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.
“When did she go up to Wild Sign?” Anna asked Charles urgently, her mouth dry. “This summer, right?”
“Yes,” Charles said. “July.”
“Does she strike you as the type of person who would give herself willingly to the thing that probably killed her father?” Anna asked.
“No.” Tag grunted, and then swore as if the grunt hadn’t been enough to express his feelings. “I can’t even get pregnant and that is revolting. Shades of Rosemary’s Baby.” Something about the lack of response made him pull himself forward to get a good look at their faces. “You two don’t know Rosemary’s Baby? Mia Farrow? Roman Polanski?”
With a huff of disgust, he dropped back into his seat with enough force that Anna could feel the SUV lurch. “You people. I get that it predates Anna’s arrival on this planet, but it is a classic horror movie. Gave me nightmares for weeks after I saw it—and I’m a werewolf.”
“What does it have to do with the present situation?” asked Anna to please him—though the title was a fair hint.
“Good Catholic girl is sold by her jobless actor husband to the Satanist neighbors, who need a vessel to carry Satan’s baby,” he said promptly. “Husband gets a part in a play. She gets drugged, raped, and then gaslighted,” Tag said. “Do we need to tell Dr. Connors?”
Anna was never going to watch that movie. She’d had enough of being helpless and told that black was white for a lifetime. Maybe Dr. Connors and her wife had been trying for a child. Anna herself had been looking into reproductive alternatives.
It didn’t feel like that.
“So the Singer is impregnating every woman who comes near it?” Tag said. “Do we need to start looking for its walkers?”
“That’s why they kept everyone away,” Anna said suddenly. “All those wards. It wasn’t about keeping the black witches out—the Singer did that for them, didn’t it? I had the impression that Dr. Connors the Younger thought it was out of the ordinary that she’d never gone up to visit her father while he was at Wild Sign. They were trying to keep possible victims away.”
“The Singer isn’t a new thing, though,” objected Tag. “Maybe we are hip-deep in the Singer’s walkers right now and just don’t know it?”
“Maybe not,” said Charles. “I don’t think that it would be making bargains unless it needed to.”
“She didn’t act like someone who had been assaulted,” said Anna.
“Rosemary didn’t remember it, either,” said Tag. “Not at first.”
“You think it affected her memory,” said Anna, keeping her eyes on the road so that Charles wouldn’t read her face. She hadn’t lost anything all day today. At least nothing that had left her with one of those odd teleport-feeling jumps. Nothing that she remembered, anyway.
Charles put his hand on her thigh, just above her knee. He’d felt her fear. She needed to tell him about that memory lapse yesterday. But before she could say anything, Charles spoke.
“We need to talk to Dr. Connors,” he said.
He was right.
“Let me do it?” Anna suggested, though there were very few things that she wanted to do less. “If the situation is what we think, we shouldn’t overwhelm her with men, right?”
She was aware of Charles’s keen glance, but he didn’t argue with her.
“I think I’ll put a call in to Mercy,” Charles said unexpectedly. “If I had my pick of who to consult about our current situation, it would be Coyote. Maybe she can tell me how we could make that happen.”
ANNA HAD DEBATED about calling ahead, which would have been the polite thing to do. But she didn’t think she could manage the proper tone. She dropped Tag and Charles off at the storage facility and headed back to the RV campground where Dr. Connors was staying.
She pulled into the spot she’d used before. The Volvo wagon, hatchback open, was backed up to the little cottage Dr. Connors and her wife were staying in. There was luggage piled inside the car. She was pretty sure that they had not intended to leave today.
She heard them before she got to the porch. They kept their voices quiet; someone with mere human senses would not have heard them at all. Even she could not hear the words, just the tone: hurt and anger with a fair bit of fear on both of their parts.
She thought, Two months, maybe three, is about the time you’d have to quit denying what your body was telling you, isn’t it? She pictured Sissy’s hollowed-out face and wondered if some of the grim control she’d shown was because she was fighting nausea.
Anna knocked briskly at the door. All of the talking stopped. Quick footsteps came to the door and it opened just a crack.
Dr. Tanya Bonsu bore very little resemblance to the cheerful woman Anna had met the day before. Her face was tight and her magnificent black eyes were reddened. “Ms…. Anna,” she said, evidently having forgotten Anna’s last name. “I am afraid that this is a very bad time. If you could come back in an hour, I’ll be out of the way and Sissy would, no doubt, be happy to speak with you.”
“Have you,” Anna said, her hold on the door keeping Tanya from pulling it shut, “ever seen the movie Rosemary’s Baby?” She didn’t know why she went with Tag’s movie, but it did seem to cover all the bases and save Anna a long explanation with a hostile audience—assuming the movie was as well-known as Tag seemed to think.
Tanya quit struggling with the door. “That is not funny,” she said coldly.
“It isn’t a funny situation,” Anna said. “Carrie Green, one of the witches in Wild Sign, had a grandfather. We spent this morning visiting him at a rest home. We know something more about what might have happened in Wild Sign.”
“I don’t care what the fuck happened in Wild Sign,” said Tanya in a low, vicious voice. “Let go of the door and come back later. When I am gone.”
“You care,” Anna said, and she pushed out with the soothing Omega power. It seemed to her that things might go better with a little less anger. She wasn’t as effective on humans as she was with the werewolves, but it could help.
She softened her voice. “Unless you and Dr. Connors have been making use of modern science, I think the creature who kept the white witches of Wild Sign safe got your wife pregnant. It wants children, and it can screw with people’s memories.”
Shock loosened Tanya’s hold on the door, and Anna shoved it open with her shoulder, tempering her strength so she only moved the other woman back a few steps.
The cottage living room held a couch, a TV, and a two-person dining table. The kitchen was separated from the rest of the house by a door, which was open. Next to the kitchen was a narrow, enclosed stairway.
“Dr. Connors,” Anna said, keeping an eye on Tanya, who had backed all the way across the living room. Evidently the shove had been hard enough to make Tanya reevaluate what she knew about werewolves, because she smelled frightened now.
Though Tanya had smelled of fear before, there was a difference between fear of losing the person you love and fear of a monster. The word was the same in the English language, but it didn’t smell the same at all. A lot of emotions were like that. After years of Charles’s teaching, Anna’s nose was well calib
rated enough to tell the difference. Anna just didn’t know if the change in Tanya’s fears was useful.
“Ms. Cornick.” Dr. Connors’s voice originated from upstairs. “This is a very bad time. Please go away.”
“Do you remember getting pregnant when you hiked up to Wild Sign?” Anna called. “Or did it steal your memories from you first?”
Anna knew the answer to that, of course.
Sissy Connors rushed down the stairway. She was wearing Minnie Mouse pajama bottoms and a USMC oversized T-shirt that was the right size to have belonged to Tanya. She was barefoot and braless, and her face was a lovely shade between I-just-threw-up and watch-out-I’m-going-to-throw-up-again. Anyone who’d ever been to a college party would recognize it.
“What the hell did you just say?” she asked.
“Sit down,” Anna said, and she glanced at Tanya. “You, too.”
Tanya looked at Anna a moment and said, “Rosemary’s Baby?”
Anna nodded.
Sissy must have watched old movies, too, because comprehension lit her face. She clutched her stomach and the scent of her revulsion might have made Anna’s nose wrinkle if she hadn’t been prepared for it.
It wasn’t Anna’s story that Tanya believed; it was the expression of shock and comprehension on her wife’s face.
Tanya walked over to Sissy and wrapped her in her arms. They rocked a moment, cheek to cheek. Then Tanya whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“How sure are you?” Sissy asked.
“That the creature that destroyed Wild Sign got you pregnant?” Anna shook her head. “Occam’s razor sure. More certain after seeing your reaction than I was driving over here. I can tell you for certain that whatever that thing your father and the other white witches at Wild Sign made a bargain with, it can take your memories away.”
Sissy looked up at Anna and raised her eyebrows. You?
Anna gave her a sharp, single nod.
“I should have believed you,” Tanya said.
“It wasn’t believable,” Sissy said soggily.
“I should have believed you anyway,” Tanya told her. “And I read that letter, too. I could have made some connections.”
“It’s still weird witch shit,” Sissy told her. “I promised to keep it to a minimum. I broke my promise.”
“That was just a joke,” Tanya told her. She looked up at Anna. “She’s been having nightmares. Ever since she hiked to Wild Sign. That’s why I came down to stay with her.” She shook her head. “Rosemary’s Baby, huh?”
“You aren’t leaving me?” said Sissy—and Anna was pretty sure the reserved woman was going to writhe later when she remembered that Anna had been in the room for that. Or maybe not.
“If you don’t cheat on me, don’t lie to me, you aren’t ever getting rid of me,” Tanya vowed. It had the sound of a well-used phrase.
Sissy stepped back and let out a sound that might have been a laugh if there had been any happy in it. “So a complete stranger comes over and tells you that Satan raped me—and suddenly you believe her?” Her voice was a little caustic.
“Not Satan,” Anna said, though she didn’t think either of them was listening to her. “This is going to take a while. You really should sit down.”
She went to the table and got a chair. By the time she brought it back, the other two women had taken a seat on the narrow couch.
Tanya frowned at Anna. “I wish you’d dropped in to tell me this last night before I did my best to blow my marriage out of the water.”
“Sorry,” said Anna. “We only just worked it out ourselves this morning. And if Tag hadn’t figured out that Sissy was pregnant, I wouldn’t be here now.”
“Tag?” Dr. Connors asked, frowning.
“Henchman,” Anna reminded her. “The huge guy with the orange hair. He has a better nose than most of us do when we are running around looking human. He didn’t think anything of it—we’re used to getting all sorts of irrelevant but private information from our noses. It’s rude to use it against people who aren’t actively hostile.”
Sissy gave a jerky nod—then her eyes widened and she bolted back up the stairs. Anna could hear her throwing up.
“Is she safe?” Tanya asked urgently, while her wife couldn’t hear the question or its answer.
“Yes,” Anna told her. Leah had had a child and survived, after all. And they were pretty sure that Mercy’s conception was similar to what the Singer was trying to do with Sissy and the witches. Mercy’s mother was still alive. But all they really had were educated guesses, and Anna didn’t know what the Singer planned on doing with the mothers of its children. And “safe” meant more than survival.
She tempered her initial answer. “I think so, anyway. We’ll try to find out—we are still learning about this creature, too. But I think anything else I have to say should wait until Sissy is able to listen.”
“While we are waiting for her to revisit her breakfast and lunch—and possibly anything she has eaten this year—there’s something you should have.” Tanya got up and went to the little kitchen, coming back with a couple of sheets of lined paper filled with graceful, rounded letters.
“Sissy’s brother had the code key,” Tanya said. “She translated it last night. I’m not sure I’d have believed you about”—she nodded upward to indicate Sissy, her eyes worried—“if I hadn’t read this letter first.”
THE FEEL OF Carrie Green’s spell casting and the weight of the grimoires had dissipated from the storage unit when Charles and Tag opened it again.
Charles nodded at Tag’s raised eyebrows.
The whole unit was ten by thirty, a little larger than a single-car garage. Originally it had been packed in a dense but tidy fashion.
“What a mess,” said Tag, looking at the room that had been a miracle of organization before the two of them had happened to it yesterday.
They had not worried about being either tidy or organized when they had moved boxes, furniture, and bins until they’d gotten to the grimoires yesterday. Then, wanting to get the books somewhere safe, they’d shoved everything back in with more haste than order. There was a pile of loose stuff, towels and clothing mostly, near the door where they had emptied boxes and bags to carry the grimoires in.
“How do you want to do this?” Tag asked.
“Can you find magic that a witch has tried to hide?” Charles asked. He had hunted with Tag before—Tag was very nearly the best tracker in the pack. But Charles hadn’t had the opportunity to look for magic with him. Da didn’t let Tag off pack land very often. And very few witches made it onto pack land.
Tag smiled. “My specialty.” He tapped his nose. “What are we looking for?”
“I can make guesses about spellcrafted things, but I’m not a trained witch,” Charles said. “I don’t want to leave anything that could hurt someone.”
“I can’t tell anything other than it’s been witched,” Tag agreed. “So we need to take anything with a hint of magic and sort it out later.” He looked into the depths of the unit and said, “At least she was a white witch—we aren’t likely to run into anything too awful.”
Charles couldn’t help giving him an ironic look.
Tag shrugged. “Had enough horrible for seven lifetimes,” he said. “I don’t like adding anything to it unless I have to.”
They worked in silence. Tag wasn’t naturally quiet, but he was a little afraid of him, Charles knew. That was all right. His reputation, even among his own pack, was another weapon that Charles could use. And Tag was not wrong to be afraid.
Charles had paid for the entire contents of the storage locker, but he had told the manager that once they had gone through everything for what they wanted, he was welcome to sell the remainder. Charles had thought at first that they had been lucky, given that the check was six months old, that the manager hadn’t already garage-saled or auctioned off the contents.
Then he’d shown them the locker. The manager hadn’t even been able to get his hand near the lock. Char
les had managed it, using the manager’s key. Charles sent the unhappy manager, who had hoped to get a look at the contents of the unit, back to his offices before dealing with Carrie’s spells so they could open the door safely. Working with her magic, and seeing how she’d dealt with Daniel Erasmus, had made Charles move from respect for her to outright liking.
Going through the unit now—without the driving need to pin down the grimoires—only reinforced his opinion. He didn’t know if he’d have liked her if he’d met her in person—he liked very few people.
But her magic reminded him of the computer code written back in the early days, when memory space was at a premium. Programmers back then created elegant script without a wasted symbol to complete the necessary task. Carrie hadn’t had a lot of power, but she’d made good use of what she did have.
Not that he knew how witchcraft worked—he wasn’t a witch by anything except raw ability. His father had offered to teach him once, but that offer had been full of such … horrific hidden emotions that even as a child he had known to refuse. He couldn’t have reproduced Carrie Green’s work, but he could feel its delicacy.
“Here,” called Tag.
Charles found him crouched over a plastic bin filled with smaller boxes. He held one of the boxes in his hand and offered it to Charles.
The box was lined with silk and filled with dozens of charms. Handmade bracelets and necklaces crafted from inexpensive wooden beads. Each one marked with a paper tag that read Health and $15.
Together he and Tag sorted through the boxes of charms. Health, Joy, and Luck accounted for all but two of the boxes. One of those boxes held a single necklace, a jade bead strung on a silver chain. Protection from Evil had a price tag of two thousand dollars. And unlike the smaller charms, this one held real power. Made, he thought, after Carrie had been given more power by the Singer. He couldn’t be sure that it was labeled correctly, but her magic had an honest feel about it. He supposed that this necklace was imbued with the same magic as whatever she’d had that kept her grandfather from torturing her for her power. It wasn’t that one—Underwood had said it had been made with moonstone, and this necklace felt unused.
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