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ANNA eating and swearing-and Charles was fit to be tied and a fair bit on his way to needing restraint himself Alan had nerves of steel, because his hands were steady even though Charles couldn&039;t keep his growls to himself Finally, Alan dropped the forceps into the bowl

"All right," he said "There is still lead in there I can smell it, but I&039;ll be damned if I can find it At least it is not silver An X-ray machine would be able to locate the rest"

"We have one of those in Aspen Creek," Charles said

"Or you can let the remainder fester out There isn&039;t a lot-I don&039;t think it&039;s enough to oes" Anna&039;s lureenish, and there were dark circles under her eyes "No more probes, please"

Charles slid out froe your ," he predicted "But you can wait if you&039;d like"

"I&039;ll do that" She huffed indignantly "Festering What a lovely thought"

He kissed her lightly, then took a good look at the manacles they&039;d used on Anna "I can pick these," he said, "if Arthur has the right tools around"

"Go look," Anna told hi to fester, I&039;d like to do it in cos are not co when he left the roo, and he had to get her help, he hadn&039;t even thought about her nudity But he didn&039;t want Arthur walking in on her, so he shut the door

The house was dark, and he thought Arthurwas still a while away He wasn&039;t going to sleep again, not in Arthur&039;s house-and he wasn&039;t going to move Anna until she&039;d healed up a bit

He went to the kitchen and opened drawers to see if he could find anything useful

"Charles?" Arthur&039;s voice It came from the room that he kept his treasures in

"Yes," he answered "I&039;et the manacles off Anna You wouldn&039;t happen to have a lockpick kit, would you?"

"I probably have so that would work," Arthur said

Charles stopped sorting through the kitchen i odd about the otherMaybe He removed a fillet knife from the block and slid it into his jeans pocket

"That would be cool" He was careful to keep his throat loose, so Arthur wouldn&039;t have any reason to think Charles had noticed anything different "She&039;s tough, she&039;d handle it-but I want the roo scent fro He hadn&039;t known her well enough to do more than feel sorry for her No wonder Arthur was off Oddly, the sympathy he felt for Arthur was farhe could do for Sunny

He tried not to think about how ht could have been Anna, they wanted to kidnap Not kill

Their taking herthree of them soothed him Or Brother Wolf, either

If they had killed her he would have joined her He paused, not having worked that out before But it didn&039;t particularly bother him If she died, he would follow Just as he would have followed her wherever they had planned on taking her had they succeeded She was his and he hers

"Charles?"

His phone rang "I&039;ll be right there Angus is calling"

He opened the phone, "Yes?"

"Your Anna was spot on About an hour ago-fifteen minutes after the cleanup crew left Chastel&039;s place-we had police all over the place Sounshots, and hell-all-knows else They brought in lulows in the presence of blood We owe Moira big-time because they found squat The last witch we had could never have cleaned up that well The police are still tearing the place apart-but they&039;re being nicer about it"

"Trap sprung too late," said Charles-aware that Arthur had cous paused "And your scent? Moira found clothes in one of the well, in the ure, soed them around the room, and dumped them"

"Deliberate"

"Absolutely And not even the fae can pin it on you now I know you left the hunting grounds in a completely different set of clothes"

"Good"

"On another interesting news front that van? The local vanized the stick you poked through one of the bad guys She called it a spellcatcher"

Charles frowned "Spellcatcher?"

"Vampire hocus pocus, apparently Very secret-the vampires here really don&039;t want trouble with your father over this to tell us this e a lot for theuns, they were successful and expensive to be able to purchase such a thing Apparently this stick can absorb up to four spells, and the person it&039;s tuned to can use it to cast them, even if that person wouldn&039;t noric"

"That would explain the shadows spell and the Look-Not-At-Me the vampires used when they attacked Anna the first time And how they kidnapped Anna while ere both in the hotel room-they must have used the spellcatcher to put us out with a witch&039;s sleep spell"

"The thing to reiven to it voluntarily by the spell caster Means a wolf gave the Anna&039;s theory," Charles said He was pacing There werehiht?"

"She&039;ll be fine as soon as a few et some locks picked so she doesn&039;t have to explain her interesting choice in jewelry"

Arthur was leaning against the door fra no effort to pretend he wasn&039;t listening

"Good" Angus cleared his throat "You did good, son"

The "son" us by a few decades "I think so She&039;s-she cous advised huue-tied"

"I&039;ll do that"

He shut the phone

"Cleanup crew?" asked Arthur

And Charles realized that there was a lot Arthur didn&039;t know "Chastel was killed last night in a particularly bloody fashion that required some quick action"

"Was it you who killed him?"

"No Vampires"

"Ah" Arthur looked away "Chastel Odd to think of hi dead at last It couldn&039;t have happened to a better person" He looked back and gave Charles a broken suess it did, didn&039;t it? Poor Sunny" He rubbed his face, hiding it for a minute "Sorry Sorry So Chastel required a cleanup crew?"

Charles considered offering syested that the iven it was vampires who&039;d done it-"

"The vampires killed Chastel? You are sure?"

Charles nodded "Ironic, considering how many wolves I knoould have loved to kill hied "The ti is off The police were lory" Maybe to keep his father fro the olves out Maybe to keep the wolves away from the scene so whoever had tried to frame Charles for it would have an easier tiht never have determined how Charles&039;s scent appeared in a place he&039;d never been "But they gave us toonow"

"I suppose not Angus is remarkably efficient"

"And, I believe, his second&039;s dayti for and how to keep the it" Charles paused

It occurred to hi for him But he dismissed his suspicion Sunny had been killed A ould never kill his own ave in to his impulse to throw out some bait "Whoever called the police did it hours too late It ht after the job was done" He shook his head "That&039;s what&039;s been bothering me, I think The incompetence of it all Most wolves are better hunters The vaht before we came over here for dinner, as aso Michel, one of the French olves, ith Chastel when he was killed And they left him for dead He&039;ll survive, and in a few days he&039;ll tell us exactly what the vampires said when they attacked Maybe they told him who hired them"

"Hired?"

"They&039;re pros Hired to cos" Charles ticked theers "Kidnap Anna Kill Sunny And kill Chastel- that screahtfully to himself "It wasn&039;t the vampires ere inco when they tried to kidnap Anna the first time, they would have succeeded Soht that the only one ould be a probleus&039;s second, Tom Chastel&039;s death was masterful Any humans who&039;d walked in, who&039;d seen pictures of it, would remember it for the rest of their lives But the person as supposed to call the police was too slow"

Charles had been watching Arthur out of the corner of his eye The wolf&039;s face showed nothing but polite interest His body, on the other hand, had been tightening with anger throughout Charles&039;s whole speech

"Incoain And watched Arthur&039;s fist clench

Arthur

His father had been suspicious of the death of an Alpha who&039;d recently been killed in London Tough man and very dominant-decapitated in a car accident Could have been deliberately arranged

Charles resu Arthur as if he weren&039;t there at all So Arthur didn&039;t realize he&039;d given hi out Chastel made sense Chastel was a threat to Arthur Kept Arthur froe power vacuuainst Chastel He couldn&039;t have just assassinated hih-if anyone knew Arthur had taken the coward&039;s way of killing Chastel, they would never have followed hih to rule a continent based on his oer-he&039;d need the subjects He&039;d need to pin Chastel&039;s death on someone else

Charles didn&039;t think Arthur cared one way or the other about the olves&039; co out He was precisely the charis the public to first But ned to attract human attention was a way to send suspicion elsewhere There were a lot of wolves ere unhappy about his father&039;s plans Bran would not believe Charles had killed Chastel, after all-so Arthur needed a nameless villain for Bran to blame Someone who hired the vampires, then conveniently disappeared

That whole butcher thing was Arthuran observation Chastel was a barbarian-Arthur clearly his superior He wouldn&039;t see the similarities In his mind, a brute who killed for pleasure was uncivilized Arthur didn&039;t kill for pleasure

Chastel ruled by killing all who challenged his place-and by terrifying the rest Arthur had started out killing the Alphas in Great Britain, then stopped Or found a better way to dispose of the wolves ould challenge hiure it out from here As far as Charles was concerned, Arthur and Chastel were just two sides of the same coin-all the need for power and none of the need to take care of as theirs Arthur wouldn&039;t see it that way, though perhaps he needed to make that more clear with the brutal method used to dispose of Chastel&039;s body

Sunny

If the reason for hiring the vampires was that it would have been difficult for a olf to attack an Oa, or nearly so, would have been i of Anna made so much more sense Arthur wasn&039;t the only olf to have his own jet-but he did have one And Anna hat Sunny could have been Oa Valued not so much because of who she was-but for who everyone else would think her to be Prize possession And, unlike Sunny, she would live forever Sunny had been getting old, as huenuine So he&039;d had her killed to spare hi Froht Arthur had underestimated the pain of her death He hoped so

Casually, he pulled his phone out and set it to text "Forgot to update Da," he said "He&039;ll be eating breakfast about now and doesn&039;t like it interrupted I&039;ll text hiht, and he can call me about it at his leisure" No lies for Arthur to hear He kept the text e simple IT IS ARTHUR

He kept the phone tilted away fro Bran and typed out a us DON&039;T CALL SEND HELP HERE ARTHUR IS VILLAIN He deemed it a little melodraus to misinterpret He hit SEND

He could handle Arthur Arthur had not been wolf enough to take Chastel But Anna and Alan Choo were here, and they needed hi in help

"You were looking for lockpicks," said Arthur

"Yes"

"I have some in there" Arthur tipped his head to indicate his treasure roo back here"

Charles followed hi exactly as he said The tapestries were off the wall, set into two-by-four frah-lu crate museums used to transport artwork A s left out was the box that held the sword

"I understand the rest," Charles said, running his fingers over the wood that protected the old sword "But how did you bribe Dana into breaking her word?"

He looked up and watched Arthur go very still The British wolf altered subtly Lost the aura of grief alot the va she wanted" Arthur smiled "Even that wouldn&039;t have worked if you hadn&039;t ticked her off"

"How did I do that?" As soon as Charles asked the question, he re his father had sent her It was lost, that place that had once been hers, and his father ift her with a reht it was a taunt, instead

Arthur threw up his hands theatrically "How should I know? Fae are easily offended As for what I offered her-" He motioned to the sword case

"That is not Excalibur," Charles said "When she discovers you don&039;t have it, she&039;ll be offended"

Arthur ran his fingers gently over the display case-and slid open a dark chunk of wood on the end "There is soht"

The sword he removed from the hidden coh it looked very like Both were swordsmen&039;s weapons rather than movie props As soon as this once-hidden sword left the case, the hair on the back of Charles&039;s neck ca that the sword in Arthur&039;s hand was a fae blade: he could feel its ic on his skin, could smell it

Arthur was a swords and had received the sa that Charles hirip-neither too tight nor too loose-showed all that training had not been wasted

He hadn&039;t been worried about a sword, but that sword Charles was a dead h help that even with the sword, Anna should be safe All he had to do was delay as long as possible And Arthur always had loved to perforo with you," he told Arthur "She won&039;t stand by your side She&039;ll wait until you take your attention off her for a ut you"

Arthur smiled "You really don&039;t believe in reincarnation, do you? Or fate I came here to kill Chastel and your father Chastel I had an answer for For your father, I needed h he was stupid "Because I ah king"

Madness indeed, thought Charles

"But reed Arthur "Fate is an odd thing Do you know just who Dana is?"

"Obviously you are going to tell me," said Charles dryly

"I wonder if your father does This is what I mean by fate-that I as Arthur would find Nio that she was here in Seattle -the first time I saw her, in fact I knew that there would coht Sunny this house"

Obviously, Charles thought, it wasn&039;t going to be hard to keep Arthur

Arthur&039;s smile turned sly "I didn&039;t find Excalibur in an archaeological dig-though that&039;s what I was doing at the tie I entry He invited uarding a treasure for so otten all about it It took stone in the carriage house A sword in the stone-so to speak" He laughed at his own cleverness

"The boy&039;s older sister looked enough like Dana to be her twin" With his free hand, he rubbed his thuht becoe So I knehen I saw Dana I had the perfect thing to bribe her with" He swung the sword gently "She had no idea it wasn&039;t resting beneath the stone where she&039;d placed it until I showed it to her-a photograph I aree with you on that," Charles said "You&039;ve done a nuet the best of a Gray Lord is the stupidest by far You never had any intention of giving her the sword"

Arthur bobbed his head-a polite agreement "The first deal would have been honest Excalibur isn&039;t the only thing I discovered there I had other weapons, you know I offered her the dagger She refused-and made it clear she would hunt me &039;to the ends of the earth,&039; I believe I know her, you see, but she doesn&039;t know me Doesn&039;t believe I a about

"But ht her with you"