Darkmoon (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 3) (11 page)

Connor seemed to sense something of my roiling emotions, because his fingers slipped around mine, intertwining, bringing with them that sense of warm strength I always got from him. “Are you all right?” he murmured.

Managing a nod, I raised my chin and tried to meet Maya’s gaze. “Well, I knew it was a long shot. I just figured I would ask.”

Somewhat to my surprise, she reached out and gave me a sympathetic pat on the knee. “I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for you to never know your own mother. And then to learn something of your father, but not know where he is, or what happened to him?” Her gaze sharpened, and I knew she must have seen something of the beginnings of those earlier tears in my eyes, although I had a feeling she couldn’t begin to understand their true cause. “I would be more surprised if you hadn’t asked. But truly, I know nothing else beyond what I’ve told you.”

I nodded, then said, “And there’s something else….”

“I had a feeling there might be.”

Now it was my turn to hesitate, and once again I felt Connor squeeze my hand gently, telling me it was all right to go ahead and relate the story of what happened in Indio.

So I did, speaking quickly, just giving the straight facts of what had transpired, not embellishing anything. When I was done, Maya sat quietly for a long moment, clearly weighing what she intended to say next.

“There are many bad elements over there now,” she said at last, her tone heavy with worry. “Some are good people, of course, merely displaced and looking for somewhere to call their own. This is why I took in those whom Connor mentioned to you. But there are many troublemakers, and I fear Simón Santiago is not quite as in control of things as he believes. There is little I can do, though, save protect my own. And this other thing….”

“Have you heard of anything like that?” Connor asked, clearly hoping that Maya, with her far greater experience of the witching world, might be able to offer some insight, some advice.

“No.” She lifted her shoulders, and although I knew she was not a young woman, had to be in her early sixties at least, this was the first time she looked old to me, old and tired, as if for the first time in a very long while she had been confronted by something she didn’t understand. “You realize that what you have now — the joining of a
primus
and a
prima
— this has never happened before, at least in no history that I have ever read, or had told to me by she who was
prima
before me. So it is not so surprising that you would be exploring new strengths, new powers, that no one else has yet seen.”

“But what are we supposed to do with them?” I asked.

Another shrug, not of indifference, but of uncertainty. “That, I suppose, is up to you.”

W
e drove
out of Phoenix with the lowering sun blazing strong and hot orange, casting long shadows from the saguaro and ocotillo cacti on the side of the road. After we left Maya’s house, neither Connor nor I said anything, only got in the Cherokee and headed back to the freeway. My thoughts kept darting this way and that, and as the suburbs of the various valley communities flashed by, I couldn’t help wondering if my father had taken this same route so many years ago. Where had he been heading? Where had he gone?

I didn’t know, and I was feeling the beginnings of a headache. The heat, probably, and it frustrated me that I couldn’t ask Connor to pull off at a drive-through so I could get a Coke. That had always worked for me in the past, and a glass of wine would have been even better, but I knew that I had to watch the caffeine consumption, and alcohol was really out of the question.

It wasn’t until we were almost completely out of the Phoenix sprawl, passing by the outlet stores at Anthem, that Connor finally spoke. “You doing okay?”

“I guess so. Just tired, probably.”

He looked over at me quickly, then returned his attention to the road. “Should we have stopped to get something to eat?”

“No, it’s not that.” Well, maybe it was, in a way. I could feel the beginnings of hunger pangs starting, and I knew there wasn’t much between Phoenix and our turn-off on the 260. On the other hand, I really didn’t want to delay getting home. There were a few places in Cottonwood that stayed open past nine. We could stop there if we needed to. Fidgeting with the cap of the water bottle that sat in the cup holder next to me, I said, “It just seems like every time we go asking questions, I end up with about a million more.”

“Such as?”

“Well, the whole Wilcox thing, for one. I’m not saying my mother was a strong enough witch to sniff out a Wilcox the way Maya can, but she should have known my father was a warlock.”

“Maybe she did. It’s not exactly the sort of thing they would’ve been discussing around Linda Sanderson, after all.”

He had a point. Even so, I felt like I should press on. “But if my mother had known he was a warlock, wouldn’t she have wanted to know more about his family? I mean, part of the whole witch thing is your clan affiliation and all that.”

“Maybe he lied and said he was with the Santiagos or something.”

“Maybe,” I repeated, my tone dubious. Of course, I had no idea what my father had really looked like, except he was tall and dark-haired, so maybe he could’ve passed for one of the Santiagos. As I mulled that over, another thought struck me. “That could have been what their fight was about.”

“That she found out he was lying?”

“Yes, especially if she somehow discovered he was a Wilcox. I can’t think of too many other things that would make someone so angry that they’d kick out the father of their baby only a few days before the child was due.”

Connor didn’t reply immediately, but instead tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, apparently considering what I’d just said. “That makes sense, I suppose.”

“And it also explains why she would never say anything to my aunt about who my father was. I mean, if he really had been a Santiago or just some beach bum she’d picked up in Newport, then it wouldn’t have been so important to conceal his identity.”

No arguing from Connor on that one. He only gave a grim little nod, as if acknowledging his clan’s poor reputation. Now I knew it wasn’t that clear-cut, that there were people in the Wilcox family who were just as honorable as any McAllister, but twenty years ago the lines had been pretty clearly drawn. East was east and west was west, and all that. Those twain definitely didn’t meet…until my mother and Andre got together.

Would Aunt Rachel have agreed to take me in, raised me, if she’d known I was half Wilcox?

I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about that. I tried to tell myself of course she would, that she would never abandon her sister’s child…but I just didn’t know for sure. And maybe my mother had known, or at least guessed, and so made sure to keep her mouth shut.

Right then I almost wished her ghost had taken to haunting that tricky curve partway down the mountain. Then at least I could have gone to her and demanded some real information. But apparently she’d seen no reason to stick around. Her spirit was long gone, and I’d have to find my own answers.

“Another thing,” I began, and the setting sun flashed off Connor’s teeth as he grinned.

“Just one?”

“Well, I figured I’d start with this one.”

He gave a slight nod of acknowledgment, so I went on,

“I’m also trying to figure out what his game was.”

“Game?”

I shifted in my seat and glanced up at him, wondering if he was being disingenuous. “Come on, Connor — think about it. Supposedly he was engaged to Marie, and yet he dumped her for some unknown reason, went to California, and just magically met the runaway McAllister who was supposed to be the next
prima
…before she chickened out and disappeared.”

“Okay, if you put it that way….” Even so, he shrugged, then pushed the visor up and out of the way. The sun was low enough now that the visor wasn’t doing him much good. “Maybe things weren’t working out with Marie, so he took off.”

“Do people in your family have a history of taking off and going to California?”

“Well, no.”

“It’s almost as if he knew who my mother was, even if the reverse wasn’t true.”

“I think that may be stretching it a bit.”

I wasn’t so sure. After all, what were the odds that two members of warring witch clans would meet so far from home? Pretty high, even if witches had a way of sensing others with similar powers. “And what about Marie?” I asked.

“What about her?”

“Do you think she’ll talk to us about Andre?”

At that question he did look away from the road and over at me, frowning slightly. The last reddish light of the sun painted the outline of his profile, making him look like some god who’d condescended to share a ride with me. His next words, however, were far from godlike. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure she’ll be plenty happy to tell us everything about the guy who dumped her more than twenty years ago.”

“I’m not asking as if she’d be
happy
— I’m asking if she would do it.”

For a long moment he didn’t say anything. Then, finally, “I honestly don’t know.”

W
e didn’t talk much
the rest of the way, each of us absorbed in our thoughts as the long dusk finally gave way to night and a thin yellow crescent moon rose above the mesa to our right. By the time we pulled off at the 260 and began heading toward Cottonwood, I could feel my stomach protesting its current empty state. We stopped at the Denny’s in town because there wasn’t much else open at that hour, and ordered some burgers. After that it was back up the winding road to Jerome, back to the quiet Victorian house waiting for us on the hill.

By then I was completely exhausted, and it seemed that Connor was, too, because we fell into bed and only held each other, too tired for anything else. My sleep was heavy, deep and dark, quiet, until I heard a keening sound and realized it was the sound of gulls. Below that came the deep rhythmic murmur of the ocean crashing against the shore.

Well, I’d just come from the beach, so I supposed it wasn’t so odd that it had invaded my dreams as well. The image in my mind brightened, almost as if the sun was coming up over the water. But no, that had to be wrong, because in Newport the sun set over the ocean, not the other way around.

Not that dreams had to make any sense, of course.

Someone was walking down the beach, her loose hair whipping in the wind. As she got closer, I saw that she was slender, although her belly was rounded, in the later stages of pregnancy.

My mother.

I’d often wished I would dream of her. When I was younger, I used to sit and stare at the one picture of her my aunt kept on her desk, thinking that if I looked at my mother’s face long enough, memorizing her features and how they were similar to mine, then she’d have to appear in my dreams. She would come and talk to me, tell me she missed me and loved me. That never happened, though.

But she was here now. As she stopped a few feet away from me, I realized our eyes were nearly level. So I was dreaming this as my now-self, and not the wistful little girl I used to be.

“I’ve been waiting for you a long time,” I said.

“I know.” Her hand dropped to the curve of her belly, and she smiled. She was wearing a loose jumper-style dress with a T-shirt underneath it, and Mary Jane–style Doc Martens. Looking at her, I realized she was exactly the same age I was now.

In a way, it was eerie to watch her, to see in her face my own straight little nose and arched brows, the rather wide mouth. My hair was darker, my eyes brilliant emerald where hers were bright blue, but anyone seeing us in that moment would have thought we were sisters.

“Why did you come here?” I asked.

“Here?” she asked vaguely, looking around.

“California.”

“We’re not really in California, you know.”

I’d had these sorts of circular conversations in dreams before, so I knew the best thing to do was press on. “It looks like California. Close enough.”

“I wanted to see the ocean.”

“And that’s the only reason?’

Her dreamy expression cleared, and the look she gave me was almost sharp. “You of all people should know why I wanted to get out of Jerome.”

“I should?”

“Are you happy, being
prima?
”

The question took me aback. I hadn’t ever really stopped to think about it that way. Not that I’d had much of a chance to stop and think about anything, what with how crazy my life had been for the past six months. I was certainly happy with Connor, but that happiness wasn’t dependent on my being
prima
. In fact, things would have been a lot less complicated if I had just turned out to be your ordinary garden-variety witch.

“I don’t think it’s a question of being happy,” I said slowly. “It’s what I was born for, so…I guess I’m settling into it.”

“Rachel trained you well,” she remarked. “Making sure you were raised to be a good little
prima
. That wasn’t me.”

I didn’t bother to hide the bitterness in my voice. “Apparently not, since you took off at the first opportunity.”

“As I said, it wasn’t me. Their expectations were crushing me.”

“So you just left? And what about me? Having a baby was just something you did for kicks, like going to look at the ocean?”

In real life, she probably would have taken offense. In my dream, though, she only looked away from me, at the sun rising in the wrong place. “No. I wanted you. Or at least I thought I wanted you. Until….”

“Until you found out my father was really a Wilcox, and not whatever he told you?” A far braver question than I would have asked if she’d really been standing there in front of me. But I guessed that my subconscious understood this wasn’t real, and had decided to go for broke.

“Would you want a child of a Wilcox?” she asked frankly, blue eyes wide with guileless curiosity.

“I’m having the child of a Wilcox,” I pointed out. As I replied, I suddenly felt heavy, oddly off-balance, and I looked down to see that my belly was nearly as rounded as my mother’s.

“Unfortunately,” she said, laying a hand on my swollen midsection. Then, almost off-handedly, she added, “You might want to get that looked at.”

Then she was gone, disappearing as neatly as the ghostly Maisie or Mary Mullen ever had. I stood there on the beach, feeling the unaccustomed heaviness of late pregnancy. Something about that odd west-rising sun compelled me, and I began to walk into the water, hardly seeming to notice as it came up to my knees, then my waist, then my chest, and finally my mouth. Cool black surrounded me, and suffocated me, and I drifted away with the tide, letting it take me.

A
n urgent hand
on my arm. “Angela. Angela!” Connor’s voice.

I blinked, taking in the blackness of the space around me, my eyes gradually adjusting to see the faint glow of moonlight coming in from the window across the room. “Wha?” I said groggily.

“You were breathing really hard, gasping, almost like something was choking you.” He was turned toward me, leaning on one elbow as he watched me with worried eyes. “Bad dream?”

“Sort of,” I replied. My face felt oddly chilled, so I reached up to touch my cheek, only to find both it and my mouth wet, as if someone had splashed water on me. What the…? I wiped the moisture away, telling myself it could’ve been saliva. But I’d never been much of a drooler, and my skin was wet enough that it would’ve required a Great Dane to create that much slobber.

Walking into the black water, letting it rise up and over my head….

I shivered, and at once Connor was reaching out to me, taking me in his arms and holding me close. “Jesus, you’re freezing,” he said. “It’s not even cold.”

And it wasn’t. Late May and June were some of the warmest months in these parts, until the monsoon rains came with their blessed moisture and much-welcomed cloud cover. We almost always got a cool breeze at night in Jerome, but even so, the temperature in the room was probably in the low 70s.

“I dreamed,” I began, then shook my head. “It’s silly.”

“What?” When I didn’t answer, he brushed his lips against my hair and said quietly, “Angela, you’re the
prima
here. Even if you’re not a seer, even if you don’t necessarily have visions, your dreams still can be important.”

What he said was true, but I wasn’t sure I really wanted to acknowledge that fact. It would mean that in my dream I’d slipped into the astral plane, had left my body to walk in that otherworld. Events that happened there could affect one’s corporeal body, or so I’d been told. Until now, though, I’d never experienced that kind of psychic travel. What did it mean?

“And your hair is damp,” he added, sounding quite matter-of-fact, as if these sorts of things happened every day. Maybe they did in the Wilcox family. He’d never given me a great deal of detail on how Marie’s second sight really worked.