Dead Heat (Alpha & Omega 4)

“Not going to happen,” said Maggie. She was sitting next to Max, and she patted his hand. “Nothing to do with your age. Mothers protect their children.”

“When did the headache start?” asked Charles.

“After I picked up the kids, I think,” Chelsea said. “That’s when I noticed it anyway. I left the kids on their own and ran up to take something for it.” She paused. “I took too many pills and then went looking for something stronger. If I’d found the pills instead of getting a cut, would the kids have been safe?”

Anna said, “Pain is a distraction; it can be used to break down your will.” She knew that. “So can certain drugs. Tylenol won’t do it—but what kind of stronger were you looking for?”

“I had some leftover Vicodin,” she said. “But I was just trying to stop the headache.”

“Vicodin would have made it harder for you to fight the geas,” said Charles. “But now we are talking a very complicated magic. ‘Kill your children and then yourself’ is, essentially, two commands. ‘Kill your children if you can, and if they are dead or if you fail to kill them, then kill yourself’ is more complicated. And the geas absolutely tried to make you kill yourself after I told you the kids were safe. If the magic drove you to do something that made you a better vessel to carry out your task … we’re getting into magic that is above the ability of most fae.”

“How long would it have taken to put such a spell on her?” asked Hosteen.

“A Gray Lord with the right magic could do it in an instant,” Charles said. “Or it could have taken hours.”

“The only time I lost was while I was in the bathroom,” Chelsea said with some certainty. “I work off a schedule. I’d have noticed any gap through the day.”

“I went through the house,” Charles said. “There was fae magic in plenty, but there was no fae in your house.”

“Could they have put the spell on her earlier?” asked Max. “Left it inert for a while until the right conditions were met? Like Sleeping Beauty’s curse?”

“Absolutely,” said Charles. “But if that’s what happened, it’s unlikely we’ll easily figure out who did this and why. So we should concentrate on scenarios that are more useful.”

Chelsea frowned. “There was something odd—”

“What was that?” asked Kage.

She put one hand to her head and reached to the table with the other and collapsed. Hosteen jumped over the table and pulled her chair away so they could get to her.

“Mom?” Max said.

“It’s all right,” Anna told him at the same time Hosteen said, “It’s about time.”

Kage picked his wife up from the floor. Hosteen said, “Take her into the apricot guest room.” He put a hand on Kage’s shoulder. “I know that’s not your usual rooms—but the kids are in your suite and we need to keep them safe. Probably there will be no trouble, but the Change is disorienting and werewolves are dangerous.”

“What’s wrong with her?” asked Kage.

“Her body is undergoing a lot of changes at the same time,” Charles said. “It’s pretty normal for her to seem to be fine directly after the Change heals the wounds that allowed the Change to take place. But after a few hours—sometimes a few days—everything will catch up with her.”

“Anna told me about that,” Max said. “I just forgot.”

Max had gone up to help Ernestine with the kids.

Hosteen settled into Chelsea’s room with a book, and so had Maggie. When Hosteen tried to send her off to bed, she’d given him a sharp look. “You quit trying to make me into a useless old woman, Papa. I can sit with Chelsea while she sleeps. I’ve got a good mystery to read.”

Kage hesitated, and his mother shooed him off. “You go on now,” she told him. “I know that you need to go do something. So take these two nice people out to the barn and give yourself something else to think about. Chelsea’s not going anywhere in the next few hours.”

Kage looked at Anna and said, “Assuming you are really interested in looking at horses…”

“Yes?” she said hopefully.

Behind Kage’s back, his mother caught Charles’s eye and nodded at Kage, then at Charles. He bowed his head.

Kage was examining Anna’s face. “Not much of a poker face,” he said.

“Take her to Vegas and she’ll come back with a small fortune,” suggested Maggie warmly. “If she starts with—”

“A large one,” Charles agreed, and ducked meekly when Anna pretended to hit him.

Despite the slurs on her poker face, Anna decided to adopt an air of casual interest. She didn’t really know how she felt, anyway. She was excited, yes, but an odd unsettled feeling vied with excitement as they drove out to the barn.

She’d never ridden much before she met Charles. Since then she’d ridden a million miles—well, a couple of hundred at least—in the mountains. They were a long way from the mountains. In a few minutes she was going to take her meager skills and demonstrate them.

Sitting in the front passenger seat of the utility vehicle Kage drove, Anna felt the odd unease grow stronger as they approached a glorious building that could have been a luxury resort. It didn’t resemble any image of a “barn” that she held in her head. The rough topography had hidden the barn from the house, and supposedly there was another barn around somewhere, too. She was more impressed by the Arizona desert’s ability to make things disappear, because they weren’t more than a half mile from the house and the barn was huge.

Spanish-style elegant, the massive structure sprawled in gracious lines that were lit like some gigantic Christmas tree with hundreds of small white lights. Behold, the expensive and tastefully illuminated xeriscaped combination of stone and exotic desert plants seemed to say. Here are the kings and queens of equines; prepare to bow down and worship them.

Anna looked down at her battered riding boots, identifying that second, unhappy emotion. She was more excited than she’d have thought to be getting a horse of her own, but she had the sinking feeling that she was not good enough for these horses. Having her ride a horse that lived in a barn like this would be akin to a sixth grader playing a priceless Lupot cello.

“Fancy,” said Charles from the backseat—he’d insisted on her riding in front—in dry tones. Kage laughed, pulling into a parking spot right next to an identical vehicle.