“Killed by a fae?” she asked. “Are you sure?”

Charles just looked at her, but Hosteen said, “I found the body. Yes. I’m sure. It was in the fall, 1979.”

The hair on the back of Anna’s head stood up. “Did he ever tell you that he saved a little boy from a fae creature? June of the year before. We’re pretty sure it’s the same one who built the fetch that tried to make Chelsea attack the kids.”

“Not that I heard,” Hosteen said. “After his mate died, he went to live with his family for a few years. We hoped it would help, but then I found out he’d stayed in his wolf shape the whole time. So I picked him up and brought him back to the pack and made him change to human. He never did go back to being his old self. When I felt him die, I was sure he’d found a way to kill himself. I thought it was suicide by fae.”

“I think,” Anna said, “that maybe it was revenge because he stopped this fae from stealing his grandchild. Or great-grandchild. Great-something-grandchild, anyway. It’s an awfully big coincidence otherwise.”

“Maybe he went looking for the fae,” offered Charles thoughtfully. “And both of you are right.”

“Any way you look at it,” said Anna. “The fae we’re chasing is powerful enough to kill a werewolf.”

“Tore him to pieces with magic,” said Hosteen thoughtfully.

“Makes you wonder,” Charles said slowly, “that such a fae let a handful of federal agents and police officers escort him off to jail.”

“Do you think they have the wrong fae?” Anna asked.

He didn’t quite answer. “I think … I think, Hosteen, that we need to borrow your wolves. This is not a fae that is going to let Amethyst, the little girl we rescued, stay rescued. We probably should send wolves out to protect Dr. Vaughn, too. And we’ll keep a weather eye on Chelsea and the kids.”

“Who is Dr. Vaughn?” Hosteen asked.

“The little boy that your wolf rescued back in 1978.”

“How many do you need?”

“All of them. On our victims, and on the FBI agent and the Cantrip agents who found his latest victim with us. At least two werewolves at all times. And they’ll have to stay out of sight,” he said. “I know that’ll put a strain on the pack. You can tell them that the Marrok will make sure they don’t suffer financially and that I don’t think it will last long.”

“Maybe they do have the right fae,” said Hosteen. “With them, it’s sometimes hard to predict why they do things.”

Charles’s horse snorted and Charles tilted his head sideways, closing his eyes, and murmured, “Can’t you feel it in the air? There’s a storm coming.” When he opened his eyes, they were yellow. He straightened and, though Anna couldn’t see that he moved again, his horse broke into a gentle canter.

They put the other horses away before taking Portabella into the same smaller arena that Anna had ridden in the day before. The mare didn’t look any different than she had before Anna had gotten on her outside. Or if she did, she looked even calmer, because she’d still been a little huffy about Chelsea when Anna had hopped on.

Charles lengthened the stirrups a lot, checked the cinch, and then swung up on the mare. Her head went up, her eyes rolled until Anna could see the whites that were normally hidden, she shifted her weight to her haunches, and she danced uneasily from foot to foot.

Charles just sat there, his body loose and easy; the only motion he made was the motion generated by the horse’s movement. She shuffled a few steps forward, two backward, a hop sideways. He made no move to correct her, just stayed balanced and light on her back.

They fit each other, Anna thought: big dark man, big dark horse, both elegant and strong. The idea made her lips quirk up, even with the worry that the janitor wasn’t the fae they were really looking for.

“You coming to the show tomorrow?” Kage asked. “Michael’s riding in the lead-line and Mackie’s taking the little gray you rode yesterday in the English walk/trot class.”

“I’ll ask Charles,” she said, watching as the mare, left mostly to her own devices, finally stopped moving except for the unhappy swish of her tail. “I think we’re going to try to get in to see the guy the FBI has locked up if we can. But I’d love to come see the kids ride.” And to make sure that they were safe.

After five minutes more (Anna checked her watch), Charles still having done nothing but sit there, the mare lowered her head and began to chew her bit. Immediately, Charles slipped off. He patted her neck and led her out of the gate. “If you want to put her on your list of possibles,” he told Anna, “that would be okay.”

And she knew for sure that he really liked her. Anna liked her a lot, too. “Okay,” she said. She looked at Kage. “She’s on our list of possibles, but not on the price list you gave us. Do you have a price for her?”

“Ten thousand,” said Hosteen.

Kage snorted. “Not anywhere near that, Hosteen. Five thousand for a pretty horse, well broke for trail. Twenty-five hundred for the well broke plus twenty-five hundred for the pretty. But don’t make up your mind yet, there’s some nice horses you haven’t seen.”

And as Kage and Hosteen left to put the mare away, Anna heard Hosteen chortle, “Did you hear him? She’s a challenge. He wants her. He’d have paid ten thousand for her.”

“We don’t overcharge for our horses, old man,” said Kage. “That’s a good way to get a bad reputation. And I suspect that Charles knows just exactly how much that horse should cost.” He paused. “I shouldn’t have said anything at all. I could have just told Dad what you tried to do; then you’d be in real trouble.”

Hosteen made a reply, but Anna couldn’t hear what he said. His voice sounded happy.

“I like them,” Anna said, very softly.

Charles’s lips quirked. “Hosteen was watching Kage when he gave us that price, did you see?”

“He was right, though,” Anna observed. “You’d have paid ten thousand for her because she’s a challenge.”

He smiled, eyes soft. “I already have a challenge,” he told her in a gravelly voice.

She shook her head with mock sadness. “I’m not a challenge, Charles. I’m just another woman panting after you like that teacher with the hungry eyes at the day care.”

He laughed out loud. “Sure you are,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Sure you are.”

Well, she knew it was true, even if he didn’t believe her. His arm pulled her a little off balance, and paradoxically it steadied her at the same time. That was what Charles did to her heart, too. He knocked it off balance into what felt like the right position, a safe place that was still exciting, exhilarating, and terrifying.

What if I lost him?

Anna called Leslie in the morning.

“No, I can’t get you in to see Sean McDermit,” she said in a distracted voice. “His lawyer is a shark, and he’s not saying anything. Apparently all we have on him is that the bodies were found in his house, a house that he’s never lived in. And that he’s a fae. Which makes this all the more politically hot, given the current tension with the fae.”

“We’re not sure you have the right person,” Anna said.

There was silence on the other line.

“I found Archie Vaughn,” Anna told her. “He was killed a year and a half after he stopped that kidnapping. Torn to pieces by a fae. Why would someone who could tear apart a werewolf let human police officers pick him up without a fight?”

“I’ll take your concerns to our fae expert,” she said. “I hate to say it, but I’m suspicious about how easy this was, too. So I’ve got people doing background checks on anyone who was ever employed by or used the day care and everyone they knew.” She paused. “We’re also searching records of missing children, trying to identify the bodies. Some of that is on computer, some of it on microfiche, and still more of it is in paper files scattered all over the city. We’ve got a pair of poor flunkies wading through microfiche of hundred-year-old newspapers, too. It doesn’t help that it’s not just Scottsdale, it’s Phoenix and all the rest of the suburbs, too. We’ll be decades identifying the bodies in that attic.”