CHAPTER 2 #2
"There's more." Kalen pulled the shirt over his head. "Brennon's bloodline trace is gone."
The berserker went still in the way Kalen had learned to watch for. Not stillness like calm. Stillness like the half second before a man came across a table at you.
"Gone how?"
"Not faded. Cut. The thread that ties him to Lainie's magic, to the property's awareness—sliced clean. Whoever did it knew exactly which thread to find and exactly how to take it without rippling the rest of the web."
"He alive?"
"I think so. The cut was surgical, not violent. If they'd wanted him dead, we'd know by the way the watch was screaming. But he's invisible to the vineyard now. He could walk through the front door and the wards would read him as a stranger."
Charlie exhaled through his nose. A long breath, slow. The kind of breath a man took when he was holding something down with both hands.
"You're telling me her son walks back onto this property today, and our own defenses don't know him."
"That's what I'm telling you."
"And the storm dies right before the guests show up."
"Aye. It'll die. Whoever's running this wants the opening to happen. They want the crowd. They want her exposed in the open with a crowd of people between her and the house."
Charlie turned his head and spit into the gravel. "It's him."
"It's him."
Neither of them said the name. They didn't have one to say.
The Collector was a shape in the negative space of the last several months—the patron Bruno had mentioned and then refused to discuss, the hand behind the goblins, the witches, the wolf pack that had pushed too far north last fall.
Always one layer back. Always paying someone else to take the hit.
Not anymore.
"Banshee at the west fence," Kalen said. "Cu Sith with her. Both of them. They dissolved before I could close."
Charlie's face changed. The berserker carried more old-country blood in him than he admitted out loud, and he knew what those two meant standing together.
"He's announcing himself."
"He's announcing he doesn't have to hide anymore."
A long beat. The rain had eased to a thin patter on the garage roof. The storm's outer rings were unwinding, Kalen could feel them dispersing, the funnel collapsing into a clear morning that would arrive on schedule the moment the first car turned off the highway.
Charlie scrubbed a hand down his face. "She's been working toward today for three months."
"I know."
"Cancel it, and she'll know something's wrong before her coffee's cold."
"I know."
"Don't cancel it, and we're hosting an event with sixty civilians on the ground and a sovereign-class predator already inside the wire."
"Aye."
Charlie looked at him. Direct. The way he looked at a man when he wanted the truth handed over without trimming.
"You want to tell her?"
Kalen's silence was answer enough.
"You think she can't handle it."
"I think she can handle it. That's why I won't put it on her this morning.
" Kalen's voice had a rasp in it he didn't like.
He swallowed it. "Three months I've watched her build this.
Nail by nail. Vine by vine. She walks into that tasting room today thinking the only thing trying to kill her is the weather, she stands in what she built.
She walks in carrying what I just told you, she carries it instead.
She's earned the morning, Charlie. We give her the morning. "
Charlie watched him a long moment. Whatever he saw, he made his peace with.
"All right. Morning. But the second the last guest's car is off the property, you tell her. Every piece of it. The storm, the boy, the harbingers. All of it."
"Agreed."
"And until then, we tighten down. Quiet."
"Aye."
Charlie's hands started moving, the way they did when he was thinking out loud with his fingers.
"I've got the Henderson boys booked for parking.
I'll pull them. Put my nephew on the lot instead—he's berserker on his mother's side, half-blood, hasn't surged yet but he'll read trouble before it shows.
I'll position him where he can see the road and the tree line both. "
"Good."
"You're at the entrance to the tasting room. Anyone comes through that door, you read them first."
"I will."
"And the boy." Charlie's jaw set. "When he turns up—if he turns up—we get eyes on him and we keep them there. I don't care if he's hung over, fine, or floating an inch off the ground. He doesn't leave the property again until we know what was done to him and who did it."
"Lainie won't let him out of her sight anyway. Not after this morning."
"She doesn't need to know why she's not letting him out of her sight."
"No."
Charlie nodded once. A decision made, locked, set aside.
"One more thing." Kalen kept his voice level. "The watch knows."
"What do you mean?"
"It's been running warm since before I woke up.
Lainie can feel it. She doesn't know what it's telling her, but she feels it.
If anything happens today—anything she sees with her own eyes that doesn't match what we tell her—that relic is going to fill in the gap on its own.
And it's bonded to her, Charlie. It won't lie to her even if we do. "
Charlie made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "So we've got till the watch decides we're full of it."
"Aye. That's our window."
"Then we don't waste it." Charlie pushed off the garage wall. "I'll come up to the main house in twenty minutes. Act like I came by early to check the generator. You go in, do your usual. Make her coffee."
"My usual involves a towel."
"Whatever gets her smiling. She needs to start the day smiling."
"Aye."
Charlie took one step away and stopped. Turned his head, not all the way back.
"Kalen."
"Aye."
"When he comes for her. When this thing puts a hand on her."
"He won't."
"When he tries."
Kalen didn't answer right away. The dragon was very close to the surface again—closer than was safe, closer than the grounding stones in his room could've held even if they hadn't been drained. He let it sit there. Didn't push it down.
"He'll burn," Kalen said. "I'll make sure of it."
Charlie nodded. Walked off into the gray light toward the guesthouse, the rain easing to mist on his shoulders.
Kalen stood alone behind the garage. Above him, the last of the manufactured storm thinned to nothing—clouds parting on a schedule he hadn't set. The sky behind them was a clean, lying blue.
He started toward the kitchen door.
Lainie would be awake by now. She'd want coffee.
He could give her that much.