch. One hand on her face. The other hand was holding …

“That,” Anna said, “is a really big axe that you didn’t have this morning when you left.” And it had blood on it. Not his blood, she didn’t think. It didn’t smell like his blood.

Not ours, agreed Brother Wolf happily.

Charles grunted, then when she raised her eyebrows, he answered her implied question.

“When you contacted me the first time, I’d just stolen the axe from the Viking who attacked me and broke his leg with it.”

“I see,” she said.

“It took me awhile to take out his twin brothers, or I’d have gotten back to you sooner.”

She considered that statement and decided he wasn’t trying to be funny. He looked apologetic.

“I would rather you not get hurt by Viking twins …” she had to say it again, “because Viking twins are apparently a thing here. Anyway, please take care of pressing business before you answer me. If you are dead, you won’t be of any use at all.”

“I’ll keep that in mind the next time,” he said.

She didn’t think that he looked too scary, but then she looked over Charles’s shoulder at the others. Sage was a little pale, but her face was very calm. Wellesley looked almost dead—but he’d looked that way when she nodded off. Asil looked like a ticked-off cat cornered by a big, freaking dog.

So apparently the not-scary was a relatively new thing. Interesting that Brother Wolf had been the one to wake her up, possibly so she could prevent Charles from killing someone?

“Since we are all here now,” she said, “maybe Wellesley will tell us exactly what happened in. . .”—she looked at Charles—“Rhea Springs, Tennessee, right? Because I think that’s where he picked up that interesting Sleeping Beauty curse.”

“I don’t know that it matters,” Wellesley said tiredly. “Most of the principals are dead, except for me. Even the town is gone, drowned by the TVA in the forties.”

“Call me curious,” Asil said. “I’ve seen a lot of witchcraft, but I’ve never seen a witchcraft construct that lasted that long and hid itself so well. Usually, they die once the witch dies.”

“It makes me unhappy,” said Charles, “to know that something like that existed right under my nose—right under my da’s nose, and none of us suspected anything.”

Wellesley rubbed his face. “I can see that. Where do you want me to start?”

CHAPTER 9

“I don’t remember everything.” Wellesley closed his eyes wearily. “But you have more than earned whatever I can tell you. Asil, my old friend, if you are through being irritated with me, would you open the cupboard above the fridge and get the bottle you will find there. Then, if you will, pour all of those who wish it, but most especially me, a little? I was saving it, but I think this tale … I think I need a little strength to tell this tale. I would do it myself, but I would end up on the floor before I got to the fridge.”

Asil folded his arms and stayed where he was. He and Sage had both lost the ready-to-defend-myself body posture they’d had when Anna woke up.

Sage heaved a sigh, opened the cabinet, and made a sound of approval as she pulled out a wine bottle.

“Merlot,” she said. “And a very good label. Yum.” She opened a cupboard and started to close it when she saw nothing but a plastic bag with cups in it.

“No,” said Wellesley. “That is what I have.”

She looked at him. “You want to drink good wine out of disposable cups?”

He shrugged. “I tend to …” “He paused, looked at Anna, and gave her a small smile before returning his attention to Sage. “I tended to break glass. The plastic is easier to clean up.”

She shook her head, found a corkscrew, and pulled the cork—bringing it to her nose. She breathed in—and a warm, fruity smell wafted through the room even as far as Anna’s love seat.

“Very yum,” Sage said. “Charles?”

“No,” he said.

“Anna?”

Anna hesitated but shook her head. “Not just this moment.” Her stomach was unsettled. She assumed it was from the same thing that was making her head ache and her eyes burn—freeing Wellesley had taken a lot of energy.

“Asil?”

Asil shook his head.

“That’s right,” she said, with a little bite in her tone. “You don’t participate in vice.”

Anna knew for a fact that Asil liked wine, but she didn’t think this conversation was about alcohol. It had the feel of one of those painful battles between lovers that continued past the point where either love or logic could put it right.

He tilted his head, and when he spoke, his voice was gentle and half-apologetic. “I assure you that I am a very bad Muslim. Wine is, for a werewolf, only grape juice—”

“Very expensive grape juice,” said Wellesley. “Also very good grape juice.”

“—though very expensive and good grape juice, I do not feel the need to consume it just now.”

“Okay,” Sage said casually, as if she hadn’t put more meaning into his rejection of the wine than it required. She filled two red plastic cups and brought them both to Wellesley. “You pick.”

“Did you poison one?” he asked with interest.

“You’re a werewolf,” she said dryly. “We don’t need to worry about poisons.”

“That’s not true,” Wellesley countered, taking one of the cups and sipping it with a happy sigh. “Our poisons are just different.”

“Alcohol is technically a poison,” Anna pointed out. “It kills brain cells—which is why humans, who don’t regenerate cells the way we do, get tipsy.”

Sage sipped her cup, raised her eyebrows, and nodded at Wellesley. “May all our poisons taste so good.” She tipped her cup toward Wellesley without stepping close enough to actually touch his. “To dead brain cells.”

He raised his cup. “To freedom,” he said, and as he did, his eyes flashed bright yellow.

“Now that we have that out of the way,” Sage said, “before story time, I’d like to catch up. Would someone care to explain matters to us?” She looked around and sighed. “To me? Since I have the feeling I’m the only one who doesn’t know what happened.”

“What do you know?” asked Wellesley.

“Charlie stared off into space for five minutes and left me to sort out the Viking twins and brother on my own.” She flashed a smile at the room. “But I learned a lesson in diplomacy from Charlie today. Funny how a few broken bones make even a bunch of Vikings so much more reasonable. I’ll try that if I ever have to deliver a message to them again. Maybe in another twenty years.”

“So not much,” said Asil. “But Sage also knows that you have been having trouble with your wolf—and it made you dangerous to deal with.”

“It was not my wolf that was the problem,” Wellesley told Sage. “Or at least my wolf was not the cause of the problem. I was in a battle for my soul, and the evil spirit that was trying to possess me has been, very slowly, winning.” He smiled broadly, raised his glass at Anna, and said, “Until today.”