There were two other people in the store, neither of them Native American. One of them was a woman of about Anna’s age with reddish-brown hair, and the other was a towheaded boy who looked about five. Both of them had also gotten their clothing from the store. Anna wondered where the drivers of the other cars were—and why people with cars didn’t drive the hour or so to Yreka to get clothes.

Without a word to the others in the store, Ford escorted them to one of the tables. Charles pulled out a chair for Anna. Tag pulled out another and looked at it doubtfully. Anna got it—he was a big man for such an insubstantial chair.

“Sit,” advised Ford. He glanced at the woman—but she was already bringing a glass water pitcher foggy with cold in one hand and four glasses in the other.

As Tag sat gingerly on the edge of the chair, the boy opened a door in the back and left the building. Anna caught a glimpse of him running as the door swung shut behind him. No one seemed worried about such a young child running out where there was nothing but forest, highway, and the river Anna had heard but not seen when she’d gotten out of the car.

“Here you are,” the woman said, setting the glasses around before bustling back into an alcove Anna’s first impression of the building had missed.

Tag opened his mouth, but Ford held up a hand. “Wait.”

The woman brought out four plates, each holding a mammoth slice of berry pie. Beginning with Anna, she placed the plates around the table.

Anna, aware of undercurrents, waited for someone to do something. Charles glanced at Ford, but then looked at the woman directly as he cut into the pie and took a bite. His eyebrow rose and he made a soft sound.

“Huckleberry,” he said in obvious approval. “I haven’t had a huckleberry pie in a very long time. Thank you.”

Which meant they weren’t dealing with the fae. Charles wouldn’t have said those words to someone who was fae. He would have praised the food, but he wouldn’t have thanked anyone.

Anna was sure by now they were dealing with people who weren’t quite human. The store smelled of smoke, of gun oil, of all the things lining the shelves and filling the fridge. But she couldn’t smell the man who sat at the table with them, or the woman who’d served them—just as she hadn’t picked up the scent of the boy.

The woman flashed Charles a big smile. “You’re very welcome. If you folks need anything else, I’ll be right outside,” she said.

Then she left by the same back door the boy had used.

They ate their pie. Anna had become a fan of huckleberries since her move to Montana, but she wasn’t fond of berry pie. Mostly they were—like this one—too sweet. The flavor was powerful—huckleberries were like that. She thought if they had used half the sugar, she might have enjoyed the pie. She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t stop eating it. She glanced surreptitiously at Charles, but he was eating the way he usually did—like a well-mannered starving person who wasn’t sure where his next meal with coming from.

She was the last to finish, her stomach telling her it had been too close to the big breakfast she’d eaten. But she only felt overfull, not sick as she probably should have.

“Thank you,” Charles said again, this time to Ford.

Tag opened up the shoulder bag he’d brought with him and pulled out an earthenware bowl. It was putty colored on the outside and reddish brown on the inside, the shape a little irregular. The bowl was shiny in some places and matte in others, as if the potter had made a mistake with the finish—or as if it were so old the finish had worn off in spots. Anna was pretty sure she had last seen that bowl on the bookshelves in Bran’s office.

Tag set it on the table in front of Ford.

The man raised an eyebrow and Tag nodded. Ford took the bowl up in two cupped hands, turning it so it caught the light. He brought it to his nose and sniffed. He paused thoughtfully and set it, very carefully, back down on the table.

“We’d like information,” said Tag.

Ford nodded at the bowl. “It must be some information if you brought this to pay for it.”

“There was a group of people who had set up camp in the mountains,” said Charles. “They called it Wild Sign. We think there were somewhere between thirty and forty of them. They went there to live away from civilization.”

Ford snorted. Anna couldn’t tell if it was a derisive snort or a snort of agreement.

“Wild Sign is on land owned by my father’s mate,” Charles said. “And two hundred years ago, give or take a decade, something lived in those mountains. We are given to understand the people who settled there disappeared sometime this spring. We would like to know where they went. My father is concerned that a danger in the mountains, one that killed a lot of people a couple of hundred years ago, is waking up again. He feels responsible.” Charles hesitated, but then left that there. “We would appreciate any information you could give us.”

Ford smiled sweetly. “‘The mountains’ is a lot of territory.”

Tag reached into his bag again and pulled out a USGS map folded to display an area marked with a silver marker. Anna couldn’t be sure it was the same map Leslie had brought them, but presumably it was marked to display where the encampment had been.

Ford did not look at the map but gave a sharp nod. “It was a town, not a camp, this Wild Sign you speak of, a town with buildings and a school. It started about two years ago, when four people built a permanent camp up there as soon as the snow was gone. By last winter there were forty-two of them. Or so I have heard—I have not been there.”

“Who told you?” Tag asked.

“My nephew works for the Forest Service. He came upon them by accident—the young seldom have the wits to heed their elders’ warnings. He told me they seemed to know what they were doing and required no help. He also said they were a cheerful and generous people, free with food and drink for wandering forest rangers. They were not on federal land or tribal land”—he gave a wry glance at Charles—“or their own land, but the owner did not come to object, and so they were left alone.”

“Why didn’t you visit them?” asked Anna. That “elders’ warnings” was directed at something—and she wanted to know what it was.

“The mountains are vast, Ms. Cornick,” Ford said. “Why should I have visited them?”

Anna waited.

“No,” said Ford with a hint of a smile fading as he spoke. “We do not go there. None of my people.” He shook his head ruefully. “Not unless we are young fools who work for the Forest Service, we don’t. And his mama has seen to it that he won’t go again. We don’t go to that place.”

“Why not?” Anna asked, and found herself meeting eyes that were deeper than a moonlit night and of no color she could name, though a moment ago she’d have sworn they were the same shade as her husband’s eyes. She felt as though Ford saw all the way through her, whereas she saw nothing she could comprehend.

He looked away from her, smiled at his hands. Then he reached out and pulled the bowl nearer to him, as if the answer to her question was worthy of that gift or payment. “Because there is something sleeping there we do not wish to awaken.” He glanced at Charles and then away. “The creature your father is worried about, I’d reckon. There are not two such in our territory.”

“What can you tell us about it?” she persisted.

He took his napkin and pulled a pen out of his pocket. He drew an upside-down V and three upward slashes on each side. “That’s a wild sign for you,” he said, handing her the napkin.

“Are you referring to the town?” Charles asked as Anna examined what Ford had drawn.

There was a primitive feel to the drawing, almost like a Viking rune, but it didn’t look familiar. When she and her brother had been children, they’d learned a set of runes and written notes to each other. The runes had been real ones—at least the symbols they hadn’t made up. But maybe this was from an older group of runes or from a different culture. Tag held out his hand, and Anna gave the napkin to him. He frowned at it.

Ford answered Charles’s question while Tag scrutinized the napkin. “The town was named after the signs they found in the rocks and trees around there,” Ford said. “They called them wild petroglyphs.” He grimaced. “Even when they were carved into the trees.”

“Who carved them into trees?” asked Charles intently.

Ford shrugged. “None of my people.”

Charles frowned at him. “That was very near a lie.”

Ford’s eyebrows raised. “I am not fae, Marroksson. I am not bound by their rules.”

“You know what that bowl is,” murmured Charles.

Ford laughed. “Yes. And I know if I take it under false circumstances, I will not hold it long.” He looked down and considered his words. “The petroglyphs, I do not know. They have been there for as long as my people have been telling stories. My mother would say they were made by the Before People, but I do not in truth know who they were. Nor does my mother.”