Rather than going through their two days moment by moment, Charles gave him a more ordered version of the story they’d put together about Wild Sign.

“There are white witches who use the wilderness to hide from their predators,” he said. “Some unspecified time ago—more than two years but fewer than five—one of them ran into the Singer in the Woods, Leah’s nemesis. The Singer offered the witches two bargains. Power for music. Safety for—and I quote—‘walkers in the world.’” The pause hung, then Charles continued, “Carrie Green’s grandfather called the Singer a god. Whatever one’s opinion of his character, his magical education was sterling. I am inclined to lean toward his assessment—this thing is at least a powerful manitou.”

“It broke the bargain,” observed Bran. “It did not keep the people of Wild Sign safe.”

“Erasmus was under the impression that the white witches broke the bargain first,” Charles said. “He implied it was a breach in the spirit but not the words of their bargain. What does the term ‘walker in the world’ mean to you?”

“It wanted some of the witches to go out and act and spy for it,” said Tag.

“Walker,” said Charles, with a little more emphasis.

“Like Mercy?” Anna said.

“I think so,” said Charles.

His foster sister’s father was Coyote, one of the primordial powers. Such descendants, though most of them were not first-generation, were called walkers. Charles now wondered if the original name had not been “walker in the world,” which gave a different slant to the original purpose of such couplings. Certainly, Coyote had been making use of Mercy.

“Safety in return for progeny who would go out into the world and do its bidding, be its eyes,” said Da. “It wanted the witches to carry its children.” In his voice was the horror that Charles felt—and not for the missing occupants of Wild Sign, who were, after all was said and done, strangers.

They did not know for sure what had happened to Leah up in these mountains. But one of the babies his da had helped Sherwood bury had been Leah’s.

Charles thought of the haunted feel of the amphitheater. If every person who’d lived in Wild Sign last April had been killed there, it would not have produced the layered feeling of tragedy that overlay the broken land. But the deaths of Leah’s people might, especially if they were only the last people who had died there, not the first.

“She never said anything about her child,” Charles ventured. It wasn’t quite a question.

“No,” Da agreed heavily. “And I never asked.”

He should have, thought Charles.

Soul-wounded by Blue Jay Woman’s death himself, Bran had not been a fit savior for Leah. Sherwood should have known better. It was a wonder Leah had not killed them all in their beds, Charles thought.

From the backseat came a thoughtful voice that cut through the heavy atmosphere. “I don’t know about calling it a god. As a good Christian—” Tag paused, waiting for someone to make a derisive snort, but he was in the wrong car for that. “Anyway, as a good Christian, I’m happy to proclaim him not a god. That way we can go kill him. But the bastard is pretentious. ‘Singer in the Woods’ and ‘walker in the world.’ I wonder what he calls his shoes—‘Slippers of Justice’ or ‘Protectors of Soles’?”

Charles appreciated Tag’s intervention. Wallowing in guilt was never productive, but Charles decided to change the subject again before his da could decide how to respond to Tag’s flippancy.

“That’s all we found out about Wild Sign itself,” he began.

“Not quite,” Anna disagreed. “Daniel Green—Erasmus—said that the witches broke the bargain that guaranteed their safety. Correct me if I’m wrong, but given that witches have power over biological things, is it possible for a witch to keep herself from getting pregnant?”

“Yes,” Bran said. “Even the most powerless of them could keep herself from getting pregnant—and a small group of them could ensure that no one in Wild Sign got pregnant.”

“They kept the word of the bargain,” Anna said, “but not the spirit. That would have worked had they been dealing with the fae.”

“Not usually,” said Tag, sounding like the voice of experience. “If you break the spirit of a bargain with the fae, they can figure out some way to make sure you lose even without breaking the word of the bargain.”

“You had other news,” Bran said.

“Yes,” said Charles. “We found the storage locker that Carrie Green was paying for and bought the contents from the locker owner. And we found two witch families’ worth of grimoires—the Greens and whatever family Erasmus actually descended from, I think. I thought it better to wait until we get them home before I examine them. For now, I have them warded in a hotel room in Happy Camp. I had to let the spells the witch had laid upon them dissipate before I could go through the rest of her property for smaller items. We’ll try later today, but it might have to wait for tomorrow.”

Da didn’t say anything—which was odd. Whatever he was holding back was bigger than taking charge of a locker full of grimoires.

“There are some other things you should know,” Charles said. “At least two of the witches involved in running the facility we found Erasmus in are Hardestys.”

“Interesting,” said Da.

“They found a way to disguise the scent of black magic,” Charles said. “I could feel it—but not smell it.”

“Yes,” agreed Tag. “It’s an odd sensation.”

“I couldn’t feel it or smell it,” Anna said. “Not without bringing my wolf up to the surface.”

“And Anna and I walked down a hall with what felt like proper torture chambers on either side of us, and I still couldn’t smell it.”

“That knowledge has been in the world a long time.” Da’s voice was restrained. “But apparently someone decided to sell it to the rest of the witches. Mercy ran into that effect when she encountered the Hardestys.”

“Carrie Green had something that protected her from the black witches,” Anna said. “Something that predated Wild Sign. It’s the reason that Daniel Green—Daniel Erasmus—didn’t take her down for her power.”

“That is a different kind of thing,” Charles told her. “Though I’ve never heard of anything that could protect a white witch against the likes of the Hardestys or Daniel Erasmus.”

“There is nothing like that in the Green family,” agreed Da.

“Carrie’s father was Daniel’s son, a man named Jude,” Charles said. “Her mother came from a witch family as well, but she had no power. Maybe whatever it was came to Carrie from her mother’s family. I’ll research it.”

“Is that all?” Da asked.

“Yes,” said Charles.

“Bright Things’s Zander is selling snow cones in Happy Camp,” Anna said.

“Really?” said his da, sounding dumbfounded. Apparently he knew who the photographer was as well. “What’s he doing there?”

“I know, right? I mean, he has to be somewhere, that makes sense.”

“But Happy Camp?” Bran agreed. He sounded almost as giddy as Anna did.

There was no reason to feel the slightest bit of jealousy over the pretty boy, Charles thought, looking at the excitement on his wife’s face. He had been able to tell that Zander had been flirting outrageously with Anna when he and Tag had interrupted them—but she had not been interested in the photographer that way. Charles wasn’t even sure that she’d noticed she was being flirted with.

It wasn’t jealousy, really, he decided, or not the suspicious kind of jealousy. Charles only wished that he could be like that boy for his wife—someone softer, gentler. Younger.

She is ours, Brother Wolf reminded him smugly. That one can find his own person. She already belongs to us.

“I didn’t ask,” Anna was saying to Bran. “Maybe he’s taking photos around the Klamath River, do you think? Anyway, he told me that he’s probably headed to Colorado as soon as the season passes.”

“Da,” said Charles. “What’s wrong?”

Silence filled the Suburban as they waited.

“Leah is gone,” Da said, finally. “She was gone this morning. I thought she had gone out running in the mountains. This business has been hard on her, and she’s taken to long runs. It wasn’t until she didn’t come in for lunch that I thought to look for her.”

“She’s coming here,” Charles said.

“Going to Wild Sign, I think,” Bran agreed. “That song she sang . . . it had the feel of a summons. I thought that— It doesn’t matter what I thought. Our bonds, pack and mating, are still intact, but I can’t open them further. Which is unusual. I am in the habit of keeping our bonds closed down, but I don’t usually have trouble opening them if I choose. I don’t have any sense of where she is.”

“The Singer messed with my ability to open our mating bond,” said Charles.

“Yes,” Da said. “You told me that.”