It wasn’t threatening, but the message was clear. They knew we had the Heartwood, and they weren’t going to let it, or us, out of their sight.
The door opened before I could raise my hand to knock, and Jame filled the entrance. His eyebrows were drawn down, his gaze hard as stone.
“Delaney,” he said.
“Jame. We have the Heartwood.”
“I know.” He stared at Jean, who just wiggled her fingers at him in a little wave.
Jame was breathing hard, inhaling the scent of us, the scent of the Heartwood. All the Wolfes were doing it, had been doing it since we first showed up.
I didn’t know what they smelled, but if it was death, demons, and one Valkyrie Feather, then they were pretty much putting the puzzle together without having to see the box top.
Finally, Jame stepped aside. “This way.”
We were ushered—bodies beside us, bodies behind us, Jame ahead of us—into the house through the main entry, then through the wide open entry into the living room.
Granny herself sat in the padded loveseat, two little boys, maybe about three years old, sitting on either side of her, their furry bare feet stuck out straight in front of them. They each were gnawing on a bone with a thick knot on the end like they were lollipops. Sam and Dean were twins and the youngest of the Wolfe clan. They obviously knew it was okay to wolf-out a little here at Granny’s.
Jean and I were corralled to the overstuffed, patchwork-covered, velvet sofa. Wolfes dropped down on either side of us, stood behind the couch, and crowded into the other chairs and floor space. All of them breathing, sniffing, scenting.
I leaned forward and very carefully placed the Heartwood on the table in front of us.
Jame moved to stand behind Granny, his hands resting on the back of the loveseat on either side of her head, while he stared at me.
Granny ignored me, Jean, the family around her, and just sipped her tea. Jean and I were not offered any hospitality other than a seat and being allowed to remain breathing.
Once her tea was done, she set the cup on the table between us, sat back, and folded her hands in her lap. “You tell me, now,” she ordered evenly. “All of it. True.”
“I took the Heartwood that night when I came to check on the office. I did not take it willingly. I was being controlled by a demon, who has now bound me to him by using the Heartwood in a spell. He is demanding my services before he will free me. After he used the Heartwood for the spell, I took it away from him, locked it in my safe, and am now bringing it back to you.”
“And your sister there?” she asked.
“I’m here as an officer of the law,” Jean said. “I need to know if you want to press charges against Delaney for stealing your property and using it to invoke unsanctioned magic.”
“Uh-huh.” Granny lifted her hands and stroked those short, strong fingers over the twins’ heads, a loving pet they leaned into.
The ticking of a clock in another room—maybe the kitchen—drummed through the silence, broken by the quiet snarls and the clicking of Sam and Dean’s teeth as they punctured the bones.
Jean and I waited. More family appeared and lounged against walls. One man sat at the bottom of a staircase that led to the upstairs communal sleeping space and smaller private bedrooms.
Then, at a signal I could not sense, a man and two women near the wall shifted into wolf form.
I wondered what order they’d been given.
“Take it home,” Granny said.
All three came around her loveseat and a woman still in human form—Tiffany—picked up the Heartwood from the low table.
The three wolves followed Tiffany up the stairs. The two youngsters stood on the loveseat and peeked over the top of it. All Wolfe eyes followed the Heartwood until it was gone from sight.
“The Wolfes and the Reeds go back way a’ways.” Granny had not watched the Heartwood being taken from the room. She had kept her gaze on me. “Ain’t that the right of it, Delaney, daughter of Robert?”
“Yes, Granny Wolfe.”
“And there are rules all those within these borders must follow. No matter who we be. No matter what we be. No matter what we are to this land.”
“Yes, Granny Wolfe,” I repeated.
