Anna, ignored by Hosteen, had chosen to come with Charles, and she had no more trouble than he did hopping to the top of the eight-foot cement wall that separated the public front yard from the private back. She waited on top of the wall with him while he took a quick but comprehensive impression of the situation.
The backyard was not extensive, consisting of a couple of small areas of arid-appropriate plants and a tile walk that surrounded a moderately large swimming pool. There was no sign, to any of his senses, that anyone was nearby. The nearest people were several kids playing in another swimming pool several yards to the west.
What he did notice was that someone was playing cartoons overly loudly in one of the upper-floor rooms in Kage’s house. He stood up and walked along the wall until he was fairly near the house. Someone had been safety conscious enough that there were no windows within easy human reach from the wall. But Charles had never been merely human.
He jumped toward the house, catching himself on the sill of the window and doing a chin-up so he could see inside the room the sound was coming from.
The bed was against the wall the window was on. He could see the backs of the heads of three people who were seated on the floor using the bed as a support. Two of them were young children cuddling as closely to the third as they could. One of the littler bodies still vibrated with the results of a bout of tears.
“Dad is coming, right?” asked one of the youngsters.
“Dad is coming,” said the one who was adult size. His voice was more hopeful than definite to Charles’s ears.
“Is she still out there?” asked the other child. “She quit knocking on the door.”
“I don’t know,” the older one told them. “It’ll be okay. You just stay in here with me, Michael. I’ll keep you safe.”
Charles dropped soundlessly to the ground and then went back up to the wall, where Anna waited. “The kids are up in that room. I don’t think any of them are hurt, but one of us needs to get in there and make sure they stay okay. You’re less scary than I am.”
He kept his voice quiet, well below the range anyone in a room with the TV blaring could hear.
“Do I go through the window, or open it?” she asked.
The window was modern. He’d have had to break the latches or go through the glass. Anna had another option.
“Why don’t you see if you can get the kids to open the window?” he said. “Save breaking the glass as a last resort. I’ll see you safely inside. Then I’ll go down and into the house from the back.”
He jumped back to the ground and stepped out of immediate view. Anna’s leap to the window was graceful, and she chinned herself up just as he had. But she kept going until her upper body was clearly visible, and then she knocked on the window.
“Excuse me?” she said.
He had to imagine the first reactions of a group of kids who had locked themselves in a bedroom to hide from … from something. He hoped that the older boy wasn’t armed. But the room was decorated for a young girl, not a teenage boy. If the boy had a gun, it was probably in another room.
“Who are you?” asked the older boy’s voice hostilely.
“I’m a werewolf like your great-grandfather,” Anna said, sounding cheerful and utterly normal, as though she hung by her arms outside windows all the time. “My husband and I were at the ranch when your father got a call that sounded … odd. He and your great-grandfather are coming in the front door. My husband is going in downstairs from the back, but he thought you might like an ally in here. I’m tougher than I look. But you’ll have to open the window first.”
There was a clicking noise as the latch released and the window opened inward. People did things for Anna. It wasn’t like when his father ordered people, and they just did what he told them before they had a chance to think about it. People wanted to do what Anna asked them to do.
“Thanks,” she said, swinging her legs up and over. “I was beginning to feel a little silly. My name is Anna, but I don’t know yours. Charles and I rode in the back of the truck on the way over here and I’d just met Kage, your dad, so there was no chance to get the details. You’ll have to introduce yourselves.”
She chattered at them as if everything were normal. Charles tuned her out and dropped to a crouch as he approached a pair of French doors he intended to use to gain entry. Inside the house, Kage called his wife’s name, but there was no response.
Charles eased the nearest door open and slid inside without wasting time.
Anna put her back against the wall, just to the side of the door, between the human children and whatever made this room smell of fear. They were as safe as she could make them at the moment.
“Okay,” she said. “Michael, Mackie, and Max. Tell me what happened. All we got was a few odd phone messages from your mom.” She kept an ear out. Kage was calling for his wife in a soft voice that she didn’t think the kids could hear. His wife was not answering.
“I got home from practice,” Max said. “Mom was in the kitchen and the kids were in the family room watching TV. She seemed a little off, but I figured she was tired—she works hard.” He glanced down at Michael, who had decided that the exploits of a lost little fish on the TV were more interesting than the woman who had climbed in the window.
Reassured that he wasn’t going to freak out his brother, Max continued in a calm voice designed, Anna thought, not to attract Michael’s attention. “She was chopping carrots on the cutting board and I reached out to take one.” He hesitated, looking at the youngest boy again. His sister patted his hand.
“Chindi,” she said in a very small voice.
Max nodded back at her. “Chindi.”
“What’s chindi?” Anna asked.
“Wild spirits, evil things, wrong things.” Max gave a nervous shrug. “It’s a Navajo word.”
“I’m not supposed to say it,” Mackie said in a small voice. “I said it, and then Mom got angry. It’s all my fault.”
Max huffed. “That’s just superstition. It’s not real.”
“ánáli Hastiin says not to say that word or the evil spirits will come get you,” she told him.
“ánáli Hastiin…” Max swallowed whatever he’d been going to say. “Look, pipsqueak, you didn’t cause any of this. Kage—your dad says that a lot of what ánáli Hastiin says is make-believe. You can ask your dad, but he’ll tell you the same thing. You did not cause anything bad to happen.”
“You promise?” she asked distrustfully.
“Promise.” He raised his hand, trapped his pinkie with his thumb, and left three fingers straight in the air. Anna thought it might be the Boy Scout sign, but it could be the sign of the flying spaghetti monster for all she knew. She’d never been a Boy Scout or any other kind of scout.
Mackie evidently knew what it was because she heaved a big sigh. “Okay.”
“So your mother was chopping carrots?” Anna asked Max.
“And I reached out to grab a carrot out of the bag and she—” He swallowed and looked very young. He mimed someone holding a knife and bringing it down with speed and force. “She meant to get me, but she changed the direction at the last moment. She”—he made sure Michael was still occupied, but he spelled it out anyway in the manner of older brothers with too-young-to-be-literate siblings the world over—“s-t-a-b-b-e-d her own hand and screamed at me to get the kids and lock us in a room and not open the door until Dad came home. Not to let her in under any circumstance.”
He looked at Anna with great big puppy eyes and whispered, “She was bl— b-l-e-e-d-i-n-g. Her hand was stuck to the cutting board and I just left her there. Left my stupid cell phone in my backpack with my laptop and there aren’t any landlines in the house except in the kitchen. I couldn’t call anyone for help.” He looked away and blinked hard as his nose reddened.
“How long ago?” Anna asked, to give him something else to think about.
“Fu—” He quit speaking, wiped his face on his shoulder, and looked down at his sister. “Freaking feels like hours, but this movie is about an hour and a half long and we are only about two-thirds of the way through.”