Wild Sign (Alpha & Omega #6)(58)

Outside, her nose should have been of use to figure out what Charles had noticed, but she didn’t find anything that shouldn’t be there: plants, birds, insects, and presumably Dr. Underwood’s aftershave or shampoo or something. He must have used a brand she didn’t know that smelled spicy and . . .

She frowned, closing the distance between them so she could get a better sniff. It didn’t smell like anything she had smelled before—and by now she was familiar with a lot of different scents. It was a blend of scents, she could tell that much—but none of the blend was anything she could pinpoint.

She couldn’t imagine that look on Charles’s face was because Dr. Underwood’s cologne/aftershave/whatever was complex. She decided she should stay alert. Which was, she noticed, harder to do than it should have been. The aura in the garden was very soothing. Perhaps too soothing.

She eyed Underwood as she considered that. Assuming Daniel Green was witchborn—it definitely ran in families—it followed that any assisted living home that could keep him safe would not be a normal facility. It might, for instance, have an unusually peaceful garden.

Anna couldn’t detect witchcraft anywhere around her, but she wasn’t good at it on her own—she needed her inner wolf for that. But she was sure as damn it that something was trying to pacify her with unnatural persistence. That was her job, and she could tell when someone else had put their hand in to have a try at it.

She coaxed her wolfish nature out—which was a bit harder than normal. As soon as she did so, the effects of the garden’s magic fell away. Her wolf told her that they were surrounded by magic so thick it felt as though she were breathing it. That was what she’d been smelling, but some spellcrafting had misdirected her into believing it was Underwood’s cologne or the flowers or anything else with a scent she wouldn’t pay too much attention to.

No wonder Charles had been wary.

Not all witches were evil. But she could not tell what branch of witchcraft had created the magic here, and there was something flattening out the smell. Even without her wolf close to the surface, she should have detected black magic under most circumstances. And if it was white magic they were using, there would have been no reason to hide what its origins were. It could have been gray magic.

But she didn’t think gray witches would go to so much effort to hide what kind of magic was at work here—that was a fair amount of power to waste if all you were hiding was gray magic.

As they wound around hedges and down steep flagstone steps, she wondered if that soothing spell had been meant specifically for them—and decided that was unlikely. There were all sorts of reasons that someone would want to calm the powerful residents of an assisted living home, and not a likely magic they would throw at a pair of werewolves.

She reached for her bond with Charles and felt his high-alert status and also a touch of “Not now.” Like the garden, Anna broadcast a soothing atmosphere almost unintentionally. Normally it was a useful—the most useful—aspect of her Omega condition. But calming Brother Wolf when he might have to fight was not ideal.

But his response gave her an answer of sorts. Charles felt that they were in danger. She probably should have been more worried about that. Maybe it was just the residual effects of the garden spell, but she thought it was probably her mate’s solid presence at her back.

Underwood led them down to a seating area that overlooked the pond side of the water feature. Stone benches edged the concrete platform where a single figure sat in a wheelchair that was angled to give him a view of the handful of black swans drifting amidst lily pads and a scattering of low fountains that burbled around the edge of the pond.

The king in exile, Anna thought, taking in the proud cant to his head and the straightness of his shoulders. Power had once rested upon him, and his body remembered.

A nurse sat on a stone bench that angled toward Daniel Green, her back mostly to the pond. Anna could catch the cheerful chatter of her voice as she knitted something pink with yarn emerging from a woven basket at her feet. She was a tall woman, big-boned and gaunt, with a mouth that smiled easily. She looked up and saw them coming, and her smile disappeared.

“Daniel,” she said, “you have visitors. I’m going to leave you with them for a while so you can have some privacy. But Dr. Underwood is here. If you feel any distress, you can call for him and he’ll come.”

She looked at Anna and Charles. “It is important for our clients to feel safe,” she said. There wasn’t active dislike in her voice, but she wasn’t friendly, either.

Daniel growled something, but he didn’t look around—or at the nurse, either. If Anna, with her werewolf ears, couldn’t hear exactly what he’d said, she figured no one could.

“Of course,” Anna told the nurse warmly, because her dad had been big on “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”

“Well,” said the nurse, whose name tag read Mary Frank, LPN, apparently taken aback by Anna’s open friendliness. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes to take Mr. Green back to his room.”

She frowned at Dr. Underwood and he bowed. Deferentially. A doctor to a nurse. Among the witches, it was usually the women who had the most power. Between Dr. Underwood and Ms. Frank, clearly Ms. Frank was in charge. Something in Underwood’s posture, respectful as it was, told Anna he resented that.

Interesting, she thought, and wondered what unconscious social behaviors might betray the fact that a person was a werewolf.