Darknight (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 2) (20 page)

They moved off, but not before he shot a truly venomous glance in Maya’s direction. She appeared singularly unimpressed.

“We’ll look around, too,” Tobias said, and took my aunt’s hand in his. They headed toward the nearest painting, and after a brief hesitation, Henry and Margot followed them.

“Thanks, Maya,” Connor said.

“It is nothing. I wasn’t sure what would happen, with McAllisters and Wilcoxes in such close proximity, so I thought it best to make the trip up.” Her dark eyes glinted as she smiled up at Connor; she was tiny, so her head didn’t even reach his shoulder. Not that it mattered. What Maya de la Paz lacked in height, she more than made up in
cojones
. “Besides, I wanted to see Connor’s work. I wondered if he was ever going to put that degree of his to use.”

His expression turned sheepish, but I overlooked that, wondering at the familiar way she addressed him, and how she knew he’d been an art major. It wasn’t the sort of thing I had expected her to know.

Those questions must have been clear on my face, because Maya let out a chuckle and said, “And now you want to know how I could know Connor at all, when his clan and mine are not exactly what one would call close.”

“Hardly,” he said with a grimace and a quick glance toward his brother, now safely on the other side of the exhibit space.

“It’s simple enough, though, isn’t it?” she went on. “Connor wished to get his degree at ASU, which has a very good art program, but since ASU is in my clan’s territory, he had to come to me to get permission when it was time for him to transfer from Northern Pines in his junior year. I’ll admit I wasn’t sure at first, but it was clear to me soon enough that he is nothing like his brother. So I gave him the dispensation, and he lived down in the Phoenix area quietly enough for four years, which is more than I can say for some of the younger generation in my clan.”

At that remark, Connor looked as if he wanted to sink into the floor. I rescued him by saying, “That was very generous of you, Maya — and I’m very glad you could make it here tonight.”

“I was curious,” she admitted. “But your work is wonderful, Connor, so I’m glad you’ve decided to get it out there so others can see it.”

“Thank you,” he said. His wasn’t the sort of complexion given to easy blushes, but I could see a brief stain of color along his cheekbones before it faded. “It was mostly Angela’s doing, but — ”

“She might have convinced you, but it was your hand that held the brush.” Her gaze was warm, as if holding both of us within it. “I will admit that when your aunt first contacted me, Angela, I was sure that Damon’s actions were going to bring us all to the sort of clan warfare that hasn’t been seen for more than a hundred years. But when I learned you were with Connor, I told Rachel that all would be well, that he was not typical of his clan.”

So that was why I’d heard nothing else after Maya had supposedly told Damon that “it wasn’t over.” Well, actually, it was — once she got the true lay of the land and realized I was not with the
primus
, but his brother, a man she obviously liked and possibly had some affection for. “I appreciate that — we both do.”

“Yes,” Connor added at once, although I could tell he was squirming a little inwardly at the “not typical of his clan” remark.

“Well,” she said, “I wish to look more closely at these paintings of yours, Connor, so I will leave you now. I think we will not have any more disruptions this evening.”

No, I sort of doubted that. Even Damon wasn’t the type to make a scene, not here anyway, so I thought the rest of the evening should go more or less smoothly.

Which it did, with various Wilcoxes coming up to congratulate him on the show, and even Aunt Rachel and Tobias approaching us once we were safely alone and praising his work. And, in an exchange that made me want to laugh, Lucas sidled up to me, nodded toward Margot, and asked who that “exquisite creature” was. Somehow managing to keep a straight face, I told him she was one of the McAllister clan elders and probably wouldn’t be all that receptive to any advances from a Wilcox.

“But is she single?” he persisted.

Somehow I managed to talk him down, and he went off to get another glass of champagne. Connor and I did get a chuckle out of the whole thing, because I couldn’t imagine anyone less likely to have romantic success with Margot Emory than Lucas Wilcox.

By the end of the night, more than half the pieces on display had discreet little “sold” labels attached to their description cards. I didn’t even want to calculate how much Connor had just made in one evening, but I knew it had to be a lot.

The only sour note in the evening came from, of course, Damon. He’d made a perfunctory pass of the paintings, didn’t even acknowledge Connor at all, and left early with Jessica in tow, murmuring something about ducking around the corner for a real drink. As he left, though, he shot me a look of such venom that I couldn’t help recoiling, although I knew I was perfectly safe here.

Despite that, I couldn’t help wondering why on earth he should be so angry with me. I’d kept a low profile the entire night, allowing Connor to bask in the praise of family members and strangers alike. I certainly couldn’t think of a single thing I’d said or done to provoke such ire.

Well, nothing except convince his brother to put his art on display when Damon always hated the idea…nothing except allow Connor to step out a little further from the
primus
’s shadow.
When I thought of it that way, then I supposed I could see why Damon might be so angry. He didn’t want his brother independent; he wanted him under his thumb, the same place he’d wanted me. That we were both proving to be so difficult to manage had to be a thorn in his side.

What he would do about it — if anything — I had no idea.

S
ince the show
was such a success, Connor threw himself into his work even more than he already had, painting sometimes eight or ten hours a day while Joelle ran the gallery. I wasn’t quite so dedicated, but I kept plugging away at my jewelry. If nothing else, it gave me something to do.

Maybe I should have felt neglected, but it was so good to see Connor happy and painting that I really didn’t mind all that much. And although I couldn’t persuade Aunt Rachel to come up to Flagstaff — that would have been asking way too much — I did borrow Connor’s FJ once or twice to drive to Sedona so she and I could meet for lunch. For some reason, I didn’t want to go back to Jerome without him. It would’ve felt like a capitulation, like I knew they still didn’t accept him. In my mind, I’d resolved that I would only return to Jerome with my consort at my side, and only when I knew they would take him in, if not with open arms, at least with the acknowledgment that he was their
prima
’s chosen life mate.

So March arrived, still bitingly cold. It was far too early for the trees to start budding in Jerome, let alone Flagstaff, but something in the shift of the angle of the light told me spring wasn’t too far off. I’d spent two months here, two months more than I had ever expected I would. Strange to think of that, and even stranger to realize that I enjoyed it here, enjoyed the new sights and sounds and people. I’d even made friends with a couple of the female Wilcox cousins, two girls who were around my age and all too ready to gossip whenever the occasion arose — which meant basically every time we got together.

“Aunt Janelle is just going nuts,” Carla Wilcox told me over coffee one bitingly cold morning. A freezing fog had descended on the town, and I was surprised she’d braved the icy roads to meet me at a coffee shop a few doors down from the apartment Connor and I shared.

“Seriously,” Mason Tillman put in. She and Carla were cousins of some kind, but I’d given up trying to sort them all out. She was a senior at Northern Pines and had a loft apartment here downtown, so she’d walked to the coffee shop, too.

Aunt Janelle was Jessica Lowe’s mother, apparently. It sounded as if she wasn’t all that resigned to the Wilcox curse descending on her daughter’s head, no matter what Jessica herself might think about it.

“So what is she doing about it?” I asked, then took a sip of my chai latte.

Carla rolled her eyes and let out an exaggerated sigh. “There isn’t much she
can
do. I mean, Damon’s the
primus
, so she’s sure not going to go up against him, and Jessica has been mooning over Damon for, like, forever, so she won’t listen.”

“She told her mother that she’d rather have a year with Damon than fifty years with someone else,” Mason added.

Ugh. Why couldn’t Jessica have a crush on Channing Tatum like a normal twenty-something?

“It’s just creepy,” Carla said. “I mean, not that I think
he’s
creepy, of course, but he’s almost eleven years older than she is, and she’s never been interested in anyone else. She totally flipped out when he got married to that civilian woman, and then when she died, Jessica was actually happy, which, I’m sorry, is just
wrong
.”

Yes, it was. I guess I was just surprised that a couple of Wilcoxes would think that as well. Obviously they were not quite the great monolith of evil I’d been raised to think they were. I liked Carla and Mason, and I thought Sydney would like them, too. My opinion of Damon was just as low as it had ever been, and I couldn’t really warm up to Marie, either, but these two girls and Lucas and a few others were far nicer than I’d ever imagined any Wilcox could be. They were so open, too — Carla telling me the first time we talked that her talent was what she referred to as the “mother of all bumps of direction.”

“Seriously,” she’d said. “It’s part of the reason I decided cultural anthro would be a good major. I never get lost, like,
ever
. I could probably get dropped in the wilds of Peru somewhere and find the nearest highway and hike out, no problem.”

At the time, I’d reflected that it seemed as if everyone had a better talent than I did. I was even falling down in the ghost-talking department. Mary Mullen seemed to have taken a powder forever, as far as I could tell. Maybe all the headboard-thumping had driven her right on to the next plane of existence.

I swirled the stir stick in my chai, watching pale brown traceries appear in the foam. “Jessica would have to be in high school when Damon’s wife died, wouldn’t she?” I asked, attempting to do the math in my head.

“Yes,” Mason replied. “And seriously, I tried to tell her that crushing on someone that much older when she wasn’t even legal yet was gross, but she wouldn’t listen. Wouldn’t even date anyone else, which was crazy, because she was always pretty and had so many guys who wanted to ask her out. But no, she said she knew in her heart that she was meant to be with Damon, and that was that.”

No wonder she’d latched on to him the second he’d decided to go trolling for a baby mama, since that whole plan for kidnapping me hadn’t worked out so well. “Then I guess there isn’t much anyone can do about it,” I said. “And whatever she was thinking in high school, she’s certainly an adult now, so I guess it’s none of our business.”

Carla frowned. “I suppose. But if we don’t talk about
them,
who will we talk about? Everyone else is so
normal
.”

Oh, if only my aunt were around to hear that pronouncement. She’d probably fall over in shock at the mere notion of referring to a Wilcox as “normal.” “Well, I have a question, actually,” I ventured, finally gathering the courage to ask about the thing that had been bothering me for weeks.

“Ooh, what?” Mason asked.

“What’s the deal with your cousin Marie? I swear, I’ve probably only exchanged twenty words with the woman, if that, but I keep getting the impression that she really doesn’t like me very much.” There, I’d said it. Marie’s vague hostility still puzzled me, but when I’d tried to broach the subject to Connor, he’d just told me I was imagining things. I still didn’t know Carla and Mason all that well, but one thing I did know was that they didn’t have much of a filter. If they were thinking something, they were basically saying it.

The two of them exchanged a glance. “Honestly?” Carla said after a brief pause. “I don’t really know. She’s never been all that friendly to
anyone
. I mean, she and Damon are sort of close, or as close as either one of them can be, since neither of them is exactly the friendly type, but I think that’s partly because he’s the
primus
and she’s our seer, so they have to work together on — well, on stuff,” she finished lamely.

It was pretty clear that she’d been thinking of my kidnapping and then realized that probably wasn’t the best example of “working together” to bring up around me. I decided to let it go. Done was done, and in the end, everything had turned out for the best. I was willing to forgive a lot when it came to my ending up with Connor.

“Yeah, maybe it’s because she is the seer, or because her mother was Navajo, but she never seemed to really be that friendly with
anyone
,” Mason added.

“Really?” I asked. That is, I’d noticed that Marie appeared to be far more obviously Native American than anyone else in the family, whose Navajo blood was many generations back, but I couldn’t quite figure out how that had worked. “Isn’t that sort of unusual? I mean, I just figured that the local Navajo didn’t have that great an opinion of the Wilcoxes — no offense,” I added quickly, as I saw the two girls exchange a glance.

“Oh, no worries,” Mason said. “That’s ancient history. And yeah, it did seem a little strange to us, but who knows what happened with Marie’s parents. Her father was my grandfather’s oldest brother, but he died before I was born. And her mother went back to live on the tribal lands after Cousin Marie graduated from high school, so I don’t think any of us ever even met her.”

“But Marie stayed?”

“Yeah,” Carla replied, swirling the foam on the top of her cafe latte.

“And she never got married or anything?”

“Not that we know of. I heard somewhere that she was engaged once, but it didn’t work out.”

“They broke up?”

“No,” Mason said slowly, drawing out the syllable as if she were racking her brain at the same time, trying to recall the particulars. “I think he just…disappeared or something. Like, here one day and gone the next. Or at least that’s what I overheard at a family party once. I forget who was telling the story. Maybe your mom, Carla?”

“Makes sense,” Carla remarked after sipping her latte. “My mom loves to gossip about
everyone
.”

Like mother, like daughter
, I thought, suppressing a grin. I wasn’t sure how much use any of this information was going to be to me, but gaining some extra knowledge never hurt. At the very least, I now knew that Marie’s hostility wasn’t necessarily directed at me, but more just a part of her personality.

As the three of us finished up and made our goodbyes, however, I couldn’t help wondering about that long-ago fiancé of hers. What really
had
happened to him?

I knew better than to ask Connor, though. He was so embroiled in his painting that he probably wouldn’t much appreciate me dredging up ancient family history. Which was fine. Our future together was far more important than whatever had happened to Marie before I was even born.

A
few days
later we were sitting in the living room, watching the morning news as we ate toast and eggs and sipped coffee. One good thing about Connor’s painting mania — he didn’t tend to get started until after nine in the morning at the earliest, so at least we could have a leisurely start to our day. We didn’t always turn on the news, but he was thinking about doing some
plein air
painting soon and wanted to catch the weather report. Apparently the Wilcoxes didn’t have anyone with true weather sensitivity, something the McAllisters definitely had up on them. On the other hand, we didn’t have a healer, nor a true seer, so the balance sheet still wasn’t all that even.

All of the Arizona news came out of Phoenix, which had always made the weather reports pretty much useless to me back home in Jerome. Flagstaff, however, was a big enough city that it did actually get a mention from the Phoenix newscasters, although in general it seemed as if they tended to ignore what was going on in the northern half of the state.

Not today, however. I’d just settled back on the couch with a fresh cup of coffee when the news returned after a commercial break. The female newscaster fixed her version of an appropriately concerned expression on her face and said, “Authorities have reported discovering the body of a female Northern Pines University student early this morning. Details are still sketchy, but the local police have informed us that there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of foul play and that the young woman appears to have been the victim of an animal attack, although such attacks are very rare. The victim’s name is being withheld pending notification of the family, and the police and local wildlife officials are saying this is most likely an isolated occurrence. However, until the animal involved can be identified, they urge residents near the university to be on their guard. In other news — ”

I picked up the remote and hit the “mute” button. “An animal attack? Is that common around here?”

Connor frowned. “Did you miss the part where they said these kinds of attacks are rare?”

“No, but — ”

“Probably a bear. It doesn’t happen very often, but this time of year I’ve heard they can be pretty hungry and cranky. We’ll probably never know what happened, since it sounds as if the girl was alone when she was attacked, but it’s not the sort of thing you need to worry about.” He paused, watching me closely, and his expression softened. “It’s awful, I know, but I’ve seen a few bears while I was out hiking, and they really don’t tend to be that aggressive.”

“Okay,” I said, but I wasn’t sure if I meant it. Something was pricking at the back of my mind, telling me this didn’t feel right at all. In general my instincts were pretty good, although I didn’t know if that was some kind of witchy sixth sense or what Sydney liked to refer to as “her gut.” In the end, it probably didn’t matter all that much.

“Can you turn the sound back on? The weather report is about to start.”

“Sure.” I picked up the remote and unmuted the TV, then listened with half an ear as the weatherman talked about building high pressure and an extended dry spell, with wind warnings in effect for the next twenty-four hours. Not that unusual; we often got strong winds in northern Arizona at the shift of the seasons. The equinox was only two weeks away.

If it really had been a bear attack, I wasn’t all that thrilled about Connor going out and painting in the middle of nowhere armed with only an easel and a brush. As it turned out, though, his destination was Oak Creek Canyon, not anywhere near Flagstaff. That made me a little more relaxed about the situation, especially after he said he wanted me to come along so we could hike around West Fork, get lunch at the Indian Gardens trading post. It sounded like a fun outing.

“I can’t guarantee it’ll be bear-free,” Connor said. “I mean, it’s the wilderness. But if I were a bear, someplace that gets visited by that many tourists is probably the last place I’d want to hang out.”

“What about all those pic-a-nic baskets?” I inquired with a grin.

“It’s Oak Creek, not Jellystone. I think we’ll be okay.”

I had to agree with that. Still, though, my spidey-sense kept tingling…and not in a good way.

T
wo days
later I was sitting at the same café where I’d met Mason and Carla the previous week. Connor had gone to meet with Eli Michaels at his gallery in Sedona, a business meeting I obviously hadn’t been invited to. Not that I minded too much; I didn’t want Connor to think we had to be joined at the hip twenty-four/seven. And it probably was a good thing for me to get out on my own every once in a while, although going approximately four doors down from our apartment couldn’t really be classified as being adventurous.