Leah rubbed her bloodshot eyes. “Good. All we have to do is stay alive until he gets here. I wonder what’s taking the Singer so long.” She frowned thoughtfully—as if, Anna thought, she might have a clue about what that was. But instead of telling them, she looked toward the pit, where the sound of rushing water had quieted now that the water was deeper. “Don’t let him pull you into the water.”

Werewolves couldn’t swim.

Tag stood up on four legs—huge, even for a werewolf, his thick, shaggy coat a shade more orange than his hair. Leah stretched her neck and began her change, and only then did Anna realize she’d been waiting for Tag.

Charles saw her look. “When there are so few of us, and there is opportunity, we try not to have all of the wolves shift at the same time. That way no one can attack us when all of us are hampered with the change.”

They waited, Anna tucked against Charles’s side, as rain poured over their heads and lightning cracked in a brilliant show that would have rivaled a Fourth of July display. When Anna counted the distance between lightning and thunder, she could only count to two. She hoped nothing caught fire—because one thing she could think of that would make this fight even harder would be if they were trying to do it in the middle of a freaking forest fire.

Eventually Leah, like Tag, stood on all four feet. The rain had already drenched her gold-and-silver coat, darkening it to gray. The combination of weight loss and wet fur made Leah look small, an effect not helped by the hunch of her shoulders.

Anna let go of Charles and untied her boots, because Leah’s shift was finished. The pit was now a dark pool filled to the brim, its surface rippling with the driving rain.

CHARLES KEPT AN eye on the newly formed lake as he waited for Anna to change. The water was inky black, even when the lightning struck, briefly illuminating the whole forest as if it were daytime. It might have been an effect of the night sky or the turbidity caused by the rapid fill of water. Or something else.

There was so much magic in the ground under his feet that he felt blinded. A thousand forest spirits could be tugging at his hands and he would not know it because his senses were already overwhelmed.

It was a testament to the power of the creature they faced. Charles did not find it reassuring.