Dead Heat (Alpha & Omega #4)(95)

He decided to go downstairs and find Charles. Charles would know … the right questions to ask, maybe. He could at least expect that Charles would believe him.

He stopped as he passed his chest of drawers and opened up the small drawer on the upper left side. And there was the old knife Charles had given him after rescuing him from a bar fight. It was a very good knife, six inches of pattern-welded steel. How good, he hadn’t realized until four or five years later when someone had tried to buy it from him for four hundred dollars. That had been at least sixty years ago. He had no idea what it might be worth now. But it was an old friend. Until very recently, he’d carried it every day of his life since the day Charles had given it to a skinny Indian kid with a chip on his shoulder.

It took him a minute to find the sheath and belt. Dressed properly, he opened his bedroom door and started down the hall. Mackie and Maggie were playing Candy Land. He could tell because Maggie exclaimed, “I get to go to Gumdrop Mountain!” while Mackie cheered her on.

That Mackie did not care whether she won or lost was not a fault of the game. Joseph thought that twenty years from now, when it was Mackie and not Kage competing in the rarefied atmosphere of the best equestrians of their generation, Mackie would still cheer on her opponents.

For a moment Joseph was deeply saddened by the thought that he would never get to witness that. But his time here was nearly past, and he really did not regret it. So much had changed, and so much had not. He was ready to go on to—how did Peter Pan put it? An awfully big adventure.

“I wanted to stay with you, Grandma,” Mackie was saying. “But I’m worried about Michael. Nix is too tired to ride and Michael is very little. Who do you think he’s riding today?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie said. “Max knows the horses who will be good for Michael. One purple. Your turn.”

“Orange,” said Mackie. “Do you think Anna will buy Merrylegs? I like Merrylegs.”

Evidently Max had taken his brother, Charles, and Anna out riding, Joseph thought.

“I hope she buys Hephzibah,” said Maggie. Joseph, unseen, still in the hall above the stairs, grinned. Mackie might not care about winning or losing, but her grandmother certainly did. If Anna had been what she had at first appeared, a too-young, too-innocent weakling, Maggie would have pitied her. But she would have taken her under her wing, too, and tried to teach her how to deal with strong-minded men.

But Anna was, in her own way, as strong-minded as Maggie. The two of them would never have been able to be friends. Maggie would always view her as competition. That Anna had Mackie’s appreciation of competition, except where Charles was concerned, didn’t make Maggie like her any better.

“Hephzibah is pretty,” said Mackie in a doubtful voice. “But Daddy calls her Hellbitch. I don’t think Anna should buy a horse called Hellbitch, do you? It’s okay, though. Max will help Anna find the right horse. Two reds. It’s your turn.”

A car drove up outside. Joseph, who had taken a step forward, hesitated. He backed up a few feet and went into one of the guest bedrooms that overlooked the parking area. The car wasn’t one of theirs, and it wasn’t one he knew.

He knew the woman who got out of it, though. Why was the owner, she could call herself a principal if she wanted to, of Michael and Mackie’s day care showing up at their door?

The hair on the back of his neck stood up suddenly.

She’s here. The soundless whisper was hot in his ear.

He knew that the feds had the person they thought had hexed Chelsea and killed all those kids. He also knew that Charles hadn’t been convinced.

If he knew his father, and he did, Hosteen would have wolves watching the place. So why hadn’t they stopped her? A fae can look like anyone. Maybe he could look like a woman, like the principal of Mackie’s day care. Instinctive certainty gripped him, and Joseph had learned to pay attention to his instincts. The woman approaching the house was the fae who’d tried to kill his grandchildren.

Charles had told him that this fae had taken down a werewolf—Joseph remembered Archibald Vaughn. He’d been a big, mean, scary old wolf, and this fae had torn him apart. One old Indian wasn’t going to stop him very easily.

There was a phone in the bedroom. He picked up the receiver and dialed Charles’s cell phone. As soon as Charles picked up, he told him what was going on.

The doorbell rang as Charles said, “English. My Navajo was never that good and I’ve hardly spoken it for twenty years.”

Downstairs Maggie got up and went to the door. How well did the fae hear? Were they like his father?

“The fae,” said Joseph in an urgent whisper, “the fae can look like anyone. She’s here.” And then he had to hang up because the door opened.

If she was here for Mackie, she would want to take her away from the ranch. One of the things that living with werewolves had taught him was that just because someone was supernatural didn’t mean that cars didn’t make getaways faster.

He pulled off his boots and ran stocking-footed down the hall to the other end of the house. He slipped out the window, dropped onto the back porch roof, and slid off as far as he could before jumping to the ground, hoping that his rejuvenation would keep him from breaking his knees on the landing. When he was eighteen he’d have thought nothing of making such a drop.

He was almost surprised to land on his feet. He ran to the cars and pulled his knife. He sank the blade into one tire of every car in the lot. Maybe Hosteen’s people would see him. But usually Hosteen didn’t like guards that close to the house. They were probably out by the main road somewhere.