resemblance to his scent under the foulness of her magic. Smelling her again, I was absolutely certain of the connection between her and Frost.
I hadn’t been able to scent her until she’d come out of the shadows, though. I didn’t like that at all.
“Aren’t you a darling?” she told Salas in a husky voice with an accent that originated in the Deep South. “But you won’t have any luck with that old thing, so you might as well put it away.” There was magic in her voice that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
He held his stance, cradling the gun in a classic grip. A light sweat broke out on his face—but the gun held steady.
She turned her smile to me. “And that is the reason I picked this family, Mercedes Thompson Hauptman. I find it so interesting when people don’t do as I tell them. It doesn’t happen too often.”
I wondered if the three tortured members of Elizaveta’s family had been told to go make breakfast. Time to think about that later. Right this moment, I needed to distract her from Salas. I didn’t like the attention she was paying to him, even with her face turned toward me.
Last moon hunt, which we held out on the Hanford Reservation, the pack had been on the trail of an elk when a rabbit broke cover just in front of us. Just for an instant, the pack weighed switching their prey before continuing after the elk.
Salas was the witch’s version of that rabbit and I wanted her focus on me instead.
“Picked them for what?” I asked.
“To get your attention,” she said. “We need to talk.” She glanced at Arnoldo and said softly, “Why are you still pointing that gun at me? Stefan Uccello is a vampire. Shoot him.”
This time Arnoldo didn’t react at all.
The witch frowned at him. “That’s not nice,” she said. “I asked you politely.”
“Mr. Salas,” said Stefan softly. “I think that if you put the gun away, you won’t be so interesting to her. That might be a good thing.”
“Ms. Hauptman,” said Salas. “If I shoot her, will she die?”
“Probably,” I said. “But then you’ll have a dead woman on your front lawn. I’ll stand witness for you that she was a witch, but she is not trying to harm you just now. I think that she is responsible for the killing of your son’s goats, but that won’t get you out of a murder charge. Worse, I am fairly certain that she is part of a group of witches. If you kill her, they will come for you. I promise that our pack will try to keep them away, but our resources are limited.”
“Werewolves protecting humans,” drawled the witch. “I never thought I’d see the day. It’s kind of cute.”
Salas nodded at me and put his gun away. He glanced at Stefan and then away. He’d heard her call Stefan a vampire, but he was willing to give us the benefit of the doubt. Which was pretty amazing in a man I’d only met this morning.
“You wanted our attention,” I said. “You have it. What do you want?”
“We have pushed out the local coven,” she said. “My lady, our Ishtar, has told me that you have found the results.”
“Yes,” I said. Who was Ishtar? It sounded, from the way she said it, more like a title than a name, but I couldn’t be certain.
“Good. Then you will have no trouble with us assuming their place. We find that this town, which previously we knew nothing about, has become very interesting—a place where the werewolves make certain everyone feels safe. You will stay out of our way—and we will allow you to remain here.”
“No,” I said. I’d heard the “feels” safe. “Feels safe” is a lot different from “is safe.”
She smiled. “Ms. Hauptman, you are young.” Which was a weird thing for her to say. I’d have put her in her midtwenties, maybe, given the kindness of night shadows, even midthirties. “I doubt you know your history. Until the arrival of the Marrok, werewolves were the vermin of the supernatural world. Dangerous individually, of course, if one were such a fool as to put yourself in a bad position, but ultimately not much of a threat. Nuisances. Your pack does not belong to the witchborn Marrok, he who has abandoned his birthright. Alone, you and your pack are no match for us.”
She was guessing about Bran being witchborn, I was pretty sure. Bran