“Carrie Green was something of a puzzle,” she said, returning her attention to Charles. “It was inevitable that she would draw attention among the”—she glanced at Anna—“underlings. He is right about this: we certainly took notice of her sudden elevation in power without accompanying corruption. We all make choices. We give up some things for power. It is”—she smiled again—“a little bit enraging when someone seems to gain the prize without the sacrifice.”

Is she trying to charm us? asked Brother Wolf. Does she think we are stupid?

Anna waited, giving Charles a chance to take over, since the newcomer was addressing him. He chose not to. When he didn’t say anything, Anna spoke. “What do you want from us?”

“That is a proper question,” the witch said, still speaking to Charles. “First, I will deal with my problem.” She looked at the man behind the desk and sighed.

She walked past Charles and Anna. And as she walked, Charles noticed the way she balanced her body and the way the excellently tailored clothes were a tad bit loose around her waist. She was pregnant.

Well, that put a fly in the ointment. Charles had no qualms at all about killing a black witch—but a baby . . . a baby changed things.

The witch rounded the desk and put her hand on Dr. Underwood’s. From the way his eyes widened until they showed the whites like a nervous horse, Underwood did not want her to touch him. But he did not pull away—and she was not using magic to make him stay where he was.

After a few seconds, the doctor’s body relaxed. His expression softened to bemusement.

“Hey, Dr. Underwood,” the witch said in a cheery voice. “I heard your daughter is missing you. I think you should call home and check up on her. Use the staff lounge for privacy because I requested the use of your office. Mom co-opted mine again. When you get off the phone, it will be time for your rounds. You won’t think much about Daniel Green’s visitors. They came and talked for a little, but it turns out he wasn’t the person they were looking for. Daniel Green is a common name.”

“Okay,” he said. He gave Charles and Anna a mildly embarrassed look. “I hope you don’t mind, but I have to go call my daughter.” He smiled pleasantly and then hurried out the door.

When the door shut behind him, Charles spoke, having changed his mind about how to deal with this witch. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Anna to handle the witch—Anna was much less likely to turn this into an unnecessary fight. But he did not know this witch, except that she was powerful. He decided to keep her attention on him and not on Anna. Against black magic, it was his job to be Anna’s shield.

“You paid for your power with corruption,” he told the witch. “Carrie paid for hers with her life—and she got very little use out of the power she gained. My father sent us to find out what happened. Daniel Green—who I know as Daniel Erasmus—”

The witch made a comical wince—yes, they had changed his name when he came here.

“—has given us the final keys to the mystery of what happened at Wild Sign. My father will see this flawed avenue of power destroyed. It need not concern you further.”

He had a reputation that he had carefully cultivated. It said that he did not lend himself to long, involved explanations to the enemy.

The witch gave him an amused look. She started to say something, but Anna spoke first.

“Is it Dr. or Ms. Hardesty?”

That made the witch pay attention to his mate. It also made Charles pay attention. Hardesty was a name they had come up against recently. How had Anna known this was one of the Hardesty witches?

“Ms.,” the witch said. She smiled prettily. “My mother is the MD and PhD. You can call me Cathy if you’d like.”

“Cathy, this is not the cross you want to hang your family on,” Anna said, coming to her feet. “Your family has lost power this year already. Twice.”

Once with them, once with Charles’s foster sister, Mercy.

“Neither event involved a direct confrontation with Bran himself. You want to leave it that way.” Anna gave Ms. Hardesty a sweet smile—a match to the one the witch had been throwing around. “Trust me.”

Anna walked toward the door. The witch blocked her.

“Your people might be able to stop us leaving,” said Anna in a low voice. “But not before my mate tears your throat out.”

Charles took that as a hint and let the change from man to wolf rip through him. With the excess magic in the atmosphere, the change took even less time than usual. He smelled the witch’s sudden fear at the speed of his shift—and perhaps at the sight of the big wolf. He snarled softly and enjoyed the stink of her fear spiking.

Anna stared at the witch. “Be smart,” she said. Then she shrugged and said in a bored voice, “Or be dead.”

When she started walking again, the witch moved out of the way. Charles followed her, but he walked so he could keep his eyes on Ms. Hardesty, who seemed to be amenable to allowing them to leave, though she didn’t say as much. He wondered if her actions, like his, were hampered by her pregnancy.

When he got to the doorway, he gave the witch a careful, eyes-up-and-watchful bow. Then he resumed his human form, closed the door between them and the witch, and followed ten feet behind his mate all the way out the front door.

* * *

*

TAG WAS SITTING on the hood of the SUV playing games on his phone. He stayed there until Anna opened the driver’s side door, and then he hopped down. There was a bit of a depression in the metal of the hood.

“Hope what you found was worth it,” Tag murmured, passing Charles on the way to his door. “This place is a witch-hive, and they started swarming about ten minutes ago. They are giving me the creepy-crawlies for sure.”

The parking lot was certainly fuller than it had been when they’d arrived, Charles noted, though Tag was the only person visible.

As soon as everyone was belted in, Anna—in a very un-Anna-like fashion—gunned the SUV out through the open gates, which swung shut behind them. There was nothing mechanical involved in their movement.

Charles wasn’t sure of the exact message the witches intended for them to take from that. Don’t come back? We could have trapped you anytime we wished? Leave us alone?

No one said anything until they were on the highway back to Happy Camp.

“Are you going to tell me what you found?” Tag asked. “Not that I’m curious about what the two of you got up to in Witch Central or anything.”

Anna filled him in on everything. When she was finished, she said, “Tell me why we left that old man to be tortured.”

“Daniel Erasmus—” Charles began.

“Erasmus?” roared Tag, jerking forward in a motion that threatened to rip his seat belt out of the Suburban. “You found Erasmus?” Then, calming somewhat, he growled, “Tell me that you left him in little pieces that somehow clung to life . . . or—” He paused, smiled in understanding, and relaxed like a big cat in the sun. “Or maybe you left him in the care of black witches who torture him every day and will eventually kill him and feed on his death to extract every bit of his power.”

Charles had forgotten that Tag had been one of the wolves his da had brought to help clean up the mess in Utah.

“What did he do?” Anna said, but less like she was worried that she’d left an innocent man to suffer needlessly.

“Made me kill children,” growled Tag.

“Trafficked in minors,” said Charles.

“Sex trade,” said Tag, in case Anna had misunderstood Charles’s terms. “Erasmus and his wife got their hands on children and then used magic to eat their minds. Left behind puppets.” He shivered. “Evil.”

Anna gave a sharp nod. “So it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” she said. By now she’d slowed back down to her usual grandma-going-to-church pace so she could safely take a hand off the wheel to rest it on Charles’s leg. “Okay.”

“How did you know the witch was a Hardesty?” Charles asked.

“Wild guess,” Anna said. “But there were nameplates in that hallway of offices where Underwood’s office was. One had ‘Ms. Hardesty’ and the other ‘Dr. Hardesty.’” She paused, then said in a low voice, “And she had Sage’s mouth.”

“She was pregnant,” Charles said.

His phone rang and he checked it. “It’s Da,” he told them, and hit the green button.

“Update?”

There was something heavy in that single word. Doubtless whatever lay under it would be made clear in Bran’s own time.

“Charles found Erasmus,” Tag said, his voice steeped in satisfaction. “And we left him helpless in the hands of a nursing home staffed by black witches who will make sure that he survives to suffer a very long time.”

“Daniel Erasmus?” said Bran softly.

“Carrie Green’s grandfather—the reason she was trying to mail a check to Angel Hills Assisted Living,” Tag told him.

“He won’t hurt anyone ever again,” said Charles.

“Good.”

That’s what I said, agreed Brother Wolf, still caught in his oddly talkative mood.