A good dozen answers fell through my brain, but the only one that they would believe would be the one that was the most impossible. “Because I have it,” I said, praying it was the answer that would keep me breathing for another day.

Silence greeted my claim. Then Mr. Ray laughed. I jumped when his hand slapped down onto the table, but Mrs. Sarong’s gaze was fixed on the Weres behind me, her face paling. “You!” the heavy Were said between guffaws. “If you have the focus, I’ll eat my shorts.”

My lips pressed together, but Mrs. Sarong spoke next. “You take ketchup with your silk, Simon?” she said sourly. “I think she’s got it.”

Mr. Ray stopped laughing. His brown eyes noted her ashen hue, and then he looked to me. “Her?” he said in disbelief.

My pulse quickened, and I wondered if I had made a mistake and they’d band together to take it from me before turning against each other once more.

“Look at her alpha,” the slight woman said, pointing with her eyes.

We all looked. David was sitting half on a table with one foot on the floor, the other draped down and hanging. His duster was open to show his trim body, and his rifle was in his hands. Yes, it was a big gun, but there were—as Jenks said—nineteen other weapons in the place. Yet there he was holding two aggressive packs still and silent.

David had always been an impressive individual, having the standing of an alpha and the mystique of a loner. But even I could see the new expectation in his manner. He wasn’t just capable of dominating another Were; he expected it to happen without a complaint. It was the focus’s magic trickling through him. He had gained the power of creation, and though it had resulted in the deaths of innocents, it didn’t lesson the magnitude of what that meant.

“My God,” Mr. Ray said. Eyes wide, he turned to me. “You have it.” He swallowed. “You really have it?”

Mrs. Sarong had taken her hands from the threat of her weapon and set them on the table. It was a submissive move, and a chill took me. What have I done? Will I survive it?

“You were there, at the bridge, weren’t you? When the Mackinaw Weres found it?” she said coolly.

I leaned back to distance myself. What I wanted to do was run away. “I had it before that, actually,” I admitted. “I was up there rescuing my boyfriend.” I fixed on her eyes, wondering if they were a shade chagrined. “The one you think I killed,” I added.

My pulse hammered when she dropped her eyes for an instant, then returned them to me. God help me, what have I become?

Mr. Ray wasn’t convinced. “Give it to me,” he demanded. “You can’t hold it. You’re a witch.”