Enigma (21 page)

Anna cleaned her weapons.

Luciano had directed her to a den on the second floor, one with a wide desk facing a gently crackling fire. Two of her pistols lay beside her already, polished and gleaming, and she’d just started in on the third when someone rapped on the open door.

She knew it was Michelle before the woman spoke—no other wolf felt quite like a Seer. “May I come in?”

“It’s your house.” Metal clicked, and Anna laid the pistol’s slide on the cloth she’d spread out. “How’d the sword fighting go?”

“It’s still going.” Michelle pulled a chair up to the side of the desk and sat, a leather-bound journal balanced on her lap. “They were starting the fifth round when I left. I think even Kat’s gotten bored of watching.”

Anna fought a tiny smile. The Seer might be the closest thing the magical world had to an all-powerful being, but she sure as hell wasn’t all-knowing. “Maybe. I’d still be out there myself, but I make Patrick nervous.”

Michelle studied her in silence before tilting her head. “I don’t know you well enough to pry, but Nicole’s too exhausted to be pushy. Plus, she didn’t see you the night you arrived.”

She felt exposed suddenly, and Anna’s hand tightened around the bottle of gun oil. The silence stretched thin, interrupted by the crackle of the fire and the distant noises of the ranch, a thousand ambient sounds her brain usually filtered out.

Michelle’s sigh exploded into the quiet. “It’s all right. I just wanted you to know—if you want to talk, I’ll listen. But I know what it’s like to wish people would just stop asking.”

“There isn’t anything to talk about.” If she believed in fairy tales, maybe. But Michelle knew as well as she did that it didn’t always matter what you wanted, or how much you cared. How far you’d go. Sometimes, reality would cut you down just as hard—or harder. “Patrick and I have our issues, but work comes first. For both of us.”

“Speaking of work…” Michelle dropped the heavy journal on the desk and flipped it open to a page marked by a grosgrain ribbon. “I went back over all of my notes about Oscar, and I’m starting to think he
is
your next lead.”

“It’s occurred to me.” Without knowing why someone would go to all the trouble of killing Oscar in such a gruesome, specific fashion, they were left chasing their tails. “Why him? Why like this? If we don’t know this bastard’s motivation, we can’t figure out the next play. Hell, we don’t even know what the game is.”

“It’s not just that. True,
natural
ghosts are rare, but almost every culture and magical tradition has a method to banish them. I’ve tried them all. Something should have worked, unless he’s being held here by a force both tangible and powerful.”

The fetish—except that destroying it should have released him, and it didn’t come fucking close. “You think he’s bound to whoever killed him?”

“Maybe not by design, but the flaying, the ritual aspects…” Michelle shook her head. “I know we’d discussed a controlled possession. I could safeguard whoever served as a vessel, but as traumatized as Oscar is likely to be, I doubt he’d be able to communicate effectively. You need someone with experience in spirit magic, someone who will know how to make contact without jerking Oscar across planes and shoving him into bodies.”

Especially Patrick’s. “We consulted a medium before. She’s the one who released him from his corpse.”

“A medium can be very skilled, but psychics are limited by their singular abilities. Someone who practices spirit magic might
be
a medium, but they can also use magic to alter the things their psychic senses tell them.”

“So we need a psychic spell caster.” No big deal, she’d just ask Santa Claus for one. “Got any leads?”

“One. William Lewis.” Michelle carefully tore a page from her journal and passed it to Anna. “He lives just outside of Farwell, Texas. He won’t open his door for strangers and almost never takes jobs, but I think I can talk him into it if I promise him a favor in return.”

The paper bore only an address, lettered in neat script. “You were right. Oscar’s our best lead—our only witness. Can this guy get information out of him?”

“If anyone can, it’s him.” Michelle reached out to cover Anna’s hand. “Whatever you do, don’t let him bargain with Patrick for payment. I’ll have an arrangement in place with him by the time you get there, but when he sees Patrick…”

The urgency in her voice sent a shiver of alarm racing up Anna’s spine. “He’s different now? What people can see, I mean?”

“I’m sure people could tell he had magic before, but it’s unbound now, and he may never have the conscious control necessary to hide his strength from other spell casters.” She squeezed Anna’s hand. “He’s strong. Stronger than Jackson, stronger than most casters you’ll meet. Trading favors isn’t an uncommon way for those of us with magic to expand our knowledge, but if you don’t know the rules and what you’re getting into, you can end up worse than trapped. People will want access to the things he could do. A
lot
of people.”

Patrick had grown up aware—and wary—of such things. In foster care, and later on the street. In his work as an adult. “I’ll keep an eye out, but Patrick knows better than to make deals easily. He’ll understand.”

“Good.” Michelle sat back with a wry smile. “I feel like I didn’t warn him properly. He’s going to be a legend. That might be hard for someone who’s spent so much time in the darker parts of our world.”

He’d spent so much time comparing himself to her and judging himself weak, vulnerable, especially since his injury. How would he react to being the scariest bastard in the room? The same way he did everything else, Anna supposed—with a cool aplomb that confused and terrified her in equal measure. No matter what life threw at him, he managed. He survived.

“Anna?” Michelle didn’t touch her this time, but she could almost feel the woman reaching out. “You don’t have to talk to me, but you might need to talk to him. It doesn’t take Kat’s gift to know he cares about you. His heart will be his strength
and
his weakness.”

“You mean
I
will be.” He cared about her, all right. Too much, and even when it wasn’t smart. “I don’t want to be, Michelle. I never did. You probably think I’m a real asshole for that.”

“I think you have a long way to go if you want to beat me at selfish romantic decisions that hurt the people we love.”

“I didn’t know this was a competition.”

Michelle’s lips twitched. “We could make it one, but I imagine we both have our share of horrible stories and more than our share of regrets. All I meant was that I’m not likely to judge you.”

“Shouldn’t someone?” Anna abandoned the remains of her broken-down pistol and shoved her hands through her hair. “Don’t you ever get tired of it? Of people telling you it’s not wrong, even though you know it is?”

“All the time,” she replied without hesitation. “Honestly, I wish
you
would. That’s the worst part, that there’s no one to blame me for what I did to him. You’re the closest thing he had to family.”

“What you—” Understanding punched Anna in the gut. “You’re talking about Aaron?”

“Of course.” Michelle’s voice shifted to icy steel. “Loving me killed him. It’s a mistake I’m unlikely to repeat with anyone else.”

There was no denying the lingering grief in her dark eyes, no arguing with the woman’s conviction—and why would she? It was the truth. Loving Michelle
had
killed him, just as he’d known it would.

But he’d been willing to take that risk, and Anna couldn’t believe he would have regretted it, not for a second. Not with their son toddling around, safe and happy and
alive
.

“I knew Aaron,” she agreed finally. “He wasn’t afraid of death. Only of leaving you.”

“And what are you afraid of?”

The answer came easily. “Of not being enough. If I thought I could love him the way you loved Aaron, I wouldn’t think twice. But I don’t know
how
.”

“I’m sorry.” Michelle reached out again, her hand hovering over Anna’s shoulder, but she didn’t touch her. “You thought I was talking about Luciano.”

“It doesn’t matter what I thought.” Anna reassembled her third pistol and began to gather her belongings. “We have to hit the road. You’ll reach out to this caster for us?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks.”

Michelle swept up her journal and rose. “When this is over, I hope you’ll come back and spend some time with us. Nick misses you. I don’t know you well, but you’re the closest thing Aaron had to a sister. That practically makes you family.”

“We’ll see.” With so many things uncertain, it was the best Anna could do.

Chapter Fifteen

The Howling Wolf looked like a thousand other roadhouses. Plopped down on the side of a remote Texas highway, it was the only structure of any sort within miles—save for the aging motel right beside it. Anna’s cute little car stood out in the shared parking lot, which was otherwise divided between beat-up trucks and a dozen well-tended bikes that made Patrick’s chest tighten in envy.

But even if he hadn’t known Anna’s friend was a werewolf, he would have suspected this place didn’t cater exclusively to humans. You learned the signs after long enough—men gathered outside to smoke, and music so quiet Patrick could only hear it when the doors swung open to let out a burly, tattooed biker. Loud music and strong smells irritated shapeshifter tempers, which was never good in a place that humans tended to wander in and out of.

The Howling Wolf. Truth in advertising.

The biker stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of Anna. “You’ve got to be shittin’ me,” he growled.

But Anna was grinning. “Moose.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her into a half hug. “The wife’s gonna kick my ass for not telling her you were headed to town. When’d you get in?”

“Just passing through, working a job.” She stepped back and tucked her hair behind her ears. “This is Patrick.”

Patrick extended a hand and nearly got his fingers crushed for the trouble, though judging by the man’s easy expression it wasn’t meant as a challenge. The bastard was just huge and, from the power prickling over Patrick’s skin, a pretty damn strong wolf. “Nice to meet you, Moose.”

“Shit, the manners on this guy.” The man chuckled. “You stop by to see Mitch?”

“Yeah. He’s here, right?”

Moose jerked his head toward the building’s rough wooden façade. “In the back.”

The man kept staring at Patrick, the slight frown plenty familiar.
Who are you
, or maybe
what are you
, and it was the latter question he didn’t know how to answer anymore.

Instead of walking through the front door, Anna circled the building, picking her way through scrub brush to the back entrance. As she reached for the door handle, a howl exploded through the darkness. It raised the hair on the back of Patrick’s neck—not because it signaled danger, but the opposite. It was an open sound, free, redolent with what sounded like pure joy.

Anna shook her head. “Must be a run going on tonight.”

Which meant Mitch owned a lot of land, since a wolf startling humans this far into the boonies had a good chance of getting shot. “You haven’t had a chance to run since this started. Do you need to?”

That made her laugh, a sound that rushed over him, tightening his skin in an entirely different way. “I’m pretty in touch with my primal side, cupcake, no matter what form I’m in. But I’ll let you know if I start to get antsy.”

It should have been impossible to make
antsy
sound like a come-on, but the way she was watching him made him think of sex, hard and fast, the kind you had up against a wall with your clothes shoved out of the way.

Shit. “We gonna meet this friend of yours, Lenoir, or are we gonna stand in the dark and flirt? Because I’m up for either.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again and looked away. “It’s stupid.”

“Hey.” He crowded a little closer and tilted her face up to his. “If it matters to you, it’ll never be stupid.”

“Except it is.” She swallowed hard. “I don’t want to walk in there like this, barely smelling like you. They’ll wonder
why
, if it’s just because we’ve been traveling together, or what. I want everyone to know who you belong to.”

He couldn’t let his lips twitch. She was so serious, so frustrated at her own vulnerability, and he’d learned by now that he couldn’t lighten the mood with a joke. How much of their back and forth over the months had been built on moments like these, moments where they meant well but didn’t know enough to
do
well?

Holding his breath, he smoothed his thumb along her jaw and let the smile come slowly. No laughter, just the pleasure of touching her. “I’m never going to say no to rubbing all up on you.”

“It’s silly,” she insisted, but her gaze went dark, soft, and she tilted her head to his touch.

“It’s hot,” he countered. “But even if it was silly, my big, bad ego can take it.”

“Mmm.” She stroked her fingers over the worn leather of his belt, and if he let her do that, they really would end up fucking up against the side of the roadhouse—at least until a pack of biker werewolves spilled out to kill him for it.

So he leaned in and kissed her.

Anna slid her arms around his neck and melted against him with a moan. Heat, hunger, it twisted together as he slid his hands down to her ass and hoisted her closer. If she wanted his scent she could have it, could wrap herself around him until every wolf for miles around knew that Anna Lenoir wanted to keep him.