Sheriff Porter was a tall, ropy man somewhere between fifty and sixty with a luxuriant mustache and a prominent brow ridge overhanging deep-set eyes. Cop eyes, Benedict thought. Like Lily’s. Porter turned down an offer of coffee and asked to speak with Clay and Robin privately.
The house was crowded enough to make privacy difficult to find, so they’d gone out onto the front porch. Everyone else had migrated from the kitchen to the living room; Benedict sat beside Arjenie on the loveseat. He’d considered finding an excuse to linger near the front wall where he’d be able to hear what the sheriff said but decided that might be seen as intrusive.
Arjenie was quiet. He wondered what that family meeting had meant to her. Earlier she’d been angry, but he didn’t think she was angry now. Hurt, maybe, but Arjenie was even worse at brooding than she was at holding a grudge. This seemed to be one of her thinking silences.
“I bet he’s got a case,” Ambrose said. “Don’t you think?”
“Of course.” That was Nate. “We’ve helped out sometimes,” he added directly to Benedict. “The coven, that is. Or now and then one of us is able to lend a hand on our own. Depends on what kind of help the sheriff needs.”
Benedict nodded. The Delacroix family had been here for generations, so they’d had time to build trust both in the community and with the sheriff. Some law enforcement officers refused any sort of magical assistance, but others were more open-minded. And the only magically derived evidence the courts accepted came from certain Wiccan spells. “Arjenie tells me that Robin is a Finder. I imagine she gets called on often.”
“Often enough,” Gary said. “Plus there were those creatures blown in by the power winds at the Turning. A lot of us were involved then, rounding them up, but of course we couldn’t send them back where they belonged.”
“What did you do with them?” Benedict asked.
“The pixies left on their own. No one knows how, but they skedaddled. The gremlins . . . well, not much you can do about gremlins except kill them, but fortunately we just had to find and hold them. The disposal was handled by the FBI’s Magical Crimes Division. The most dangerous one was that snake.”
“Oh man, yeah.” Nate shook his head. “Biggest damn snake I’ve ever seen. At least twice the size of an anaconda, and it could hypnotize its prey, just like they say dragons do. It ate someone, though we didn’t know that until they cut it open.”
“Your coven found and killed it?”
“Trapped it. We avoid killing if possible, especially if there’s some uncertainty about the sentience of the predator. The snake died anyway, though, about three days later. Robin thinks it came from a high-magic realm and there just wasn’t enough here to sustain it.”
Seri grinned. “Or else it ate something that didn’t agree with it.”
“Seri,” Hershey said reproachfully.
She shrugged. “Come on, Uncle Hershey, you know what John Randall was like. Beat that poor wife of his, even if she never would press charges. Too scared, most likely.”
“No one deserves a death like that. Swallowed alive.”
“So it was ugly. So was he.”
Stephen shook his head, his mouth twisting wryly. “You and Sammy didn’t see the body. It’s easier to joke about that sort of thing if you don’t see the object of your humor half digested.”
“You didn’t see it, either,” Seri protested. “You weren’t here during the Turning.”
“True. I saw other things, however.”
That sparked Benedict’s curiosity. Stephen was a wanderer, according to Arjenie. The rest of the Delacroix brothers had settled near their homestead. Hershey and his partner were practically neighbors; Nate and Ambrose were about fifty miles away. Arjenie had moved farther than most, but D.C. was still only two hours from here. Stephen, however, kept a post office box in his old home town but had no permanent address. He traveled all over the country. Why?
“Benedict,” Arjenie said quietly.
He turned to look at her. She had beautiful eyes. Ocean eyes, not blue or green or gray but partaking of all those and varying according to the lighting. Or maybe they reflected her surroundings and her self the way water reflects the mood of the sky . . .
At the moment, they were the color of the sea beneath a cloudy sky. He put a hand on her thigh. “Yes?”
“I’m going to tell them. Not all of them,” she said softly, “but Aunt Robin and Uncle Clay. They need to know, and they’ll keep our secret, just like you’re keeping theirs.”
Shit. She was talking about the mate bond. “We don’t speak of that to out-clan. Ever.”
Her chin came up. “And my family doesn’t talk about the land-tie to those who aren’t coven. Ever.”
He frowned, trying to put into words down why speaking of the mate bond would be wrong when it hadn’t been wrong for Robin to tell him about the land-tie. Which, admittedly, did seem the same, on the surface . . .
Arjenie patted his hand. “Don’t worry. It’s not your decision or responsibility. If Isen wants to yell at me later, he can.”
The front door opened. Clay stood in the doorway. Something about him reminded Benedict of his father and Rho. Isen often stood just like that, his wide stance matching his wide shoulders. He sent a glance around the room. “Robin and I will be going with Sheriff Porter. We’re requesting volunteers, enough for a small circle. Arjenie, Seri, Sammy—we’d like you to participate, an’ you so will.”