“Exactly,” Rafe said. “And we need to bring the fight to him before he tries anything else.”
I looked at Rafe in some alarm. We hadn’t discussed anything of the sort, so I didn’t know why he thought it a good idea to suddenly be so aggressive. “I’m not so sure that will work — ” I began, even as Cat broke in.
“Rafe, this isn’t an action movie. This guy is dangerous. We’ve already lost Mom. I’d rather not lose my brother, too.”
His jaw set, but I could tell that Cat’s words had helped to check him, if only a little. “Well, I’m not suggesting doing anything impulsive, but I also don’t think we can afford to sit on our hands forever.”
Probably not. The thing was, there didn’t seem to be much middle ground between charging in after Simon, or waiting here in Santa Fe for him to make his next move.
Something occurred to me, though. “Maybe we can check with the property management company to see if he’s even still at the estate in Tesuque. For all we know, things have been quiet because he changed his base of operations, thinking we were sure to come after him.”
Relief shone in Cat’s dark eyes. It was fairly obvious that she’d feared she wouldn’t be able to stop her brother if he really did decide to go rushing after Simon Escobar. “You know which company handles that property?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I was there when they called the house one time. Casas del Sol was the name.”
Rafe nodded. “They’re one of the biggest management companies here in Santa Fe. Makes sense that the owner of a place that high-end would be working with them. Let me call and see what I can find out.”
As Cat and I watched, he got his cell phone out of his pocket and surfed around a bit to locate the number, then made the call. A brief pause, and then he said, “Hi — I was calling about the property in Tesuque, on Griego Hill Road. A friend of mine, Simon Gutierrez, was overseeing it for you. I haven’t been able to reach him and was wondering — ” A pause, during which Rafe was clearly listening to the person on the other end. Then, “You’re sure? No, that’s fine. Thanks for letting me know.”
“What is it?” I asked.
Rafe returned the phone to his pocket. “Just like we thought. He bailed yesterday afternoon. Told the management company that he’d had a family emergency come up and that he couldn’t stay through the end of his contract. The woman at Casas del Sol didn’t sound too happy with him.”
“She can get in line,” Cat remarked, and I couldn’t help but smile a little.
“True,” Rafe said. “Mr. Escobar has a lot of people pretty pissed off at him. So now we know he’s not still in Tesuque, but he can’t have gone too far. He still needs to be close enough to make our lives difficult.”
“But how close?” Cat asked. “I mean, he can’t be right in Santa Fe, can he? Louisa would be able to tell if he was around.”
“Not necessarily,” I told her. “Simon can block his powers so other witches and warlocks can’t tell what he really is. I’m not saying he could move in next door to her, because at least then she’d recognize him — well, unless he cast an illusion to change his appearance — but he still can pretty much move around inside the city limits without anyone knowing.”
“Well, that’s just great.” Off in the depths of the house, a phone rang, and Cat startled slightly. “I’d better go get that,” she said before hurrying toward the kitchen.
“You have a landline?” I asked, a little surprised.
“It’s a very old house,” Rafe replied, one corner of his mouth quirking upward. I gave him a pained look, and he added, “And I have some very old relatives. We’ve had the same number here longer than I’ve been alive, so it just made sense to keep it all going. Maybe Louisa will get rid of it, although I doubt it. Anyway, if someone’s calling that number, it’s one of the relatives. Dad would call Cat’s cell. But let’s go see.”
He led me out of the foyer, then down the open hallway that divided the bottom floor of the house, passing the living room and dining room, and a smaller, more intimate space that I guessed was some kind of sitting room. The phone in question hung from one wall in the kitchen; Cat stood there now, wrapping the overstretched cord around her fingers as she spoke.
“No, we haven’t decided yet,” she said. “It was all so sudden — no, I don’t think so. I really don’t know much, Aunt Lucilla. I’m waiting to hear what my father has to say, and Louisa. It’s really their decision.” A long pause, during which she clearly was doing her best to hold back her mounting impatience. “No, not yet. I think he’s talking to the bishop. Maybe you should call him directly. Mm-hmm. Okay. Right. I’ll let him know as soon as he gets home.”
She hung up then, and Rafe said, “I’m surprised you could get through that conversation without having your eyes roll out of your head.”
Cat gave both of us a weary grin. “Believe me, I had to fight the temptation.” Obviously, I must have looked puzzled, because she went on to explain, “Aunt Lucilla is really a cousin, but everyone just calls her ‘aunt.’ Anyway, she’s eighty-five and a sweet old lady, but she feels left out if she’s not in the center of everything. I know she didn’t like hearing that nothing’s been decided about Mom’s funeral.”
“She’s going to like it even less when she finds out no one was invited, but we’ll deal with that later.” Rafe looked over at me, then asked, abruptly changing the subject, “Do you have any idea where Simon could have gone?”
I shook my head. “None at all. Your guess is as good as mine — probably better, because you’d know more than me which areas might appeal to him the most. If the Tesuque estate is any indication of the sort of property he wants, then I’d say it would be something on a big plot of land, kind of isolated. Not in the center of town, that’s for sure.”
Cat and Rafe exchanged a glance. She shrugged, while he said, “That describes a lot of properties in Santa Fe County. Once you get outside the city itself, it’s normal to have houses on three, four, even five or more acres.”
Great. “Well, another thing about the estate was that it felt private because of all the trees around the house and on the property line. I haven’t gotten out much, but I noticed when I was taking the Railrunner up from Albuquerque that most of the land around here is pretty open.”
“That’s for sure.” Rafe went quiet for a moment, clearly pondering the problem at hand. Right then he looked very dark and brooding, and handsomer than ever. Or was I just watching him with sex-afterglow goggles on?
Not that it mattered. Despite everything, I had to fight the overwhelming urge to tell Cat we had important business to attend to so I could drag him back to the house and into bed once more.
“What about La Cienega?” Cat asked.
Rafe considered that suggestion for a moment, then slowly nodded. “Maybe. There’s a spur of the Rio Grande down there — Cienega Creek. That means it’s a lot greener than the land around it, lots of trees. There are properties down there that are pretty isolated, so one of them could work as Simon’s backup hideout…especially since there aren’t many Castillos in that part of Santa Fe County.”
That sounded promising. At this time of year, the cottonwood and sycamore trees would be mostly bare, but Santa Fe and its environs had lots of evergreens, too, mostly juniper and piñon pine. If there were enough of them down in La Cienega, then they’d still provide plenty of shelter. “How far is that from Santa Fe proper?”
“Not too far,” Rafe replied. “About fifteen, twenty minutes from the center of town.”
“If that’s even where he went,” Cat said. “He could have gone up into Pojoaque, or out to Glorieta or Pecos.”
Rafe looked dubious. “Those are all a lot farther out, though. I don’t care how powerful Simon is — if he’s suddenly having to send his spells fifteen or twenty miles, they’re going to be weaker. I don’t think he’d compromise himself that way.”
I had a feeling Rafe was probably right. It seemed clear enough that Simon want
ed to inflict whatever damage he could on the Castillo clan, and intentionally weakening the effectiveness of his spells didn’t line up with his plans for vengeance. This La Cienega place sounded promising, but we couldn’t count on that, especially since it wasn’t as though we could go out and conduct a house-to-house search for him. With the powers he had at his command, he could make us walk right past the place where he was holed up, and we’d never even know.
Then Cat winced, and put her hand to her temple again. “Are you okay?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve been feeling that weird pressure off and on all morning. It was okay last night, but….”
Damn. The last thing I wanted to believe was that Simon might be hurting her in some way. I glanced over at Rafe, who frowned. “Do you think you might somehow be feeling Simon working his magic?”
“I don’t know.” She shot a nervous glance at both of us and added, “I kind of hope not. That would be creepy.”
“It’s possible, though.”
“I guess.”
Why Cat would be able to feel that kind of a manifestation when I couldn’t, I had no idea. Magic was such a slippery thing in so many ways. No two people’s experience of it were exactly alike; we all had to come to it in our own ways, with our own sets of beliefs and prejudices. However, an idea was beginning to form in my mind. “What if it’s more that you can tell he’s doing something, but it’s mostly blocked because of the protective spell on the house?”
Rafe said, “That would make a lot of sense.”
A bit of hope showed in Cat’s face, but then she shook her head. “I don’t think that’s it, though. The first time I felt this pressure, we were at the hospital, visiting Marco. There was no spell of protection there, that’s for sure.”
Damn. And there I’d thought I was on to something. Still, it wasn’t as though these weird sensations Cat was experiencing could be explained away as simply migraines or something with a purely physical cause. Deep in my gut, I knew they had to be connected to Simon’s magic, even if I couldn’t trace that connection at the moment.
From the disappointment in Rafe’s expression, I could tell he was really hoping it would be a simple explanation like that. Although I knew he loved Cat fiercely and would never want to see any harm come to her, it would have been helpful to know for sure that she experienced those twinges whenever Simon was up to something, like an early warning system or our own personal magical barometer.
Before either of us could reply to her, however, I heard the sound of voices coming from the front of the house, and guessed that Eduardo and Uncle José and Aunt Rosa must have returned from their trip to the chapel. Sure enough, a moment later all three of them appeared, looking somewhat surprised that we’d congregated in the kitchen.
“Ah, there you are, Cat,” Aunt Rosa said. Looking at her, I could see some resemblance to her younger brother Eduardo — the same long, aristocratic nose and finely molded mouth — but she was short and much more rounded, almost plump, while Eduardo was tall and well-built. Immediately, she turned toward me. “And here is Miranda. José and I are so glad you could be with the family in their hour of need. What a dreadful business, all of it.”
I opened my mouth to make some kind of reply, possibly a few words of condolence, but she didn’t give me the chance. Instead she turned to Rafe.
“You need a haircut,” she pronounced, looking at him with a critical eye. From the way his mouth twitched, I guessed this wasn’t the first time she’d made a comment along those lines. “But ah, the chapel will be lovely, although I still think it’s a tragedy that Genoveva won’t have her service at the cathedral.”
“The whole thing is a tragedy, Rosa,” Eduardo murmured.
At once she stopped, then gave a large sigh. “That it is, of course. A tragedy for you, and for the entire clan. I am just saying that it is also sad that Genoveva could not be given the respect she deserves when she is laid to rest.”
“The respect is in our hearts, my dear, not in how many people attend Genoveva’s funeral,” José said, clearly used to these sorts of pronouncements from his wife.
Once again Rosa sighed. “I suppose you are right, José, but still — ”
“Aunt Lucilla called while you were out,” Cat cut in, her voice strained. “She was not happy when I wouldn’t tell her anything about the funeral.”
“No, I suppose she wouldn’t be,” Eduardo said, and offered his daughter a gentle smile. Grief had given him shadows under his eyes, and lines in his face I could have sworn weren’t there when I’d first met him less than two weeks earlier, but the love for his family still shone in his handsome features. “I’ll call her later, once I’ve figured out what I can safely tell her.”
“I can call — ” Rosa began, but her brother shook his head.
“No, if you call, she’ll know I’m trying to avoid her. Sooner or later, everyone will know that we’ve gone ahead and had Genoveva’s service without the rest of the clan present. I hope by that point I’ll be able to explain why we had to do such a thing.”
“When will the service be, Dad?” Cat asked.
“Tomorrow, at eleven in the morning. At least we were able to get that much planned.” Another weary smile, and he went on, “That means we won’t have to hold off the inquiries for too much longer.”
Rafe shifted his weight as he stood next to me, then said, “Simon’s left the estate where he was hiding.”
Eduardo’s brows pulled together, but he didn’t look all that surprised. “I suppose that was inevitable, since he knows we know where he was living. But I also suppose it’s no use hoping that he’s left entirely.”
“We don’t want him to have left the area,” Rafe returned, arms crossed and a martial light in his dark eyes. “We want to make sure he gets what’s coming to him.”
“If that’s even possible.” Eduardo’s gaze moved to me, now faintly speculative. “I’ve heard that your powers are now quite formidable, Miranda, but the last thing I want is for you to be dragged into this thing.”
I still didn’t know Eduardo well, but I already felt the first stirrings of affection for the man who would one day be my father-in-law. He was so kindly and gentle, such a foil for the imperious Genoveva. Once again, I wondered how they could have gotten along so well, but I supposed theirs was the ultimate case of opposites attracting. And now she was gone. I’d heard that often consorts didn’t live very long after their primas had passed, although I had to hope Eduardo would be the exception to that rule. He certainly was far too young to fade away, and the world would be worse off for his absence.
Since he was watching me with that air of gentle concern, I could only smile at him and say, “It looks like Simon’s dragged me into it already. About all I can do is help keep everyone safe — and fight by Rafe’s side, if it comes to that.”
“A little thing like you?” Rosa asked, clearly not impressed by my comment. “I’m not quite sure what you think you could do in a fight.”
Well, I wasn’t entirely sure, either, but it wasn’t as if I planned to get into a mixed martial arts brawl with Simon Escobar. Even as Rafe opened his mouth to protest, Cat rushed to my defense.
“Miranda is a very powerful witch, Aunt Rosa. I have a feeling if Simon tried to take her on, he’d be regretting it pretty quickly.”
I could only hope so. The day before, I’d managed to hold him off…but just barely. If he was waiting for me, had planned ahead for exactly that sort of confrontation, then I had a feeling he’d beat me, and badly. There was just so much about wielding magic that he knew, and I still didn’t. He’d been my only teacher, but I wouldn’t be able to get any further guidance from him, that was for sure.
Rosa sniffed, which made me think that was her standard response when she’d been outmaneuvered but didn’t want to admit defeat. Something about her stubbornness reminded me of Genoveva. Maybe that was why Eduardo had been able to handle his wife so well — he’d already had years
and years of dealing with that same sort of temperament in his sister.
“We don’t know it will even come to that,” I said. Even though I might have to face that eventuality one day, I really didn’t want to think about having to go head-to-head with Simon. “I mean, just the fact that he’s left Tesuque tells me he’s a little afraid of what we might do to him. Otherwise, it would have been easier for him to stay put.”
“Possibly,” Rafe allowed. However, from the way he frowned slightly, I guessed he didn’t think that was very likely. “Unless he’s left because he found an even more defensible place.”
Rafe had a point. I hoped he was wrong, though. The estate in Tesuque had seemed ideal, but for all its isolation, it did have acres of open land around it, land that could be used to sneak up behind him if you weren’t too concerned about crossing someone’s property lines. I wouldn’t know La Cienega if you dropped me in the middle of it. However, I hadn’t forgotten Rafe mentioning a creek there, an offshoot from the Rio Grande. If that creek was big enough, it could create a natural barrier…assuming Simon had been able to find someplace that backed up to it. Then all he’d have to worry about was a frontal assault.
I was about to say as much when Rafe’s cell phone rang. He got it out of his pocket, checked the screen briefly to see who was calling, then put the phone up to his ear. “Hi, John. What’s — ?” That was as far as he got. The blood drained from his face, and he stood there, face like a stone, as he listened to the person on the other end of the line. I didn’t know who John was. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but there were so many Castillos….
Everyone else clearly knew who was calling, though. The strain in Eduardo’s face was almost painful to see, as though he knew this had to be yet more terrible news, yet another blow for the Castillo clan to suffer. Cat was just as pale as her brother, while Rosa quietly reached for her husband José’s hand.
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