Wild Sign (Alpha & Omega #6)(59)

Mr. Green made another noise, a grunt this time. Anna couldn’t tell what kind of a grunt it was. He was facing away from her, and even with Charles she usually had to see his face to interpret his grunts.

“I’ll be back to get you,” the nurse said. “You behave yourself, Daniel, and we’ll go have some ice cream afterward. Won’t that be nice, dear?”

Dr. Underwood bent his knees a little so that he could look into Daniel’s eyes. “I’ll leave you with Anna and her husband, but if you need me, you can just call out.” He stood up and said to Anna, “I’ll just be on the other side of the fountain. I can see you—and hear you if you shout.” It sounded like he knew that from experience.

She nodded—and waited until the doctor was well on his way before moving around the chair to where Daniel could see her. And she could see him.

Daniel Green’s face was deeply lined, making his already prominent features seem larger—he reminded her of the ents in The Lord of the Rings movies. He’d been built nearly on the scale of Tag at one time, but age had winnowed away his bulk and left only the crags behind. His jaw was solid and his deep-set black eyes burned fever-bright. He had the eyes of a roadside evangelist, she thought—intense and slightly mad.

“I don’t know you,” he said, his voice surprisingly soft. He looked like a man who should have had a battlefield voice. “They said you are Carrie’s sister-in-law. Carrie was an only child and she never married.”

“I lied to them,” Anna agreed. He was talking about Carrie as if she were dead, she noticed. If he was witchborn, maybe he could tell.

Based only on the way the young man at the reception desk had talked about him, she would place the odds of him being witchborn at about 95 percent. The way he carried himself made her think that he had been one of the rare men who were powerful witches. That made her very glad Charles was with her.

She sat on the bench that the nurse had abandoned, because it put her on eye level with him. “I’m Anna Cornick and this is my husband, Charles.”

At her gesture, Charles, who had been casting restless eyes around the garden, came around so Daniel could see him without moving his chair.

“Cornick,” the old man said, narrowing his eyes at Charles, who had moved to stand behind Anna. “I wondered if it was your family when they told me that name. But I did not really expect it. What do you think I’ve done this time?” He grinned suddenly at Charles, a wicked expression giving Anna a glimpse at the charisma this man must have once commanded.

He knew Charles and Charles knew him. She was sure that if Charles had known that coming here, he would have told her. She supposed that Daniel Green was a common name, or maybe Charles had known him under a different name.

“Plenty, I imagine,” answered Charles, his voice equally soft.

“Don’t worry,” Daniel Green said, and waved his fingers. There was a popping noise, and something small and dark that might have been a miniaturized camera bounced through the air and rolled on the ground.

“That’ll ensure our privacy. There will be a fuss behind the scenes. Look down there—he’s getting the call.” He gestured toward Underwood, who was putting his phone to his ear. “I have no intention of giving you away. They don’t need to know that the son of the werewolf king is here in their power. Not yet, anyway. Have you come to kill me?”

He sounded, Anna noticed, almost hopeful.

“Not this time,” Charles told him, and even Anna couldn’t tell if he was just humoring the old witch or if he really regretted that Daniel’s death wasn’t Charles’s aim today.

“We are here trying to find out what happened to Carrie Green and the rest of the people in the camp she lived in,” Anna said, deciding that it was time to bring the conversation around to what they needed.

“Wild Sign,” said Daniel. “She’s dead. They are all dead.” He didn’t sound particularly broken up about it. “I suppose you’ve found the bodies.”

Anna shook her head. “No. But the whole town is empty. We hiked in a few days ago to see it for ourselves. Do you know what happened? Are you sure everyone is dead?”

“She was a fool,” he bit out, though he was still keeping his voice soft. “That’s what happened. She was a fool living with a whole bunch of do-gooder, pansy-assed twits trafficking with powers they had no business dealing with. If my Jennifer had survived, she’d never have let Carrie grow up such a mealymouthed puling idiot. Now, that was a witch worthy of the Green name.”

He rocked a little, lost in thought. Then he sighed. “But our only child was a son. He had no power at all, despite my own capabilities. He married a woman of good birth—it wasn’t until later we found out she was a throwback, with no power, either. Jude knew, though, and kept it to himself. My Jennifer died when Carrie was six years old, and Jude and the damned fool woman he married turned their daughter into a ‘moral’ woman.

“Moral,” he said again, his voice shaking with rage. “She had so much promise. She could have been a Power—but she was a Wiccan and would not break Wiccan precepts. ‘An it harm none’ and all that rot.”

He made “Wiccan” sound like a swear word.

He took a long breath and seemed to regain some control.

“So she died,” he said. “My only granddaughter. My only living kin. She died because she was a white witch, the last of our family—a mewling, moralistic weakling. Arrogant. I told her that they were all fools, but she wouldn’t listen to me.” He leaned over and spat on the ground. “I could forgive the rest, but not the stupid.”