“Nor do I,” admitted his da. The growl in his voice was almost subvocal, raising the hairs on the back of Charles’s neck in response.

The obvious question was “Why not?” but Da’s growl and the memory of Brother Wolf’s unease kept him quiet. There had been something wrong about Leah’s singing. Da would tell Charles about it when he was ready to do so.

Bran looked back at the map. “April was the last time anyone heard from the people living in this village?”

“That they know of,” Charles said. He’d taken time to go through the file the FBI had given them before he’d left his house. “Dr. Connors’s daughter is the only relative who has come out and identified her father as missing. The rest of the names they got from the post office box, but the relatives of those people have been singularly unhelpful. Apparently people who want to live off-grid are not big on communicating with the outside world. The last letter Dr. Connors’s daughter received was dated early April. That seems to be the last communication from Wild Sign.”

“Leah started singing last April,” Bran told him.

“You believe there’s a connection?” Charles asked.

“I don’t like coincidences,” Bran told him. “There is something magic in whatever she’s singing. It feels like a summons of some sort. But I can’t tell if Leah is trying to summon something to her, or if she’s hearing a summons.”

Charles looked up from the map. “Leah doesn’t work magic.” He was as sure of it as he was of his own name. “Not outside of pack magic. But you aren’t talking about that kind of magic.”

“No,” Bran agreed. “It doesn’t feel like her—she smells wrong for a while afterward.”

Charles sat back. “Then why haven’t you done something about it?” He didn’t know what he’d do, but if Anna started smelling wrong, he wouldn’t have sat on his thumbs for five months.

“At first she used to sing all the time,” Bran said, and Charles wasn’t sure he was talking to Charles until he looked directly at him. “Do you remember that?”

“I remember that she sang,” Charles said. “And her song made Brother Wolf uneasy. But I don’t remember her singing all the time.”

Bran didn’t seem surprised. “Mostly she’d stopped by the time we got back here, I think. You haven’t heard her sing recently?”

Charles said, “No.” It wasn’t surprising. Neither Leah nor he sought out each other’s company.