“Adam likes to be prepared,” Josh said.
“I told you that bullets didn’t seem to do much damage to the bear. Maybe not any damage.”
Josh nodded. “You think it’s a skinwalker.”
“A skinwalker!” Sammy looked shocked.
“We didn’t hear that part,” Seri said. “In all the commotion when you got home, we didn’t have a chance to ask questions.”
Sammy nodded. “And we have a lot of questions.”
So for the first mile or so, Arjenie told them, in detail, why she thought the bear was a skinwalker. To be fair, she outlined her aunt’s objections to this theory, ending with her suspicions about who the skinwalker might be.
“K. J. Miller?” Seri wrinkled her nose. “He’s a complete asshole, but I don’t think—”
“I don’t know, Seri,” Sammy said darkly. “Remember the cat?”
“Not the same thing at all. And if he had that kind of heavy-duty magic, why didn’t he stop the Drews when they—”
“Because he didn’t have it then. That was last year, doofus.”
“He already had the bearskin.”
“Wait a minute,” Arjenie said. “You know for a fact that he has a bearskin?”
Seri nodded. “It’s enormous. We, uh . . .”
“Snuck into his house one time.” Sammy gave his sister a frown, as if she’d objected out loud. “We’re going to have to come clean. About all of it. This is too serious.”
“Not your fault!”
“Maybe it is.” He plodded on several feet in silence, and his expression reminded her of Benedict when they first met—dark and closed and brooding. Finally he looked at Josh, who was walking a few steps behind them. “Could you . . . you’re a nice guy and all that, Josh, but I need to . . .”
Josh looked at Arjenie, eyebrows raised.
“If you think it’s safe to drop back a bit,” she told him, “I’m good with that. We’re not close to Benedict yet.” Josh would have to drop back a long way to avoid hearing whatever Sammy wanted to confess, but she chose not to mention that. Josh wouldn’t repeat anything he heard.
As soon as Josh was out of human hearing range, Sammy spoke without looking at Arjenie. “I’ve been experimenting. Not just with the spell that was supposed to use Raven energy but for the last couple years. Seri knows. She’s helped me sometimes, but it’s my deal. It’s on me if . . . if something I did opened things up and let the wrong Power into our world.”
Oh, by the Light, Lord, and Lady. Cautiously she said, “I don’t think I’m the one you need to talk to about this.”
“You’re the one I am talking to.”
That was hard to argue with.
“And you won’t bullshit me,” he added. “You’ll tell me straight out.”
“I can’t tell you anything yet. I don’t know what you’ve been doing.”
For the next mile or so, he told her.
It was, she had to admit, intriguing. He’d put a lot of thought into his experiments. Unfortunately, he’d been trying to prove the wrong thing—that the Powers were nonsentient energies—but he’d gone about it brilliantly and had achieved a couple interesting if irrelevant discoveries along the way.
At last she said, “I’m afraid I still don’t know. It’s possible that your experiments did weaken whatever barrier lies between here and what Native Americans call the other world or the spirit world. I don’t think so, but I don’t know enough to say for sure. This is outside my experience and knowledge.”
“That friend of yours—the shaman you mentioned. Would she know? Would she talk to me?”
“She’d talk to you, and she might know. She’s really good. She doesn’t use spells at all—not the way we do, anyway. It’s all spirit. Well, except for her Gift. She’s a healer, too, like you.”
“She is?” A little light seeped back into his face. He looked so terribly young and hurt and hopeful. “And she’d be straight with me? She wouldn’t sugarcoat things?”
“I doubt Nettie has ever sugarcoated anything in her life. What I don’t understand is why you did it. For two years, sneaking around to conduct your experiments—which were brilliant, but stupid, too. Why didn’t you just tell your mom and dad what you wanted to do? Aunt Robin can be a bit close-minded,” she admitted, “but you could have talked her around eventually. And with her backing, what you did would have been safe.”
Sammy exchanged one of those twin looks with Seri, who’d been unnaturally silent the whole time. She said softly, “You said it already. We have to come clean about all of it.”
He heaved a sigh. “I don’t think I want to be Wiccan. No,” he said, his voice strengthening. “I don’t think I am Wiccan. I’ve been . . . I thought the yoga would work, that it would be enough, but it wasn’t. The experiments . . . I’ve been trying to find out what I am. What my path is.”
Oh my. Oh, but it all made sense now. Sammy was mostly a gentle soul—it was usually Seri who led the twins into trouble—mischievous, yes, but without a shred of meanness. He worried about others’ feelings and would go out of his way to avoid hurting anyone . . . especially his mother.
Who would not understand. She’d try. Aunt Robin really did believe that all religions were valid paths to the Source. But deep down she thought Wicca was the best path . . . and the Delacroix had been Wiccan for centuries.
Arjenie stopped and reached for her cousin and hugged him hard. “You are very foolish,” she told him, her eyes teary, “but you have been between a rock and a hard place, haven’t you?”
“You’re not upset?”
“That you aren’t Wiccan anymore?” She blinked the dampness back and smiled. “Some of the people I love best in this world aren’t Wiccan. Like Benedict. He—”
Her phone picked that moment to interrupt. She huffed out a breath but released Sammy to take the phone from her jacket pocket. When she saw who it was, she was glad she had. “Nettie! I hope the surgery went okay?”
“It went long.” She sounded exhausted. “I kept having to put him back in sleep. But yes, it went well. Rule tells me you think you have a skinwalker.”
“Other people tell me that isn’t possible.”
“Oh, it’s possible,” she said grimly. “Unlikely, but possible. Tell me what you know.”
Arjenie resumed walking as she went through it all again, including a bit about how Sammy had been experimenting with blending Wiccan and Native spiritual elements.
“That’s not good. Magically, Wicca is based on sidhe magic, and—”
“No, it isn’t.”
“I’m sorry, but it is. Your distant ancestors learned spellcraft from the sidhe back when they came here more often, so while your magic has evolved, it is derived from sidhe spellcraft, which is not native to our realm. Native Powers are just that—native to our realm. They do not care for the sidhe or for sidhe magic. While many pagan practices can be incorporated into Wiccan spells, the Native Powers cannot.”
Arjenie swallowed. “Do you think Sammy woke something up? Or weakened the whatever that lies between our world and theirs?”
“They’re of our world, Arjenie. They . . . never mind. This isn’t the time. It’s possible Sammy had something to do with your skinwalker. It’s more likely, I think, that the Turning did. The power winds blew in many an odd creature. They could have woken one who’d been asleep. You say your cousin called Coyote? And he came?”
“Yes, though Sammy thought he was calling Raven. Or the essence of Raven—I told you how he had that wrong. You think there is a skinwalker?”
“Yes. A skinwalker can’t be killed with weapons when he’s wearing his skin. It has to be hand to hand—or claw to claw, since you’ve got lupi to go against it.”