Blood Ties

1 Joanna Wilcox glared at the collapsed section of the split-rail fence that enclosed one of her alpaca pastures and held back a curse. It seemed as though she’d spent the last year fixing one spot, only to have another come falling down. Most likely, she needed to have the whole thing replaced, but she didn’t really want to think about how much that would cost. She had a rainy day fund for those sorts of things, true, and yet she didn’t know whether an amount that had once seemed like a comfortable cushion would cover installing brand-new fencing to enclose her five-plus acres on the northeast edge of Flagstaff. And she had a feeling that the unusually snowy winter they’d all just lived through hadn’t helped matters, either. Not that the winter had started out that way, but once Addie Grant had managed to break down the blocking spell a couple of witches up in the Seattle area had cast, storms had filed into northern Arizona one after the other, like jets coming in for a landing at Phoenix International Airport. In a way, that was a good thing; Flagstaff needed the tourist dollars a good winter skiing and snowboarding season would bring. On the other hand, though, near record high amounts of snow had given the city’s infrastructure a beating. Including her fences. Since there was no one around to hear it except Daisy and Lola, two of her alpacas who munched on the hay she’d scattered in the next pasture, Joanna allowed herself a sigh. But that was all she’d allow herself. There was work to be done. Repairing the fence was a bigger job than she could manage on her own. Several times over the winter, her cousin Jasper had come over to help her whack things more or less into shape, and so she figured she’d give him a call now. While no one in the Wilcox family was exactly hurting for cash, thanks to the monthly stipend they all received from a general fund, Jasper didn’t have a regular job, unlike most of the other Wilcox clan members. He was usually up for making a couple hundred bucks here and there in exchange for taking on the occasional odd task. His phone rang several times, and she worried that either he was somewhere out of range or maybe had a bad connection. He lived on the west side of the San Francisco Peaks, in a small cabin on Forest Service land, and his phone service could be pretty spotty. But then he picked up. “Hey, Joanna.” “Hey, Jasper,” she replied. “It looks like another chunk of my fence has decided to give up the ghost. Any chance you could come by to lend me a hand with it?” A pause. Then he said, “I wish I could. But I already promised Connor that I’d go down to his place and do the monthly inspection there.” Damn it. Connor, the clan’s primus, didn’t live in Flagstaff full-time, and generally spent the winter months — except for a chunk of Christmas week — down in Jerome, where his wife Angela had grown up. In a little more than a month, they’d be back in Flag to spend the summer in their house at that city’s more comfortable elevation, but in the meantime, Jasper had the task of going by their home in Forest Highlands every month to make sure everything was still safe, secure, and running smoothly. “That’s okay,” she replied, even as she mentally ran through a list of other people in the Wilcox clan who might be able to give her a hand. Problem was, there weren’t many of them, since it was a Wednesday morning, and most able-bodied people with the right skill set were at work. Maybe she could manage the project by herself. The poles were heavy, and trying to leverage them into place on her own wouldn’t be easy, but better that than cramming all her alpacas into one pasture while she tried to get this one in order. And Elspeth and Polly were due to drop their babies any day now…. Before she could continue, however, Jasper said, “I think I know someone I can send over. Let me give him a call. And if he’s not available, I can try to come by late this afternoon. We wouldn’t be able to get it all done, but we’d be able to make a start.” “Sounds good,” Joanna told him, even as she wondered who he planned to send as a replacement. She opened her mouth to ask the question, but then the call ended. Scowling, she stared down at the phone, not sure whether Jasper had hung up or whether the connection had simply dropped out. With Jasper, it was hard to say. He could have taken her response as a signal that it was all settled, and therefore they didn’t need to hash out anything else. Or, because he lived in the back of beyond, Verizon could have hiccupped at exactly the wrong moment. Since her phone remained silent, she guessed it was probably the former. At least he was sending someone over. Which meant she might as well get as much prepped as she could. She’d already moved the alpacas out of the pasture with the damaged fence, but she knew she could save some time by transferring a bunch of replacement rails out of the shed where they’d been stored all winter and over to the spot where the repairs needed to be made. At least her fences were made with eight-foot lengths rather than the more unwieldy eleven-footers, and so she hoped she could manage them on their own. A frown pulling at her brow, she made her way down the muddy path to the shed. Inside was the trailer and little Polaris Ranger she used for most of the lighter hauling jobs on her ranch. She had a vintage Chevy Silverado for the heavier stuff, but since the weather had finally warmed up, melting snow had turned most of the lanes on her property into veritable mud baths, and so she liked to use the Polaris for getting around. Loading up the replacement rails took her about twenty minutes. By the time she was done, she’d gotten hot enough to take off the down vest she’d been wearing over her flannel shirt. She tossed it onto the passenger seat of the Polaris and carefully pulled out of the shed, towing the trailer back to the spot where the damaged fence waited for her. A man stood by the fence, apparently inspecting it more closely. Since his back was to her, she couldn’t tell who it might be. He didn’t seem familiar, though; even from the back, she could see his hair was medium brown, not the usual near-black of most Wilcox family members. Who the heck had Jasper sent over to give her a hand? At the sound of the Polaris approaching, the stranger turned. Piercing, pale blue eyes met hers, and she realized at once who the man must be, even though she hadn’t actually met him before this. Randall Lenz, former Homeland Security agent, given refuge with the Wilcox clan because he’d sabotaged his own project in order to free the witches and warlocks who’d been held at a government facility for testing. Joanna didn’t know why their paths hadn’t crossed before this. Then again, she didn’t get out much — and neither did he, from what she’d heard. He tended to keep to himself. Her cousin Lorelei had rented him a cottage on the south side of Flagstaff’s historic downtown section, and he kept a pretty low profile by most accounts. “Hello,” he said as she climbed out of the Polaris and came toward him. “You’re Joanna? I’m Randall Lenz.” He had a nice voice, not overly deep, but mellow, smooth. Supposedly, he’d grown up in Manhattan, but he didn’t have a trace of a New York accent. “Hi, Randall,” she replied. “It’s nice to meet you. And yes, I’m Joanna. Jasper sent you over?” Randall nodded. Like her, he was dressed for rough labor, in faded jeans and a flannel shirt, although he wore heavy work boots instead of the worn cowboy boots that tended to be on her feet no matter what the season. “I’ve never fixed a fence before, but I should be okay if you tell me what to do.” Joanna had to repress a smile. That was probably the first time she’d ever had a man actually request that she order him around. All right, that wasn’t exactly what he’d said. Still, she was a little impressed that he was okay with letting her take the lead. Too many men she’d known wanted to act as though they were the expert, no matter what the subject at hand. “It’s really not that hard,” she said. “Mostly, we just need to lift these new rails into place to replace the ones that got cracked or broken over the winter. In a few spots, we’ll need to install new posts, too, but at least the footings are already there and we won’t need to pour cement or anything.” Randall looked a little relieved at that explanation. Although he appeared lean and fit — and a quick glance at his hands told her they weren’t the soft hands of a guy who’d spent his entire life at a desk — Joanna guessed he’d never had to do much in the way of manual labor. Why would he, when he’d spent years and years working for Homeland Security? It wasn’t like he’d been a ranch hand before he showed up in Flagstaff. All the same, she was a little surprised by how good a worker he turned out to be. He followed her lead and lifted rails and held posts without comment, never asking to take a break, never even seeming to break a sweat. In fact, he was so quietly efficient that she began to wonder if maybe he had done this sort of thing before, as implausible as that notion might seem. When she asked, though, he shook his head. They’d taken a break to have some water, and he allowed himself a large swallow before saying with a faint smile, “No, I was a city kid. I had the obligatory summers at camp — my parents didn’t want me staying in New York for my entire summer breaks — but I don’t think canoeing or learning to build a campfire exactly qualified me to rebuild split-rail fences.” His words made her realize how completely different his upbringing must have been from hers. True, as the adopted child of civilian — nonmagical — parents, he hadn’t even known about the powers that lay hidden within him, whereas Joanna had been raised by a witch and a warlock, well aware of her place in the Wilcox clan. She wondered if he would be troubled by the realization that most of the Wilcox clan knew his personal business. Connor wasn’t the type to gossip, but he’d relayed a few details about Randall Lenz’s background, just so people would have a better idea as to why he’d come to live in their family’s territory. And Joanna had to admit that she’d thought she knew where she fit in with her own witch clan…until her weather-working powers began to surface, and her parents feared that the clan’s former primus, Connor’s older brother Damon, might use those powers for ill. They made the difficult decision to split up, and Joanna’s mother Naomi — a Navajo herself — had taken her live on the Navajo reservation up near Kayenta, far away from the Wilcoxes…and their clan’s scheming leader. The stratagem had been necessary, Joanna supposed, but at the same time, she knew being raised for a good chunk of her life among her mother’s people rather than the Wilcox clan had made her feel forever apart from them. Just like the man standing before her now, she didn’t quite know where to fit in. “Well, you’re helping me make great progress,” she told Randall Lenz. “Another day like this, and I think I’ll have it all handled — as long as Addie doesn’t send any more massive snowstorms our way.” Something flickered in his cool blue eyes. Belatedly, Joanna remembered that Randall had been responsible for the death of Addie’s mother, even though the whole thing had been a terrible accident. Even so, she knew the two of them had done their best to avoid one another ever since he’d come to live in Flagstaff. Probably, it hadn’t been very tactful to bring up the subject of Addie Grant. However, Randall’s voice was calm and unruffled as he said, “I think we’re in the clear. At least, the forecast says we’re coming into a warming trend, and I doubt she’d tamper with that.” Most likely not. Addie, just like Joanna herself, didn’t tinker with the weather any more than was strictly necessary. All the storms that had descended on Flagstaff this past season really weren’t any of her doing. She might have removed the stopper from the bottle, so to speak, but it wasn’t as if she’d spent all winter calling snowstorms into the area. From what Joanna had been able to tell, her clan’s other weather-worker was as sick of continually having to dig herself out of the snow as anyone else. “No, probably not,” she agreed. Even as she spoke, though, an odd little thought flickered through her mind. She liked standing there and talking to him. And it wasn’t just being able to take a break after a few hours of some pretty hard labor. No, she liked the clarity of his eyes, so different from the dark eyes of the Wilcox men. She liked the sound of his voice, smooth and deliberate…the way she could see the muscles in his throat move as he took another swallow of water from the bottle she’d provided. Why hadn’t anyone told her that Randall Lenz was a very attractive man? Well, it probably wasn’t the sort of thing that Addie would have even noticed, for a variety of perfectly understandable reasons. And no one else in the clan had had much contact with him, after all. If Joanna had been the type to meet up for coffee and gossip, maybe she would have heard something from her cousin Lorelei, who’d rented Randall the house where he now lived. She didn’t know Lorelei well, but she knew the other woman was the chatty type. Joanna, on the other hand…. Maybe because she’d spent a large chunk of her formative years being sheltered from the Wilcox primus, she’d never been the type for confidences. Her mother had raised her to take care of herself…along with being circumspect to the extreme…so she’d never been as much into the whole clan-togetherness thing as most of her cousins. She went to the holiday parties that Connor hosted, because avoiding those would have been horribly antisocial, but mostly, she kept to herself. Anyway, if she’d kept her toe in the waters, so to speak, possibly she would have heard that Randall Lenz was something of a looker. Older than she was, true, maybe by as much as ten years. Not that it really mattered. It shouldn’t matter at all, she told herself. He’s here helping you out, not looking for a hook-up. And neither was she. Her dating life was as fractured as her fence. She’d had only two romantic relationships in her life, one with a distant Wilcox cousin, the other with a civilian. That one had lasted a little longer, but when he’d started pressuring her to make things more serious, she backed out. At the time, she’d told herself it was only because she hadn’t felt enough for him to tell him who and what she really was — what being a Wilcox really meant — but even then, she’d known there was a lot more going on than that. She just hadn’t wanted to make herself vulnerable. Ever since then, she’d kept to herself. It was easier that way, even if it sometimes got lonely in the big ranch house all by herself, with only her cat and the alpacas for company. If Randall noticed the odd pause in their conversation, he didn’t show any sign of it. He drained the rest of the water in his bottle, then set it on the ground a little ways away from where they’d been working. Before they’d taken their break, he’d shoved his work gloves into the pocket of his jeans, but now he pulled them out and put them back on again. “Ready to get to work?” he asked. She nodded. Randall Lenz was definitely all business, and she liked that. With any luck, it would make things a lot less complicated.