Dead Heat

“All right,” she agreed.

Joseph’s eyes closed. “It’s been a long time since I had no pain. It’s hard to sleep when you hurt.”

“Go ahead and sleep,” Charles told him. “You won’t die today.”

Joseph nodded, but opened his clear eyes to meet Anna’s. “Don’t let Dad talk you into Hephzibah. She’s a witch who only looks like a horse.”

“I thought Arabs are all friendly except for Jasper,” said Charles.

Joseph grinned—and it was the same expression that he’d worn when someone had taken a photo of him as he rode a bucking horse. “Hephzibah will kill someone someday. There’s something wrong with her spirit.” He shut his eyes again and his voice slurred. “Maybe the evil dead have touched her. Maybe she is really a skinwalker. You keep your wife away from her.”

“I’m a werewolf,” Anna said. “I’m not in danger from a horse.” But Joseph was already asleep.

Maggie met them at the door to the hallway.

“It is good that you’ve come to see him,” she said to Charles. Anna suddenly realized that Joseph’s apartment had been entirely masculine. Didn’t Maggie share the apartment with him? “Are you going to do as Hosteen asks now? Do you see what has happened to Joseph? He is gone already, that man I married.” She brushed an impatient hand over her face, and Anna realized Maggie was crying.

“No,” Charles said, but he said it gently. “Joseph does not want to be a werewolf. He has no need to live forever. And whatever the rest of us feel like we need, that is, it must be, his choice.”

She grabbed his arm, swift and sudden. Anna instinctively moved to intercept her but caught herself before Maggie noticed.

“I don’t want him to die, Charles,” Maggie told him intensely.

“Neither do I,” he said in the same gentle tone. “But everyone dies, Maggie. This is not the worst death I have seen. He is not afraid, not of death, anyway.”

She let go of him and took two steps backward. “Joseph has never been afraid of death,” she agreed. “I think it surprises him that he has lived this long.”

The intense intimacy of their conversation faded, caused by some trick of Maggie’s body language: she was once again the gracious hostess.

“Food is ready downstairs,” she said. “Kage said that after dinner, he’d take you to see some horses.” She smiled suddenly, “He is grateful for Chelsea, and my son can see no greater reward than to take you to see his horses.” She started down the hallway. “In that way, he and his father are just alike. Horse-mad idiots.”

“You, too,” Charles said, his hand on the small of Anna’s back as he followed. “Remember that poor skinny pinto you saved from that pair of cowboys, Maggie?” He looked at Anna, his eyes smiling. “One woman against two armed men, and she took after them with a broom for the way they’d half starved a mare. Only it turns out, when the dust settled, that they’d just bought that mare from another guy because they didn’t like the way he wasn’t feeding her.”

“I apologized and fed them my burritos,” Maggie said. “They didn’t care about a few bruises after that.”

“Won’t it be too dark to ride?” asked Anna.

“The main barn has lights,” Maggie said shortly. “You won’t have any trouble seeing.”

They ate in the big dining room because there were too many to fit around the kitchen table. Ernestine had roasted a huge beef brisket and topped the meal off with corn bread and a green salad. She ate with the family, deliberately sitting next to the kids and helping Max and Maggie keep a normal conversation going.

Anna sat next to Charles and watched everyone (except for her husband) try not to stare at Chelsea.

Chelsea, when she was not dying on a bathroom floor, was a strikingly attractive, if not beautiful, woman. She was tall, half a head taller than Kage, and built like an athlete. Her hair was a Nordic blond that complemented her icy-gray eyes and was cut very expensively to frame her expressive and rather bony face.

Max had given Anna a picture of a charming and funny woman. But Chelsea didn’t engage with anyone, not even when someone spoke to her directly. She would eat a few bites quickly, then set her utensils down as if they were puzzle pieces she had to fit into place. Then she would take a gulp of water, stare at the wall or the table or her hands—and then suddenly grab her silverware and eat another two or three mouthfuls with ravenous intensity. Every once in a while she’d try to eat something besides the meat, and Anna could see her fight to get the food down.

It was probably something from the Change, Anna thought. She didn’t like to think about the weeks shortly after she had been Changed. There were large gaps in her memory—

She curled around herself shivering, cold and hot by turns. The bars of the cage burned her skin, but without something against her back she felt vulnerable to attack. She smelled grease from a fast-food box …

Okay, so some things she remembered just fine, but she could choose not to dwell upon them. There was no cage here, no one to throw a cardboard box of fried chicken at Chelsea. To this day, Anna couldn’t eat chicken from that particular chain.

There were no rapists here.

Suddenly Chelsea’s eyes met Anna’s from across the table and held them. Icy gray became even more pale, and Chelsea’s nostrils flared.

“Who hurt you?” she asked, slicing through the two other conversations going on at the table.

“He’s dead,” said Charles, his hand sliding up Anna’s back reassuringly. “I killed him. If I could, I would bring him back to life so I could kill him again.”

Chelsea turned her gaze to Charles for a moment. “Good,” she said, before she had to drop her eyes. Her intensity faded. “That’s good.”

Charles put his lips against Anna’s ear. “He’s very dead.”

Anna nodded jerkily. “Sorry.”

“No,” he said, his breath warm against her neck. “Don’t be sorry. Just know if anyone ever tries to hurt you again—they will be dead, too.”

And some people had tried, hadn’t they. And yes, she realized, they were all dead. Charles was a big warm presence at her back, better than a solid wall or bars.

She picked up her fork and took a bite of brisket. “Okay,” she told Charles.

They cleaned the table collectively, Ernestine directing traffic. Anna found herself in the kitchen washing pots and pans as Maggie put them away.

“Do you suppose Ernestine made us work together on purpose?” asked Anna.

“Undoubtedly,” Maggie agreed.

She didn’t say anything more for a moment. It wasn’t exactly private—people were in and out with food and dishes. Max had taken up the post at the dishwasher, where he scraped and loaded dishes.

“I loved your husband once,” said Maggie.

“I gathered that,” Anna said. “He cares a lot about you.” She forced herself not to add and Joseph, too. It was true, but it made her sound as though she were jealous. She wasn’t. Territorial, yes. Jealous, no.

“I was not as courageous as you,” Maggie said. “Twenty or thirty years later I would not have made the same choice, but I was young and he frightened me when I found out what he was.” She glanced at Anna. “I was about your age. Werewolf side effects aside, Joseph said that Charles is buying you a horse for your twenty-sixth birthday. You were younger than I was when he found you. And you weren’t afraid of him.”

It was a big concession, implying that Anna was somehow better than Maggie for not running away.

“Yeah. I had already met the real monsters,” she told Maggie. “It gave me some basis for comparison.”

“If I had not been afraid I would have picked Charles,” Maggie said. She headed off to a pantry space with a handful of pots. When she came back she said, “Joseph suited me better. Charles and I are both too serious. Even now, Joseph is a breath of pure sunshine. I’ll send you home with my recipe for burritos. Charles and Joseph both love them.”

And after that they finished up the pots and pans and serving dishes in utter harmony.