He bent down to look in the car to see who was in it. He did an exaggerated double take when he saw Tad’s magic garb. Tad huffed indignantly. Satisfied with Tad’s reaction, Wulfe opened the sliding door and got in. He belted Scooby in before he belted himself.

The hair on the back of my neck tried to run away. I was really glad that Zee was sitting behind Wulfe to keep watch. If anyone was a match for Wulfe, it was Zee. I was also glad that Scooby was in the seat directly behind me.

“If I’d known we were going medieval, I’d have worn my hair shirt. I’m sure I have it around somewhere.” The vampire snapped his fingers. “Damn. I left it at home. It will probably be another half millennium before I get a chance to wear it again. Oh well. These things do tend to come back in fashion.”

A lot of the vampires have accents. But Wulfe, today, sounded like any other teenager born and raised in the Tri-Cities. Other than the fact that I would be surprised if there were more than one or two teenagers born and raised here who would even know what a hair shirt was.

He raised his head and sniffed like a dog. “You brought me a present? How kind. Give. Give it to me.”

Tad looked at me and I shook my head. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

Wulfe made an impatient sound. “You have something that belongs to the witches.”

I had grabbed the box with the broken athame when I got out of Sherwood’s car. It hadn’t been difficult. I’d been carrying it while he drove—and he’d been worried about making sure the garage was safe before he left.

Sherwood’s wolf had thought that he could use it to hunt down the witches. I didn’t want him anywhere near these witches, so I had taken it when he wasn’t looking.

I reached between the front seats, grabbed the take-out box, and held it up.

“Ooooo,” Wulfe said, taking it. “Looky here. What naughty children to let this out of their hands. Pity it’s broken.”

“Why is that?” I asked him.

“Because the witches could have done all sorts of nasty things with that tonight, and I could have watched them. If they really do have an almost completed coven—”

I had given Marsilia a play-by-play of the last day, which had ended about a block from the seethe. I had left nothing out. I didn’t know if it had been a mistake to tell her that there was a witch out there who could control werewolves, but she’d told me about Frost, who could control vampires, hadn’t she?

Evidently, if he knew about Sherwood’s assessment that the witches were running with the power of an almost coven behind them, Wulfe must have been listening the whole time.

“—they could have used it to take over anyone who held this knife. Lots of mischief to be done. I’d say they killed five or six people to make this athame—and that’s if they had plenty of practice. They won’t be happy that it is broken. It’s useless now.”

He tossed it back to the front seat and the box spilled the separate pieces onto the floor. Tad bent over and collected them while I put the bus in gear and pulled away from the seethe. Marsilia’s home base gave me the creeps.

Not that driving away from the seethe would help much, not when Wulfe was in my car.

“What does it mean?” I asked him. “That there are ten families in their coven. A lot of what I know about the witches comes from Wikipedia; it told me that a coven had thirteen witches.”

I could feel him staring at me. I was careful to keep my eyes on the road.

“I get the best spells from Wiki,” he said. “Have you read what it says about werewolves? I keep editing the article, but someone—and I think it’s Bran Cornick—keeps changing it back.”

“Vampire,” said Zee. “If you don’t answer the question, I will.”

“So touchy,” said Wulfe, admiration in his tone. But then he said, “Back in the bad old days, a coven of witches was thirteen witches, one from each of thirteen families. If you had a complete coven, then you were limited in power only by your imagination.” He sighed. “But, since they are witches, usually that only lasted a few months or a year at a time before someone fought with someone else and the next thing you know, there would be bodies all over the place. Untidy folk, witches.”

“Give me an example of what they did,” I said.

“Stonehenge,” Wulfe said promptly. “The Little Ice Age. A couple of volcanic eruptions. They weren’t responsible for the Black Plague itself—but I know that in several instances they used plagues to discipline rulers who worked against them. The Great Plague of London killed a hundred thousand people in eighteen months. I think Bran himself took care of that coven.”

“Holy wow,” I breathed.

“But they don’t have a real coven,” said Wulfe. “The best the Hardesty witches managed—with nine different families represented in their coven—was 1816.”

Zee grunted.

I had a history degree, but 1816 didn’t ring any bells. The War of 1812 ended in 1815. In 1817 James Monroe became president of the United States—and I only knew that because I’d written a paper on him in college.

Wulfe was waiting.

“What happened in 1816?” I asked.

“It was the Year Without a Summer in New England,” said Tad.

“I see it isn’t true,” said Wulfe, “what they say about modern education.” He sighed. “Pitiful attempt, really; with a full coven they could have frozen the whole Atlantic seaboard for a couple of years.”

Enough of that talk or I was going to pull over and run screaming into the night. I was already scared. We only had two witches to deal with, I reminded myself.

“Elizaveta said she knew when a witch came into her territory,” I said, thinking out loud. “Will they know when you get too close?”

“This was my territory a long time before Elizaveta Arkadyevna Vyshnevetskaya came here,” Wulfe said, his voice suddenly a purr of power. “So subtly did I lay my hold on the land that she did not, does not even feel it—no more than did the new intruders. They will not know me until I choose.”

“I thought the vampires called you the Wizard,” Tad said. “Are you a witch or a wizard?”

Wulfe preened. “Yes,” he said.

Witches had power over the living—animals, trees, people. Wizards manipulated objects with magic—bending spoons, moving furniture, that kind of thing. Wizards were a lot more rare than witches because witches deliberately bred themselves for power. I didn’t know if wizards ever tried it. Maybe they did. But I’d never heard of a wizard family. That he was both . . . and a vampire as well . . .