Her husband let out his breath in a huff of air. “This is true.”

When the darkness pressed too deep as they both lay awake, Anna said, “Why is the music so important? Do you have any idea?”

He gave a deep sigh and she couldn’t tell if he was relieved to change the subject or not. Children were something her husband had very complicated feelings about—and she wasn’t sure he understood them himself.

As he spoke of parallels between magic and music and how they both could be used by various evil creatures, she felt his body relax. Monsters, she thought with drowsy humor, were apparently less frightening than children.

CHAPTER

3

Anna found herself, not unexpectedly, at the wheel for the California trip. Charles actively disliked driving, and Tag . . . Tag drove with a joyous abandon that probably had not been as hazardous when the most common mode of transportation had been horses. A horse could decide not to run off a cliff or into a tree no matter what Tag did or failed to do. Automobiles tended to rely on their drivers to avoid accidents, so it was best if Tag didn’t drive.

They borrowed an SUV. Charles’s single-bench-seat truck would have had a hard time containing the three of them. Charles was a big man and Tag was even larger, nearly seven feet tall and wide as an ox. Tag currently drove a Ford Expedition that would have held them all with room to spare if it weren’t for the territoriality plaguing all dominant males. Tag could have ridden in Charles’s truck, had they all fit, because Charles was easily more dominant than Tag. But Charles could not ride in Tag’s vehicle—except, possibly, if he drove.

Anna had long since quit fretting about dominance issues except to be thankful she, as an Omega, was outside all of that. Bran had a small fleet of automobiles owned by the pack, and he made it available to them. The pack Suburban was neutral territory and plenty big enough for all of them. Charles rode shotgun and Tag stretched out in the backseat and went to sleep for most of the drive, for all the world as if he were a cat instead of a werewolf.

The first day had been mostly interstate, and they’d stopped shortly after crossing the California state line, staying in a hotel in Yreka. The second day, Anna found herself driving on a narrow highway barely two vehicles wide as it twisted through mountains only a little more civilized than those at home.

When she’d first moved to Montana, she’d driven these kinds of rural highways with a white-knuckled grip. Some of the roads around pack territory were little more than two ruts through the woods, so the narrow highway now only bothered her when they got stuck behind slow-moving RVs or semis.

They traveled along the edge of a mountain valley where the only sign of civilization was a few fence lines. She hadn’t realized that California had places that were so isolated. The road followed the edge of a mountain, so she had no warning when they rounded a curve and found what looked to be a gas station, though it was hard to tell because it was all but buried in trees.

“Pull in at this stop,” said Tag. His voice was high-pitched for a man as big as he was, and when he sang, he had a beautiful Irish tenor. Uncharacteristically he’d been upright and watching the scenery for the past half hour. The urgency in his voice made her wonder if he’d been keeping an eye out for a bathroom break.

Pulling into the gravel parking lot, Anna got her first clear view of the place. The battered, flat-roofed building sported a ruff of cedar shakes like a tonsured monk on top, and cheap paneling everywhere else. The siding was painted a blue that had once been dark but had faded to a blue gray.

There was a pair of old gas pumps out front wrapped in battered yellow caution tape, indicating that part of the business was no longer in service. The lighted beer signs in the small dirty windows obscured what lay beyond.

Despite the dilapidated appearance of the business, six cars filled the parking lot: four late-model SUVs, a pickup truck, and a dented, ancient Subaru. It might have been silver a few accidents ago but was now mostly primer gray. Anna pulled in on one end of the lot, her left wheels on grass instead of gravel.

“Is this a bar?” asked Anna.

“Sometimes,” Tag admitted, pulling on his boots and beginning to lace them up without hurry. “Was a gas station when I was here last.”

“You know this place?” asked Charles.

Tag grunted.

A Native American man opened the door of the business, whatever it was, and stepped out, staring at their SUV. He looked to be somewhere in his midfifties, though his short hair was still glossy and dark.

He was not overly tall, but when he stopped, folded his arms, and squared his stance, he looked pretty badass. Anna softly whistled the opening notes of the theme song of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

At the sound, Tag paused, looked up, and saw their observer. “Good. I was worried it might have passed to other hands.”

Apparently they weren’t here for a bathroom break.

Tag slanted a quick glance at Charles. “Do you mind if I go talk to him first? I think these folks might be useful, and they know me.”

Charles, his gaze pinned on the waiting stranger, said, “These are friends of yours?”

His tone was odd, something Anna couldn’t quite read. He’d seen something Anna had missed—or he knew something she didn’t.

“‘Friends’ would be stretching it a bit,” Tag said judiciously as he got out of the SUV, bringing a leather over-the-shoulder pack with him. “But we know each other.”

He didn’t bother to close his door as he strode over to the man who waited, so neither she nor Charles had to strain to hear, even with the sounds of the nearby river.

“Carrottop,” said the stranger. “Long time since you came this way.”

Tag said something in a liquid tongue Anna couldn’t pinpoint, and the other man laughed.

“Call me Ford,” he said, sounding a lot friendlier, as if Tag had spoken some sort of code when he’d switched languages. “And it is rude to talk in a language everyone doesn’t speak. Your accent is atrocious anyway.” He looked over at their SUV.

Charles opened his door, so Anna climbed out, too.

“Call me Ford,” said the stranger again, this time to Charles. He wasn’t looking at Anna, but she felt like he was very aware of her.

“Charles Cornick,” Charles said after waiting long enough Anna could have spoken if she wished. “And my wife, Anna.”

Ford rocked on his feet, looking at Charles a little differently than he had before, less welcome and more wary. He glanced at Tag. “You keep dangerous company, Carrottop.”

Tag didn’t lose the goofy smile designed to draw attention away from his cool gray eyes. “So do they.”

Ford grinned appreciably, and the tension in the air dropped back to where it had been before Charles introduced himself.

“Welcome to the Trading Post,” said Ford.

* * *

*

THE TRADING POST was a lot of things stuffed into one building. The room smelled of tobacco, coffee, and cinnamon, all overlain with a strong smoky scent, as if someone was smoking meat nearby. She’d smelled a little smoke outside—it was fire season—but this smelled less like burning trees and more like a cook fire.

The carpet was threadbare, with the floorboards peeking through here and there. Four card tables, of the folding sort, were squished together in one corner with chairs that looked like the same kind Anna’s high school orchestra had used—cheap, easy to stack, easy to clean.

Roughly half of the space not dedicated to tables was stocked like a tiny grocery store, with refrigerated goods stored in a double-sided, glass-fronted fridge. One of the walls consisted of a big walk-in freezer. A hand-lettered sign on the freezer door advertised locker space available above a price list for beef, pork, and venison sold in quarters, halves, or whole.

The remaining space was a very basic clothing store carrying jeans, blue T-shirts, a variety of flannel shirts, and brown leather lace-up boots. A glance at Ford showed he had done his clothing shopping here, and his boots looked suspiciously like black versions of the ones the store had for sale.

Along the back wall, shelves offered enough ammunition to arm a good-sized militia. In the corner next to the shelves was a huge old metal safe that looked very much like it belonged in a Hollywood Western-and-bank-robbery movie. Anna suspected it was more likely a gun safe than a bank safe, but there were no signs, so she couldn’t be absolutely sure.