Anna wasn’t in their room, though she’d obviously showered. He wondered what she felt she had to clean off. She didn’t usually shower twice a day. The room was steamy and smelled like the things she used in the shower: body wash, shampoo, and conditioner. He took in the scent and … Brother Wolf stirred uneasily.

Charles wasn’t going to give in to that. He pulled off the shirt Anna had gotten for him and exchanged it for a red T-shirt. If Tag threw him in the river, he didn’t want to tear up his good shirt.

But when he took the path to the river, he found Anna alone. She was sitting on a big rock, facing the river, her arms slung around one of her legs that she’d pulled up to her chest. Like Charles, she had discarded her good clothes and now wore jeans and a black tank top.

“Hey,” he said to her, because she hadn’t turned around when he’d come up to her. The river was loud and the wind blew in his face, but she still should have heard him.

She turned to look at him—and for a moment he would have sworn she didn’t know him. Then her smile filled her face and her eyes came alive. “Sorry,” she said. “I was just trying to remember a song.”

C H A P T E R

8

Anna still hadn’t talked to Charles about the weird glitch in her memory by the time they were getting ready to head out for Angel Hills Assisted Living.

After a good night’s sleep, she’d begun to think that she’d made a mountain out of a molehill. Nothing bad had happened. It hadn’t felt like an attack—not like when something had been looking for a way into her head after they’d gotten back from Wild Sign. Maybe it had just been a leftover from her experiences with the Singer in the Woods, a hiccup.

As she got dressed for the day, she decided she’d talk to Charles if she experienced something like that again.

Charles came back into the room after his shower and said, “I think we should keep the rooms here at the hotel until we set out for home so we can leave the grimoires in their room.”

Anna had noticed that he tended to speak about the books as if they were alive, which she found disturbing. She couldn’t see Charles doing that by accident. She wasn’t excited about driving all over Northern California dragging the books around with them like bait for any magically inclined whatsit who happened by.

Still, there were problems with leaving them in the room while they ran around looking for clues. Doubtless Charles knew all of the pros and cons, but she couldn’t help worrying.

“You want to leave them locked in a room that every maid and manager can just waltz into while we’re gone?”

Charles nodded. “That’s a consideration, but they seem a little understaffed here.”