Darknight (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 2) (3 page)

After an entrance like that, I halfway expected Damon to be wearing his black robes from the night before. Actually, he looked pretty much like what you’d expect from a man out and about on a freezing Saturday afternoon — black overcoat, jeans, heavy-duty dark shoes that weren’t quite hiking boots but were close.

“Where’s Connor?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” I said, as steadily as I could. Upset as I was with Connor, in that moment I really, really wished he were there to act as a buffer between me and his clearly crazy brother. “Down in the gallery?”

“I checked.” For the first time his gaze moved past me to the narrow bed — made up, yes, but hastily. It was pretty clear that I had slept there the night before, and the open duffle lying at its foot with my toiletries sitting on top only further proved that I’d taken up residence in this room and not Connor’s. Damon’s mouth tightened. “Made yourself at home, I see.”

I didn’t dare more than a lift of my shoulders. Even though I knew I was safe enough from being bound to Damon Wilcox, that didn’t mean I wasn’t still afraid of him. He’d already shown that he had very little regard for anyone’s well-being other than his own.

As he opened his mouth to speak, I heard footsteps on the stairs once again, hastening upward as if they belonged to someone fearful of what they might find. A second or two later, Connor appeared in the doorway, features tight with worry. They cleared somewhat as he spied Damon standing a safe distance from me. Well, more or less safe. It was clear he could do quite a bit of damage from several feet away.

“Where the hell have you been?” Damon demanded, rounding on his brother.

“Out,” Connor said shortly.

“I can see that. We need to talk.” His gaze flickered toward me and then back to Connor. “Downstairs.”

“Okay.” By his apparent air of unconcern, it was clear he had a lot of experience managing his brother’s rages. He shot me the briefest of glances, as if trying to ascertain for sure that I was all right. I gave a tiny nod, then went and sat down on the bed, trying to appear as collected as he was.

They both left, Damon not giving me a second glance as he shut the door behind him. I forced myself to remain sitting on the bed for a moment to give them enough time to get downstairs, but I knew I couldn’t stay there. I had to find out what had sent Damon hastening over here, clearly intent on confronting Connor about something.

After I thought a safe interval had passed, I got to my feet and opened the door. The knob was still warm to the touch, the lock clearly blasted beyond repair. I shivered. And that was just something Damon had done hurriedly and in anger. I really didn’t want to think about what he was capable of with a chunk of preparatory time behind him.

The hallway was empty, of course, but I hadn’t expected to see them up here. I tiptoed down the corridor, then paused at the top of the stairs. The place wasn’t so big that I couldn’t hear them from this location, and I didn’t dare get any closer.

Damon’s voice, tight with rage. “…were you thinking, leaving her alone?”

“The wards you set are working just fine. She couldn’t get out.”

“Yes, they’re working to keep her in the apartment. But she still managed to do a good bit of damage. You know who I just had a visit from?”

Silence. Maybe Connor had shaken his head, but since I couldn’t see him, I didn’t know for sure.

“The elders of clan McAllister…accompanied by Maya de la Paz.”

“Oh.”

“I’m going to leave aside the fact that they came to my house. Maybe that’s better — at least because it’s Saturday, they couldn’t come barging into my office on campus. Do you want to know how they figured out that they should come straight to me?”

Another pause, and then Connor replied, “Well, it’s not that big a leap to think of you when their
prima
goes missing, is it?”

“Maybe not. But I doubt they would’ve worked quite this fast if the girl’s aunt hadn’t gotten an email forwarded from a friend, an email saying that Angela McAllister was here in Flagstaff.”

“Oh.”

“Stop saying that. You sound like an idiot. Of course, who but an idiot would let that girl roam around freely so she could lay her hands on his laptop and get a message out to her family?”

Despite myself, I felt almost sorry for Connor. Maybe he’d been careless, but he didn’t deserve to have his asshole brother calling him an idiot. And Connor was right — of course everyone’s suspicions would’ve landed right on Damon Wilcox when I disappeared. It might have taken them a bit longer to put two and two together, but….

I was sort of impressed by how quickly they’d gotten here, though. It had been not quite three hours since I’d sent that email, and it took almost that long to get here from Phoenix even in good weather. Maya de la Paz must have hit the road almost the minute she got the call from my clan. I wondered if it had been Aunt Rachel who’d made the call, or whether one of the elders had contacted the de la Paz
prima
. Not that it really mattered. The important thing was that they’d come. Maybe rescue was closer than I’d thought.

Voice even, as if he’d suffered this sort of abuse many times before and no longer cared, Connor said, “So what did you tell them?”

“Nothing. I said I didn’t know what they were talking about, and that they were trespassing on our land and breaking the pact to stay out of one another’s territory. What proof do they have, really?”

“None, I suppose.”

“Exactly. And I put out the call as soon as they appeared, so Marie and Lucas and a few others showed up to lend their support. The McAllisters had to back down, even if they did have Maya de la Paz with them. She’s too shrewd to start an all-out clan war, although she did tell me this was not the end of the matter.”

“So it’s all okay, then.”

“No, it’s not okay. I’ll ask again — what the
hell
were you thinking? And you clearly left her alone again after that…not to mention that it’s obvious you didn’t do what was expected of you and seal the deal.”

You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what he meant by “seal the deal.”

For the first time, Connor’s voice held a touch of anger. “I’m handling it, okay?”

“Are you? It doesn’t look that way to me.”

“I’m handling it.”

A silence that felt painfully long, although I knew it only had to be a second or two. Finally, Damon said, “You’d better be. If you can’t rise to the occasion, then maybe I should step in.”

My blood went cold, even as Connor replied, his tone as frosty as the ice-covered streets outside, “You’re not her consort. I am. Leave it alone.”

Another one of those agonizing pauses, until Damon said, “I will…as long as you don’t.”

Then I heard the door slam. At the same time, a weight I hadn’t even noticed up until that moment seemed to lift from my chest. The
primus
was gone.

And here I was, standing at the top of the stairs, just waiting for Connor to discover me. I hurried back to the guest room and closed the door, then went to the bed and sat down.

A minute later, I heard his voice outside. “It’s okay to come out.”

Since I didn’t know what else to do, I got up and opened the door. Connor stood a foot or so away, clearly making sure I had enough room to get out without having to brush past him. I said hesitantly, “He sounded…upset.”

Those sculpted lips, the ones I had to try very hard not to think about kissing, tightened briefly. “Yes, he was, but I have a feeling you listened to the whole conversation, so no need for me to go into the gory details.”

I opened my mouth to protest, saw the warning look in his eyes, and decided I’d better quit while I was ahead. Instead, I told him, “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble. I just — ”

“You just wanted to let your family know you were all right. It’s fine.” He hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure what he should say next, then lifted his shoulders. “Actually, I hoped you’d find my laptop and get a message out to them. Not that it would make this all better, but at least they’d know you were alive, right?”

“You — ” The words couldn’t quite assert themselves, I was so flabbergasted by his remark. After taking a breath, I asked, “You
meant
for me to contact them?”

“Like I said, I didn’t want them to worry. I wasn’t really expecting them to drag Maya de la Paz into this, but — ”

Right then the cell phone in his pocket went off. He dug it out of his jeans — it was a sleek silver iPhone — answered with a brief “hello?”, then listened as a frown dug itself into his brow. “Okay,” he said finally, “I’ll be down in a minute.”

“Your brother?” I asked.

“No. That was Joelle, my assistant in the gallery. The client I was wooing all morning came back and is about to buy the piece, but he wants my assurances as to its potential to appreciate in value.” Connor shook his head. “The guy’s supposedly buying it as a Christmas present for his wife, but he still wants to make money on it. Anyway, I need to go handle things. Make yourself at home — but you’ve already sort of done that, haven’t you?”

Without giving me a chance to reply, he turned and hurried down the stairs, leaving me alone.

Again.

S
trangely
— maybe because I’d been fairly caught using Connor’s laptop — I had no desire to do any more snooping. Instead, I wandered downstairs, found a glass in one of the cupboards, and filled it up with water through the refrigerator door. He seemed to prefer bottled water, but I’d always drunk water like this when I was at Sydney’s house and didn’t see the harm.

A clock of burnished copper on one wall told me it was now almost two-thirty. I wondered how long the transaction at the gallery was going to take. As long as it took, I supposed. Since I’d just purchased several large original pieces myself, I knew Connor wasn’t talking about a few hundred dollars here.

I knew I should just sit down on the couch and turn on the TV, and try to disengage my brain for a while. The wards on the apartment were too powerful for me to overcome, and I’d already contacted my family. My available options weren’t what you could call vast.

But that visit from Damon had filled me with nervous energy, and so I went to one of the two large windows on the street side of the room and looked outside. The day was still bright, although I noticed the sky had begun to be dotted with large billowy clouds. More snow on the way? I didn’t know enough about the weather patterns in Flagstaff to say for sure. All I knew was that it was much colder here than in Jerome, and the city got consistent snowfall, whereas in Jerome it was still something of a special event when it snowed and actually stuck to the ground for a while.

The streets below were even busier than they’d been that morning, which made sense. All the shops would be open now. I saw people carrying a lot of bags and packages. Strangely, I didn’t notice much in the way of decorations. In Jerome there were holiday lights everywhere, with a good many of the houses with a single lighted “Ho” in their yards or attached to walls and fences. Just our silly in-joke, a crack about the town’s bustling red light district back in the day.

I realized then that I’d never asked Maisie what she thought about all those “Ho”s with the Christmas lights attached to them. Probably just as well.

But here in Flagstaff I didn’t see much sign of holiday cheer, except in the people themselves, who appeared festive and happy enough. They had friends and families to shop for, places to go, people to be with. It all looked so normal. Then again, the vast majority of the city was normal. I was sort of hazy on Flagstaff’s actual population, but it was of course many, many times the size of tiny Jerome. There, half the residents were McAllisters. Here, even if there were a good many more members of the Wilcox clan than there were in my own family, they’d still constitute a tiny minority.

They could probably get away with a lot, using the anonymity of a large population to conceal them.

Seeing all those people intent on their own business didn’t cheer me up, though. Sighing, I went and sat down on the couch. In that moment, I could only think of the clan elders, returning to Jerome empty-handed, and how disappointed my aunt and Adam and so many others must be. I didn’t see how they’d thought they could ask Damon Wilcox to just hand me over. Maybe they’d thought they could get reason to prevail. Unfortunately, he was the polar opposite of reasonable.

And what now? I had no idea. Damon had said Maya wouldn’t risk a clan war, and if she wouldn’t, that meant the McAllisters’ hands were effectively tied. There was no way they could take on the Wilcoxes without allies. But Maya had also said this wasn’t the end of it. What did that mean?

Once again, I had no answer. There had been clan wars back in what Aunt Ruby had referred to as “the old country,” but she’d been very vague about what such warfare actually entailed. “We left those things behind,” she told me once when I tried to press her on the matter, and that seemed to be the end of it.

However, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out that a war between witch clans would no doubt attract a lot of attention, the sort of attention we all — even the Wilcoxes — tried very hard to avoid. So maybe Maya and the elders were trying to see if there was another way to get me back, one that wouldn’t involve magical pyrotechnics. But did they even know where to find me? They’d obviously known where Damon lived, but Connor could be an entirely different story.

As if thinking of him had somehow summoned his return, the door to the apartment opened, and he came in, stopping a few paces away from where I sat on the couch. I still wouldn’t call his expression or posture exactly relaxed, but he did seem a little less tense than the last time I had seen him.

“You made the sale,” I said.

“I did.” He pushed his hair back from his brow. I found myself wondering what those sleek, heavy locks would feel like slipping between my fingers, and once again my heart sped up.

This was getting ridiculous.

“Congratulations, I guess.”

“Thanks.” He stood there watching me for a few seconds, then added, “I’m surprised you’re not watching TV or reading or something.”

“I was people-watching,” I replied, with an off-hand gesture toward the window.

“Maybe you saw my client, then. Uptight-looking jerk in a gray coat, drove off in a silver Audi SUV?”

Despite myself, I smiled. “No, I must have missed him.”

“You didn’t miss much.” Turning from me, he went into the kitchen and got himself some water.

I watched him —
really
watched him, trying to study his expression, his stance. He was still doing that thing of looking at me without actually looking at me, and while I understood his reason for doing so, it still felt odd, as if he were only partially present in the room.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said.

That did make him raise his head. For a second his eyes met mine before he glanced away. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do.” I got up from the couch and moved toward the kitchen, although I stopped in the dining area. That way there would still be a safe distance between us. “Maybe it could have worked, if you’d been honest with me from the beginning.” At that comment his eyebrows lifted, and I said, “Okay, maybe not from the
very
beginning. I can see why you wouldn’t want to admit you were a Wilcox at the Halloween dance, right when you were smack in the middle of McAllister territory. But you could have told me in Sedona. That’s neutral ground.”

His expression was more than a little dubious. “Yeah, right. I can see that going over really well — me telling you I was actually a member of the Wilcox clan when you were there with your posse of McAllister witches.”

“And you didn’t have a posse of your own?” I retorted.

“No, I didn’t. I really was there with just a friend. My friends — the civilian ones — don’t know anything about…all this.”

“Really?” It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. Not that I had a bunch of civilian friends, but of course Sydney knew the score when it came to the McAllisters. I couldn’t imagine having not even one person outside my clan to confide in. It would mean an almost unbearable pressure to keep everything in, to never allow anyone to know the truth about you or your family.

“Really,” he replied, his tone flat.

I decided to leave that aside for the moment, because once again I was starting to feel sorry for him. He didn’t deserve to be felt sorry for, not when he had lied to me and been complicit in my kidnapping. “Okay, whatever. But maybe you could’ve said, ‘Hey, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I’m the man you’ve been dreaming of for the past five years, and let me drop this illusion so you can see my eyes are really green and that I’m a member of a witch clan just like you. Sorry I’m a Wilcox, but I’m sure we can work this out.’ Maybe if you’d done that, we actually could have. Worked it out, I mean.”

The look on his face had shifted from dubious to outright disbelieving. “That’s a nice fairytale, Angela, but don’t tell me that’s really what would have happened.”

I said softly, “I guess we’ll never really know, will we?”

“I guess not.” He stared at me for a long moment, one in which I didn’t even dare blink. Was he going to move toward me?

Apparently not. He glanced away, then said, “I need to check my email and handle a few things. You know where the TV is.” And he took his water and went upstairs, leaving me to watch his departure and wonder how on earth we were going to survive being thrown together like this.

I
really didn’t feel
like watching TV, but I didn’t have a heck of a lot of choice. Trying not to sigh — loudly — I resumed my seat on the couch and started channel surfing. He had the full cable lineup, with HBO and Showtime, and Netflix and Amazon Prime video to boot, but I still couldn’t find anything to hold my interest. How could I, when I was here under an even worse house arrest than I’d suffered back in Jerome?

But since Connor didn’t show any signs of reappearing any time soon, I settled for a re-watching of
Last Holiday
, since I liked the movie and had only missed the first ten minutes or so. Maybe it would help me to escape for a few hours. Maybe.

It actually did take my mind off my worries, so much so that when it ended I was surprised to see Connor standing at the edge of the living room, watching the last of the credits roll. I was also surprised to see that it was dark outside; he must have flipped on the light in the kitchen without my even noticing.

“Good movie?” he asked.

I nodded.

“It’s almost six. I thought I’d go around the corner and grab some tapas for dinner. I don’t cook much.”

I reflected on the irony of him having a three-thousand-dollar Jenn-Air stove and not actually cooking anything on it. All I said, though, was, “What’s tapas?”

A flicker of surprise crossed his face. “They really did shelter you, didn’t they?”

I crossed my arms and scowled at him.

Appearing to relent, he replied, “It’s Spanish food. ‘Tapas’ just means small plates. You get a bunch of different small things to eat and share. It’s good.”

“Okay,” I said, my tone guarded. Not what I would’ve chosen for my birthday dinner, but….

No, I wasn’t going to go there. I’d almost managed to make myself forget it was my birthday. And he was trying to make a gesture, however small.

“That sounds good,” I added.

“I’ll be back in a while, then.” He paused at the closet in the hallway and put on a black peacoat and buttoned it up, then wrapped a scarf with gray, black, green, and white stripes around his neck. For some reason the ensemble just made him look that much more gorgeous, and I had to swallow and look away, pretending to be intent on finding something else to watch.

Without saying anything else, he let himself out of the apartment and closed the door quietly behind him.

Since he’d said he’d be a while, I assumed waiting for the food to be prepared, I wasn’t sure what I should be doing. One movie had been enough for me, and though I supposed I could have gone back upstairs to steal more time on his laptop — maybe checking what those all-important “emails” he’d been reading all that time had been — that didn’t sound like such a great idea.

No, if he was going out to get food, I thought maybe I should do what I could to get the table set for us. Otherwise, our dinner could get cold while he was trying to get everything put together. That seemed like a valid reason. I didn’t want admit that I might be trying to help him out in any way.

I already knew where the glasses were, so I pulled out some clean ones. The next cupboard over contained the plates, and a drawer directly underneath held place mats. In the drawer next to that was the silverware. It didn’t take much time for me to get the table set.

When I was getting out the glasses, I’d also seen wine glasses, but I left those inside the cupboard. Connor hadn’t made any mention of having anything stronger than water to drink. Probably just as well. Sharing a bottle with him might have unforeseen consequences…even though I felt like I could use a glass of wine or two after that confrontation with Damon Wilcox.

Once I was done with the table, I went back to the living room and shuffled through the cable channels until I got to the music-only ones. Judging by what he’d been listening to when I woke up this morning, Connor wasn’t exactly a Top-40 kind of guy, and classic rock didn’t feel right, either. But then I found a station with instrumental guitar music, and since we were eating Spanish food, that seemed like a good fit to me. I turned the sound down a little so it wouldn’t be too intrusive, then waited for him to return.

He seemed to be gone a long time. Maybe the restaurant was busy; it was Saturday night, after all. But eventually, almost a half hour after he’d left, he returned carrying several bags of food, and with a wine bottle tucked under one arm.

Obviously he didn’t have the same reservations about drinking wine that I did.

A flicker of surprise passed over his face when he saw the table, but he only said, “Thanks for getting everything ready. That’ll make things go faster.” He set the bottle down on the kitchen counter and then started pulling small white carry-out containers from the bag and transferring their contents to an assortment of plates and bowls.

There really was quite a variety. I couldn’t tell what everything was, but it sure smelled good.

“Can you start taking this stuff to the table while I open the wine?”

I nodded, again wondering at his ability to act so casual when this was anything but a simple dinner date. But I realized I was hungry, and it seemed best to go with the flow for the moment. Better that than starting a silly argument that wouldn’t solve anything and would only let the food get cold.

Carrying everything to the table made me realize how much food Connor had actually brought. This seemed enough for four people, tapas portions or no. But it did keep me busy, and by the time I’d set down the last bowl — filled with an amazing, spicy mushroom dish — he was done opening the wine and had come to the table with the bottle and a pair of oversized red wine glasses.

The easiest thing to do was sit down, put my napkin in my lap, and act perfectly normal. I left the place at the head of the table for Connor and took the spot to his left. That way I was facing out into the apartment. The windows now were two black mirrors, filled by the fast-falling night of midwinter.