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.”
“It’s a bear! At least a thousand pounds of bear! Three wolves can’t go against a Kodiak bear.”
“You’ve got Coyote, too. Not that he can act directly, but . . .” She fell silent a moment, then muttered, “If Cullen was there he could see it. But he couldn’t sneak up, so . . .”
“I don’t understand.”
“Talking to myself. Bad habit. Benedict and the others will need help. A skinwalker has one real weakness: the clasp that fastens his skin. Remove it and he’s back to human. You’ll need to sneak up on the bear and cut off the clasp.”
Arjenie’s heart gave one hard jolt and her mouth went dry. She was not terribly brave. “I . . . okay.”
“The problem is, you can’t see the clasp when he’s wearing the skin. I could make it visible, but I’m not there. Let me talk to your cousin.”
“Now?”
“I can’t teach you the chant. It would have no power in your mouth. He says he’s not Wiccan, and Coyote answered his call, so he must be right.”
“Sammy,” she said, holding out her phone, “Nettie Two Horses wants to talk to you.”
Hesitantly, as if she’d offered him a snake, he took the phone. “This is Sammy.”
Seri moved closer. “What’s going on?”
“Nettie thinks it’s a skinwalker. She’s going to teach Sammy a chant to . . .” Arjenie kept moving but stopped talking. Paying attention to another sense.
“What?”
“Benedict’s moving awfully fast all of a sudden. And it seems like . . .” She walked several feet and checked again. “He’s headed for Delacroix land. We need to cut left, through the woods, and I think . . . I don’t know why, but I think we need to hurry.”
The house was a tidy frame cottage. Flowers had bloomed in its gardens last summer; those beds were trimmed and mulched now. There was a swing set out back. A bicycle and a tricycle waited for their owners on the front porch.