fingers in her best stage magician manner, though she'd already hit him while he was quoting from "That Voodoo." She contorted her face and made funny gobbling sounds, then said, in the perfectly serious voice she'd picked up from Charles, "Consider yourself whammied."
They strode along companionably for a block. "I don't feel whammied," he said.
"What do you feel?" she asked.
Isaac took three more steps before he stiffened and stopped. "I haven't been drunk since I was changed," he whispered. "What did you do to me?"
"You aren't drunk. Not impaired physically or mentally," Anna told him.
He bowed his head, working his hands; then he turned and started walking backward again, facing her. Anna followed, keeping a sharp eye out for things he might back into or over. She wondered if Isaac did this all the time - and, if so, how he avoided getting photos in the paper with captions like "Local Alpha Trips over Child" or "Wolf Versus Street Sign, Street Sign Wins."
"I'm myself again," he said, his face almost slack with wonder. "It's just me in here." He tapped his forehead. "One night before the full moon and I don't want to hunt or sink my teeth into anything." He blinked rapidly and turned back around again so she couldn't see his face anymore. After a moment he said, "It's like the wolf is gone." There was a hint of worry in his voice.
"No," Anna answered. "Just...at peace. You could start changing right now if you wanted to."
"Before God, it is no wonder my second was salivating at the thought of you," Isaac said. "Do you worry about being kidnapped?" His voice altered just a little. "I heard that Charles rescued you from an abusive situation." He glanced over at her, his eyes glowing light yellow. The other effect of being Omega was that dominant wolves tended to be overly protective of her.
She nodded her head. "Charles saved me. My first pack turned me and kept me under their thumb. One of their old ones was crazy and her mate thought I could keep her sane. When Charles got through dealing with them, he taught me how to rescue myself." Charles had helped her regain confidence in herself. But no matter how competent she was at protecting herself, Anna knew what ultimately kept her safe from wolf packs who wanted an Omega of their own. "If someone tries to kidnap me, Charles will hunt them down. Do you know very many wolves who would be willing to face that?"
"The Marrok's bogeyman?" asked Isaac with a snort. "No." He paused a moment. "Especially if they've ever seen him fight. Hally told me that he wouldn't be able to see that fae - just know when he was around. But Charles fought like he could, like he knew exactly where it was. And I've never seen anyone - not werewolf, not vampire, not anyone - move that fast."
"His gift," Anna agreed. His bane. Maybe if he hadn't been such a good fighter, his father would have sent someone else to maintain order among his packs. But that wasn't for public discussion. She needed to change subjects.
"So where are we going?" A diner would be perfect - just a little worn-down, with cracked Naugahyde seats and scuffed-up, bad-imitation wood-grain Formica tables, where coffee was served to everyone in white cups and all of the meals were cooked in unhealthy grease: a cop's hangout, the cliche of every cop film or novel.
"When Goldstein called me, I offered to host the party at The Irish Wolfhound," Isaac told her. "The pub owned by our pack. There's a big room for parties."
Anna couldn't help being a little disappointed. "I was hoping for a diner."
Isaac laughed. "The food's better at the Wolfhound, and we're less likely to have uninvited guests." Amusement died from his face, and the smile he gave Anna was tight and unhappy. "As I told you, there are members of our law enforcement community who dislike us and would love to provoke a fight under the cover of too much drink. This way it's just the people who are working on this case - and most of them are way too ecstatic about Lizzie's rescue to be fussy about how it was done."
"It seems like a lot of celebrating, when we didn't catch the killers," Anna said.
Isaac nodded. "It's like when I was in high school. My junior year our football team just had this...synergy. The year before, the year after, they were