Humon Error

Chapter Five

Benedict managed to get in a couple more questions as they headed back to the house. He needed to know how best to integrate what his guards did with what Robin knew and could do with her land-tie.

She did not give him much information. Of course, she considered herself in charge of security here and he was still largely unknown to her. Not that she came out and said so, but the assumption was implicit in what she did and didn’t say.

Pity she didn’t know what she was doing.

Knowledge bias was unavoidable in security work, of course. Generals were always fighting the last war. You couldn’t help focusing your resources—which were always limited—on the threats you knew and understood. Take Homeland Security. They knew how to protect against shoe bombs and certain liquid explosives, but as the “underwear bomber” had proved, they didn’t know how to guard against all explosives. And they completely ignored the possibility of a magical attack on a plane in flight. It had never happened, so how likely could it be?

Robin was in a similar position. Her family and her coven had been safe here for a long time. She knew how to protect them from familiar threats—suspicious neighbors, sensation seekers, the occasional fervent antimagic activist. She did not know how to protect against attack or infiltration by a determined enemy who possessed excellent technical, magical, and monetary resources. It had never happened, so how likely could it be?

Plus, Robin hadn’t had the land-tie, and the responsibility that went with it, for long. The woman Arjenie called Nana—Belle Delacroix—had held it until last year, when she decided to turn over responsibility for the land and the coven to her son’s wife so she could travel with Andrew, her remaining husband. Her other husband, Samuel, had died a little over two years ago.

Benedict’s Chosen had not been raised conventionally.

“. . . won’t wake up if an animal wanders onto the land, no,” Robin was saying, “but if a human does, I will.”

She’d already said that cars created an interruption in the energy of the land, one that would wake her even if she wasn’t on alert. But cars weren’t the only way people moved around. “What about a human on horseback?”

“I can tell the difference between a horse that’s being ridden and one that’s wandering loose.”

“In your sleep?”

Robin’s mouth opened. Then closed in a frown. She was still frowning as she reached for the back door. “We’ll talk more later.”

In the short time they’d been outside, the temperature had dipped from crisp to chilly as day slid into twilight. The bright, warm kitchen was inviting. Benedict smiled as he stepped inside—taking the rear, because threats were less likely to come from the house.

The silence was his first clue. Then the smell—anger plus other emotions he couldn’t sort out in this form. There were a lot of tense bodies in that warm, welcoming kitchen.

“What?” Arjenie said, frowning as she stopped and looked around.

“Clay?” Robin said.

“We need a family meeting.”

“Wait a minute,” Seri began.

“It’s not always best to drag everything into the open,” Sammy said.

“And at Yule—”

“Hurt feelings.”

“Sit,” Robin said. “And be quiet until it’s your turn.”

Carmen’s brother’s name was Ben, which disconcerted Benedict when he heard it again. How had he forgotten a variant on his own name? Pure distraction, he supposed. That other Ben was very politely asked to relieve Gary of kid duty so Gary could participate. Partners counted the same as spouses in the Delacroix clan—as family.

Benedict wondered if he was considered Arjenie’s partner. He offered to go chop wood, but Arjenie told him he was family and an adult so he would certainly take part. No one argued, though Sammy looked uneasy and Seri tossed her head. But then the meeting was probably about him. Made sense for him to be there.

There was enough room for all of them at the big cherry table, though they were a bit crowded. Benedict had just enough time to check in with Adam and Josh before Gary joined them.

Robin sat at one end of the table, Clay at the other. A fat pinecone sat on the table in front of Robin. Gary seated himself on Benedict’s right, Clay gave Robin a nod, and the two of them held out their hands. Arjenie took Benedict’s hand on one side; after a second of observation he understood what was required and held out his other hand to Gary. Once everyone was clasping hands, Robin spoke. “We seek wisdom and clarity, and ask for the patience needed to reach these goals, and for the memory of who we are as individuals and as a family to guide us. Blessed be.”

Most of the others echoed “blessed be,” though there were a couple “amens” mixed in. Arjenie and Gary both squeezed Benedict’s hands before releasing them.

“All right,” Robin said, and set a pinecone on the table. “Clay, you asked for this meeting. I have something to bring up, too, but it may be connected to your issue. I’d like you to go first.” She passed the pinecone down the table.

When it reached Clay, he held it in one hand as he began. “Seri and Sammy have a concern about Arjenie’s relationship with Benedict. I don’t care for the way they’ve expressed this concern, but it needs airing.”

“I—” Seri started, then visibly controlled herself. “Excuse me.”

Clay smiled and handed her the pinecone.

“Thank you.” She sat up very straight. “I didn’t want to do this in a family meeting because I thought it would hurt Arjenie. But here we are, so”—she turned to Robin—“I’d like to open this up.”

Robin thought, then said, “Ten minutes open discussion.”

Seri moved the pinecone to the center of the table. “Here’s the deal. Arjenie didn’t come home for my and Sammy’s birthday.”

“I explained that!” Arjenie protested. “And I hated to miss it, but I called. I sent presents.”

“Yes, and I love the sweater, but this isn’t about presents. You didn’t come, and I . . . well, I’m sorry, but I didn’t believe your explanation.”

Sammy snorted. “Too busy at work. Yeah, that’s believable.”

Pink flags flew on Arjenie’s cheeks. “Since my work involves helping the people who stopped other people from destroying the country, maybe it should be believable.”

“Our birthdays were after those horrible Humans First rallies.”

“And you thought that meant the problem was solved?”

“It’s not like that’s the only thing,” Seri said.

Sammy picked up that thought and ran with it. “You moved across the country. Pfft. Just like that. You haven’t been home since you took that mysterious trip to San Diego—”

“Which you have never explained—”

“Except that Dya was involved somehow, but she left before we got to see her. You stayed at the lupi clanhome and you won’t tell anyone why—”

“Even though you didn’t know any lupi before you went there—”

“But you stayed at their clanhome and met Benedict, and while you were there a mountain sort of collapsed—”

“When its node imploded, and I know you were involved, but you won’t talk about it, and you say Benedict can’t move here, but—”

“You won’t explain why. You told Mom that you two are plighted—”

“But he’s lupi, and everyone knows they aren’t monogamous—”

“And you plighted after you’d known him a few days! No time at all for that kind of—”

“Life-changing decision, and no one in the family had even talked to him, so—”

“We think Benedict’s controlling you somehow.” Sammy finished with a scowl, which he aimed at Benedict.

There was silence for a moment. Carmen broke it hesitantly. “Arjenie deals with top secret information, with sensitive information . . . I don’t think we can lump in her silence about the collapse of that mountain with her silence on other subjects.”

“And yet,” Stephen said, his narrow face thoughtful, “they’re connected. Not directly, but there’s a connection.”

“Stephen,” Arjenie said reproachfully. “You, too?”

He spread his hands. “I’m not jumping on the twins’ bandwagon. Just saying that you’re keeping a lot of secrets, and those secrets are connected somehow.”

Stephen Delacroix had a weak but well-trained patterning Gift, according to Arjenie. He must have picked up on the pattern that connected Arjenie to all those event and their common denominator: him. “If I understand correctly,” Benedict said, “open discussion means I can speak.”

Robin nodded. “Yes, of course.”

“Arjenie is a member of my clan now. She knows clan secrets that do connect obliquely to—”

“What?”

“She’s in your clan?”

“Are you saying you turned her into a lupus?”

“Don’t be an idiot. You can’t get turned into—”

“Does that mean you’re married? And you didn’t tell us? I can’t believe you didn’t—”

“Lupi don’t get married! Everyone knows that.”

“So what’s he doing here if he isn’t Arjenie’s plighted partner?”

“Enough.” That was Clay, not yelling but putting enough volume and certainty in his voice to cut through the exclamations and comments coming from everyone. “I think,” he said dryly as he claimed the pinecone, “we’d best go to directed discussion. Robin?”

She nodded, and Clay continued. “First I’ll clarify that, yes, Arjenie plighted herself to Benedict, and he to her, so his place at our table is a given. Robin and I were aware she’d been welcomed into Nokolai clan. Arjenie had planned to announce that to everyone else herself, but I understand why Benedict felt he needed to tell you now. I believe the clans are pretty secretive, so she’s constrained from discussing some of that with us.”

“I don’t like it,” Sammy muttered—maybe too low for the humans to hear, but Benedict did.

“So the issue we are discussing,” Clay said, “is not whether Arjenie has secrets. She does. The question is whether or not she has been, ah, unduly influenced by Benedict.”

“There’s a line,” Hershey said gruffly, “between personal and family. You bring someone into the family, fine, that’s family business. What’s between you and him, though, that’s not family business. Think we’re crossing the line.”

Clay nodded. “I’m thinking that myself.”

Seri’s face set stubbornly. “Which is exactly what I thought you’d say, which is why I didn’t ask for a family meeting in the first place. But you’re wrong. If she’s been given some sort of lupi emotional jujitsu, we need to do something about it.”

“Oh?” Robin focused on her daughter. “And what would you suggest? Possibly inviting a Native Power onto our land?”

Dead silence.

“Seri?” Robin prompted. “Sammy?”

It was Sammy who answered, his voice far too bland. “I haven’t been in contact with any Powers, Native or otherwise, since the equinox.”

“No? And have you been in touch with any energies that I would consider a Native Power, even if you don’t?”

Sammy gave himself away with a quick glance at his twin.

Robin looked around. “Did anyone tell these two what happened while they were gathering holly?”

Sammy sent Benedict a dark look. “Benedict claims he was forced to turn into a wolf and that Coyote showed up and scared Muffin.”

“And you don’t believe him. Why?”

Another glance between the twins. Seri sighed and answered. “Because it wasn’t Coyote we invited. Not that it was really an invitation—you’d call it that, but we altered the ritual so we’d be drawing on the underlying reality of the kind of protective energy we wanted, not a named persona representing that energy.”

“Who,” Robin said, “or what did you invite?”

“It wasn’t an invitation. It was—”

“Seri.”

“Raven.”

Benedict sighed and rubbed his forehead.

“Benedict,” Robin said, “you have something to say, I think.”

“Yeah. You two got the wrong trickster. Protective energy? Raven?” He shook his head. “Raven’s a lot of things, sometimes helpful, sometimes not, but at heart, he’s a trickster, not a guardian.”

Sammy managed to look both wary and vaguely superior at the same time. “Raven is a symbol, not an entity.”

“He’s both. And symbol or entity, he’s not a protective figure. And you didn’t get him. You got Coyote. I see three questions here. First, what were you really trying to do? Second, why involve a Native Power instead of the ones you call on in Wicca? Third, why did Coyote decide to show up?”

Arjenie spoke suddenly. “I bet I can answer the first one. Look at what happened. Something forced you to Change. I bet the twins cast some sort of ‘reveal’ spell—a variation on a truth spell that was supposed to force you to reveal what you really are. Only because they involved Coyote—”

“Raven,” Seri insisted hotly.

“You may have been thinking Raven, but when you tinkered with the invitation, trying to make it not an invitation but something that fit your skewed notion of reality—”

“Skewed? Skewed? Let me tell you, we have been practicing this sort of thing with smaller spells for some time, and results clearly demonstrate—”

“You have, have you?” Robin said softly. “And where have you done this practicing?”

The glance the twins exchanged was easily read by nontwins this time—something along the lines of Oh, shit.

Robin waited. When neither of them spoke, she said, “This is now a coven matter. The family meeting is adjourned.”

“But Mom—”

“Clay?” Robin stood.

He shook his head, but it wasn’t a disagreeing shake. More like resigned and unhappy. Benedict wondered what coven rules the twins had broken and what the penalty might be. “She’s right and you know that. We’ll have to talk with you two privately.”

Robin’s face had gone still, as if she were listening to something. “But not right away,” she said slowly. “We have a visitor, or will very shortly. I believe it’s the sheriff.”