He didn’t comment, only led her out the back door to the detached garage. As she followed him, Cassandra found herself oddly satisfied. He hadn’t laughed at her, or told her the Castillo clan didn’t need some amateur playing cop when the situation was so dire. No, he seemed as though he was disposed to give her a chance, let her see what she could do.
Now she would just have to prove that it made sense for her to stay here in Santa Fe and offer what help she could.
3
There hadn’t been much change in his mother’s condition, but Yesenia had had to excuse herself and leave, since she’d gotten a call from a Castillo cousin on the city’s south side that her son had fallen out of a tree and broken his arm. And since Tony’s father seemed unwilling to leave his wife’s side, it meant Tony could stay downstairs with Cassandra and Louisa, and keep watch over what they were doing.
Louisa stood by the closet door that had once concealed the de la Paz grimoires. Her fingers began to trace the outline of the frame, and Cassandra made a small sound of protest.
“What’s the matter?” Louisa asked, looking somewhat exasperated. When she’d arrived on the scene, she’d seemed less than happy to see a witch from another clan here, even though Tony had explained the reason behind Cassandra’s presence. Now he could tell his cousin didn’t think much of the younger witch’s interference.
“I was hoping I could check for fingerprints,” Cassandra explained. “I don’t have a real kit with me, but cornstarch or talcum powder should work. Oh, and some tape.”
Even as Louisa began to shoot her a disbelieving glare, Tony hurried to say, “Cassandra’s father is a police officer. That’s why she knows about this stuff.”
“Homicide detective, actually,” Cassandra put in, which didn’t seem to mollify Louisa in the slightest.
“I doubt whoever did this was foolish enough to leave fingerprints behind,” she said. “And right now, I need to focus.”
She closed her eyes and laid her fingers against the doorframe once again. Cassandra’s mouth tightened in annoyance, but she didn’t say anything, possibly realizing that it wouldn’t take much to overstep her boundaries here.
Tony felt a rush of sympathy for her, although he also remained silent. Louisa might not be quite as imperious as her late mother, the prima, but she still could be plenty bitchy if someone rubbed her the wrong way. And with his own mother lying in bed upstairs in a magically induced coma, he really didn’t feel like trying to play peacemaker.
At least it seemed as if Cassandra had gotten the message. She moved away from Louisa and went to crouch down next to the spot where they’d found Sophia, outstretched hand moving over the thick pile of the Persian carpet. There were no obvious indentations, no real sign that a woman had been lying there unconscious less than an hour before, but maybe Cassandra could sense something despite that.
Louisa spoke then. “Yes, this was dark magic.” The forefinger of her right hand rested on the doorframe, and a tremor went through her. “It feels almost familiar, as though I’ve encountered this kind of magic before.” Her well-arched brows drew together, and her nostrils flared in distaste. While objectively Tony realized most people would think his cousin an attractive woman, there was still something off-putting about the elegance of her features. “In fact, it feels very like Simon Escobar’s magic, but that’s impossible.”
A chill shivered its way down Tony’s spine. It had to be impossible. As he’d told Cassandra earlier, he’d been there when they put Escobar’s lifeless body in the ground. He now rested in an unmarked grave in a corner of Rosario Cemetery on the north side of town, and good riddance.
And while zombies might have been good fodder for movies and TV shows, there was no such thing in real life, no chance that an undead Simon Escobar had risen from his grave to seek vengeance almost a year after he’d died. This had to be something else.
Cassandra pushed herself up from the rug and briefly dusted the palms of her hands on the thighs of her jeans. “We don’t know very much about where Simon’s father came from. Central America is what I heard, but even that’s just based on what Simon’s half-sister Olivia has said. Since she came to Southern California to live with the Santiago clan when she was very small, she really didn’t remember much of her life before then.”
“What about Simon’s mother?” Louisa asked. “She’s the prima of the Santiago clan — she must know something.”
Something in Cassandra’s expression darkened. Obviously, that hadn’t been a very tactful question. “Simon’s father forced her,” she said in a voice that was almost too calm. “Controlled her mind. I doubt he was revealing any secrets about his past during the time she was under his spell.”
Louisa’s mouth tightened, and she looked away without responding. In a way, it was almost amusing to watch how Cassandra had managed to get her to back off, especially when you considered that she had to be the other woman’s junior by more than a decade. Even though Tony guessed Cassandra was no more than twenty-one or twenty-two at the very most, she had the kind of self-possession of a much older woman.
Because her father was a former cop? Maybe. Or maybe she would have been like that no matter who her parents were.
Either way, Tony guessed it was probably time for him to step in. “None of us know very much about the magic practiced in other parts of the world, because all our clans tend to stick to their own territories. What if Simon’s father came from a place where they all use that kind of dark magic? That would explain why the magic you sensed here felt familiar, Louisa.”
She nodded, although she didn’t seem very happy with this particular piece of deduction. “Maybe. Although the last thing any of us need is an entire region filled with witches and warlocks as strong as Joaquin Escobar and his children.”
True enough. Tony really didn’t want to think what the consequences of such a population suddenly setting their sights on the Castillos might be.
“I’m not sure that’s it, though,” Cassandra said, her tone musing. “For one thing, if they were all so powerful, you’d think we would have heard something about it by now. That kind of power is hard to keep secret, if for no other reason than they’d probably already have attacked other witch clans. We keep to ourselves, but we also communicate with one another if the threat is big enough.”
Which was also true. It was because the prima of the McAllisters and the primus of the Wilcoxes had come to Castillo territory to get help from Louisa’s grandmother Isabel to fight Joaquin Escobar that the New Mexico clan and the Arizona clans had become involved at all. Before that, they’d had very little contact.
“Maybe,” Louisa allowed in grudging tones. “We’re certainly not going to solve the mystery today, though. I can sense what kind of magic was used here, but I don’t know anything about the person who used it, or where they might have gone.”
“But it’s a start,” Tony told her. “It’s more than we had an hour ago.”
She seemed somewhat mollified by the praise, which had been his intention. The last thing he’d wanted was for her and Cassandra to start bickering, comparing theories that didn’t have much in the way of fact to back them up.
“And we’ll keep picking away at it,” Cassandra said. “At least now we have a direction for where to start looking.”
Right then, Tony’s father came to the arched opening that connected the family room to the hallway that split the bottom floor of the house. “She’s doing a little better,” he said, his expression not quite as strained as it had been an hour ago. “She has more color in her cheeks, and when I squeezed her hand, she pressed down on my fingers.”
Relief flooded through Tony. Maybe his mother wasn’t sitting up and talking, but if she could respond to a stimulus like that, seemed to be somewhat aware of her surroundings, then she wasn’t in as bad shape as Tony had thought. “That’s great news, Dad,” he said.
“I hope so.” He looked over at Louisa. “Did you find anything?”
&n
bsp; “Just that whoever did this is dabbling in some very dark magic,” she replied. “But I suppose that’s sort of a given, because no one who wasn’t traveling the left-hand path would even want those books in the first place.”
As she spoke, she sent a pointed glance at Cassandra, as if accusing the de la Paz clan of dabbling in black magic, since otherwise there was no reason for them to have collected the grimoires. To be honest, Tony wasn’t really sure why they’d had them, either, except that it sounded as though they’d been collecting books of magic, both dark and light, for centuries, and so it was more of a tradition than anything else.
Cassandra’s jaw tightened, but she said politely, “I’m very glad to hear that your wife is doing better, Mr. Castillo.”
“Henry,” he said, but his tone was absent, as though he’d made the response automatically, his thoughts far away.
Which they should be. Tony knew that in a way he’d been distracting himself from his mother’s condition by focusing on the investigative side of things, but what else was he supposed to do? He wasn’t a healer, or someone with the kind of gift that could reverse another witch or warlock’s magic. That talent had existed once, but no one in the Castillo clan had possessed it for longer than he or his parents had been alive.
“Do you need us to do anything?” Tony asked. “Get you some takeout, maybe?”
“No, I’m fine,” Henry said. “There’s plenty of food in the fridge, and I’m not hungry anyway.”
“But maybe you should stay, Tony,” Louisa put in. “There’s always the chance that whoever did this might return.”
Now Tony’s father sent her a sharp look, the sort of laser-like glance he used to good effect in the courtroom. “Why would they come back? They’ve already gotten what they wanted. There wouldn’t be much point in returning to the scene of the crime, especially if they know we’re waiting for them.”
Louisa drew in a breath, then seemed to think better of what she was about to say and shook her head. “You’re probably right. But I don’t like the thought of you being here alone with Sophia.”
“I won’t be alone for too long,” he said. “I called Ava to tell her what happened, and she’s already on her way here. She said she can afford to miss a few days of school and wants to be here to help out.”
How very selfless of her, Tony thought, then wanted to shake his head at himself. He and his sister had never gotten along all that well, possibly because he didn’t tend to take things all that seriously, and she was pretty much the opposite. Far too earnest and serious for him to really understand what was going on in her head half the time. After all, who the hell went away to college and didn’t have time for at least a little partying?
“Oh, well, then,” Louisa said. “I suppose that should be fine. Such a steady girl, Ava.”
This seemed to be Tony’s cue, so he put in, “Then I guess Cassandra and I can go.”
“Do you have someplace to stay?” Louisa asked.
“Oh, I’m crashing at Tony’s place,” Cassandra said without batting an eye. “Right, Tony?”
“Right,” he replied, also without missing a beat. “She’s going to stay in the spare room upstairs.”
“Sounds like you’re all settled,” Henry said. If he thought there was anything strange about Cassandra staying with someone she’d just met, rather than at one of the numerous hotels that dotted Santa Fe’s downtown, he didn’t show it. Or maybe he was so preoccupied with his worry about his wife that all these minor details were barely registering with him.
“We are,” Tony said. “Call if anything changes, though.” He looked over at Cassandra. “Ready?”
“Sure.” She shifted toward Louisa and added, “It was very nice to meet you, Ms. Castillo.”
Something in her tone seemed to indicate just the opposite, and Tony had to quell a smile. More than once, he’d wished he could come up with a way to knock Louisa off her high horse, and Cassandra seemed to have managed that feat within five minutes of meeting the former prima.
I think I like this girl, he thought, even as Louisa’s lips thinned and she murmured something empty and polite.
He made his goodbyes, and the two of them went outside. Now there was a dark gray Volvo next to his Fiat in the driveway, parked close enough that Cassandra, even as slender as she was, had to angle herself to climb into the passenger seat to avoid banging the car door into Louisa’s vehicle. Had Louisa done that on purpose just to be bitchy, or was she in such a hurry when she arrived that she simply hadn’t been paying attention?
Probably better not to answer that question.
Neither he nor Cassandra said anything as he backed the car out, then engaged the self-driving mechanism. Once they were back on Hyde Park Road and heading down into the city, though, she blew out a breath and shook her head.
“Well, she was lovely.”
Tony laughed out loud. “Louisa is kind of prickly.”
“Kind of?”
“All right, prickly as a patch of cholla cactus.”
Now Cassandra was the one who chuckled. He liked her laugh, warm and throaty, just like her voice. “Honestly, I didn’t mean to step on her toes. But when you see someone contaminating a crime scene like that — ”
“Do you really think you could have found something?” he asked, genuinely curious.
Her shoulders lifted. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s harder to pull prints than the TV shows want you to think. And when magic is involved….” The words trailed off, and she frowned. “It’s not like there was any sign of forced entry, so the thief probably got into the closet with the safe the same way he got into the house, using some kind of spell that got him past the wards. Or maybe he didn’t even have to do that much, and just went straight there.”
“You mean he might have teleported, like Miranda can?”
Surprise was clear on his companion’s features. It didn’t seem as though she’d heard about that particular talent. “Really, Miranda can teleport?”
“Yes. I guess her parents can, too.”
“Right. I suppose I should have thought of that.” Cassandra played with the ring on her right hand, an intricate piece of silver set with a clear pale blue stone. Aquamarine, maybe. “I forget how many things Angela and Connor can do, since they’re so low-key about their talents. And I guess Miranda is like that, too?”
“Sort of, I guess. To be honest, she and Rafe don’t talk about it that much. But as far as I can tell, she can do almost anything, magically at least.”
Although even the crazy powers she possessed hadn’t been enough to prevent her from slipping on that bit of icy sidewalk. Tony knew Rafe blamed himself for his prima wife’s accidental fall, although it hadn’t been anyone’s fault, just some bad luck.
“Must be nice,” Cassandra remarked. “I wish I had the talent to be able to touch something and see what happened in a room. Then I’d know exactly who did this, maybe where they went.”
“Whoever it is, they must have a lot of Simon Escobar’s same tricks.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because he had the ability to mask what he was. Usually, a prima can sense it when a strange witch or warlock enters her territory. But I could tell Rafe was totally surprised when I called him to let him know about the break-in, so Miranda must not have known that there was an intruder in Santa Fe.”
“Right. I’d forgotten about that.” Cassandra twisted the ring on her finger again, and Tony wondered suddenly who’d given it to her. A boyfriend, maybe?
Somehow, though, he got the feeling she was unattached. Definitely not married or in a serious relationship at least, or she probably would have found a way to mention the guy, if for no other reason than to make it very clear what her boundaries were. Anyway, Tony knew if he were with a girl as impressive as Cassandra, he wouldn’t be too thrilled about her going alone to another clan’s territory to ferry a bunch of dangerous grimoires back to her prima’s house. Not that he would have tried to stop
her. He didn’t know the de la Paz witch well at all, but he could already tell she wasn’t the type who’d put up with an over-protective boyfriend for very long.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, and she looked over at him, obviously surprised.
“I don’t know,” she responded. “Maybe a little, but it’s still early. I was actually hoping you could take me someplace to get a few odds and ends. No luggage, remember?”
Right. She’d gotten off the plane with the oversized bag she had tucked into the footwell now, and nothing else. Obviously, she’d expected to perform her errand and head straight back, but fate had intervened.
“I’ll take you to the mall,” he said. “Then some food. Sound good?”
“Sounds perfect. Thank you.”
No, thank you, he thought. Right then, he was just glad of the chance to spend a little more time with her, no matter how that time was spent.
Even…groan…shopping.
To his relief, though, Cassandra was just as efficient about procuring herself enough clothes to get by as she seemed to be about everything else. She told him there was no reason for him to come in the store with her, and sure enough, she was gone for fifteen minutes at the most while she disappeared into Macy’s. When she emerged, she was carrying two large bags, and Tony obligingly popped the trunk so she could stow them right away and climb back into the passenger seat.
“Drugstore?” she asked as she closed the door.
“There’s a Walgreens up on Cerrillos. I’ll take you there, since it’s on the way back downtown.” Tony sent her a quick glance from under his eyelashes. “That was some pretty impressive shopping.”
Cassandra shrugged. “I shop at Macy’s enough that I know where things are, which brands and which sizes to get. No biggie.”
Maybe not, but after getting dragged along on more than one shopping expedition with his mother and sister back when he was younger, he could still appreciate a woman who went in, got what she needed, and got out, rather than aimlessly wandering from rack to rack, searching for God only knew what.
An Ill Wind Page 4