It dropped the appearance of humanity and stepped back among the trees in the corner of the garden and became a small, scraggly tree in the shade of the big fruit tree.
“Sorry,” Leslie told Charles. “I guess I was hoping for Kryptonite, you know?”
Charles shook his head. “Your first question was good. It told us everything it knew.” He glanced at Leeds, who had been writing as the fae spoke. “You have that address, right?”
“I have it. I’ve texted it to our research division. They’ll have the ownership records and whatever else they can find, like house plans, back to us as soon as they can.”
“Excuse me.” The woman he didn’t know, presumably the owner of the house, spoke to Leslie. “Do you think I might get a photograph of the werewolf? Photography is a hobby of mine and she is beautiful.”
Leslie raised her eyebrows and looked at Charles. “What do you think?”
He was inclined to refuse. “Anna?”
She hopped on the big granite boulder and posed, looking graceful. And cute. Which was pretty amazing, because werewolves could be beautiful, but they were predators. Cute was not, usually, in the picture. But then, his Anna was amazing.
We have some time because we need to wait until we have a little more information on the address, right? Her voice inside him still felt new and wondrous. He was so grateful not to be alone. We need to know if we’re breaking into a fae’s prison or the home of some poor slob who happened to buy the house in the last fifty years. And we owe Ms. Jamison. How much damage did you do to her house?
He smiled at her. “Yes,” he said to Anna, forgetting that everyone couldn’t hear her. “I’ll pay for the damage, of course, but a little PR repair might be in order.”
CHAPTER
11
Charles left a business card, one with only an e-mail address and a PO box, for Ms. Jamison to send the estimates for repairs. She wanted him to sign a release for the photographs, but he shook his head.
“I’m not the one you photographed,” he said.
“Photos showing people’s faces need release forms or I can’t use them,” Ms. Jamison complained sharply.
“Werewolves are in a gray area,” he told her. “Use them. If someone gives you trouble about it, write to the address on the card and we’ll take care of it.”
Leeds’s phone rang, and whoever was on the other end had news. The house at the address the wearden had given them was owned by the estate of a woman who’d died twenty years ago. It was cared for by a property management company for the past fifty years until, in fact, a few months ago when the renters had been asked to leave.
“Keep looking for the owner,” Leeds told them. “We’re headed over to that address. Three federal agents with two werewolves for backup. We’ll be okay.” He put his phone away. “Let’s go check this out.”
“Good luck,” said Ms. Jamison. “I hope you find her.”
Charles rode with Leslie, who followed Marsden and Leeds since they were local and knew the area. Anna stretched out in the backseat of Leslie’s car. She grumbled because there just wasn’t room in the backseat for a two-hundred-pound werewolf to be both comfortable and secure.
“Not designed for wolves,” he told Anna sympathetically.
Riding with Leslie was less troublesome than riding with the Cantrip agents. He liked them well enough, but Brother Wolf approved of Leslie, and she drove better.
They followed Marsden’s dark sedan for a few more miles, away from upscale houses and into neighborhoods a few notches further down on the economic scale, before Leslie spoke again. “Her change was very slow compared to yours.”
“We’re all different,” he said after a moment’s thought. “But I’m more different than most. And yes, there is a more detailed explanation for it that I’m not at liberty to tell you.”
She laughed unexpectedly. “My security clearance isn’t high enough?”
“You aren’t a werewolf,” he said, half apologetically.
“Yes, Mr. Smith,” she said. “Just remember, as many politicians can attest personally, secrets tend to come out at the worst possible time and blow up in your face.”
“We’re trying for a controlled release,” he said.
She laughed again, and he wondered how well she sang. Maybe she’d like to sing with Anna and him sometime. If her singing voice was like her laugh, it would blend very well with Anna’s. He was adding in Anna’s cello and a little piano … or maybe even guitar to the song in his head when Marsden pulled over in front of a mailbox that fronted a piece of property with a tagged and crumbling eight-foot cinder-block wall.
On the corner of the block stood a run-down apartment building with a full parking lot of cars that showed signs of spending a decade or two in the unforgiving Arizona sun. Next to it, across the street from where they had parked, was a small house with a fenced-in yard in which a puppy and two boys played a complicated game of fetch and tag.
“This is it,” said Marsden. “We have a search warrant fast-tracked because of the terrorist angle and endangered child. Leeds called the management company and they say as far as they know it has been empty since they were asked to remove the renter. The lady he talked to said she thought they were still managing it but had no record of any maintenance or interaction with the owners since last December. She did not know why they cleared out the previous renters—only that the owners requested it. Her boss is on vacation in Florida. She’s looking for the paperwork.”
The wooden gates were half-opened. The left-hand gate drooped sadly to the ground.
Marsden would have led, but Charles stepped in. “Let Anna and me lead. We don’t know what we’ll find, and the two of us are less likely to get hurt if it’s bad.”
Marsden retreated with his hands up. “All right.”
“And stay with us,” Charles added. “If this is the fae’s home, he is unlikely to run.” This was why he didn’t like working with humans: they died too easily. “Stay with us and we’ll do what we can to keep you alive if it attacks.”
Leslie pulled her weapon and held it down against her leg. “We’ll do the same for you,” she said dryly.
He smiled at her and then ducked through the person-sized gap between the tall gates, Anna at his side.
This was not the first dangerous situation Anna had strolled into at her husband’s side. She was, if she felt like being honest, pretty humiliated by her performance with the fae in Ms. Jamison’s garden. Big bad werewolf reduced to shivers by a wussy little garden fae. What was it Charles had called it? A wearden.
Humiliation was better than the shiver of horror that the thought of Justin called up. Funny, she didn’t remember being that terrified of him while he was alive. Terrified, yes, but reduced to shivering like a jellyfish, no. Maybe the wearden’s magic had done something to make her fear worse. But if so, why did her stomach still ache?
But she had a job to do, and she shoveled Justin to the dark dungeon in her mind where she kept him and he only bothered her in her nightmares.
Inside the walls, the yard was barren, not xeriscaped, but zero-scaped. Red soil with patches of dead vegetation provided no cover for anything to hide behind. She breathed in deeply but smelled nothing unusual: no magic, no fae, nothing but dust.
And yet … she put her nose down and half crept, half walked. Her ears drooped slightly in unease that was not, she didn’t think, spawned from her earlier fright.
Do you have anything? Charles asked her.
Her lips pulled up involuntarily, a threat display of teeth for— Nothing, she told him, and yet …
She shivered in the warmth of the high sun. It was not summer, but in Scottsdale that didn’t mean it wasn’t warm, nearly eighty degrees. She could smell the others’ sweat.
I let that fae spook me, she told him. I’m overreacting.
He shook his head. No birds, no insects, nothing living here at all. There are ghosts here; they burn my skin with their breath. Stay alert.
“In the front door?” asked Leslie.
“If he’s in there, he already knows we are here,” Charles told her. “Front door, back door, or down the chimney, we’re not going to have surprise on our side.” He added, “I don’t smell anyone. Anna?”