“I have been on staff for ten years and have more experience than any other teacher here,” Ms. Newman told Charles in a voice someone might use to impart state secrets. “When Ms. Edison is ill or when she has to travel, like when she was called away for a death in the family before Christmas, I’m the one who keeps an eye on things.” She breathed deeply, drawing attention to an asset that wouldn’t help her in her job.
Was it acceptable to wear low-cut shirts to take care of children? he wondered. The mores of the world tended to change more often than he paid attention to them, but her clothing didn’t seem to be entirely appropriate.
Ms. Newman looked at him until he felt like a side of beef she was thinking of eating for dinner. Like Ms. Edison, she was scared of him. He hadn’t been able to smell the principal’s fear, but he’d heard her heart rate speed up. But unlike with the principal, fear seemed to excite Ms. Newman. Brother Wolf much preferred Ms. Edison’s avoidance to Ms. Newman’s flirtation.
A bell rang from somewhere in the building, and Ms. Newman’s face fell. “That’s my cue, I’m afraid. It was very nice talking with you,” she said to Charles. “I look forward to seeing you again when you bring your child in.”
“Ms. Newman,” said Anna in a low voice.
Ms. Newman dragged her attention off Charles. Anna put her hand on him and leaned toward the other woman, who stepped back; smart woman.
“You need to understand something,” she said intensely. “Charles is my husband. You can’t have him. Mine. Not yours. There are lots of nice, unattached men out there, I’m sure. Pick one of them and you might live longer.” Then her body relaxed and her voice regained its usual cheeriness. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Newman.”
As they left, Charles turned back toward the teacher and shrugged helplessly. Then he put on his meekest face and turned around to follow Anna.
“I saw that,” she muttered at him.
“Saw what?” asked Charles in mock innocence. Brother Wolf was pleased with her claiming of them. So was Charles.
She gave him a look that made him smile, then knocked on the door of the room that bore a temporary paper sign that said miss baird in big block letters. Behind the door, decorated hopefully with spring flowers and bright green leaves, the strains of cello music wafted out. Charles recognized a recording of Yo-Yo Ma that he often listened to himself. The soon-to-be-unemployed Miss Baird had good taste in music.
The woman who answered Anna’s knock looked sad underneath her warm smile. She was very young, a little younger than his wife, he thought. Like Ms. Newman, she smelled entirely human.
Her ash-blond hair was cut short to reveal the bright purple elephant earrings that were the same color as her bright purple shirt. The bright colors only served to emphasize the depression that weighed down her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing perfume at all—which meant he already liked her better than Ms. Newman.
“Hello,” she said cautiously. “Ms. Edison told me to expect you. She also said she told you that I’m leaving at the end of the week.”
Anna nodded. “Yes. We’d still like to speak with you if you don’t mind.”
Miss Baird’s look sharpened, but she backed up and opened the door to invite them in. Her room was not as big as the very-available Ms. Newman’s, but it was decorated with art obviously created by her five-year-old students.
One student was washing a whiteboard with a spray bottle and an ink-stained rag, her back to them. She seemed totally engrossed in cleaning the board. There was a stiffness to her movements that didn’t please Brother Wolf, who always looked for things that were ill or off.
The teacher saw his glance.
“Amethyst is choosing not to sing today, so the music teacher sent her back here. Choice is fine, but it is a choice between music and work, not music and play.”
He’d thought initially that she was a submissive person, and that would indeed mean trouble while she was trying to run a class of young children. But that firm voice was plenty dominant. So her defeated greeting of them probably had more to do with the temporary nature of her employment than her usual personality.
“This is the five-year-olds’ classroom,” she said to him and Anna in the same tone she’d used on Amethyst. “It’s the smallest class until later in the year. The children who are five in the fall started kindergarten, so we only have the children who were five after the beginning of September. This class will grow as the four-year-olds in Ms. Newman’s class turn five. The kindergarten kids, who go to public school for half the day, go in an entirely different classroom. We do have an after-school program for older children divided by grades—first and second graders, third and fourth graders, fifth and above.”
She looked at them both, shoved her glasses more firmly on her nose, and said in a faintly accusatory tone, “But you aren’t here for that, are you?”
She glanced over her shoulder at the girl cleaning the whiteboard and lowered her voice. “I thought you looked familiar, but I only just this moment figured out why,” she told Charles in a voice that would not carry across the room over Yo-Yo Ma’s cello. “My stepfather is”—another glance at the girl—“one of you. When I was ten, you came to talk with him about his … friends. We lived in Cody, Wyoming. I know who you are and I know you don’t live in Scottsdale. Your moving away from Montana would have been big enough news that my stepfather would have told me.”
He didn’t remember her, though he had indeed gone to Cody about a decade ago and removed an Alpha who had lost control of his wolf. He’d gone to talk individually to all of the wolves in the pack. Some of them had been married, with human families.
“You don’t live here,” she said. “You don’t have children. So why are you here?”
He took in a deep breath, to make sure, then turned at Brother Wolf’s steely determination to face the child who was still wiping down the same board, which had been clean for a while.
“We are here to speak with her,” he said.
The child froze. Then straightened and turned awkwardly around.
Beside him, Anna, too, had stilled.
“This doesn’t concern you, wolf,” the child said in the voice of a five-year-old.
“Chelsea Sani belongs to the grandson of the Alpha of the Salt River Pack,” he told her. Miss Baird already knew about werewolves, and about secrets. She would not tell other people of Chelsea’s connection to the pack. It was important to let the fae know where it had erred. The pack was a deterrent that would keep Chelsea and her children safe. “You picked the wrong victim, protected by the pack and by the Marrok.”
The creature’s face twisted in an expression that didn’t belong on a child. “No werewolves. That’s the only rule. Mackie’s mother is not a werewolf. Mackie is not a werewolf. Mackie’s brother is not a werewolf.”
“They belong to us,” Charles said, noting that the fae was more interested in Chelsea as Mackie’s mother than as a person herself. That indicated the attack was actually focused on Mackie. He walked toward the child, keeping her attention on him and not his mate or the human woman who was more vulnerable than either of them.
He could smell fae magic; it permeated this room, where this fae had apparently been playing at being five years old. But the smell didn’t get stronger as he approached her. Also, he detected only magic and not the fae herself. Had she disguised her scent somehow? But then why not disguise the magic, too? And what was she doing with the magic he could feel as a steady presence?
She snarled soundlessly, backing away from him before he got within touching distance. “No. She wasn’t a werewolf. Fair game. Fair game. Witch but not werewolf. I could kill her, the rules say.” She still sounded like a five-year-old.
“Amethyst?” said the teacher, sounding afraid.
“Amethyst is mine,” said the child in a sharp bark of anger. It was said with the same degree of possessiveness that Anna had just used with the four-year-olds’ teacher. “You can’t have her. She’s mine.”
Charles knew what it was. It had given the game away with its last two words.