to get involved. That meant she was speaking almost as loudly as Isaac had been.
The local Alpha looked at her for the first time and frowned. His nostrils flared as he tried to catch her scent - which would have been impossible to filter from the rest of the people nearby except that she smelled like an Omega wolf.
After a rather long pause, Isaac shrugged his shoulders to loosen the muscles and walked off the end of the wagon - a good nine-or ten-foot drop. He landed with flexed knees and turned to the proprietor of the shop, who'd stopped when Anna had drawn attention to her.
"My apologies," he told her. "I didn't mean to scare you." He smiled and handed her a card. "A friend of mine runs a pub - stop by and have a meal on us."
The woman took the card with a rather shaky hand that steadied as Isaac's smile warmed. She glanced down and her eyebrows rose. "I've eaten there. Good fish and chips."
"I think so, too," he said, gave her a wink, and strolled over to where Anna and Charles sat.
"Nice PR," Anna said. "Though considering what went before, I'm not inclined to give you an A for it."
He studied her, ignoring Charles's brooding presence. "Ayah, nah," he said, exaggerating his Boston accent into incomprehensible nasal sounds before he dropped most of it to continue more clearly. "What in the hell are you?"
"Good to meet you, too," Anna said. "I bet that card was your second's idea, wasn't it? To make up for your lack of manners?" She dropped her voice and added a touch of Boston to it. "Oops - sorry I destroyed your car. Here, have a meal on me. Was that your dog I ate? Oh, sorry. Have a drink at my friend's pub and forget all about it."
Isaac grinned, a sudden, charming expression that showed white, white teeth in his blue-black face. "Caught me, darling. But you didn't answer my question."
"She is mine," said Charles. His aggressive answer didn't show up in his voice, which was low and calm. "We have a meeting scheduled tomorrow, with you and your pack. There was no need for this..." He glanced around. People were still watching them, but they were pretending not to. "Theater," he finished.
"This is Boston, hoss." Isaac bent his knees and squatted, putting his head on a level with theirs. "That's 'thee-ah-tah.' We're all about theater here." He pronounced the second "theater" just as Charles had. He wasn't native to Boston, she remembered. She thought he was from Michigan or Pennsylvania.
Anna gave him a gimlet eye and spoke to Charles. "He was probably walking by and spotted us. Decided he couldn't wait until tomorrow to throw a hissy fit."
"And aren't you one to burst everyone's posturing?" Isaac's dark eyes considered her. Then, in a more down-to-earth tone, he looked at Charles and said, "As a matter of fact, she's right." Then his face and his voice went very, very serious. "I meant what I said. To get to my wolves, you'll have to go over my dead body."
"If you do your job, he'll never have to do his." Bitterness made Anna's tone sharper than she meant it to be.
"She make all of your words, kemosabe?" Isaac asked Charles.
Charles raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated fashion and pointed his chin at Anna as if waiting for her to answer for him. He never used his fingers to point. It was, he'd told her, very bad manners among his mother's people.
Speaking of bad manners..."Where's our card for a free meal?" Anna demanded. "I think you owe us one. Cogita ante salis, my father would tell you. You should think before you leap."
Charles murmured, "Before you depart. Sally forth. Close enough."
Anna was never sure how many of the Latin phrases she knew were right, and how much her father simply had made up on the spot. She'd quit speaking it in front of Bran because he'd get this pained look on his face. Charles seemed mostly to find it funny, a joke they shared. He claimed not to speak Latin, but apparently Spanish and French were close enough to allow him to comment.
"Charles is not here to enforce justice, at least not on you or yours." She nodded at Isaac. "We were coming to you to ask for information. There are dead werewolves and the FBI and police apparently don't have anything but bodies. We were sent here to help them. We were