Dead Heat (Alpha & Omega #4)(45)

“How did you manage that?” Kage asked.

She shrugged. “I’m an Omega wolf. I have a tranquilizing effect on other werewolves, but I have to admit I’ve never seen anything like what happened to Hosteen.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that, either.” He hesitated at the door. “She’ll be okay?”

Charles nodded. “For tonight, all is as it should be.”

He’d left then. She’d turned out the lights and Charles changed into Brother Wolf’s form, settling himself by her feet and keeping them warm with his dense fur. She knitted for a while; her eyes were good enough for it even in the dark. Eventually she must have fallen asleep.

Charles stirred, standing up and stretching.

“I hear them,” Anna assured him, because the sounds of someone getting serious in the kitchen was what had awakened her in the first place. She checked Chelsea, but the new wolf was sleeping deeply.

“Is it safe to leave her long enough to change and freshen up?” she asked Charles.

In answer he led the way out of the room and up to their own. While she showered, he changed and dressed in his preferred fashion statement of battered jeans and bright-colored T-shirt. This one was pumpkin orange and clung to his bone and sinew and made her want to pet him.

Instead she braided her damp hair and dressed herself.

“Wear something comfortable,” Charles told her. “We’ll probably go out to the barns again this morning.”

They walked into the kitchen just as Ernestine put a tray piled high with bacon on the table. Kage, his three kids, and a stranger were already seated at the table.

“Good,” said Ernestine. “I was about to send Max to find you and see if you wanted to come down. You can sit where the clean place settings are.”

“Good morning,” said Kage. “This is Hosteen’s second, Wade Koch. Hosteen brought him in to help with Chelsea. Wade, this is Charles and Anna Cornick.”

“I know Charles,” Wade said. “I’m pleased to meet you, Anna. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

He was a soft-spoken man, neither tall nor short. His eyes were intense when he looked at her.

“Wade,” said Charles, his tone of voice telling Anna that he liked this man.

“I’m going to call Chelsea’s work this morning,” Kage said. “Do you know how long it will take before she’s ready to go back to work?”

Charles shook his head. “That depends on her, and how stressful her work is. Not this week, but maybe next week.” He hesitated. “I’d keep all the kids around here for a week or so. Not because of Chelsea, but because whoever bespelled her in the first place is still out there.”

“That work okay for you and school, Max?” asked Kage.

Max nodded, swallowed, and then said, “I was going to stay home for the first few days of the show anyway. It’s only another couple of days on top of that. Most of my teachers post their assignments on the computer. You’ll have to call it in for me, though.”

“Okay,” said Kage. “I’ll make the calls, and then if you’d like, we can go out and try a few more horses.”

“Where’s Hosteen?” asked Charles.

“That man got up about two hours ago, saddled a horse, and rode off into the desert,” said Ernestine. “He told me he had some thinking to do.” She looked at Charles. “He said you were to keep his family safe until he got back.”

“He did, did he?” said Charles softly.

Ernestine had been walking toward the table. She stopped.

“Do you remember exactly what Hosteen said?” asked Kage.

“He said that the family would be safe with Charles here,” she said slowly. “He told me to ask you to keep an eye out for them.”

Charles nodded. “That’s fine.” He went back to eating.

Ernestine gave him a cautious look that he didn’t see. Anna smiled at her. “This is very good,” she said. “I don’t know when Chelsea will get up, but she’ll be hungry again. It might be a good idea to put together some food for her. Well-fed werewolves are easier to deal with than hungry ones.”

Anna rode three more horses. Her favorite of the morning was a quick-moving gelding named Ahmose who had a long scar down the length of his shoulder.

When Anna, Charles, and Kage, sweaty and smelling like horses, got back to the house, Chelsea was sitting at the table and eating ravenously. She looked up when they came in.

“Hey,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about yesterday. I felt just fine driving to the day care. But by the time I was belting the kids into the car, I had a killer headache. I don’t get headaches as a rule, and it seems to me that it was part of the whole compulsion that eventually pushed me to try to hurt the kids.”

“You are witchborn,” said Charles. “Trust your instincts. It happened at the day care?”

“Yes.”

“There’ve been some other bad things happening at the day care lately,” Anna said. “I had a long talk with Max about it yesterday. He said that they had a teacher commit suicide. And they also had a family killed in a car wreck.”

Chelsea nodded. “People do commit suicide, and they die in traffic accidents, but I am not naturally inclined to kill my children and then myself. If one of those was a spell, maybe all of them were?”