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In his powerful bipedfuris form, Duncan took a step toward us. Tense muscles flexed under his short salt-and-pepper fur, and his jaws parted, revealing racks of sharp teeth.

I tensed, shifting to stand in front of my mother’s bed, afraid this had been a mistake. That feeling intensified when an orange glow grew visible through the fur on Duncan’s forehead. Had Radomir and Abrams already somehow sensed that he’d changed? Duncan had said they wouldn’t be able to manipulate him into attacking, not from afar, but was that the truth? Did he know for certain?

Even if they couldn’t make him attack, they could call him away from us. I’d wanted that so I could track him to their hideout, but I’d hoped we could help Mom first.

Power throbbed in the air beside me, and I jumped, startled. It was the case. The lid tilted open, and brilliant silver light flowed out.

Duncan paused to peer at it before squinting and looking away. The mushroom-shaped artifact lay within the case, but the light made it too bright to more than glance at .

“It looks like you do activate it in that form.” Keeping my gaze on Duncan, I lifted the artifact out of the case, the mushroom shape warm, smooth, and with heft. The silver glow from the case lessened. “Probably better than a rattlesnake.”

Mom stirred in her bed but didn’t move to rise. She was watching Duncan. While I’d been worrying about being in a confined space with a bipedfuris under someone else’s control, she’d been studying him without fear.

“A rattlesnake?” she murmured.

“That’s what I could have pulled into the bedroom with you.” I placed the artifact next to her on the bed, hoping it would sense her disease and know what to do.

“Less appealing than a werewolf.” Her gaze shifted from Duncan to the artifact. In the face of a bipedfuris, she might have been fearless, but her expression held unease as she eyed it.

“You think so?”

“Snakes are cold and scaly. He’s strong and lush.”

“Oh, he knows it.” I didn’t think Duncan would react much to the words he heard while he was in that form, but his short snout came up, as if with pride. I snorted. Maybe he recognized an acknowledgment of his appealing lushness in any form.

I debated what to do—how to call upon the artifact’s magic. Before, it had reacted automatically, sensing the poison in Duncan’s wound, and it had known how to heal him. Now, it emanated power, but it wasn’t growing intensely bright as it had before. It didn’t seem to be doing anything. My hope started to fade.

“I sense that it has protection magic,” Mom said. “I would be interested to consult other elders and maybe our wise wolf about it. There’s great power bound up within it. Maybe it can send its magic out across many miles.”

“We only need it to use it across the bed.”

Mom flexed her bandaged hand, lifting a finger to prod it. I opened my mouth to warn her it might zap her, but its power flared, and the silver light I’d hoped for came from the mushroom cap.

My hope surged back to life. Maybe it would cure her.

Behind me, Duncan paced. Distracted by the artifact, I’d forgotten to keep an eye on him.

Faint magic whispered into the room, raising the hair on the back of my neck. One of Duncan’s clawed hands rose to his forehead. Using his heel, he cupped that scar. His hand blocked the orange glow, but I doubted that gesture could negate the power of the call. Radomir knew the bipedfuris was out and wanted Duncan to return to his quest, to serving him.

I clenched my jaw, wanting to find Radomir and put an end to all that.

The silver light intensified, pulling my gaze back. It flowed from the artifact and toward… my Mom’s hand. The one wrapped with a bandage. Its power poured into the spot.

“It tingles,” Mom said with awe. “Such power.”

Feeling defeat rather than awe, I sank to my knees beside the bed. Unless Mom had hand cancer, I didn’t think this was going to be the answer.

She sighed with some relief, letting her head fall back against her pillows.

Something stirred under her nightshirt, startling me. A glow that matched that of the artifact seeped out through the material. The talisman? Or her medallion?

The slender chains around her neck shifted, and both medallion and talisman, the two chains entwined, slipped out from under her shirt. I couldn’t tell which was responsible for the new glow. Maybe both were, their magic activated by the proximity of the artifact.

They lifted into the air, defying gravity. I gaped as they were pulled across Mom’s nightshirt and toward the glowing mushroom, somehow drawn to it.

Mom noticed and tried to tuck the jewelry back into her shirt. “Is that thing magnetic?”

She tilted her chin toward the mushroom artifact, its glow now fading.

I started to shake my head but remembered Duncan experimenting on the case. He’d used one of his magnets to attract what had then been an unknown-to-us object inside.

“It might be,” I said. “It’s at least got some metal in it that’s attracted by magnets.”

“These must too.” Mom released her medallion and the talisman, no longer fighting their attempt to be pulled toward the artifact.

Something else distracted her. Her hand.

She flexed her fingers, then marveled, “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

I smiled and murmured, “That’s good,” though I had a feeling the artifact hadn’t done anything to heal the greater issue. Maybe it didn’t have the power to do that. Even though nothing in the translation had suggested it could cure disease, it was hard not to be disappointed. “That was from the bear fight, right?”

I’d assumed that, but she hadn’t told me anything about the wound.

“From the trap I fell on during the bear fight.” She grimaced. “It was hidden in the leaves, and I didn’t see it, an old-fashioned metal trap with teeth.”

When she gestured in the air, as if to draw it, my mind conjured something from a cartoon. I hadn’t thought anyone used traps like that anymore.

One-handedly, she tugged at the knots on the bandage. I helped her remove it, though I was aware of Duncan pacing behind us, the claws on his feet clacking whenever he stepped off the rug and onto the bare wooden floorboards. Tension knotted his body as he fought the call of the control device. Any second now, he might lose that battle.

Mom, more interested in what the artifact had done than Duncan’s pacing, held up her hand to the daylight coming in the window and rotated it. The scars appeared to be old and faded, even more so than the one on her neck that I’d noticed the other day.

“Huh,” Mom said. “That’s amazing. We put a new bandage on my hand last night, and wounds were still weeping blood. Lorenzo thought the trap had poison on the teeth, and that was why my werewolf regeneration wasn’t working well on the wounds. I admit I didn’t wash the cuts after I got them, not until later. My whole life, wounds have healed easily and nothing has ever gotten infected, so…” She shrugged.

“If there was poison lingering, that might be why the artifact worked.”

A grunt came from behind, and Duncan lunged for the door. He jerked to a halt before reaching it, the heel of his hand pressing to the scar again.

“What’s happening?” Mom asked.

“The one who raised him bound him to a control device that can call him across miles.” It could do a lot more than that, but I didn’t go into details.

My gaze drifted to the talisman and medallion, the chains still entwined, a faint glow still coming from them. They clung together as if their magic had fused them. Or had the artifact changed something within them, giving them magnetism that they hadn’t had before? I shook my head, not certain of the science that might account for this. Or even if science could explain magic .

Mom said something, but I didn’t register the words. An idea had popped into my head, and I snatched the bag that Bolin had given me out of my pocket. I dug out the small GPS device, the magnetic GPS device.

Before I held it toward the artifact, I felt a pull. It was also drawn to it. Until I flipped it over. Then it was repulsed.

“Guess we know where the poles are on this.” I pointed to the talisman. I wouldn’t ask to take the medallion from Mom, but maybe that would do. “May I borrow that?”

Grunts and straining sounds came from Duncan. He wouldn’t be able to fight the call much longer. It was as if he, too, was made from metal and being magnetically drawn.

If only the magic were that innocuous.

“It’s yours,” Mom said dryly as she untangled the two chains and reached for the talisman’s clasp behind her neck. “It does help soothe my pain, by the way. I didn’t thank you for that.”

“I’ll bring it back.”

“Okay.”

As I pulled the necklace away from her, a tiny beam of silver light shot from Mom’s medallion to the talisman. It disappeared so quickly that I wasn’t sure I’d seen it, but the mushroom artifact hummed faintly. For an instant, I sensed more than magic from it. I sensed… emotion ? That it was pleased? The feeling faded as quickly as the beam of light had, and I shook away the thoughts. I’d probably imagined it all.

Another grunt from behind reminded me to focus on my new idea, my mission .

Mom watched as I held the GPS tracker to the back of the talisman.

Though the mushroom-shaped artifact had a greater pull, the tracker did click to it.

“Duncan.” I turned, holding the chain up and trying to show him the talisman while hiding the GPS tracker now attached to it. That was a challenge since it was larger. But, maybe in his werewolf form, he wouldn’t be as observant—or wouldn’t quite know what the flat black disc was. “They’re trying to call you, aren’t they?”

He grunted, his eyes locking with mine. They continued to look more animal than human, the power of werewolf magic within them, but there was recognition too. He knew who I was. And maybe he understood me.

“Do you remember when we found this locket? You said it was a longevity talisman. It’s lucky, too, I think.” We hadn’t spoken of that, but maybe he wouldn’t remember the details while in this form. “If you get called up by Radomir and Abrams, you’re going to need luck.”

He grunted again, but it sounded more suspicious than agreeing, and squinted at the locket. Then he snarled, clutching his forehead once more.

“Wear this, okay?” I stepped forward and lifted the chain, my heart hammering in my chest. Not only was I trying to trick a great bipedfuris much stronger than I, but I was getting close to him, close enough that he could tear into me with a sweep of his claws.

When he jerked his arms down, I jumped, afraid he would attack. Tension radiated from his body, from his every taut muscle. He looked like he wanted to slash into his enemies with those claws.

But he stared at me through the chain I held up, meeting my gaze. Again, I noted the intelligence in there. Could he remember the plan to follow him that I’d spoken of? The one he hadn’t approved of?

I smiled encouragingly and lifted the chain a little higher, trying to indicate that I wanted to put it on him. Too bad it wouldn’t fit over his head. I would have to clasp it behind his neck. Talk about walking into the lion’s den… the werewolf’s maw…

“Let’s put this on you, okay?” Damn, my mouth was dry. “For luck.”

Duncan’s gaze shifted toward the locket and his eyes narrowed. A bead of sweat ran down my back. Tricking him wasn’t going to work. I had to tell him the truth and hope he would go for it. That he wouldn’t be pissed.

But his eyes opened a little wider, and he cocked his head as he regarded the locket. As if he’d sensed something new about it.

Appearing almost contemplative, he met my eyes. I opened my mouth, groping for a way to sell him on the locket.

He surprised me by lowering his head. It took me a moment to realize he was offering his neck, that he would let me put it on him.

With a tremor in my fingers, I lifted the chain. When I tried to operate the clasp, I fumbled it and almost dropped the locket. I half-expected Duncan to come to his senses and spring away, but he remained utterly still. I fastened the clasp, and the locket fell against his furred chest, the GPS remaining attached.

When I stepped back and lowered my hands, he sprang into motion.

Startled, I scrambled away, but he didn’t come toward me. He rushed out the door.

In the other room, Lorenzo grunted in surprise. The front door banged open. I lunged for the window in time to see Duncan leap the railing and run to his van. Claws scraping the metal, he flung open the door and jumped inside. A couple of seconds later, he leaped back out, carrying a big black case over his shoulder. Still inside of the van, Jasmine and Bolin gaped out the window.

I stared. What the hell?

Without glancing back toward me, Duncan charged into the woods, heading north.

Toward those with the control device? Those calling him? Of course. What else could it be? But why was he taking… whatever was in that case?

“What happened?” Mom asked. “Where’s he going?”

“He’s going to lead me to the ones with the control device, and I’m going to take it from them so they won’t be able to command him any longer.”

Assuming the tracker didn’t fall off. I hoped that magnet was strong.

“Oh, good,” Mom said. “Nobody should command a werewolf, especially not one as powerful as he.”

“I agree.” I grabbed Duncan’s clothes, fished his keys out of his pants pocket, and headed for the van. “Time to see if this plan will work.”