“There’s more to it than putting your smell on a man, little wolf,” Carl said.
Sage stopped with the coffee halfway to his mouth.
“Carl, if you hadn’t brought the coffee and hadn’t saved Will last night, I’d kick you out for belittling him like that.”He interlaced his fingers with Will’s.“We’re together, okay?”
Carl gave them a look.“He your witch bride or what?”
Sage felt himself go purple.“No one does that anymore.So how come you showed up here last night to chase off the loup-garou?Oh, and who was that with you?”
Carl shrugged.“Kira.She’s my sister.She did a perimeter check yesterday after you left—before we headed out for the moon.Her nose is better than mine, and she picked up loup-garou.”
“But not before?”Sage asked.
Carl shook his head.“I didn’t smell it.Which leads me to believe the ass-clown was using magic to hide what he is.That human-looking not-quite human you made run off with his bowels giving out on him.”
Will leaned forward.“That guy?He didn’t—” Will’s eyes grew distant.
Sage turned to him.“What?”
Will trembled, then shook himself as if to make it stop.“I had that feeling all last night after we got home.Unease.”
“Why’d a loup-garou want to hurt you?”Carl asked Sage, and Will visibly deflated, which Carl noticed.“Wait,youhave a loup-garou after you?Got a mouth on you.You piss off the wrong canine or something?”
“My old pack sold me to loups-garous.”Will didn’t look at Carl as he said the words.
Carl’s eyes went wide.“Well, shit.That’s… I don’t even know.You’re a lucky bastard, I’ll give you that.”
“Lucky?” Will’s head snapped up.He looked furious.
Carl kept his calm.“To be alive.Was this guy one of them?”
Will shook his head, and Sage jumped in.“They all met Peter.”
“Ah.”Carl nodded.“That’s good to hear.So this is…just some random loup-garou trying to get into the Boudoir without anyone finding out what he is, and then when that didn’t work, he follows you two?Does that make sense to either of you?”
Sage shook his head, but Will was frowning.“Will?”Sage put a hand on his back.
Will took a deep breath.“He talked on the phone sometimes.Ed did.To someone he was close with.I think it was his brother, but he never really said.”Will’s jaw ticked.“And I might have—they beat me.I might have forgotten things.Faces.”
“Loups-garous don’t come in families.They usually don’t even come in packs.”The hard look left Carl’s eyes, and he seemed to reassess Will.
“The pack knew each other from before they were turned,” Will said.“He might’ve turned his brother.Ed might have, I mean.They were…Ted used to say stuff about how the person on the phone had to be careful of other people, and—” Will’s head swiveled to Sage.“Oh, fuck.I think I did a bad thing.”
“What do you mean?”
Carl leaned in.
Will swallowed, and Sage saw his Adam’s apple bob.“I… They made me do magic?For hiding.I put it into those key charms, you know, into those little metal containers that could hold my spices and herbs.And they made me make more than three.”
Sage slapped his forehead.“If that was your magic, it explains why absolutely nothing in the house reacted.I thought it was a particularly strong illusion spell or something, but if it was you—”
Carl took a sip from his own coffee.“Will also did blast you into your garden pond, right?I’ve never seen anything like that, and I’ve got to say, when you do magic, Sage, it looks more elegant than that.”
Will briefly glowered at Carl, then looked up at Sage.“I didn’t do that.I’ve never been able to do magic in my wolf form.”
Sage shrugged.“You did though.Twice, actually.The first time you whammied me right out of the house, the second, you helped heal your own wounds.”
Will’s jaw dropped.
