The gardens were lower than the building, so when they stepped outside, Anna got a fair look at the whole thing. Five or six acres, she judged, completely enclosed by what looked to be a ten-foot wall. Hedges and the natural rise and fall of the land had been utilized to create small pockets of privacy. In the center of the garden was a good-sized water feature with a waterfall on one end and a natural-looking (other than it being aboveground) pond on the other end.

Charles gave her a thoughtful look as she started down the stairs ahead of him, following Dr. Underwood. She wasn’t sure what that look was about, but she thought she was missing something. She tried to figure out what that could be.

Outside, her nose should have been of use to figure out what Charles had noticed, but she didn’t find anything that shouldn’t be there: plants, birds, insects, and presumably Dr. Underwood’s aftershave or shampoo or something. He must have used a brand she didn’t know that smelled spicy and …

She frowned, closing the distance between them so she could get a better sniff. It didn’t smell like anything she had smelled before—and by now she was familiar with a lot of different scents. It was a blend of scents, she could tell that much—but none of the blend was anything she could pinpoint.

She couldn’t imagine that look on Charles’s face was because Dr. Underwood’s cologne/aftershave/whatever was complex. She decided she should stay alert. Which was, she noticed, harder to do than it should have been. The aura in the garden was very soothing. Perhaps too soothing.

She eyed Underwood as she considered that. Assuming Daniel Green was witchborn—it definitely ran in families—it followed that any assisted living home that could keep him safe would not be a normal facility. It might, for instance, have an unusually peaceful garden.

Anna couldn’t detect witchcraft anywhere around her, but she wasn’t good at it on her own—she needed her inner wolf for that. But she was sure as damn it that something was trying to pacify her with unnatural persistence. That was her job, and she could tell when someone else had put their hand in to have a try at it.

She coaxed her wolfish nature out—which was a bit harder than normal. As soon as she did so, the effects of the garden’s magic fell away. Her wolf told her that they were surrounded by magic so thick it felt as though she were breathing it. That was what she’d been smelling, but some spellcrafting had misdirected her into believing it was Underwood’s cologne or the flowers or anything else with a scent she wouldn’t pay too much attention to.

No wonder Charles had been wary.