He knew that—and it would have been obvious to his da as well. That knowledge might have been the thing keeping both agents alive. He didn’t think it was because Bran was seriously considering an alliance.

“Unofficial offers from government officials are notoriously dangerous,” he observed. “Secret alliances were the powder keg that blew up into World War I.”

“That doesn’t mean friendly relations wouldn’t be useful,” Anna countered.

He nodded agreement. “Friendly, yes. But wherever such a relationship ends up, it will be far short of an us-against-them alliance of humans and werewolves against all comers.”

“Especially since Bran doesn’t really like mundane humans,” added Anna, wiping her cheek on the end of her towel.

Charles closed the distance between them. He put a finger over the towel where her breasts came together and formed a valley, but he left the towel where it was. He never touched her without her consent, and never would.

She smiled, and it was a wicked, hungry thing.

“Yes,” she said.

CHAPTER

2

Charles spread the map that Goldstein had left with them on his da’s desk. He had taken a silver Sharpie and inked in the boundaries of Leah’s land before he’d left Anna sleeping in their bed and gone to find his da—as his da had requested before he’d left Anna and Charles to deal with the FBI.

Charles had known about the land, of course. He took care of all of the pack’s properties, and the personal properties owned by his family. Taxes, upkeep, and, when appropriate, renters or rental agencies were all under his aegis. It wasn’t the only section of land owned by the Cornick family, so he hadn’t been too curious about it.

He’d thought his da had bought the property for Leah sometime in the nineteen forties—during World War II. But if her name had been on the original deed . . . He couldn’t remember how that part of California had been settled. Had that been one of the areas settled by homesteading? That would mean Da had acquired that land a lot earlier than Charles had believed.

Bran studied the map for a minute and then shrugged. “I haven’t been there in a long time. I doubt I could find my way there without a map and a guide. Too much has changed—the entire course of the river, logging, trails, and towns.”

Charles nodded. He had the same problem. He’d traveled all over the west in the early nineteen hundreds. Some of that had been business for his da, and some of it had been to get away from his da. He’d been to most of the towns nearest to Leah’s land at one time or another. He didn’t remember much about many of them, and he doubted he’d recognize them.

“You are sending Anna and me to check out the missing people,” Charles said. It wasn’t a question.

“I don’t like to send you there,” his father replied, arms folded across his chest and an expression on his face so neutral that Charles knew Bran was very, very unhappy.

Since his da had sent him to some nasty situations over the years, Charles was intrigued.

“Do you know what could have happened to them?” he asked. “Is there something—someone dangerous?”

Bran frowned. “Yes. But I don’t know much more than that. The only one who might be able to tell us something is Sherwood Post, and he’s forgotten it all.”

His da’s voice held a growl that told Charles it was a good thing Sherwood was safely out of his da’s long reach at the moment. Da had always blamed Sherwood for the memory loss, though from the outside it had seemed grossly unfair. Doubtless Da had reason for it—he usually did—but he hadn’t shared it with Charles. At any rate, the old three-legged wolf was a member of Hauptman’s pack now—and the Columbia Basin Pack was the only pack in North America that did not owe fealty to Bran Cornick.

Charles waited.

“Leah’s been singing again,” Bran said in an apparent non sequitur.

“What do you mean, singing?” Leah didn’t sing. He hadn’t thought about it much; some people sang, some people didn’t.

Leah had used to sing, though, hadn’t she? He remembered her singing when he was a boy. But there had been something unsettling about her when she had.

“Do you mean like she used to sing?” he asked. “When you first brought her home? Brother Wolf used to make us leave when she was singing. He didn’t like it.”

“Nor do I,” admitted his da. The growl in his voice was almost subvocal, raising the hairs on the back of Charles’s neck in response.

The obvious question was “Why not?” but Da’s growl and the memory of Brother Wolf’s unease kept him quiet. There had been something wrong about Leah’s singing. Da would tell Charles about it when he was ready to do so.

Bran looked back at the map. “April was the last time anyone heard from the people living in this village?”

“That they know of,” Charles said. He’d taken time to go through the file the FBI had given them before he’d left his house. “Dr. Connors’s daughter is the only relative who has come out and identified her father as missing. The rest of the names they got from the post office box, but the relatives of those people have been singularly unhelpful. Apparently people who want to live off-grid are not big on communicating with the outside world. The last letter Dr. Connors’s daughter received was dated early April. That seems to be the last communication from Wild Sign.”

“Leah started singing last April,” Bran told him.

“You believe there’s a connection?” Charles asked.

“I don’t like coincidences,” Bran told him. “There is something magic in whatever she’s singing. It feels like a summons of some sort. But I can’t tell if Leah is trying to summon something to her, or if she’s hearing a summons.”

Charles looked up from the map. “Leah doesn’t work magic.” He was as sure of it as he was of his own name. “Not outside of pack magic. But you aren’t talking about that kind of magic.”

“No,” Bran agreed. “It doesn’t feel like her—she smells wrong for a while afterward.”

Charles sat back. “Then why haven’t you done something about it?” He didn’t know what he’d do, but if Anna started smelling wrong, he wouldn’t have sat on his thumbs for five months.

“At first she used to sing all the time,” Bran said, and Charles wasn’t sure he was talking to Charles until he looked directly at him. “Do you remember that?”

“I remember that she sang,” Charles said. “And her song made Brother Wolf uneasy. But I don’t remember her singing all the time.”

Bran didn’t seem surprised. “Mostly she’d stopped by the time we got back here, I think. You haven’t heard her sing recently?”

Charles said, “No.” It wasn’t surprising. Neither Leah nor he sought out each other’s company.

Bran nodded. “I was told, back at the beginning, to ignore it and hope it went away.” He gave Charles a wry smile. “I wasn’t told what to do about it if she didn’t quit. I don’t know what to do about it now—and the only person who might know—” He growled in frustration. “We didn’t talk about it because we were worried that talking about it might give it power.”

There were things that grew more powerful when spoken of—some of the fae, those who had died, demigods, and some of the spirits of place. Speaking something’s name could draw its attention, and that held its own dangers. Charles could not immediately think of any kind of magic—not a magical being—made worse by speaking of it, but his da knew a lot more about magic than Charles did.

“You think there is something or someone yanking on Leah’s chain,” said Charles. “And that it is all connected to the plot of land where the off-grid squatters disappeared from?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Tell me what you can,” Charles said.

Da nodded. It took him a while to begin, but Charles was patient.

Finally, his da said, “I wasn’t actually out looking for a mate when I left you with your grandfather. The wolf was restless and I couldn’t stay where she . . .” He stopped speaking and his eyes flashed yellow with grief that belonged both to him and to his wolf.

Charles had heard stories of his mother from his grandfather and his uncles, not from his da. He knew the battles between his parents had lit the forest with their fury. He knew neither of them could speak more than a few words in each other’s language. He knew their love had been a rare and amazing thing to watch. His grandfather liked to claim his only daughter had been soft and dutiful until she met Bran, and that made Charles’s uncles laugh behind their hands. But Charles knew all of that secondhand.

When he had been a child, he’d pretended he would happen upon his mother someday. He dreamed of walking with her in the forest. He wanted to know the extraordinary Blue Jay Woman who had fought with Bran and won. Over his da’s objections, she had carried Charles to term, fighting off the werewolf’s need to change under the full moon. She had died in the process because the spirits exact a price from those who defy the natural order of things, and werewolf women were not meant to bear children.

Charles had known all of his life that his mother’s death had been his fault.