Luckily, Chelsea has some witch blood that gives her the strength to stab herself instead of her three children. An unidentified fae has spelled Chelsea, placing a geas on her that forces her to stab her children and then kill herself. Kage gets some frantic voice mails from Chelsea begging him to come home immediately to save their children. The event that sets off the action takes place just as Charles and Anna arrive at the Sani's ranch. Note: Briggs provides an early clue to the human identity of the villain, but you have to think carefully to recognize it. A mysterious Fae female gives him back his magic and sets him free so that he can enter the human world and do some major damage. He is introduced in the Prologue as a long-time prisoner of the Gray Lords of the Fae. The plot that ties everything together revolves around a powerful child-abusing fae known as the doll collector. Their father-son relationship reminds me of the TV show, Forever, in which 41-year-old Ioan Gruffudd plays the father of 80-year-old Judd Hirsch. I had to keep reminding myself how the men were related and who was really the oldest. The story can get confusing because Joseph is elderly and frail, while his father Hosteen is young-looking and healthy.
Joseph's father, Hosteen Sani, became a werewolf 100 years ago when he was in his twenties. Just to be clear: As the story begins, all of the Sani family except Hosteen are humans: Joseph and Maggie Sani (both in their eighties), their son Kage and his wife Chelsea (both in their forties), and Kage and Chelsea's three young children. The complications of this familial relationship play out in story threads woven through the primary story line. She loved him back in the day, but rejected him as soon as she found out about his wolfy nature. To make things worse, Joseph's wife, Maggie, still holds a torch for Charles. Hosteen is furious that Charles won't act, and he extends his hostility to Anna, who is meeting his family for the first time. Joseph's father, Hosteen, a full-blooded Navajo and Alpha of the Salt River Pack, wants Charles to save Joseph's life by turning him into a werewolf, but Joseph doesn't want the bite, and Charles refuses to force him into the change. Joseph and Charles spent a lot of time together when Joseph was in his teens and twenties when they were both itinerant range riders in the Southwest. Joseph Sani is a human in his eighties who is dying from lung cancer, but he has kept his illness a secret from Charles. Charles decides that he will take Anna on a vacation to his old friend's horse ranch in Arizona to pick out a gift horse. Charles and Anna Cornick have now been married a little over three years, and it's Anna's 26th birthday. It's been a long wait between books in this series, but thankfully, this one can be read as a stand-alone.
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