Blood Challenge

TWENTY-TWO

THE current crop of experts claimed that baby girls stare at faces while baby boys watch the mobile over their cribs. They extrapolated from this to conclude that women are inherently interested in people and men are inherently interested in objects.

Isen Turner supposed they might be right in a statistical sense, but numbers don’t tell the whole story. If you have one foot in boiling water and one in a tub of dry ice, on the average you’re comfortable. And maybe those experts hadn’t included any lupi in their sampling. His mother used to say he’d begun studying people the moment he figured out how to focus his eyes.

He’d kept that up for the ninety-one years since. People fascinated him. Male people, female people … lupi, human, gnome, whatever. He never tired of studying them, figuring out what they were thinking and feeling, what they wanted, what they feared, how they had changed or were changing. That fascination worked out well. There was no more important subject for a Rho to devote himself to.

That’s why it was his youngest son, not his eldest, who would become Rho one day. Benedict saw clearly when he looked, but it was a learned behavior, not innate. It was also why Isen’s middle son hadn’t been in the running. Mick had never learned to clear his eyes where others were concerned, his vision of them forever warped by his own wants and needs and obsessions. Eventually, this had killed him.

That was a grief Isen lived with daily, one that woke him some nights with his face wet. But Isen was well-acquainted with grief. It was the one opponent to whom even a Rho must submit.

Benedict understood and accepted why Isen had chosen Rule as heir. This was one of Benedict’s most remarkable gifts—a deep and fluid acceptance of both his limits and his talents. Rule didn’t understand, an odd blind spot in one who otherwise made good progress in his own study of self and others. But Isen knew his sons. Rule’s blind spot would not hamper him as Rho, for Benedict would never take advantage of Rule’s love and admiration for his big brother. He would, quite literally, die first.

On this sweet-smelling night in September, Isen didn’t need his ninety-plus years of expertise. Arjenie Fox presented no challenge. A scent-blind ten-year-old boy could have read her face. She might be able to keep a factual secret, but emotionally she was transparent.

True, she wasn’t purely human, and Isen had no real experience with the sidhe. That might be throwing him off. He didn’t think so. When Seabourne had revealed her binding, Isen was convinced she felt a single, simple emotion.

Relief.

That certainly wasn’t the emotion the others felt. Seabourne was suspicious and fascinated. Benedict remained fascinated, too, though in quite a different way, but he’d gone still, ready to counter if she suddenly attacked. As for their invisible company, why, Rule was silent at the moment. Probably typing out on his laptop what Seabourne had just said so Lily would know.

Technology was a marvel sometimes.

Rule had been listening in on their dinner table conversation via Isen’s phone, typing a rough transcript of it for Lily, whose human ears would miss most of it. Benedict and Seabourne were undoubtedly aware of this. They would have heard Rule’s occasional comments from Isen’s earbud. Benedict had probably known from the moment Isen returned to the table with an open phone line. Even for a lupus, his hearing was unusually acute.

Isen’s hearing wasn’t exceptional, but it was easy for him to hear Lily’s reaction. She wanted Isen to get away from Arjenie right now. Isen smiled. His youngest son’s Chosen was wise and wary. Good traits. He had no intention of following her directions, but he approved of her caution. She was very like Benedict in some ways. “You can see this binding?” he asked Seabourne.

“I do now. It’s a subtle thing, almost invisible unless it’s active. I thought it a natural part of her aura at first.”

Arjenie Fox looked from Benedict to Isen to Seabourne. No doubt it was clear from their faces they weren’t experiencing the relief she felt. She spoke quickly. “Did you know that one kind of binding spell doesn’t compel a person to do anything? It wouldn’t even make them lie. It would just keep them from revealing something.”

“Who did this to you?” Benedict demanded. “Friar?”

That deepened her anxiety, but she didn’t speak. Probably couldn’t.

Seabourne could and did. “Extremely unlikely. The spell is beyond anything I could do, and I refuse to believe he has that kind of skill and training. Plus it’s hard as hell to use mind-magic on sidhe. Even someone only a quarter-sidhe would be resistant.”

Isen spoke. “Could another sidhe do it?”

“It takes a sidhe to bind a sidhe?” Cullen shrugged. “Maybe.”

Arjenie smiled brightly. “I don’t think I told you that I was five when Eledan came to see me the first time. He was worried about me chattering the way kids do, so he put a spell on me so I couldn’t speak about him or my heritage. I couldn’t tell anyone about the spell, but fortunately my mother figured out what he’d done and made him remove it. Otherwise I couldn’t tell you about it. Or him.”

“Your father did this to you,” Benedict said flatly.

Her smile stayed stuck tight to her face.

“You can’t confirm or deny this binding,” Isen said gently. “You can’t speak of it at all, so you can’t let us know if we guess right. But it doesn’t make you lie, so you aren’t forced to deny it. That’s helpful.”

She looked at him gratefully. “You remind me of my uncle Clay. I wish you could meet him. I wonder how you would feel if there was something you really wanted to let people know, but you couldn’t speak of it.”

Isen nodded, understanding. “You want to get rid of the binding.”

She smiled like crazy.

Isen looked at Seabourne. “Can you do that?”

“Maybe, given time. The question is whether I can do it safely.”

Rule spoke softly in Isen’s ear. “Lily says Sam could.”

Isen nodded thoughtfully. “I wonder if Sam would be willing to take a look at this binding.”

Seabourne’s expression sharpened. “Good idea. The binding is tied to her blood, so it’s similar to what was done to me. Sam unsang that.”

Arjenie looked from one of them to the other. “Who’s Sam?”

“Sun Mzao. The black dragon.”

Her eyes widened. Her mouth shaped a silent “oh.”

Rule spoke so quietly Isen didn’t know if even Benedict could hear him. “Sam is, ah, out of pocket at the moment. He won’t be back for several days, and when he returns, he’ll probably consider this a favor. Nokolai hasn’t accumulated a favor from him yet. We’d have to bargain for this separately, and dragons tend to price their favors high.”

Isen answered him while appearing to respond to Cullen. “It’s worth finding out.”

“Conversational breadcrumbs,” Benedict said abruptly. His attention had never wavered from his Chosen. “You’ve been dropping some, haven’t you? The potions are connected to whatever you can’t reveal. Your father put this binding on you. Is your father connected to the potions?”

She started to say something, stopped, and began again. “When I was young I saw things much more in black-and-white than I do now.”

“The connection is indirect.”

She beamed at him.

“You said the potions wouldn’t harm us.”

“One of them was to mask my scent, like I said. The other one was intended to help, not harm.”

“Did you make the potions?”

She all but sang her answer. “No!”

“Can you tell me who did?”

“I need to change the subject.”

Benedict continued to circle around the forbidden topic with questions, trying to define its parameters. Arjenie looked harried and tense and tired. Seabourne had tuned the rest of them out and was frowning off into space. Rule was arguing with Lily. She wanted to check out of the hospital tomorrow and fly back here. Rule considered that incredibly foolish, though he didn’t put it in quite those words.

It was nice to know his son had some sense. Isen sighed. Rule was not going to be happy with him. He agreed with Lily. “Arjenie, you’re looking worn-out. Let’s sit down again. Perhaps some more coffee?” He offered her his arm rather than taking hers. He’d noticed that she disliked being handled. Was that a sidhe characteristic? He’d have to ask Seabourne.

Benedict gave him a quick glance—wondering why he’d interrupted, probably. Arjenie took his arm, smiling at him in a much more natural way than her too-bright smiles earlier. “I’d love some coffee. You’d think I wouldn’t be sleepy for hours after being unconscious for so long, but passing out doesn’t seem to affect my sleep cycle at all, and back home it’s midnight. Besides, I love coffee.”

“Then we’ll get you some.” He patted her hand, then pulled his phone out of his shirt pocket. As they started for the table he added casually, “I believe it’s time we all participated openly in this discussion. Rule, I’m putting you on speakerphone.”

Arjenie stopped dead. “What? You don’t mean—tell me you haven’t—has Rule Turner been listening?”

“I’m afraid so. So has Lily, indirectly.”

She blanched. “Oh, no. Oh, no. We agreed—”

“I agreed not to speak of your secret away from Clanhome,” Isen said. “I haven’t. Nor have those under my authority.”

“But Friar can hear! If he’s trying, he could have heard everything! Lily’s Gift might block him from hearing her—I’m not sure about that, but it might. But it wouldn’t keep him from hearing a phone near her! Someone … someone could be in terrible trouble.”

Lily’s voice came through clearly on the phone’s speaker. “It shouldn’t be a problem. I confirmed that he’s in California now. I also checked with Cullen. No Listener can eavesdrop across that many miles.”

Arjenie was anguished. “He can.”

“You’re claiming that Friar is the strongest clairaudient on record?”

“I know he can hear things in D.C. when he’s in California, so he could Listen to you in Tennessee, too!”

“Well, even if you’re right, he can’t do it constantly, so the odds are good. And even if he beat those odds and was Listening to my hospital room, he didn’t hear much. I know that because I didn’t. Rule had his phone on speaker, so I heard Isen, but the rest of you weren’t close enough to Isen’s phone for it to pick up your voices much. Rule’s been typing a rough transcript for me. If I hadn’t had that, I wouldn’t have been able to follow things at all, so I doubt Friar could have, either.”

Arjenie was not placated. “You don’t know what he could hear magically, not for sure. You don’t have the right to risk someone else when there’s so much you don’t know.”

“Arjenie, that’s my job,” Lily said, her voice weary. “That’s what I do every day. I make decisions that either help or hurt people, and I almost always have way too little information.”

Ah, poor Lily. Isen knew it wasn’t really her injury dragging at her. That would frustrate and infuriate and worry her in the days and weeks to come—humans healed so slowly!—but it wouldn’t flavor her voice with defeat. In her head she knew LeBron had not been under her authority, but in her heart he had been, and had therefore been hers to protect.

Isen understood her new burden all too well, but this wasn’t the time for him to speak of it. It was time for clarity on another subject. He looked at Arjenie. “Lily believes there is an organized effort against the Unit. Ruben Brooks was nearly killed. He will be unable to resume his duties for some time, and may be unable to resume them at all, depending on the results of the healing performed on him. Then Lily was herself nearly killed. She has a responsibility to determine whether you were involved in the attack on Ruben Brooks or on her.”

“Me?” Arjenie was dumbfounded. “But I’ve been here! Here in California, I mean.”

“Isen,” Lily said, warning clear in her voice, “don’t—”

“I’m afraid you aren’t entirely in charge,” he told her gently. “Arjenie, Lily suspects a conspiracy that includes at least one perpetrator within the FBI. Who else could have reached Brooks to administer whatever caused his heart attack? But there could be more than one FBI agent or employee involved.”

Arjenie chewed on her lip and thought that over. He liked that about her. She was as chatty and confiding as Benedict was silent and reserved, but she knew when to stop and think.

No one else spoke, either. Lily’s silence was especially loud. Isen knew what she wanted to say: It was stupidly irresponsible to tell a suspect what you suspected.

She was right, of course. But whatever Arjenie Fox might be involved in, it did not include harming others. She knew or suspected something about the attack on Brooks, but she wasn’t conspiring to bring down the Unit or anyone within it. Not intentionally, and not due to the binding. She was, he thought, a practicing Wiccan in the deepest sense, one whose heart embraced their core tenet: and it harm none. If her actions had caused clear harm—even if she’d been unable to direct those actions—she’d be consumed by guilt. She wasn’t.

“I can’t think of anyone who’d betray the Bureau,” Arjenie said at last. She sounded almost as tired as Lily. “Of course, I might say that if I were part of a vast cell of traitors, all of whom I knew intimately, so that doesn’t help. Is Mr. Croft in charge of the Unit right now?”

“He is,” Lily said.

“Are you going to tell him about my Gift and my father and me being here at Clanhome and everything?”

“I haven’t decided.”

Arjenie sighed. Benedict moved closer to her, but not so he could counter a potential attack. Not this time. He wanted to hold her. Isen knew that as clearly as if Benedict had announced it.

After that involuntary movement, Benedict went still again, but Isen could almost taste his son’s longing. It hurt his heart. There was so little he could do. He settled for patting Arjenie’s hand. “If it helps, I don’t suspect you of anything nefarious. Rule, Lily’s right.”

“Quite often,” Rule agreed dryly. “But which specific instance did you mean?”

“She needs to come home. She is in serious and ongoing danger, and a hospital room is difficult to defend. In addition”—he put a subtle note in his voice so Rule would know his Rho spoke—“I need her and you here. Unless Nettie is utterly opposed, I want the three of you to return tomorrow. The meeting with the other North American clans is more vital than ever, and without Lily’s presence as guarantee of our peaceful intentions, Ybirra will withdraw. Lily, I hope you don’t object to my stating my wishes, since they agree with your own.”

“Object? No. But you’re up to something.”

“Arjenie is right, too. There are some things that shouldn’t be discussed over the phone. I’ll say only that I disagree with you in one respect. I don’t think your Unit is the target of a conspiracy.”

“I’d be interested in hearing your reasoning.”

“We’ll discuss it when you return. I do believe there is a conspiracy.”

“But not against the Unit.”

“No. Against us. Lupi. All lupi, not just Nokolai, and all who might aid us or otherwise interfere in her plans. You can guess which enemy I’m thinking of.”

Lily’s breath caught. Rule didn’t make a sound. Cullen Seabourne swung to face Isen, his eyes narrowing. And Isen’s oldest son looked at him with dawning relief. “Of course.”