Eileen Wilks: Humon Error

“Which was a totally different—”

“But without the lemongrass. I know.”

“Feverfew?”

“Not unless the North is—”

“I don’t think so. West and Air.”

“Air? Air? Are you nuts? See you inside,” Sammy added to them, and the twins moved off with Seri stroking Havoc, arguing in the abbreviated way that made sense only to them.

Benedict watched them leave, his head cocked. “Are they telepathic?”

“Not in the usual sense,” Robin said. “I wonder what they’re up to.”

“Ah.” Arjenie nodded. “I wondered about the feverfew. Feverfew does not make sense for protective wreaths.”

“Plus they were off the land for about an hour earlier.”

“You didn’t ask them about it.”

“They’d tell me they were gathering holly. Which they undoubtedly did, and if I asked what else they were doing, they’d tell me what they saw on their walk, where they stopped to look at an ant bed or something. Everything that actually occurred except the thing they don’t want me to know about.” She looked at Benedict. “They don’t lie to me, but they are ingenious about avoiding the truth at times.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You think they called Coyote here?”

She shook her head. “They’re up to something, but not that. They know better. Magically speaking, you can mix traditions in a spell if you’re careful, experienced, and knowledgeable. But invocation is spiritual magic. Spiritual magic is accessed through faith, through a particular religious or spiritual practice. Basically, they’re too Wiccan to try contacting Native Powers.”

“You’re sure of this.”

Arjenie exchanged a look with her aunt. “They know better,” Robin repeated.

“Feedback loop,” Arjenie said.

A small V appeared between Aunt Robin’s eyebrows. She looked at the house, where the back door was just shutting behind the twins. “Feedback loop,” she said slowly, “is family shorthand for what happens when Sammy and Seri stop arguing.”

Arjenie could tell Benedict needed more explanation. “When one of the twins gets an idea in his or her head and gets the other one to buy into it, a self-contained reality sets up shop in their heads. It is very hard to penetrate all that certainty. Sometimes,” she added, wanting to be fair, “they’re even right. Like with Amos Brown.”

Robin sighed. “Being right one time in five just makes them harder to convince the other four times.”

Arjenie thought about the summer of the aliens, the “gate” that blew up a small utility shed, and the time the twins decided everyone was wrong and telekinesis really could be used to fly. “They’re older now,” she said, trying to convince herself.

“Even Seri and Sammy couldn’t suddenly believe that invoking a Native Power would work out well for them,” Aunt Robin said slowly, “but an invitation . . .” After a moment she shook her head. “The use of invitation is so basic, so fundamental to Wicca. It’s hard to believe they’d suddenly decide they could use it for other Powers.”

“There’s a difference between invitation and invocation?” Benedict asked.

Robin nodded. “A large difference, actually. An invocation is like tugging on a Power’s sleeve—or even summoning one, if it’s a minor power and you have enough power yourself. An invitation is more like an e-mail. If you address it right, it goes where you intended, and the Power can answer it, ignore it, or act on it.”

“Wiccan rites usually offer invitations,” Arjenie added. “We invite the Powers of the North, South, East, and West to bring their protection to a circle, for example. We don’t compel.”

Benedict’s eyebrows went up. “Your spells depend on the whim of these Powers?”

“Rites and spells are different. Most spells don’t have a spiritual component. In Wicca, the rites do.” Wanting to give him a more complete picture, she added, “Non-Wiccan practitioners like Cullen will tell you that North, South, East and West are fundamental energies, not Powers. That’s because these energies aren’t animate, not personalities or beings, so the spiritual component isn’t necessary. And they’re right on one level. You can cast a circle and practice magic without being Wiccan or of any other faith. But we believe that the spiritual component both enhances our magic and grounds us in the larger reality.”

He thought that over a moment. “Could someone offer an invitation without including the spiritual component?”

“I don’t see how. Unless they somehow convinced themselves they were working with a type of energy and not addressing a Power, but no one who knows anything about it could . . .” Arjenie stopped. Because once in a while the twins convinced themselves that down was in fact up.

For a moment no one said anything. “I need,” Robin said, “to talk to Sammy and Seri. Now.”

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.