In a moment, there was a young Wolf where the young man had stood; another moment passed while he trembled with shock and surprise; then the Lead Wolf was on him, treating him as he would any young fool who dared to challenge him for the right to lead the Pack.

There would be no killing—oh no. But before this one was sent back to his body by the contemptuous fling of a pair of lupine jaws, he would be certain he was about to be killed, not once but a hundred times over. Likely, he would not again dare to reach for Medicine Powers he was not entitled to, with the help of peyote. Not after this experience.

Satisfied that the Lead Wolf had the situation well in hand, she stepped back across the threshold and into her own body, just in time to see the competition begin. Paramedics were taking the young man who had collapsed to the first-aid tent; they were probably assuming heatstroke. He would wake up soon—and with no more thoughts of causing trouble tonight, at least.

Grandfather’s hand tightened around hers, and she looked up into his wrinkled, smiling face. “Well done,” he whispered.

That was all. He never told her what he had done, but later her father told them a story he’d gotten from one of the Tulsa County Sheriffs, about a dog that had spooked the normally steady horse ridden by one of the mounted officers. The rangy dog—reportedly a German shepherd—had driven the horse right down a trail away from the powwow and into a gathering of young white boys who were carrying bats and chains, were drunk, and were obviously out to start a fight. The officer had rounded them up with the help of his suddenly cooperative horse, and had seen they were escorted out of the park—and had arrested the most aggressive for public intoxication. “Damndest thing they’d ever seen,” her father had said, with a curious glance at Grandfather. “Those crowd-control ponies just don’t spook. And to head in the right direction like that—”

Grandfather hadn’t said anything, and neither had Jennifer. But from that moment, the games ended, and the serious work began.

From then on, she’d applied herself with the same determination that she’d given to her studies. There hadn’t been much room in her life for anything else, particularly not once she started her sideline of “finding.” The first time it had been by accident; she’d been working on a case that had taken her up to Indiana, tracing the movements of a child-support dodger. She’d found herself in a tiny town with four hours to kill, and had in desperation followed a sign that pointed the way to a “county museum.”