Dead Heat

“Hosteen is pretty distracted,” said Max, when the dishwasher was loaded and running. He took the big pan out of Maggie’s hand with a smile. “He wouldn’t have let Ernestine put you to work if he’d been paying attention. Why don’t you let me finish this and go sit down as though you’d been doing it all along?”

Maggie exchanged a grin with him and left the kitchen to younger hands.

“Hosteen has been more protective of her since Joseph got sick,” Max told Anna. “She knows he’s feeling bad, so she indulges him.” He smiled. “She’s a tough old broad, is Maggie. He’d better lay off because she’s going to get tired of it pretty soon.”

When the kitchen was clean, Hosteen organized a war council. He began by evicting the innocent bystanders.

“Hey, kids,” said Ernestine in response to Hosteen’s raised eyebrow. “Why don’t you come watch some TV with me up in the gold guest suite?” She took Michael and Mackie by the hand. “Coming, Max?”

Max gave Kage a half-pleading, half-defiant look. “I think I’ll stay,” he said.

Kage nodded. Ernestine smiled at Max and then led the children away as the rest of them reseated themselves around the dining room.

“I’m proud of you,” Anna overheard Kage tell Max. “You’ve been extraordinarily useful today. It’s always hard to be on the support staff when there’s action elsewhere. Thank you for taking care of the kids this afternoon.”

“I did it under protest,” said Max, apologetically.

“But you did it well,” Kage replied. “Good enough for me.”

Hosteen sat at the head of the table and looked down its gleaming surface at Chelsea. “We need to know what happened to you,” he said, not unkindly. “Are you up to answering questions?”

She nodded. “I don’t know how much help I’ll be.”

“You are witchborn,” said Charles. “Did you sense anything wrong? Do you know when you were bespelled?”

She shook her head. “I don’t have much training. My mother taught me how to hide myself, but that’s it.”

“When did you notice something was wrong?” Hosteen said, his voice a little impatient.

“In the bathroom,” Chelsea said, sounding a little lost. Kage scooted his chair nearer and put his arm around her. “I was looking for something stronger, for my headache. I knocked the toothbrush holder into the sink and it broke. It cut my hand when I cleaned it up, and I could think for a moment.” She looked at Kage. “That’s how I figured it out, that I could stop myself if I was bleeding.”

“That’s why you stabbed yourself in the hand?” Max asked. Chelsea’s left hand still had a scab on it.

She nodded. “You or me,” she told him. “I picked me.”

He nodded and then said, “I’m not a kid anymore, Mom. Next time—pick me, okay?”

“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.