“You were right,” I broke in blandly. “Hanging around us is dangerous. Someone is after Jesse.” I don’t know why I said it that way, I had no real reason to believe they would go after Jesse—they already had their hands full, but my instincts were certain, and I always listened to my instincts. “They have already kidnapped her father and killed one of his werewolves.”

“See, hijo? That’s what happens when you associate with the werewolves,” Sylvia said—but I saw her eyes linger on Jesse. Sylvia talked tough, but she had a heart as big as the Columbia. She also had four daughters, the oldest of whom was only a little younger than Jesse.

“Her father is a werewolf,” Gabriel snapped, not seeing Sylvia’s softening. “She can hardly avoid them.”

I put a hand on his arm to get him to stop antagonizing her, but it was a mistake. Sylvia looked at my hand, and her face hardened again.

“The people after Jesse are human,” I told her before she could say something she couldn’t take back. “Not werewolves, fae, or anything other. They are human—and they will hurt her. And you raised a man who cannot leave someone he cares about to face that danger alone, any more than he could desert his friends just because it was the safer, smarter thing to do. Not even if his mother asked him to—because it was she who taught him how to love other people in the first place. So he is in danger, too. Won’t you hide them for a couple of days so that they will be safe?”

Sylvia looked at me, straight in the eyes. Then she shook her head and gave a little laugh as her expression softened. “A compliment slipped inside a reprimand inside a request I cannot possibly turn down. Leave a child in danger? Leave my child …” And when Gabriel made a protesting noise, “You’ll be my child when you are fifty and I am seventy, hijo, so it is better that you accept it early. I am not going to leave my son, whom I love, to face danger alone for pride’s sake. Even I am not such a fool. Oof.”

The “oof” was because Gabriel was hugging her hard, tears in his eyes that he wouldn’t shed because he was not a man who cried in front of others if he could help it. About that time there was a squeal from one of the other bedrooms. My ears had told me that the girls were all awake and listening. They had apparently just been awaiting their mother’s decision before exploding into action because the room filled with Sandovals.

I told them the whole story. If they were going to protect Jesse, they deserved to know everything.