“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—”