Tied With a Bow

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.”

Chapter Five
     
    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