When he was finished, Anna said, “Your da should be shot. And I’m only withholding judgment on Sherwood because I don’t know his side of the story.”

“Yes,” Charles agreed. “He thought you would see it that way.” He paused and said, “I’m not sure I don’t see it that way myself.”

“I’ve only heard Leah discuss how she became a werewolf once,” Anna told him, then recounted as closely as she could remember what Leah had said at the restaurant in Missoula.

“Huh,” said Charles when she was done.

She gave him a mock punch in punishment, then flattened her hand on his bare chest. “So Sherwood Post is the only one who actually knows what happened? But your da never asked him what that was while Sherwood still remembered it?”

Charles grunted. “He told me he asked. But once Sherwood was cognizant again, he refused to talk about it. Da thinks Sherwood did not believe he had killed or destroyed whatever it was he fought. Sherwood believed merely talking about it was a problem.” He paused. “And Da is pretty sure it was Sherwood who made certain Leah wouldn’t remember it, either, that blocking her memory of it was part of how Sherwood was trying to free her from it.”

“Wait a minute,” Anna said. She’d known Sherwood for a while before he’d been shipped off to Adam Hauptman, but Charles’s story had revised her understanding of the quiet and stoic wolf a great deal. “Mind magic … that’s witchcraft, right? But Sherwood is a werewolf—and male witches are not usually powerful.”

Charles drew in a breath. “Sherwood … the person Sherwood was, was a Power in the way my father or Bonarata is a Power. If one spoke of him, one would probably not call him a werewolf, even. That he was a werewolf did not define him in the way it defines me or you. I don’t know what category he would fit into, but it would involve magic.” He paused. “I don’t know how he managed to get captured by the witches. My da is more than half convinced Sherwood let them take him in the arrogant belief they couldn’t keep him—and found out he was wrong.”

“So,” Anna said, feeling apprehension she wouldn’t have felt before hearing a bedtime story this serious, “are we going to California?”

“Yes,” said Charles. “We are taking Tag with us.”

“Because … ?”

“Because magic has trouble latching onto him for whatever reason.”

“Like Mercy,” Anna said in surprise.

Charles shook his head, but said, “Maybe. I don’t understand the mechanisms of Tag’s resistance. Mercy’s immunity seems to be from the same heritage that allows her to change into a coyote and is far less reliable—and more effective when it does work—than Tag’s.”

“So we three are going to venture into a situation that disappeared a village and brought a legendary werewolf—no,” she corrected herself, “a legendary legend to his knees and killed who knows how many people. You and I and Tag.”