Darkangel (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill) (15 page)

He’d come loping up the front steps, looking at the house with what I thought was an avaricious gleam in his eye. I knew this because I was peeking through a clear spot in one of the stained-glass panels that flanked the door. All right, maybe I was already predisposed to expect the worst, but his expression was decidedly different from that of the candidates I’d met at Aunt Rachel’s far more modest apartment.

The doorbell rang. I weighed the possibility of pretending I wasn’t home, then decided against it, since I knew one of the bodyguards would just come answer the doorbell if I didn’t. So I grasped the handle and turned it, then opened the door.

Like most of the candidates, he wasn’t bad-looking. A little above average height, short brown hair, brown eyes. I gave a mental shrug. Really, it would be so much easier if I could just look at their eye color, say “nope,” and move on to the next one. But although everyone more or less thought there must be something important about my dreams, they weren’t willing to give them enough weight that they could rule out every candidate who didn’t have green eyes.

Although I’d been dressing a little more nicely these days, mostly because it didn’t seem right for the
prima
of the McAllisters to be slouching around in jeans with holes in them and pilly sweaters, I hadn’t gone to a lot of effort today. My hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and I wore one of my Jerome sweatshirts over a pair of faded jeans. No, they didn’t have holes in them, but they were starting to get a little threadbare.

I could tell by his disappointed expression that this new candidate wasn’t overly impressed with the McAllisters’
prima
.

Good.

“Hi,” I said, and stuck out my hand. “I’m Angela.”

“I know,” he replied. Then he shrugged and extended his own hand. “Griffin Dutton.”

I knew that as well. I also knew that he came from Wickenburg, worked at one of the guest ranches there, and was my fifth or sixth cousin lord knows how many times removed. Back in the twenties one of the McAllister girls had married a rancher in those parts, and Griffin was her great-great-grandson. Or so Aunt Rachel had explained.

After a lackluster hand shake, I said, “The parlor is over here. Do you want me to get you anything first? Water? A Coke?” I didn’t drink soda, but a couple of the bodyguards were caffeine fiends, so I kept it around for them.

“A Coke would be good.”

Fetching it would give me a small reprieve. I pointed to the parlor, which opened on the foyer. “Why don’t you go on in and sit down? I’ll be back in a minute.”

He nodded and headed into the parlor, and I went the other direction to fetch his Coke from the kitchen. I found my cousin Kirby with his head in the fridge, eyeing a pizza box from Grapes.

“Don’t you dare,” I told him. “That’s my dinner tonight.”

Looking over his shoulder, he shot me a grin. He was a few years older than I and had a loft apartment down on Main Street that he shared with his boyfriend. Even ten years ago there probably would’ve been a hell of a ruckus over that, but these days no one even batted an eye. I wished my love life were that uncomplicated.

“What, you don’t think you’re going to have a celebratory dinner with Rachel after this candidate proves he’s the One?”

I shot Kirby a very sour look. “I’d say the odds of that are roughly the same as me getting elected President.”

“Hey, you never know.” With a visible show of reluctance, he put the pizza box back in the ancient Frigidaire. “Did you need something?”

“He wants a Coke.”

Another grin. “Well, at least he didn’t ask for a beer.”

“I didn’t offer.” I took the cold can of Coke from Kirby. “And hands off that pizza. I’m serious.”

“But I’m hungry.”

“Then have some cheese and crackers or something. There’s some white cheddar in there, and I have crackers in the pantry.”

“If I must.” He heaved an exaggerated sigh, then extracted the package of cheese and shut the refrigerator door.

Any longer, and Griffin Dutton would know I was stalling for time. So I left the kitchen and headed back to the parlor, where I found him looking around at all the new furniture and the art on the walls, most of which was from local artists and was all original. I could practically see the dollar signs in his eyes as he mentally added up what it all must have cost.

“Your Coke,” I said, and extended the hand holding it.

“Thanks.” He took it and popped the tab, then took a few large swallows. “That’s better. It was kind of a long drive.”

I only nodded. Yes, it was, but I’d had candidates come a lot farther than that, so I feared my expression wasn’t entirely sympathetic.

If he noticed, he didn’t give any indication. Instead he gazed up at the ceiling, which had been painted a soft cream color, and then around at the deeper toast hue on the walls. “Been doing some work on the house?”

“Some,” I admitted. “It was very retro, and not in a good way. I’m not big on florals.”

“Hmm.” He drank some more Coke, then set the can down on the coffee table.

I immediately swooped in and relocated it to a coaster.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, although he didn’t sound all that sorry…more amused by my anal-retentive protecting of the table.

Once again I thought this would be a whole hell of a lot easier if I could have a few drinks before forcing myself to go through with this ridiculous ritual. On the other hand, I didn’t think there were thick enough beer goggles in the world that would make me believe kissing Griffin was a good idea.

“So…” I said. I really didn’t want to kiss him, but I did want to get this over with.

“So…” He moved closer to me.

I sighed. “Just go ahead and do it.”

A lot of guys probably would have been put off by my tone. I’d already taken the measure of this one, though, and he wasn’t seeing
me
. He was just seeing the
prima
of the McAllisters and her big house and the position he’d have as her consort. Boy, was he in for a disappointment.

He leaned in and pressed his mouth against mine. That was it — no reaching up to caress my cheek, no finesse at all. Just lips against lips. I suppose he thought he didn’t need to do anything else, because if he turned out to be the one, the spark would start on its own.

Of course it didn’t.
Thank the Goddess
, I thought. Bad enough that I should have to kiss him at all, when I’d been spending my days mooning over Chris Wilson. But it hadn’t worked, so I started to pull away immediately.

“Sorry — ”

I didn’t get out anything else other than that, because he’d grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me back toward him, forcing my mouth open with his tongue. He tasted of Coke, and I gagged. This time I didn’t even have to invoke the Goddess. Even as my mind cried out a “no!”, an invisible force grabbed hold of him and pushed him away from me with enough force that he tripped over a footstool and went tumbling to the floor. In the process he knocked over the fireplace tools, which hit the slate hearth surround with a clatter.

Almost at once, Kirby and the other two bodyguards, Tom and Alison, came running. They took in the scene before them and then hurried over to me.

“What happened?” Kirby asked, as Griffin shook his head, as if to clear it, then began to push himself up to his feet.

“That crazy bitch attacked me, that’s what happened.”

At their
prima
being called the big “B,” all three of them frowned. Tom, a heavy-set man in his middle forties, said, “You might want to reconsider what you just called Ms. McAllister.”

Griffin matched their scowls with one of his. “Well, it’s the truth.”

“I was defending myself. We did the kiss, it didn’t work, and I guess he didn’t like it, because he decided to stick his tongue down my throat. So I…did something about it.”

“I think you’d better leave,” Alison said grimly.

Griffin glanced from her to Tom to Kirby, who was looking angrier than I thought I’d ever seen him. Actually, before that moment I wasn’t even sure Kirby could get angry.

“Fine,” Griffin said. “Like I want to be part of this freak show anyway. She’s not even good-looking.”

After delivering that parting shot, he stalked out of the room and into the foyer. The front door banged a few seconds later.

The three bodyguards just stared at me. I hesitated, then went over to the footstool and righted it, putting it back in its proper position. “I’m going upstairs,” I told them, and walked with as much dignity as I could muster to the staircase in the foyer. I went upstairs, closed my bedroom door behind me, and threw myself down on my bed, where I wept stormily and wished this would all be over.

O
n Thanksgiving
most of us converged on Spook Hall for a huge, rowdy McAllister feast. They’d been doing this ever since I could remember; Aunt Rachel had once told me it was Great-Aunt Ruby’s idea, that after spending Thanksgiving going from house to house so she could try to see everyone, she put her foot down and said we should all gather in one place and save her some work. So we shopped like we were buying food for a soup kitchen or something, making the run to Prescott so we could go to Costco and the Trader Joe’s there, and then set up the long tables in the hall with warm russet tablecloths and centerpieces of autumn flowers.

The kitchen was large, but even so we did a good deal of tripping over one another. My aunt supervised, more or less, since she was an amazing cook. Some turkeys went in the oven, and others were smoked in the smokers across the street at the English Kitchen restaurant. My specialty was homemade spiced cranberry sauce, so I handled that and tried to stay out of the way as best I could.

We really hadn’t discussed my disastrous encounter with Griffin Dutton, but I noticed that she hadn’t sent any more candidates my way after that. Thanksgiving was late this year, so there were only three weeks until my birthday at that point. Both she and I — and the entire clan — were aware of the rapidly approaching deadline. We couldn’t not be. But either she’d decided to let the universe handle it from here on out, or she thought she might as well leave it alone until after Thanksgiving. I wasn’t going to question her actions, mostly because I was just relieved to not have another candidate shoved down my throat. Literally.

It was mainly women in the kitchen, but that didn’t mean the men got off scot-free. From the hall came scraping sounds as they brought out the long racks of chairs and started setting them up. There was another group congregating across the street, ostensibly in order to keep watch on the turkeys in the smoker, but I had a feeling there was more beer drinking than turkey-watching going on there.

All around me was the chatter of cheerful voices and the warm, rich smells of turkey roasting and pies baking. Everyone looked happy, glad to be surrounded by family, glad of the opportunity to share in the world’s bounty. I knew I should be feeling the same way, but I didn’t.

Suddenly the kitchen felt stifling. My cranberry sauce had more or less gelled by then, so I turned off the gas and moved the pot to the back burner. “I need to get some air,” I told Aunt Rachel, and then hurried out of the kitchen and threaded my way through the tables to the front door.

It was one of those beautiful late autumn days, the air cold but the sun warm, the sky deep sapphire punctuated by downy white clouds. I took in a deep breath, raising my face to the sun and the wind, and headed down the side street in an attempt to get away from the hustle and bustle.

“That’s quite the shindig you’re putting together in there,” came Maisie’s voice from a few feet away.

She hadn’t been there a second earlier, but that was sort of how she did things. Just appeared out of nowhere. Once I’d tried to ask her where she was when she wasn’t here. She’d shaken her head and said vaguely, “Around.” Which of course wasn’t illuminating in the slightest.

Right now she sounded more wistful than anything else. “Didn’t you have big Thanksgiving dinners?” I asked.

“Maybe when I was really little, before Papa died.” Her expression hardened. “But that no-good dog my mother married afterward didn’t hold with Thanksgiving. Said turkey was too expensive and it was silly to go to all that fuss.”

I didn’t press the matter further. From our previous conversations, I’d gotten the impression that her stepfather had gotten a little too friendly as she got older, and she ran away. How precisely she’d ended up in Jerome, I wasn’t sure. I could tell she didn’t want to talk about it.

So I only replied, “Yes, I think it’s even bigger this year. Of course, part of it is that everyone wants to be here for Thanksgiving with the new
prima
.” I shrugged.

Her expression turned sly. “Yes, I seen that you did all that work on your great-auntie’s house. Can’t say for sure that I think it’s an improvement, but then, I’m not much of one for all these new-fangled styles.”

I wondered what my interior decorator would think if I told her that a ghost had criticized her work. Leila was pretty no-nonsense for someone who lived in Sedona, woo-woo capital of the world, so I had a feeling she wouldn’t take it all that well.

All I said was, “I like it, though. It feels more like me now.”

Maisie appeared to consider that, then nodded. “Well, I s’pose that’s the important thing, as you’re the one living in it.”

I nodded, and looked past her out across the valley, past Sedona…all the way to Flagstaff, where Humphreys Peak brooded amongst a crown of dark clouds. It didn’t look like the version from the movies, but it still reminded me of Mordor, especially on days like this, where it was sunny here but broody and dark all those miles away. Kind of silly, I supposed, because although the Wilcoxes were not exactly what you would call nice people, they were far outnumbered by all the ordinary folks who lived in Flagstaff and worked and shopped and went to school without having any idea that a coven of evil witches and warlocks lived amongst them.

“What do you know about the Wilcoxes?” I asked abruptly, after turning back to Maisie.

She looked surprised by the question. “No more than you, I guess. They aren’t very nice, are they? And of course all that hullaballoo when they tried to grab Ruby when she was your age. But that was a long time ago.”

“Not very nice” was a hell of an understatement. But Maisie was a ghost. There wasn’t much they could do to her at this point.

I didn’t even know why I was thinking about the Wilcoxes, except for seeing the mountain, standing dark and tall a hundred miles away. Did they have their own Thanksgiving observance, or did they consider that sort of thing hopelessly plebeian?

It was kind of silly to wonder about such a thing, I supposed. I wasn’t likely to find out any time soon.

Rachel’s head popped out of the side door of the building, startling me and causing Maisie to dissolve immediately. “Oh, there you are. We’re about to start pulling the turkeys out of the ovens, and I need you on gravy duty.”

I reflected that sometimes being a witch wasn’t exactly what it was cracked up to be. Yes, we all had our individual powers and abilities, but that didn’t mean we could wiggle our noses like Belinda from
Bewitched
and have a feast magically appear. There was still a lot of grunt work involved.

“Coming,” I told my aunt, and started to walk up to meet her. Yes, I was the new
prima
, but that didn’t absolve me of kitchen duty. Just as well, probably. At least that way I’d be busy inside, instead of standing out in the middle of the street and brooding about the Wilcoxes.

After that it was sort of a frenzied bustle of getting all the last-minute things — the gravy and the rolls and the mashed potatoes — ready at the same time. Aunt Rachel supervised with the practiced skill of a field marshal, so everything made its entrance into the hall and onto the long tables set up buffet-style on the far wall at the anointed hour. Then it was time to eat.

I sat at the head of one table, which I hadn’t expected but probably should have, if I’d stopped to think about it. Rachel was on one side of me, once she finally sat down, and Tobias was on the other, so I didn’t have to worry about Adam trying to keep me company all during dinner. He was at the same table, but farther down, sitting with his parents and his younger sister, who was a senior at Cottonwood High. I didn’t see Jenny, his older sister. Maybe she had to work — the lowest person on the totem pole usually got the crap shifts on holidays and weekends. Once or twice during the meal he tried to catch my eye, and while I smiled at him, I didn’t have time for much else.

At last, though, after everyone had had seconds or even thirds, it was time for pie. I’d been sort of selective in my eating, skipping the stuffing altogether, since I didn’t like it that much to begin with. It would be a crime to be so full that I didn’t have room for any of Aunt Rachel’s pumpkin pie, which was divine.

I was just putting a piece on my plate and giving it a healthy dollop of freshly whipped cream — none of that canned stuff around here — when Adam came up to me. Well, it looked more like he was just there for pie, too, but I had the feeling he’d timed his approach so he’d be there when I was.

“Everything okay?” he said in an undertone.

“Of course it is,” I replied, even though I didn’t know if it actually was. “Why do you ask?”

“You just looked sort of…cranky…during dinner.”

“Well, I’m not,” I snapped. Then, as a hurt expression crossed his face, I added, “That is, I’m fine. It was just busy getting everything ready, and I’ve been kind of stressed out with my birthday coming up, and….” I decided to stop myself there. He knew what the problem was…mostly. No way would I admit to him that I’d spent more time than was probably healthy brooding over Chris Wilson. That match was even less viable than one with Adam. At least Adam was a McAllister, and a warlock.

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

Why does that not surprise me?
But we were blocking the pies, so I sidled a few feet away. “Everybody’s probably been thinking about it. But I don’t think there’s much we can do except hope that the consort shows up damn soon.”

“There might be another solution.”

Since he was the one volunteering it, I had a pretty good idea what that might be, or at least what he
thought
it might be. Affecting unconcern, I took a bite of pie, then asked, “There is?”

A light flush appeared along his cheekbones. “Well, I’ve been doing some reading, trying to see what the precedents were. I mean, we all know that it’s not a good thing for a
prima
to be without a consort when her twenty-second birthday rolls around. But I found an instance where that happened, and a warlock from her clan married her even though he wasn’t the consort, and it actually worked out just fine. So maybe that’s what we should do here.”

It took a few seconds for his words to sink in. Lowering my voice, I said, “Are you asking me to
marry
you?”

The previous flush was swallowed up in a wave of bright red that went over his face from forehead to chin. “Well, yeah. Wouldn’t it be better than what happened to Great-Aunt Ruby?”

“Nothing happened to her. I mean, the Wilcoxes tried, but they weren’t successful. And it turns out she was right all along for waiting, because then she met Great-Uncle Pat a few weeks later. All’s well and all that.”

“Yeah, but — ”

I realized then how hard this must have been for him. He had to know I wouldn’t agree, but because he was worried and because he cared, he’d gone out on a limb anyway. “It’ll be all right. You’ll see.”

He hesitated. “Maybe. But can you promise me something?”

“What?” I asked, my tone guarded. I knew better than to make a promise without knowing what it was about.

“If we get to your birthday, and there’s still no one else, can you please think about it? I want you to be safe.”

I looked up into his pleading blue-gray eyes. If the man of my dreams never materialized, did it really matter? I didn’t want to be alone for the rest of my life, and no matter how much I might yearn for him, I knew Chris Wilson was not an option. Witches and warlocks married civilians from time to time — heck, Adam’s own mother was one — but a
prima
didn’t have that option.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “If we get to that point, then…okay.”

His face lit up then, and for a second I was worried he was going to pull me into a hug and smash my plate of pie right against me. Somehow he managed to keep a grip on himself, though. “Great. I mean, I doubt it’ll happen, but if it does…”

“…you know where to find me,” I said wearily. I gestured with my free hand back toward the table where I’d been sitting. “And now I’m going to sit down and eat the rest of this pie.”

“Sure.” He grinned at me. Since I didn’t want to show him how unexcited I was by the prospect of having to marry him because there was no one else, I summoned a smile in return before heading back to my empty chair.

In that moment, I wondered how much I really had to be thankful for after all.

C
lean-up seemed
to take forever, but finally around nine o’clock I headed home with that night’s bodyguards in tow. No one spoke, probably because we were all feeling sleepy and stuffed after the enormous meal we’d eaten earlier. By that point pretty much everyone had done a rotation watching over me, so I didn’t see the need to show anyone where the snacks and sodas were. Or the coffeemaker; more than once I’d awoken in the middle of the night and smelled the rich scent of coffee drifting up the stairs, beating out the lingering paint fumes.

I just said goodnight to them and went upstairs, thinking I’d read in bed for a while or watch a show on my laptop. Something normal, prosaic. It felt way too early to go to bed, even though I was wiped out from the long day and all the heavy food I’d eaten.

But after I’d washed my face and brushed my teeth and climbed into the flannel pajama bottoms and long-sleeved thermal shirt I wore to bed — it was a magnificent house, but drafty — I found that the book I was partway through really didn’t interest me, and neither did any of the shows I had queued up on Netflix. So I shut my laptop and wandered down the hall to the library to see if I could find anything more enticing there.

I say “library” because that was what everyone called it, but it was really more of a combination study and library. A big rolltop desk stood against one wall, and two of the other walls were covered in bookshelves. This was a room I hadn’t touched yet, mainly because I hadn’t decided what I wanted to do with it. Sydney thought I should turn it into a media room, sort of a home theater, but I thought it felt sacrilegious to tear out those lovely dark oak bookshelves.

Not that what they contained looked all that intriguing. An old out-of-date set of World Book encyclopedias, probably from when Great-Aunt Ruby’s sons were young. Books of fairytales. Some tattered paperbacks looking out of place amongst the more dignified hard-bound books, mysteries and some science fiction and a few more sensational titles like
Peyton Place
and
Valley of the Dolls
.