Darkmoon (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 3) (13 page)

“Sooner rather than later. Maybe Tuesday.”

“That won’t work,” I said immediately. “I’ve got to be back in Jerome. The contractors are coming to get started on the kitchen.”

He grimaced before coming to sit next to me on the couch. “Damn. I’d forgotten about that.” A pause as he seemed to study my expression. “Are you really going through with the remodel? It just seems so…disruptive.”

“It will be,” I replied. “But I can’t cancel the whole thing. It’s way too late for that. And it wouldn’t be fair to all those people counting on the income from the project.”

“You’re right, of course. And that sounds like something a
prima
would say.” To my surprise, he bent forward and kissed me, very gently, on the lips. “So okay, maybe Wednesday or Thursday.”

“Thursday,” I told him. “I need to be back in Jerome for more than just one day. Partly because I should be around for the contractors, and partly because I know no one’s thrilled about me disappearing up here for the weekend. They didn’t
say
anything, of course, but you could practically see the disapproval radiating off the elders when I told them I wouldn’t be around for a few days.”

“They need to watch it…especially Margot. She has no idea that I could unleash Lucas on her at any time.”

The thought was so incongruous that I had to laugh. “I dare you. Seriously.”

“Well, if Lucas sells us on this house, he’s going to need something to occupy his time….”

The glint in Connor’s eye as he said this as so devilish that all I could do was pull him to me and kiss him, kiss him hard. His mouth opened to mine, and we tasted one another, the fire of our bond licking along our veins. In short order I was in Connor’s arms and being carried upstairs, where we spent the rest of the afternoon losing ourselves in one another, forgetting about houses and disapproving elders and the mystery of Marie’s radio silence.

Even then, though, I knew they wouldn’t be forgotten forever.

A
s I’d expected
, the next morning Connor tried calling Marie again, still with no response. He set his phone down on the counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area and let out a brief gust of breath. “Okay, that’s it,” he announced. “We’re going over there.”

I put down my cup of green tea. Even though I’d been trying to avoid coffee anyway, over the weekend I seemed to have developed a sudden aversion to its smell. Poor Connor had tried to make himself some French roast, and I nearly vomited at the aroma. Strange, because otherwise I really wasn’t experiencing any morning sickness. But now — at least for the time being — if he wanted to get his caffeine fix, he’d have to go to the coffee house down the street and drink his venti before he came home.

“Do you think that’s such a good idea?” I asked in dubious tones. “For all we know, Marie’s not answering the phone because she’s shacked up with the pool boy or something.”

Connor didn’t crack a smile. “She doesn’t have a pool. And I’ve never heard of her being with anyone, let alone a pool boy, so there goes that theory.”

“Oh, now I’ve figured it out,” I said. “Her main problem is that she just needs to get laid. She’d be so much more relaxed.”
Then again, probably the real reason she always acts hostile around me is that I’m the child of the man she wanted to marry….

Not bothering to respond to my remark, he went on, “Do you think you can be ready to leave by eleven?”

It was ten-thirty now, and although I’d showered, I was still roaming around in yoga pants and a tank top, with no makeup on. “No problem,” I said blithely. Thank goodness my “beautifying” routine was pretty basic.

And, sure enough, we were out the door at five after eleven. I’d eschewed my jeans, which were starting to feel a little tight, for one of my flowing sequined skirts — thank the Goddess for elastic waistbands — and a camisole. It wasn’t even that hot in Flagstaff, but I thought the outfit was a good kick-off for the start of summer.

As before, we walked the few blocks to Marie’s house, letting the mild breeze be our companion. Connor and I didn’t talk much; I could tell he was still brooding over her silence, and attempting to figure out the reason behind it. Well, we should know in a few minutes, one way or another.

Her house didn’t look much different from the last time we’d seen it, only a few days earlier. The irises still bloomed, although they were starting to look a little dry around the edges, as was the lawn. Well, maybe she was big into water conservation.

Connor went to the front door and rang the bell. We waited, the breeze picking up and pulling at my spangled skirts, causing a brief swirl of reflections around the front stoop, like a drift of falling stars.

Nothing.

“She could be out shopping or something,” I suggested. “I mean, even Marie has to replace the toilet paper sometime.”

A brief twist of his mouth, and Connor shook his head before ringing the doorbell once again. We could hear it echoing in the house, but there were no answering footsteps, no Marie coming to the door and giving us that look of quiet disapproval she’d mastered so well.

“I’m going to open it,” Connor said, after we’d waited another minute.

“I don’t think she’d be too happy about us breaking and entering.”

“I don’t care. I’m the
primus
of this clan — what’s she going to do about it?”

To that I had no answer, so I merely lifted my shoulders and watched as he laid his hand on the latch. A pale glow seemed to drift from his fingers, surrounding the dark metal piece, and then he pushed down, and the door swung inward.

“Wow,” he said, lifting his hand and staring at it as if he’d never seen it before. “She had it warded, but I just pushed with the power — the
primus
power — and the wards…disappeared.”

“You haven’t used it very much,” I said. It was not a question.

“No. Except that time in Indio, with you. It sort of…well, it scares me a little. I saw what it did to Damon, and I don’t want to be anything like that.”

Again I couldn’t really find the words to reply, to reassure him that he would never be anything like Damon. Instead, I slipped my fingers in his, pulling him gently into the foyer. After all, if he’d gone to the trouble of using the
primus
powers to unlock the door, then we might as well go inside and see what’s what.

Everything was neat and clean, everything in its place. Well, almost everything. As we moved from the entryway into the combined living room/dining room space, I noticed a cream-colored envelope, the kind that you might put a birthday card in, leaning up against the Navajo basket filled with dried gourds that sat in the center of the dining table. One word was written on that envelope, in handwriting so elegant that it looked almost like calligraphy.

Connor
.

Mystified, the two of us exchanged a glance before he stepped forward and lifted the envelope, turning it over in his hand. Nothing else had been written on it.

Connor stood there for so long, staring down at the envelope, that I felt compelled to ask, “Aren’t you going to open it?”

“I guess so. Yes. It’s just…I don’t know. I can’t imagine she would’ve left a note unless it was bad news.”

A weird prickling sense of unease told me the same thing, but I shook it off, saying, “Even if it’s bad news, we need to know what it is.”

“I know…you’re right.” A final hesitation, and then he ran his thumb under the flap of the envelope, tearing it open. Inside was a single piece of paper, also cream, thick and heavy. That surprised me; Marie seemed like the last person in the world to care about nice stationery, although I knew I should probably stop trying to understand all the quirks of the individual Wilcoxes.

As Connor unfolded the paper, I saw that it contained only a few words written in that same flowing handwriting. Peering over his shoulder, I could just make out what they said.

I thought I could do this, but I can’t. You’ll need to discover your own path to the solution.

“What the hell?” Connor exclaimed, turning the paper over, almost as if he expected more words to magically appear on the reverse of the note. Well, it had been written by a witch, so I supposed that expectation wasn’t entirely unwarranted, but even so, the paper’s surface remained smooth and blank.

“So…she’s gone?” I asked.

“Sure looks that way.”

And even though the house was clearly empty, he still went from room to room, with me trailing in his wake, as if Marie might be discovered hiding in a broom closet or something. Like the main rooms downstairs, the bedrooms and bathroom on the second story were clean and neat, nothing out of place. One bedroom was clearly a guest room, with a daybed and small dresser and not much else, and the other seemed to be her office, although the desk that must have once held her computer was now empty. There was a table opposite it that she seemed to have used for some kind of mosaic work; the surface was covered with a plastic sheet, and there were still jars of glass tiles sitting there, and a half-finished piece showing a jagged mountain range and a stylized sunburst behind it.

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “I didn’t know Marie was an artist, too.”

He gave a shrug, clearly not interested in Marie’s artistic pursuits at the moment. “Yeah, she’s been doing that stuff for as long as I can remember. Sells it to the local shops, has an online business, too, I think.”

My knowledge of Marie had just doubled in the last five minutes. “It looks as if she didn’t care much about taking it with her.”

“Well, it’s not quite as portable as knitting, I guess.”

Moving out of the office, he went down the hall to the master bedroom. The door stood ajar, so it wasn’t as if she’d locked it behind her, but I still felt strange going in there. My aunt’s bedroom, which was about my only frame of reference for an adult woman’s private space, was a cheerful jumble of antiques and knickknacks and decorative frames filled with various photos of family members. This chamber was almost the exact opposite, spare Shaker-style furniture and a queen-size bed with a white-on-white quilt laid across it. No pictures, no decorations at all except a couple of Navajo rugs hanging on the walls, just as in the living room downstairs.

Well, there was one thing out of place.

Lying in the middle of the bed, glaringly obvious against all that white, was a small 4x6 photo. Connor went to it at once and lifted it up, again turning it over to see if anything was written on the back. But the reverse of the photo was blank, except for the faint watermark of the photographic paper.

As he flipped it back over, I saw it was a picture of a young couple, the woman clearly Native American, the man also dark-haired, but his skin was lighter, and his eyes hazel. They were standing in front of what looked like the gate to a corral; in the background I could just make out the dark brown shape of what was probably a horse.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“I think that’s Marie.”

“Marie?” I asked incredulously, reaching for the photo. Connor surrendered it, and I stared down at the picture of the couple, attempting to see the cold and distant Marie I knew in the laughing face of the girl in the image. She was probably barely twenty in the photo, her face not as sharply angled as it was now, the chin rounder. But I recognized the dark, arched brows and the thin nose and the long, long lashes. Somehow, though, this girl was beautiful, whereas I’d never thought of Marie that way. Striking, yes, but sharp and almost hawklike, as if the passage of years had worn away all that youthful prettiness. “Okay,” I allowed at last. Then my heart seemed to drop a beat or two as I focused on the young man more closely. Was that…? “And the guy?” I asked, my voice casual. Too casual, I knew.

Connor’s gaze flickered up at me, and his eyes narrowed as he seemed to take in my expression. Then he said, “I don’t recognize him, but I think that’s your father. He’s around the right age, and Marie’s looking pretty friendly with him.”

That was true — she was leaning into the young man’s shoulder, a flirtatious glint in her eyes. And even though I’d been waiting all my life to know what my father looked like, now that the time had come, it was harder than I had thought it would be to stare down at that photo, make myself really study his face.

He was handsome, with sooty hair almost as dark as Marie’s, and fine high cheekbones and a nice strong chin. I could see why my mother had fallen for him. But that still didn’t explain why he had left Marie and gone to California, apparently intent on seducing the wayward McAllister daughter who had gone there to escape the heavy expectations of her family.

“I can see it a little,” Connor said, glancing from the photo to me and back again. “Something in the shape of your face. And your hair color is almost exactly the same.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to dwell on those similarities, because I had a feeling I’d start obsessing about which feature I’d gotten from which parent, and we really didn’t have time for that. Turning to the matter at hand, I asked, “But why would she leave it here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe for you to find? Obviously the whole thing is still painful to her, or she wouldn’t have treated you the way she did. Does. Whatever.” He began to shrug and then seemed to stop himself, as if he realized that such an off-hand gesture didn’t really fit the seriousness of the situation.

Even so, I gave him a startled glance. Yes, I’d thought the same thing myself, but I hadn’t really expected Connor to agree with me. He’d always seemed fairly quick to defend Marie’s behavior.

“I saw it,” he said. “I didn’t like it, and it wasn’t really overt enough for me to call Marie on it. And then when we discovered who your father really was, it made total sense.”

I nodded, then stared down at the photo once again. It was so odd — for most of my life my father had been a specter, a shadow, someone with no name, no identity. Now I knew his name was Andre Wilcox, and this was what he’d looked like, once upon a time. Better than nothing, but it still didn’t help us get any closer to discovering why he’d gone to California all those years ago and what had happened to him, never mind whether finding any of those answers would get us any nearer to breaking the Wilcox curse.

“And she left this…why? As a clue?”

“Maybe. Or maybe she wanted to look at it one last time before she left.”

“Left for where? I mean, where would Marie even
go?
”

“I have no idea,” Connor said grimly. “So I’m going to call the only person who might.”

S
itting
in Marie’s living room, Lucas appeared stunned as he glanced from me to Connor, his gaze finally coming to rest on the photo where it sat on the coffee table. Then he reached over and picked up the snapshot, eyes narrowing. “Andre Wilcox. Jesus Christ.”

“So you knew him?” I asked.

“Well, he was my cousin — okay, we’re
all
cousins, in one way or another — so yes, I knew him. Not well, since that branch of the family was a little standoffish, and he was about seven years older than I was. Enough that we weren’t in the same subgroup of kids who hung out together at family parties, that sort of thing.”

Lucas shifted on the couch, the photo still in his hand. Again I was struck by how he had to be about the least warlock-looking warlock I’d ever met, with his expensive jeans and golf shirt and polished loafers. He’d probably come straight from the country club when we called.

Now he scrubbed his free hand through his dark hair, disarranging the expensive haircut, and shook his head. “And this thing with Marie? I don’t get it.”

“So she never said anything to you?” Connor inquired.

“Well, she’s said lots of things to me over the years, but she certainly never mentioned that she was planning to just up and disappear on us.” His expression clouded as he leaned down to return the snapshot to the coffee table. “She might not be the world’s friendliest person — ”

No, that would be you,
I thought with a mental grin.

“ — But she’s always been there when we needed her. We just sort of accepted that it was Marie’s way and rolled with it.”