Protector (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 5) (6 page)

These revelations made Caitlin sit up a little straighter. She had never even stopped to think that perhaps Maya, the redoubtable head of the de la Paz clan, had not wanted to take on that role, because everything Caitlin had heard made it seem as if Maya had been born to it. In that same moment, she also wondered who that consort was, as Caitlin had seen no evidence of a husband here in the house, and neither had she ever heard anyone mention him by name. “But you didn’t say no.”

“Of course not. Just as Angela did not say no when that mantle fell to her. She knew what she had to do and did not shrink from it.”

Although Maya’s tone was mild, Caitlin couldn’t help thinking there was just a hint of disapproval in it. “So I’m a coward.”

“Would a coward have fought back against a warlock such as Matías?” Maya shook her head, then went on, “‘Coward’ is too simple a word to use here, I think. I can understand why you would not want to tell anyone of the gifts that had come to you, for in some ways I think it is even more difficult to be the seer of a clan than to be its
prima,
or one of its elders. The visions can intrude when you do not wish them to, and everyone, even the
prima
herself, will be coming to you for advice.”

“So what should I do?” Caitlin asked, and hated herself for the quaver of worry she heard in her voice.

Maya smiled sadly, then reached out to touch Caitlin’s hand. Only briefly, and even that gentle brush felt more like the whisper of a frail, bird-like wing than actual fingers. “You will have to ask yourself whether the lives of your friends are worth revealing your gift to your clan. Because I will tell you, Caitlin McAllister, that this is only the beginning. You cannot hide what you are, or even a part of it. You must embrace it fully. It is your sight that can save them…if you’ll let it. For if you do not, nothing else on earth can save them.”

This was the thing she’d feared all along, that the visions and feelings and vague sensations of foreboding were the only things that might somehow lead her to wherever Danica and Roslyn had been taken. And even then it might be too late, if Matías and his cronies determined that the powers they were summoning needed a greater sacrifice than just a few drops of innocent blood.

“I don’t — I don’t know how to use it,” Caitlin whispered at last. “I’ve spent so many years trying to hide it that now…I guess I’m afraid to even try tapping into it.”

“That’s not surprising,” Maya said, and instead of sounding disapproving, her tone was gentle, if a little sad. “But your gift wants to manifest itself, which is why you’ve had visions, even if you’ve tried to suppress them. All you must do is take down the barriers you’ve built up.”

All
. Caitlin thought of the past six years, of how she’d tried to close her mind down whenever those unwanted images began to pop into it. That didn’t always work, of course; instead, her gift had edged its way into her dreams, or the unguarded moments when she was thinking of something else entirely. But it had never abandoned her, and had even tried to protect her, back there at the bar when Matías and Jorge and Tomas approached her and her friends. If only she had trusted in it more.

Seeming to sense her inner turmoil, Maya said, “Let it move through you now. Don’t try to direct it. Think of your gift as a river — it knows where it must flow. Trying to redirect it will only cause harm. And remember —
always
remember — that your gift is part of you. It is not some alien thing attempting to act on you from outside.”

That was a little more reassuring. Even so, Caitlin didn’t quite know what she should be doing with herself. Should she close her eyes? Choose one object in the room and focus on it? Always before, the visions had come without her bidding them, without even knowing exactly where they had come from.

But then it didn’t matter, because the room around her suddenly seemed to blank out. No, that wasn’t quite right. It was more as if another image overlaid the one she had just been seeing, obscuring the leather couch and the faded Persian rug on the floor, the dancing waters of the fountain outside in the courtyard. Instead, she saw a small room, around the same size as the living room in the apartment she shared with Danica in Flagstaff, similarly furnished in the kind of shabby hand-me-downs that Danica had referred to as “early Salvation Army.”

And there was Danica herself, sitting on a truly hideous plaid sofa, with Roslyn next to her. Both girls had their eyes open, and yet Caitlin had the uneasy feeling that neither of them was truly
there
, as if their individual selves had either fled or were so deeply buried that they might as well not be there at all. Roslyn’s arms showed several cuts, but Danica’s were still unmarked. Maybe wherever the strange warlocks had fled wasn’t suited for a summoning, or maybe they simply hadn’t had enough time to redraw the circle and begin all over again.

“Fucking
puta
,” Caitlin heard Matías say, and even though she knew this was a vision, that the warlock was probably miles and miles away, she gasped. At once the image of that shabby living room, and of her two friends, faded away.

“You saw them.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes. I think — I think it must have been an apartment somewhere, although I couldn’t tell where. Both Roslyn and Danica seemed okay, but still….” The words seemed to evaporate into the air, since Caitlin couldn’t quite bring herself to say the word “enchanted.” No, they weren’t enchanted. That was far too pretty a term for what was being done to them. Hexed, or bespelled, or good old brainwashed? Any of those words seemed far more appropriate to the situation.

“They are not themselves,” the de la Paz
prima
said.

That was an understatement. “No. Whatever this hold is that Matías seems to have on them…it’s strong.”

Maya’s thin, dry lips seemed to stretch even tighter as her mouth compressed. “He is using a kind of magic that has been forbidden for generations. And I know he is none of mine.”

“So…where did he come from?” Caitlin asked, perplexed. The witch clans had their territories, and everyone more or less stayed in theirs, except in certain cases, and that was that. For a warlock of unknown origin to suddenly appear in de la Paz territory and begin wielding the sort of black magic that had been outlawed years and years ago was more than terrifying. It meant that the rules the witch clans had been following all these years had suddenly been abandoned.

“As I have not seen him, or experienced the magic he uses firsthand, I can only guess.” Maya sighed, and Caitlin fancied she could hear that breath rattling in the older woman’s narrow chest. “But I fear very much that he is one of the California warlocks whom Angela and Connor fell afoul of several years ago, or at the very least is associated with them in some way. Símon Santiago does not keep as close an eye on the witches and warlocks in his clan as he should. True, it is difficult, with a territory as large as his, but….”

This was the first Caitlin had heard of any trouble with warlocks in California. True, her
prima
and
primus
had been pretty well occupied for the past few years, what with first breaking the Wilcox curse and then having twins to raise, but you’d think they would have said something. Or maybe they did, and the elders — Caitlin’s mother among them — did know, and had decided for whatever reason not to pass that intelligence along to the next generation. It was possible they’d thought no trouble would come to them, with the Wilcox and McAllister clans now more or less joined, and California and its problems so very far away.

But trouble had come, even if it had taken a few northern Arizona witches to go to Tucson before disaster struck.

“Then shouldn’t you approach this Simón Santiago and let him know what’s going on?” Caitlin asked. Strange that the Santiago clan had a warlock in charge, when almost every clan save the Wilcoxes had a
prima
at its head. “Maybe, even if he couldn’t help directly, he would be able to give us some information on how to track down Matías. I mean, yes, I just saw him in a vision, but a crappy-looking apartment with a very ugly plaid couch isn’t a lot to go on.”

Despite everything, Maya smiled slightly. Her expression turned grim quickly enough after that, though, as she replied, “I fear it is not quite so easy. You see, Simón is not actually the true head of the clan — his wife Graciela is the actual
prima
. But she suffered a fall some years ago, and while they have a healer, she is not a very strong one, and was unable to make the Santiago
prima
whole. Graciela has been in a wheelchair for twenty years now, and Simón more or less runs the clan. I was never able to learn precisely what his particular gift is, but whatever it might be, clearly it is not well-suited to him being in charge of the Santiagos’ territory.”

“This just gets better and better, doesn’t it?”

A rusty chuckle. “Yes, I fear that we will not have much luck going to them for help. Perhaps we will still have to try, if that is what the kidnapped girls’ parents and your
prima
and
primus
want.” Maya went still then, her dark eyes focused on the bright colors of the flowers in the courtyard, the fountain dancing in the last light of the afternoon, completely oblivious to the turmoil within the house. “And I will admit to you, Caitlin, that is not a phone call I will enjoy making. But it is my responsibility.”

“Just as it’s mine to keep looking for Roslyn and Danica,” Caitlin said, and was gratified to see the de la Paz
prima
give her an approving look.

“Yes, I fear that task will fall to you. The Wilcoxes have a seer — ”

“Marie Begonie,” Caitlin supplied.

“Yes, Marie. And no doubt she will wish to help, as one of her clan’s own has been taken as well.”

It would be a relief to have Marie involved, even if Caitlin had to admit to herself that she’d never warmed to the Wilcox seer. Apparently she was miles friendlier than she used to be, now that she’d been reunited with the love of her teenage years, but even so, the woman could be awfully prickly at times. Somehow, though, Caitlin got the feeling that Marie wasn’t going to be all that much help here. For whatever reason, the universe seemed to have decreed that this task would fall on her own woefully unprepared shoulders.

Her expression must have shifted, because Maya said, “But you don’t think Marie will be of much assistance.”

“I — I’m not sure. But….” Caitlin lifted her shoulders. “I’m getting a feeling.”

“And you should trust it.” With a trembling hand, Maya took her glass of water and drained the rest of its contents. “But now, I am afraid I will have to make some phone calls. If you could go to the kitchen and send Luz to me? It’s down the hall, toward the back of the house.”

“Sure,” Caitlin said, rising from the couch. Maya’s request had made it clear enough that their audience was over. And although Caitlin experienced a slight stab of relief at being released from this interview, she was not looking forward to the inevitable fallout of those phone calls the de la Paz
prima
was about to make.

Still, she’d worry about that later. For now, it was enough to make her escape.

“
T
hey’ve been
in there a long time,” Alex said, glancing over at the digital clock on the microwave.

“I imagine they have a good deal to talk about,” his mother replied, her tone somehow managing to be simultaneously mild and reproving. “It does no good to sit here and fidget.”

He knew that, but he’d never been much good at sitting around and waiting. But since there wasn’t much else to do, he drank some more of his lemonade and wished it was something a little stronger. A shot or two of Reposado might go down pretty well right now. But his
abuela
didn’t keep spirits in her house, and even if she did, Alex knew better than to go in search of something he hadn’t been offered.

If this wait felt torturous to him, he could only imagine what Caitlin must be going through. Getting grilled by Maya de la Paz was not something most people would particularly enjoy. Having to do it after being attacked by a trio of strange warlocks? No, thanks.

Even so, he hoped his grandmother was having better luck at extracting information from Caitlin than either he or his mother had. The girl was hiding something; he could tell that much, even if he couldn’t quite figure out what it might be. That seemed like a foolish move on her part. How could he and the rest of the de la Paz clan help her get her friends back if she wasn’t willing to tell the entire truth of what had happened?

Movement at the entrance to the kitchen caught the corner of his eye, and he shifted in his seat in the breakfast nook to see Caitlin standing there. For someone who’d just spent a good half hour having her story picked apart by his grandmother, the McAllister witch looked remarkably calm. She even smiled at Luz as she said, “Maya would like to talk to you now.”

“Thank you, Caitlin,” Luz said, sliding out of her seat and taking her glass of lemonade with her. “Alex, would you get Caitlin something to drink? She must be parched after all that talking.”

As Caitlin murmured her thanks, Alex got up from his own chair and said, “Is lemonade all right, or would you rather have some water? I don’t think my grandmother has much of anything else.”

“Lemonade is fine,” Caitlin replied, watching as Luz shot her an encouraging smile before going down the hallway that led to the living room.

Alex poured a glass and inclined his head toward the chair his mother had just vacated. “Want to sit down?”

“Definitely.” She took a seat, then managed a half-smile as Alex handed her the glass of lemonade. After sipping some, she nodded. “That’s better. Although right now I could use a margarita.” She paused. “No, scratch that. After what Matías did, I don’t think I’m going to want a margarita for a long time.”

Frowning, Alex sat down. Even though she’d taken him and his mother to the house where the warlocks had brought the girls, shown them where the circle had been drawn, Caitlin hadn’t been very specific about exactly what had gone down in there. “What
did
he do?”

She bit her lip and looked away, out through the stained-glass-bordered windows in the nook, the ones that had fascinated Alex when he was younger. One finger drew a line through the condensation on the outside of the glass as she appeared to contemplate the desert-y loveliness of the back garden, with its gravel walks and careful plantings of native flowers and shrubs and cactus. At last she said, “I told you he brought us back to that house for margaritas, right? Well, they were drugged or something. I had just a sip of one, and it made the spell he had cast so much worse. It was so hard to fight it.” Shuddering slightly, she picked up her glass of lemonade and drank deeply, as if by doing so she could erase the taste of the tainted drink Matías had given her earlier that afternoon.

“But you did fight it,” Alex reminded her gently, wishing he’d left it alone. He didn’t like to see her so upset, eyes tragic, her jaw set. In that moment, he realized he’d barely seen her smile so far, and certainly never laugh.

He wanted to hear her laugh.

“I did,” she said. “I still don’t know how, exactly, but….” Looking up from her drink, she faced Alex squarely. In the warm late-afternoon light, her eyes seemed to glow almost green. “I wasn’t telling you the truth earlier.”

Puzzled, he asked, “You weren’t?”

“Not really. I mean, I was trying to dance around the issue. The reason I knew something was off about Matías and his gang, and maybe part of the reason I was able to get away, is that I’m a seer. I
felt
how awful he was. In fact, I knew something terrible was going to happen even before we left Jerome. I just didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t want to tell anyone, because then they’d know.”

“So…no one in your family knows you’re a seer?”

She shook her head, and he tried not to stare at the waves of coppery hair that seemed to dance with the movement. “I couldn’t tell them. I know it was wrong. But…I didn’t want to be a seer. I still don’t. But I will, because otherwise I don’t know how we’ll ever find Danica and Roslyn.”

Right then he wished with all his soul that he knew Caitlin better. If that were the case, maybe it would be all right to get up from his chair and go to her, take her in his arms and give her the hug he thought she so desperately needed. This whole thing had to be so rough on her, from losing her friends to realizing that the one thing she had wanted to keep secret was the only thing that might save them.

But he was too chickenshit to do that. Or maybe cautious was a better word. Diego probably would have gone to Caitlin and given her a hug, but he and Diego were very different people. Alex had to settle for a completely inadequate, “I’m sorry.”

Even that seemed to floor her. She blinked, then said, “You don’t think I’m a jerk?”

“A jerk? Why would I think that?”

“Because I should’ve told someone I’m a seer! I’ve been hiding it, pretending that I can only do the small, regular things — you know, lighting a candle without a match, unlocking a door without a key, whatever — when all this time I could have been helping my clan.”

It was clear she’d been beating herself up over this for some time, so Alex didn’t see any reason why he should. “Well, I suppose that’s between you and your clan elders,” he said mildly. “And you’re going to use your gift to find your friends, so….” He let the words trail off, mostly because he wasn’t sure what else she expected him to say.

If Caitlin intended to argue further, that resolve appeared to have faded. She wrapped her hands around the glass of lemonade but didn’t drink. “I’m going to try, anyway,” she murmured, then added in clearer tones, “I’m not sure how much good I’ll be. Not really. I’ve spent way too much time trying to repress my gift, and now I don’t even know how to use it properly.”

“It’ll come to you,” he said, trying to sound encouraging. “Our gifts, talents, whatever you want to call them — they want to be used. A little practice, and you’ll be amazed at what you can do.”

At first she didn’t reply, only stared at her fingers where they still encircled the tall, moisture-beaded glass. She had pretty hands, with strong but delicate fingers, although the pale pink polish she was wearing had already started to chip off. No rings, which relieved Alex a little. She did seem a bit too young to be married or even engaged, but witches and warlocks tended to marry early, so it wasn’t outside the bounds of possibility for her to already be committed to someone.

Like that should even matter. No matter how pretty she was, they’d only just met. He didn’t know anything about her.

Well, except one thing. He thought he liked her, liked her odd combination of toughness and vulnerability. As if she had a lot more to her than even she realized.

“What about you?” she asked, and he tilted his head.

“What about me?”

“When did your gift show up?” A shy smile. “It’s a pretty cool talent. I’ve never heard of it before.”

Neither had anyone in his clan. He rocked back in his chair and grinned. “I was eleven. I was playing soccer with some friends from school and some other kids from the clan. Nothing formal — just kicking the ball around on a Saturday afternoon. Well, Humberto Almeida — he was this big kid, older than most of us, almost fourteen — he launched that ball right at me. Hard. I could tell it was going to hit me right in the face, probably break my nose. You know how you can see something about to happen, and you know there isn’t anything you can do to stop it?”

Caitlin nodded, a small smile playing around her mouth. It was a pretty mouth, with that defined Cupid’s bow at the top and the full lower lip, all overlaid with a faint gleam of soft peach lip gloss. And Alex realized he’d better stop staring at it.

Somehow he managed to tear his eyes away and drink down the rest of the lemonade in his glass. “Well, it was like that. This ball coming right at my face. And then at the last minute, this shield or whatever you want to call it shimmered out of thin air and surrounded me, and the ball bounced right off. At first everyone was too shocked to say anything, but then the kids started calling out, ‘Do it again! Do it again!’ and running for the spare balls we had sitting off to one side so they could start throwing them at me.”

“Ouch,” Caitlin said.

He grinned. “Yeah, something like that. Because the shield or whatever it was didn’t come back. I took off for home, running like I had the zombie horde or something after me, and told my mom what had happened. I asked her why the shield hadn’t come back, and she thought about it for a minute and said it was probably because I didn’t think I was really going to get hurt, not like I would have if the ball Humberto had kicked had really gotten me in the face.”

“So how did you start practicing with it? Have someone throw knives at you?”

Her tone was wry, but really, she wasn’t that far off from the truth. “Not knives. Not at first, anyway,” he added, and her blue-green eyes widened. “But having Diego come at me and threaten to pile-drive me was pretty effective. He was in wrestling in high school.”

“Double ouch.”

“I might have had a few bruises that needed explaining away. Gradually, though, I got control of my gift instead of having it control me. And now I can summon it when I need it, instead of having it pop up out of nowhere while watching the 3D version of the latest
Avengers
movie or whatever.”

Again she smiled slightly at that image, but her expression turned thoughtful as she said, “I like that. Having control of my gift instead of letting it control me. I guess that’s what I was letting it do when I was so afraid all the time of what the next vision would be, and when it might show up.”

Privately, Alex wondered how pleasant the next round of visions would be for her, considering she was going to use them to track down the warlocks who’d kidnapped her friends. He decided it was better to let that go for now. “It makes a huge difference. And maybe you’ll find out that being the McAllister seer isn’t so bad after all.”

The dubious glance she gave him spoke volumes about what she thought of that prospect, but she didn’t contradict him. She didn’t really have the chance, because his mother entered the kitchen, her expression troubled. In one hand, she held a cordless phone.

“Caitlin,” she said. “Your mother would like to talk to you.”

Some of the pretty color drained from Caitlin’s cheeks, but she raised her chin and nodded. “I had a feeling she would.” She extended her hand, and Luz gave her the phone while at the same time shooting Alex a worried glance.

He wasn’t sure what to do — get up from the table and give Caitlin her privacy? Stay where he was and pretend he couldn’t hear every word she was saying? — but she solved that problem by standing up from her chair and moving out of the breakfast nook and past his mother, going to pause in the corridor.

“Hi, Mom.”

A long silence, during which Luz shook her head slightly, which led Alex to believe that Caitlin’s mother, who seemed to be one of the McAllister elders, wasn’t being quite as zen about the revelation of her daughter’s powers as Caitlin had hoped she would be.

“That’s not going to happen,” Caitlin said, her voice firm and carrying clearly enough down the hallway. “I know you’re worried.
I’m
worried. But I can’t help Roslyn and Danica by hiding in Jerome and letting everyone else do the heavy lifting.”

Another long pause.

“Fine, if Connor and Angela want to bring Marie in on this, there isn’t much I can do about it. That’s their call. But I’m pretty sure she won’t be able to help.”

Alex lifted his eyebrows at his mother, and she shrugged slightly. Even though Caitlin had told him she was going to stay down in Tucson until this thing was settled, some part of him hadn’t believed she’d really stand up to her family and do it.

Which meant it looked like she actually was going to be crashing at his house for a while. That could get…interesting.

“…you know Angela won’t tell me to go back to Jerome. That’s not how she does things. Maybe that makes all you elders crazy, that she’s not laying down the law right and left. But unless she comes down here and point-blank tells me to go home, I’m not changing my mind. It’ll be — well, maybe ‘fine’ isn’t the right word, but they’re all looking after me here. You have nothing to worry about.”

Brave words. Alex hoped they were true. Oh, he and his mother and everyone else in the clan would do whatever it took to solve this problem, not out of any loyalty to Caitlin or the McAllister family as a whole, but because it reflected badly on the de la Pazes to have something this awful happen on their home turf.

“I’m hanging up now, Mom. You do whatever you have to on your end, but I’m staying. My phone’s gone, but I suppose Luz Trujillo gave you a number — right. She’ll be able to get ahold of me.” A
click
, and Caitlin came back into the kitchen, looking annoyed. Her expression smoothed itself slightly as she handed the phone back to Luz.

“Well, she’s not happy with me, but I don’t think she’s going to send anyone down here to hogtie me and drag me back to Jerome.”

“That is good,” his mother said, her voice grave, although a certain glint in her dark eyes seemed to indicate she was somewhat amused by Caitlin’s declaration of independence. “Then we should be going. Maya takes her dinner early, and my cousin Raisa will be here soon to cook her meal.”