Free Dead Heat by Patricia Briggs

some things.”
    “Men,” said Mackie smugly, reacting to Anna’s tone rather than the content of their conversation. “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”
    “Shut your piehole, punk kid,” Max said, thumping her on the head with the palm of his hand.
    “I’m telling Mama you said ‘Shut your piehole,’” Michael said. “‘Shut your piehole’ is a bad word.”
    “‘Shut your piehole’ is three words, Michael,” said Mackie.
    Undaunted, Michael said, “I’m telling Mama you used three bad words.”
    “You do that, kid,” Max told him, sounding subdued. “I hope you do that.” He glanced at Anna and said, “So tell me about this fae magic that made my mother try to kill us. I thought the fae were all locked up.”
    Anna snorted. “They locked themselves up. I don’t know who got your mom or why; maybe she can help with that when she—”
    “Don’t you mean if she—” He didn’t complete the sentence.
    “It could go wrong,” she admitted. “Lots of people don’t make it. But your mother has courage and willpower. She fought to keep you safe. Apparently she could stave off the compulsion by hurting herself; that’s why she was so cut up, why she stabbed herself before telling you to take the kids away.”
    “But she made it,” Max said. “Why didn’t they just call the ambulance? Why Change her?”
    “She saved you,” agreed Anna. “But it took us too long to get here. By the time Charles found her, she was dying from blood loss.”
    He swallowed.
    “Mom is dying?” asked Mackie.
    Darn it,
thought Anna.
Forgot the little ones were listening in.
    “I thought she was turning into a werewolf like Ánáli Hastiin,” Mackie said. “Dying is like Mrs. Glover. Dying is gone forever.” Her voice rose and wobbled.
    Her little brother picked up on it and started to cry. “Mrs. Glover was nice. I loved Mrs. Glover. She gave me candy.”
    Max looked overwhelmed.
    Anna gathered herself together and said, “I don’t know who Mrs. Glover is, but your mother is strong. Brother Wolf told me so, and he never lies.”
    “Who is Brother Wolf?” asked Max.
    She hadn’t meant to bring Brother Wolf out in the open. His presence confused people who had been werewolves for centuries.
    “He’s the big wolf,” said Mackie. “The one who made Ánáli Hastiin listen.”
    Anna tilted her head at the little girl who smelled like witch—witchborn and observant, too.
    “That was Charles, Anna’s husband,” said Max.
    “You are both right,” she said. “That was Charles and Brother Wolf.”
    “You call your husband Brother Wolf when he is in his wolf shape?”
    Anna decided that a technical discussion would lower the emotional distress and possibly give the kids some useful information. Charles wouldn’t mind; Brother Wolf wasn’t a secret.
    “No,” she said. “I call Charles Charles. And I call Brother Wolf Brother Wolf. It has nothing to do with the shape they wear, or that they share the same body.”
    “I’m lost in an episode of
Doctor Who
,” said Max without even a hint of humor. “Explain that to me.”
    “Werewolves,” Anna told him, “have two natures. The human part and the wolf part. But the wolf isn’t like a real wolf—it’s a lot more angry than that.” How did you tell a kid his mom was going to be a monster? Maybe she should have thought this through better.
    “Like the Incredible Hulk,” Mackie said thoughtfully. “Nice Mommy and Werewolf Mommy. We’re not supposed to bother Ánáli Hastiin when he’s grumpy.”
    Anna looked at her for a moment. “Exactly. Most werewolves learn to control the wolf, the Hulk part, in a year or two.”
    “Does Great-Grandfather have a Brother Wolf?” asked Michael.
    “I don’t know,” Anna told him. “Most werewolves don’t actually think of themselves as two people, not like my husband does. But he was born a werewolf and it made him strange in a lot of ways. To him, his wolf is a separate being who