Tied With a Bow

While the ability to work magic was often passed down, it seldom bred completely true.
    Clay Delacroix was the oldest. He had the only beard, the most gray, a crooked nose, and thick, muscular arms and legs. Ambrose had a deep tan and wore his hair long, clubbed back at the moment. Nate—Ambrose’s fraternal twin—looked more like a sergeant than a doctor, with his buzz-cut hair and the scar bisecting his jaw. Hershey could have passed for a lumberjack, right down to the flannel shirt, but was in fact a technical writer. The youngest, Stephen, was the leanest, with a narrow face, black hair untouched by gray, and very pale blue eyes. Benedict wasn’t entirely clear on what he did. Some kind of artist.
    Two of the Delacroix brothers sat at the table with Benedict—Nate and Stephen. Sheila and her brother sat there, too. The rest were standing around, except for Arjenie, who was pacing.
    “. . . as if you’d throw fire in a barn. And at a living being.” She flung those words at Hershey, who looked sheepish and muttered, “She’s really mad.”
    “I didn’t think Arjenie even had a temper,” Sheila said. “I’ve never seen her lose it before.”
    “People kept grabbing her,” Benedict explained. “She doesn’t like that.”
    Stephen slanted him a quizzical look. “Maybe that isn’t the only reason.”
    “And you,” Arjenie said, stopping to glare at Clay. “Never mind if it was reasonable to draw on Benedict or not. Why did you even have a gun? You don’t wear a gun. You never wear a gun.”
    Clay exchanged a look with Robin, then sighed. “Nate had a disturbing dream.”
    Arjenie frowned at Nate, who was sitting beside Benedict. “What kind of dream?”
    “One with lots of blood.” The man shrugged. “Not that I expect it to be literally true, but it’s one of the strongest sendings I’ve received. The overwhelming sense was that trouble was coming. Danger.”
    Benedict turned to him. “Precog?”
    Nate nodded. “Not a strong Gift, so my hunches aren’t always reliable. But when I do have a prescient dream, it’s likely to be accurate. Not in terms of the dream’s contents—my unconscious seems to make those up to fit the feeling, so I don’t know that blood will literally be involved. But the feeling is reliable.”
    Arjenie crossed her arms. “And you all assumed that trouble coming meant Benedict?”
    Ambrose protested, “Not all of us. I didn’t know anything about Nate’s dream, much less that Big Brother”—he cocked an eyebrow at Clay—“was packing heat.”
    “Arjenie,” Benedict said, “it’s all right. I am dangerous.”
    She shook her head. “Not to them.”
    Robin sighed. “Ambrose, we didn’t tell anyone about Nate’s dream because we hoped to avoid scaring everyone. Arjenie, I understand that you’re upset, but you aren’t thinking. Clay carried the gun because of Nate’s dream, not because of Benedict. We didn’t expect trouble from any particular direction. We simply wanted to be ready.”
    Ready? And yet they’d allowed members of the family to ride or wander all over their acreage. Benedict shook his head. Either Robin wasn’t being honest about where they thought the threat lay, or these people did not understand security at all.
    Robin’s revelation set off a new round of talk. Some wanted to know the details of Ambrose’s dream. Others remembered other dreams he’d had and how they hadn’t played out the way anyone expected but had fit events perfectly . . . in hindsight.
    That’s how precognition usually worked, from what Benedict understood. He did know one precog who was phenomenally accurate. His hunches were more reliable than many people’s observed facts, and when he did—rarely—have a prescient dream, it was both literal and accurate. But most precogs weren’t like that. On the whole, the Gift seemed more trouble and confusion than help.
    Robin didn’t contribute to the speculation, he noticed. She went to the refrigerator and started pulling out things—carrots, onions, celery. She asked Nate to get her a jar of tomatoes from the pantry, and would Clay taste the broth from the stewing meat to see if a bit more thyme was needed?
    Nate went for the tomatoes. Clay gave Robin a knowing smile, a kiss, and told her to “give me that knife, woman, and don’t mess with my soup.” Within minutes, and with only the tiniest of nudges, Carmen and Clay were cutting up vegetables, Nate was showing Carmen’s brother—Benedict