While he listened, Benedict noticed Carl crossing the den and motioned to him. Arjenie needed food. She didn’t seem to notice Carl coming, leaving, then returning. She sat on the bed running that pick thing through her damp hair and chatting with her aunt for fifteen minutes, sounding as relaxed as if she were on vacation. “I’d better go,” she said finally. “Supper’s almost ready, I think. Blessed be.”
“All right, but don’t think I didn’t notice how little you’ve told me. All that silence is not reassuring. Blessed be, sweetie.”
Arjenie frowned as she disconnected. “She’ll worry. I can’t keep her from worrying, but at least she won’t get the cops to look for me.”
She certainly was keen on keeping the police out of her affairs. “Is your aunt a precog?”
“No, she’s a Finder, which shouldn’t give her the least hint of second sight, but she always knows when one of us is in trouble. She gets tingles.”
“Your uncle’s a blacksmith.” He’d finally remembered who used swage blocks.
“Uh-huh. He’s begun to get a name for his sculpture, too, but the blacksmithing is still his bread-and-butter work.”
“And your aunt’s a Wiccan.” As was she, most likely. She wore the Wiccan star on one hand.
“We all are. The whole family, I mean, going back forever on my uncle’s side. Though he isn’t my uncle by blood, so I can’t claim that heritage, but on my aunt’s side we’ve been Wiccan for at least five generations. It gets murky if you go back farther, because my great-great-great-grandmother was adopted after a flood killed her parents—the Great Flood in Galveston, have you heard of it? She was quite young when it happened and we don’t know much about her original parents, but we think they must have been Wiccan because her adoptive parents weren’t, yet she was, and that just never happened back then. Converting to Wicca, I mean. Is that a trail bar you’re holding?”
He smiled. “Two. Here.”
“Oh, good.” She ripped one open and devoured it in several neat bites. Then she opened the second one. She ate it more slowly, and she asked questions. Did it hurt to Change? How often did he do it? What colors did he see as a wolf? Was his vision different? Why wasn’t he asking her any questions?
He was leaving that to his father, and so he told her. Then, of course, she wanted to know why. He preferred not to lie to her, but he also preferred not to tell her precisely why he wanted to wait, so he alluded vaguely to the fact that they would be joined at supper by Cullen Seabourne.
“And his wife?” she’d asked quickly.
His eyebrows flew up. “You know a great deal about Seabourne.”
“Never mind that for now. Will his wife be joining us?”
“I haven’t been told.” Technically true, but he was sure she wouldn’t be. Cynna was staying with the Rhej for a few days. It had something to do with her apprenticeship and the memories, though Benedict knew nothing more than that. No one did, save the Rhej and her apprentice.
Arjenie bit her lip, then nodded once as if agreeing with herself. “I think I will tell you some things, but not yet. You’re right. I need to speak with your father. He’s the one who decides.”
NINETEEN
THE one who decides joined them on the rear deck twenty minutes later. Seabourne hadn’t arrived yet. That wasn’t due to his usual rudeness; he’d warned them that making the charm was tricky and might delay him. But it was a pain. Benedict needed to talk with his Rho, but couldn’t do so privately until Seabourne took over guard duty.
He wanted to discuss the attack on Lily and the news Rule had passed on about Ruben Brooks’s heart attack. That was the most important. Less important—probably—was another example of Arjenie’s oddly detailed knowledge about them. When she said she needed to speak with the Rho, she’d called him Benedict’s father. She shouldn’t have known that. Few outside the clans did.
The deck was Benedict’s favorite part of the house. There were two levels. The lower level, next to the house, was roofed; the upper level was smaller and open to the sky. Benedict had helped his father build the stone retaining wall that separated the two. They would eat on the lower deck, where there were lights enough for their human guest, but for now they sat on the upper deck. Isen liked the view.
Benedict did, too. The sky was putting on a show. Twilight shimmered in the east while the western sky glowed golden, and Venus hung, sparkling, near the top of the old loblolly that lightning hadn’t managed to kill five years ago. The air was dry and calm, perfumed by pine and creosote as well as Carl’s lasagna. It was probably around seventy-five degrees, a comfortable temperature for humans.
Not that Arjenie was wholly human. How did she experience temperature? Where did she differ from human? Where was she the same?
Arjenie loved the deck. She loved the landscaping around it, and the way the tended parts blended into the wildness around them. She didn’t love the cabernet sauvignon Isen poured for her—an elegant vintage, a real treat for the nose—but she pretended politely.
Pretense turned to curiosity when she learned the wine came from Nokolai’s own vineyard. She and Isen chatted away happily about wine-making. She knew more about that than most laymen—certainly more than he’d expect from someone who didn’t drink the stuff.
She wasn’t afraid of Isen anymore. Benedict knew that was his Rho’s intention, just as last night he’d meant to terrify her. Today he wanted her to relax her guard, and Isen could be very charming indeed when he wished. But her comfort seemed innate as well. She was like a wolf in that way, Benedict decided as he sipped his wine and listened to his father charm his Chosen. She was good at taking whatever the moment offered. Once she’d determined there was no immediate threat, fear became irrelevant.
Or else his perceptions were entirely distorted by the mate bond, and she was a supremely confident and powerful actress who hoped to charm Isen into letting his guard down.
If so, she was out of luck. No one could charm Isen to that degree.
She smelled so good.
“I would love to see it,” she said in response to Isen’s invitation to tour Nokolai’s winery. “Which sort of leads into something else I want to talk about. How long do you plan to keep me here?”
“We aren’t keeping you,” Isen protested mildly. “We are simply—”
“—planning to call the cops if I leave. Right. I understand why you—no, I take that back. I understand why you’re suspicious. I don’t understand why you haven’t just called the cops. I’m glad you didn’t, because that would create problems for me and could endanger someone else, but I don’t understand why. It makes me think there’s something you know that I don’t.”
“Hmm.” Isen studied the wine in his glass, gave it a swirl to release the aroma, and sipped. “Yes, you could say that. It isn’t something I’m prepared to talk about now.”
She nodded solemnly. “And I’m unable to talk about the potions. At least, I did tell Benedict about one of them—the one that removed my scent—but I can’t discuss the other one. Not in any helpful way.” She stopped, tipped her head, and looked at Benedict. “How come you’re so quiet? You’ve hardly said a word since we came outside. Are you deferring to your Rho or just moody?”
Isen gave a sharp crack of a laugh.
His father found that amusing, did he? “I’m not very talkative.”
“You note that he doesn’t deny being moody,” Isen said.
“Quiet doesn’t necessarily mean moody … but I’m getting off-subject.” Yet still she looked at Benedict. In this light, her skin was luminous, so pale it almost glowed. Her eyes were more gray than green or blue, and her expression was pure librarian. A librarian confronted with a book she didn’t know how to shelve. Apparently he didn’t fit the Dewey Decimal System.