Anna smiled at him, a genuine smile despite the edge of sadness remaining on her face. That had been a reference to an in-joke between them. He missed a lot of pop culture references, and she liked to tease him about it.

“If they didn’t use their deaths for power, why did they kill their pets?” Anna asked.

“If they had to leave them behind,” said Tag, “it would be a kindness to put them down rather than let domestic animals loose to fend for themselves out here.”

“Sounds right to me,” said Charles. That Tag had come to the same conclusion Charles had made it more convincing.

Charles couldn’t think offhand of the exact circumstances that would allow a group of people time to clean up their camp and kill their pets before disaster overtook them—it spoke of a resignation that seemed oddly wrong. The people who had come to this mountainside and created a place where they could be safe did not strike him as the kind of people who would be resigned to their deaths. Wild Sign was an optimistic place, built with ingenuity by people fighting for a good life. The kind of people who had lived here should have fought—and there was no sign of any kind of battle.

“Charles?” Anna said, her voice thin.

He knelt beside her to see what she’d found: the top of a small skull, suspiciously round. A shape more common among humans than dogs.

Gently, he unearthed the rounded skull, Anna tense beside him. He couldn’t help the sigh of relief he let out when he turned it over to see the skull supported sharp canine teeth. He kissed the top of her head.

“Chihuahua,” he said. “And that makes eighteen.”

She took a deep breath. “Someone needs to dig through these,” she said. “If they killed their pets …”

“I’ll do it,” Tag said. “While you and Charles go through the rest of the camp.” He reached down and held out his hand; Anna took it and let him pull her to her feet. “Come on. I have something else to show you.”

He tugged her after him without releasing her hand. Charles couldn’t tell if Tag was trying to comfort her—or himself.

Charles rose, but instead of following them, he raised his head and drew in a deep breath, letting Brother Wolf sort through the information the air held. Outside of the normal scents of a forest, he detected the faint trace of witchcraft lingering all around Wild Sign, though that was more intuition than scent. There was acrid smoke from distant fires.

Finally, he attended to the subtle scent he’d been catching the whole time they’d been there. He thought it had been strengthening every hour they stayed, but it was difficult to be certain. Like the feel of witchcraft, it was not quite something he could smell.