Such an unobservant man, noted Brother Wolf, working in a place like this is doomed. If we kill him now, we would just be doing him a favor.

Brother Wolf was a lot more talkative than usual. Charles couldn’t figure out if it was the emotional upheaval of the Singer’s attack on Anna or Underwood bespelling her—or if it was a side effect of all the magic in this place.

This is a very interesting place, Brother Wolf enlightened him. I have hope that we will kill some witches here before we go. This one would do.

“Anna and Charles Cornick,” Underwood said. “Your names are familiar to me. Very familiar.” He gave Anna a sad-eyed look, and a soft billow of magic puffed out to land upon both Anna and Charles. “Carrie Green was an only child and she was not married. You are not her sister-in-law. But the Cornick name is well-known among people who are witchborn.”

“Is it?” said Anna, who was, hit by Underwood’s magic, supposed to feel guilty. But for now, her politeness looked close enough to guilt for Underwood, because he looked faintly satisfied.

“Charles Cornick, the scourge of werewolves, the Marrok’s assassin—and the woman who rules him,” Underwood said.

Was that what the witches were saying about his Anna? True enough as far as that went. He wondered who else was saying that. Maybe that was why the FBI agents had concluded that Anna was the Marrok. If Anna had wanted to rule them all … Well, Charles couldn’t see his da giving over the care of his wolves to anyone while he lived, but Da listened to Anna. They all did.

She could have ruled them all, Charles thought, but only because she would never think to rule any of them. Being the ruler of all she surveyed was just not anything his Anna desired—which was one of the reasons they could let their guard down around her.

She was more than up to taking point against a second-rate witch like this. And she was better suited to get information out of him than Charles was. People liked to talk to Anna. People liked to run away from Charles. Both of those things pleased him.

“Yes?” Anna said in response to Underwood’s I-know-who-you-really-are reveal. Her mild tone made Underwood’s lips thin.

The best part, as far as Charles was concerned, was that the question in her tone meant that she wasn’t lying to the witch. It wouldn’t be her fault if Underwood misunderstood.

Witches couldn’t smell a lie, but they had their own ways of detecting untruths, not that Underwood was using any of them. If Charles were to hazard a guess, it would be that Underwood did not have the magic to spare. He wondered how much of Underwood’s magic went to just keeping him safe from the black witches who employed him.

As I told you, he would be better off if we killed him now, agreed Brother Wolf in a lazy tone that fooled Charles not a bit.