“I’ll head up to Wild Sign as soon as I drop Anna and Tag off at the hotel in Happy Camp,” Charles said. “I don’t want Anna up there again.”

“Leah won’t make it today,” Bran said. “I know she’s still in wolf form—it changes the shape of our bond.” He growled, and there was a crack as something wooden broke. In a velvet-soft voice he said, “I did not notice because it is my habit to leave our bonds closed. Has always been my habit.”

“You can fix that,” Charles said, “after we deal with the Singer. We’ll deal with the locker today—I don’t want to leave it any longer than we have to, because if there are any other artifacts there, they will start to attract attention now that I’ve taken down Carrie’s protections. Tomorrow morning, I’ll head up to Wild Sign. If Leah is running the whole way, she won’t get there before I will.” Even a werewolf had limits.

“I cannot leave here,” his da said raggedly. “Asil is in Billings, dealing with a lone wolf.”

There was no one else who could handle their pack.

“I will find her,” Charles promised. “She won’t get past us.”

“She is a ghost in the forest,” his da said. “If she doesn’t want you to know that she is there—”

“Pack bonds,” Charles reminded his da. “If I pay attention to the pack bonds, I’ll feel her as soon as she is within five miles of me.” Usually only an Alpha would be able to read pack bonds that well, but Charles could do it. His da was pretty upset to forget that.

“Yes,” his da said. And disconnected.

“First, we check on the grimoires at the hotel,” said Anna firmly. “Then we’ll go to the storage locker and get that taken care of. You’ll get a good sleep and go save Leah in the morning.”

She caught his sudden attention and shook her head. “I don’t think I should go up there, either. I opened myself up to that thing. I don’t know if it can get a hold on me again.”

Charles smiled, put a hand on her leg. “That’s not what surprised me,” he told her. His Anna was full of common sense. “It was your boundless confidence that I can save Leah.”

It had come out in her voice like truth.

Tag snorted in the back, but he was quiet enough about it that Charles could ignore him.

Anna grinned. “My hero,” she crooned—and that came out like truth, too. He wasn’t sure she knew that, but he and Tag did.

Charles felt his cheeks heat—which was ridiculous.

CHAPTER

10

There was no more activity at the old gas station when they passed it for the second time that day than there had been the first. All three of them watched it go by. No one said anything about it, but Anna met Tag’s grin in her rearview mirror.

They had passed the Sasquatch gift shop sign before something that had been tapping at the edge of Anna’s instincts coalesced into certainty.

“Cathy Hardesty was pregnant,” she said. “It didn’t strike me as important at the time, but I think I was wrong about that.”

Charles nodded, and from his face she knew that he understood what she had. Maybe he’d seen it from the start.

“She let us go too easily,” Anna said. “And maybe that was because she was pregnant—and because you honestly scared her, Charles. But knowing black witches . . . If she, like Underwood, thought we were a path to greater power, she would never have let us get away without a fight.” She paused. “They would never have let us go.”

“Agreed,” said Charles.

“Just like they wouldn’t have let Carrie Green go, once they’d noticed the new power she carried,” Anna continued. “I don’t care what kind of artifact she had. And the Singer in the Woods—” She felt a flash of indignation. “I feel very unhappy that every time I say ‘singer’ I will have that thing in my head. ‘Singer’ is a thing you are, Charles, a thing we do that is ours. And I love the woods. I don’t want to give that word to some creepy primordial god.”

Charles gave her a half smile. “Creepy primordial god?”

“Whatever,” she said with a wave of her hand. She got back to her original point. “That thing wants walkers. And we think that means children.”

“It would have been easy enough for a witch or two to follow Carrie back to Wild Sign,” Tag said, proving that he’d been thinking along the same lines that Anna had. “They can hide themselves pretty well from most things that aren’t werewolves.”

“Would the magic on the trail to Wild Sign have kept them out?” Anna asked.

Charles shook his head. “It’s meant to keep mundane people from wandering in. Maybe if the Singer actively wanted to keep them out, it could. But the warding on the trail was easy enough to push through. A witch could do it without much trouble. Maybe even use the wardings to find what they were hiding, the way I did.”

“How far along is she?” Anna asked. “It is late September, and whatever hit Wild Sign did it in April. That is five, five and a half months. She could be that far if the baby is small.”

“I wonder,” said Charles softly, “how many of the witches who run that rest home are pregnant. How long that garden has been alive. How long they’ve had the power to waste on covering up the stench of black magic. As a rule, not even black witches waste magic on permanent spells.”

Chills swept up Anna’s spine. That was further than she’d thought through, but it made sense. She didn’t want to go up against witches again—not when they were also going up against the Singer. Maybe it was time to call in the troops.

“So maybe the witches followed Carrie back to Wild Sign,” Tag said heavily. “When they got there, they informed the Singer that the witches of Wild Sign would never supply it with mothers for its children. A witch could tell what other witches had done to themselves—we are of the opinion that was how they broke their bargain, yes? The white witches of Wild Sign—” He frowned. “And doesn’t that sound like a line from Gilbert and Sullivan? Anyway, those white witches had kept the women of Wild Sign from becoming pregnant—and the black witches told the Singer what they had done. What if black witches brought Wild Sign down—and offered the Singer a new bargain? Power for children who would be witches and walkers both?” He paused and said in a mild tone, “It is speculation, but that scenario would account for everything we saw up there, expect maybe for the pet graveyard.”

“Cemetery,” Anna said, the echoes of a long-ago monologue by her father ringing in her ears. He was something of a pedant. “Graveyards have to be next to churches.”

“I know that,” said Tag, with feigned indignation. “If that amphitheater wasn’t Wild Sign’s church, I don’t know where they worshipped.”

“I thought that you didn’t consider the Singer to be a god,” Anna observed.

Tag licked a finger and made an imaginary score in the air. “Point to you.” He paused. “But since I think that they considered it a god, I stand by my nomenclature. No point.” He put up the same hand and made an erasing motion.

“Proving you can believe two contradictory things at the same time,” Charles observed.

“It’s a talent,” agreed Tag.

Anna went back to the original discussion. “We haven’t found anything that sounds very good for the people who lived in Wild Sign. Are we counting them dead?”

“I think that’s a safe assumption at this point,” Charles said gently. “But we knew, given the length of time between when they disappeared and when we were called in, that this was unlikely to be a rescue. Our job was to get information.”

“Which we did,” Tag agreed. “So we tidy up our loose ends, and then what?”

“Intercept Leah,” said Charles. “After we have her safe, then we’ll lay it all out for Da. I don’t expect that we are going to leave this alone. I expect we’ll be back with more firepower to clean the Singer out of these mountains for good.”

Anna thought that if it weren’t for Leah’s involvement, Bran was quite capable of letting the Singer prey upon anyone it wanted to as long as it left the werewolves alone. She had very few illusions about her father-in-law. Charles, however, would not agree to let it be. Someday he and Bran were going to find themselves on opposite sides of something like this, but she didn’t think it would be this time.

She put her hand on Charles’s leg, reassuring herself that he was safe. For now.

And aren’t your current problems enough for you, Anna Banana? Her father’s imaginary voice echoed in her ears.

Charles watched her with curious eyes, but before he could ask her anything, Tag spoke.

“There’s another thing,” the wolf in the backseat said. “No one else has mentioned it, so I have to think maybe you didn’t notice. Dr. Connors is pregnant, too. I thought it odd at the time, but private business between her and her wife. They can do that nowadays. Have children without a man directly involved.”

“You are an advertisement for modern sensibilities.” Anna’s response was automatic despite her growing horror at what Tag seemed to be saying.

“She is two months along, I think.” He tapped his nose to show how he’d figured it out.