The funny thing was, Arjenie hadn’t been startled, either. She hadn’t heard the front door open or close. She hadn’t seen Benedict appear in the hall. No, it was as if she’d known Benedict was there. She just hadn’t noticed that she knew until he spoke. “Hi,” she said happily.
Benedict gave her a nod, but spoke to Cullen. “Cynna’s ready to come home. She’s pretty worn-out. This was a hard one.”
Cullen left. He didn’t say ’bye, nice talking to you, gotta go, or anything else. He just left, moving fast. This time she heard the front door open and slam closed. She looked at Benedict. “He’s a sudden one, isn’t he? Though I guess we have to expect that with a Fire-Gifted. Cynna’s all right?”
“She will be. Where’s your cane?”
“In my room. I don’t need it anymore.”
He frowned and started for her. “I need to check your ankle.”
“Ask.”
“If you object, I—”
“Giving me a chance to object is not the same as asking permission. You’re used to telling people what to do. That works with those guards you’re in charge of. You aren’t in charge of me. You have to ask.”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “It’s more efficient my way.”
“If your primary goal in life is efficiency, you should just die.”
That startled him. His head actually jerked back. “What?”
“The most efficient way to live a life is to die a couple seconds after you’re born. Pfft. Done.” She dusted her hands to demonstrate that. “It’s too late for you to achieve optimal efficiency, but you could still …”
Benedict was laughing. Silently. She couldn’t hear a thing, but his face, his open mouth, his whole body said laughter. It only lasted a few seconds before dwindling to an audible chuckle. “You have a strange mind. I like it. I like you.”
He sounded surprised. She was surprised, too. Also delighted. And turned on. Her cheeks heated.
“May I check your ankle now?” he asked courteously.
She gave permission, and he knelt in front of her to unwrap the elastic bandage, which made the flutters in her belly worse. The man said he liked her, and she reacted like a tween with a crush. It was almost as mortifying as it was wonderful.
He took her foot in one big hand and rotated it. “Good movement.”
“I want to know who this enemy is Isen spoke about last night.”
“You’ll be told about her, but not now.”
“Why not?”
“I’m taking the day off. Swelling’s gone,” he added, beginning to rewrap the ankle.
“You won’t answer questions because you’re on vacation?”
“More or less.” His mouth turned up wryly, as if at some private joke. He tucked the end in securely. “A brief vacation. One day. How does your ankle feel?”
“Fine.”
His eyebrows lifted. “A one-word answer?”
“I got tired of answering questions about my health twenty years ago.”
“After the accident.”
She nodded.
“I imagine there was a long recovery and therapy. You mentioned additional surgeries, as well, later on.” He nodded as if he’d added up a column. “I may have to ask about your physical status sometimes, but I’ll avoid it when possible.” He rose. “Today I needed to know because I’d like to show you around Clanhome.”
She beamed. “I’d like that. My ankle really does feel fine. There may be some lingering weakness I won’t notice until I’ve been walking on it awhile, but Dr. Two Horses’s treatment helped, plus I heal faster than most.”
His eyebrows lifted. “The sidhe blood?”
She nodded. “Obviously I don’t always heal completely, or at the rate your people do. But I heal fast for a human.”
“I’ll get your cane.”
“I’m not taking it.”
“It’s a precaution, in case you need it later.”
She stood and patted his arm reassuringly and smiled. “No.”
TWENTY-FIVE
THE cane stayed behind.
Benedict worked this out logically. If he brought it along after that firm refusal, she’d be annoyed and more determined than ever not to use the thing, even if she needed it. More important, though, it was the wrong thing to do. Children needed to have limits set for them. Arjenie wasn’t a child. She was his to protect, but not from herself. Not from the consequences of her own decisions.
That was the problem.
He’d dreamed of Claire last night. Once that had been common, but not these days. Still, he supposed it would have been more surprising if she hadn’t shown up. In the dream, he’d been at his cabin, which had mysteriously sprouted a new room. A bedroom. Arjenie had been asleep in the new bedroom when Claire walked in.
Sometimes his subconscious was damned unsubtle. “I thought we’d look in at the center first,” he said as he and his new Chosen left his father’s house.
“What’s that?”
“Our child care and community center. We don’t get cable out here, so there’s a satellite dish and a big-screen TV at the center for those who want to watch HBO or Showtime.” He glanced at her. “But maybe you knew about that.”
Arjenie looked apologetic. “The satellite dish does show up on aerial photos. So does the playground equipment. But, um, I haven’t seen inside your center.”
“Nice to know a few things aren’t in the government’s files. We’ll go to baby room first,” he said, opening the front door and stepping out ahead of her. The human courtesy of waiting for the woman to go through a door was all flourish, no sense. If any danger waited on the other side of a door, he’d rather meet it himself, not send her into it.
“Baby room?”
She was moving easily, he noted. Just as she’d said, her ankle wasn’t bothering her. He kept his pace slow. “Where the tenders mind the clan’s babies. Any who are here, that is. Obviously a lot of them won’t be. Even when the father has or shares custody, he may not live close enough to use the center regularly.”
She nodded seriously. “The courts haven’t been exactly friendly to lupus dads. I know Mr. Turner—Isen’s son, I mean, Rule Turner—wasn’t able to have custody of his son until recently.”
Rule’s custody hearing had made headlines—especially since it coincided with a string of supernatural murders. “Some mothers won’t share custody with a lupus father, and until recently there was no chance of pursuing legal remedies. Still not much point in it, in most places. And many of the mothers who do share custody live too far away for their babies to be tended here when they’re at work.” Of course, some women—like Rule’s mother—handed their babies over to their lupus fathers as fast as they could. They didn’t want a child who was going to turn furry one day.
The gravel path didn’t seem to be giving her any trouble. “If I understand correctly,” she said, “that would be girl babies and boy babies both, right? You consider your female children part of the clan even though they can’t Change.”
They also couldn’t be included in the mantle, but he wasn’t going to explain mantles yet. “Is that in the FBI’s files?”
“Well, yes.”
“Your file’s right. Our daughters are clan. Their children aren’t, but are considered ospi, or friends of the clan. Several of the babies and younger children at the center are ospi.”
“You provide child care for them, too? Even though they aren’t clan?”
“Babies are babies.” It was beyond Benedict’s understanding that, in the human world, there were children who went unclaimed, unwanted. Logically he could see that a race as astonishingly fecund as humanity could afford to be careless with its young, but everything in him revolted at the idea.