Mysterious Ways

by Christine Pope

  Miranda stirred in her seat, looking out her window at the dry brush and junipers passing by. “Another cousin?”

  Cat replied, “Yes — she’s an artist. She lives by herself.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Rafe saw Miranda’s brows lift. It wasn’t very common among witch-folk to be unattached, especially for someone like Nina, who was in her late forties.

  “Nina always did things her way,” he said. “She has a daughter around my age — she’s married and lives down in Rio Rancho. But Nina didn’t want to get married, even though I heard my grandmother threw a fit about her having a child out of wedlock. That’s ancient history, though.”

  He supposed that was a true enough statement, although part of the reason Lisa, Nina’s daughter, had settled in Rio Rancho was to put a safe distance between her and Genoveva, who’d decided that disapproval of Nina’s life choices needed to be an intergenerational thing.

  “No one knows who Lisa’s father is,” Cat put in. Now she didn’t look quite as strained and pale, as though she, just like Rafe himself, was desperately searching for a distraction that would allow her to focus on something other than the tragedy that had once again struck her family. True, Malena was only in a coma, and hopefully she should come out of it at some point, since otherwise she was a healthy and energetic woman, but…. “Everyone thinks he was a civilian, since if it had been a Castillo, he probably would have said something.”

  “That sounds like my Aunt Margot’s situation,” Miranda said. “Her father was some Italian painter that her mother had a fling with when he came to the Verde Valley to paint one summer. Margot’s mother didn’t want to get married, either, so I guess it was a good way to have the child she wanted without having to get attached.”

  “I’m glad it’s not too much of a trend,” Rafe remarked. “Because that would leave a bunch of warlocks with no one to marry.”

  Miranda reached over and laid a hand on his leg. Gently, in a reassuring sort of way, but even that light touch was enough to get his blood racing again. God, he had never expected she would have this kind of an effect on him. “I doubt that’s going to be a problem,” she told him, “considering how irresistible the Castillo men are.”

  He couldn’t help but chuckle a little. “Not according to Cat.”

  His sister made a sound of disgust. “Thanks for the support, Rafe. Like it wasn’t bad enough to have Mom — ” She broke off there, clearly realizing she shouldn’t be speaking ill of their mother when they’d only lost her the day before.

  While Rafe understood why she’d stopped, he didn’t think Cat should be too hard on herself. It was all right to grieve and yet still recognize the shortcomings of the person they mourned. Genoveva had given Cat way too much grief about being single, and everyone knew it.

  Miranda said, “He’s out there, though. I think you’ll stumble across him when you least expect it.”

  Since they were only going twenty-five miles an hour, Rafe thought it was safe to steal a quick glance at his fiancée. She had a faraway look in her big green eyes, as though focused on something that none of them could see. A weird little chill ran down his back. “What, are you a seer now, too?”

  The question seemed to make her snap back to herself. “I — I don’t think so,” she said with a nervous laugh. “I’m not really sure where that came from.”

  “Well, I hope you’re right,” Cat said. She’d been leaning forward slightly, but now she settled against the seat back, fingers playing with the safety belt that stretched across her chest. “Maybe this means some gorgeous, rich Wilcox warlock will appear and sweep me off my feet.”

  “I have to say, there are several who match that description. I guess it’s just a matter of coaxing them over here.”

  “Which isn’t going to happen, unless we can figure out what to do with that barrier Simon’s put in place,” Rafe remarked, glad he could comment on something other than the apparently overwhelming attractiveness of Wilcox men.

  At once the faint smile Miranda had been wearing disappeared. “Right. I’d almost forgotten about that.”

  “I hadn’t. But Louisa got the word out over the family grapevine, so I don’t think we’re going to have any more car accidents at least. Good thing we witches and warlocks don’t tend to travel much.”

  Cat grumped, “No, we never go anywhere.”

  He refrained from mentioning that the two of them had just flown to San Antonio a few days earlier. It wasn’t as though that had been a pleasure trip, however. Besides, he hadn’t yet told Miranda about his and Cat’s abortive trip, and didn’t want to add to her guilt over this whole situation, a guilt she couldn’t quite seem to shake.

  They pulled up into Nina’s driveway. Her house wasn’t large, but it sat on a hill that commanded a striking view of all of Santa Fe, with the Sangre de Cristos looming off to the left.

  A chill breeze had begun to blow, and although the day had started off clear enough, a cloud passed over the sun. Rafe felt another one of those strange little shivers move its way down his spine, although he told himself there was nothing here to be frightened of. What Simon had been doing was horrible, but it was also obvious that he was intent on striking at the heart of the Castillo clan, rather than random distant cousins. There was no reason to think anything was wrong here.

  It seemed as if both Cat and Miranda had felt it, too, however, because Cat frowned as she got out of the car, and Miranda hugged her arms around herself, as though she was suddenly far colder than the brisk breeze would warrant. By instinct, the three of them clustered together as they went up the front walk, which Rafe knew was surrounded by flowers in the warmer months, although the beds on either side were now not much more than carefully raked dirt, waiting for the return of the summer sun.

  Wind chimes sang mournfully from the overhang that shielded the front door. Rafe stepped forward and pressed the button for the doorbell, heard it sound within the house. However, no one came to answer that bell.

  “Maybe she has music on or something and can’t hear the doorbell?” Miranda asked.

  “No, she works in dead silence,” Rafe replied, with Cat adding,

  “She always says that music distracts her. Anyway, we all heard the doorbell, so we should have been able to hear music if it was playing.” Biting her lip, she leaned forward and knocked on the door, then called out, “Nina? Are you home? It’s Rafe and Cat.”

  Only silence. Now it was almost impossible to ignore the creepy crawlies moving up and down his spine. Rafe knocked again, then decided the hell with etiquette. He put his hand on the latch, which pressed down easily. “It’s not locked.”

  “Should we go in?” Miranda didn’t seem too thrilled by her own suggestion — not that Rafe could blame her.

  “I think we’d better,” Cat replied. “Rafe, you go first.”

  “Thanks,” he said, but went ahead and opened the front door.

  He’d only been here a few times, but as far as he could tell, everything seemed to be in order in the small entryway. One of Nina’s paintings — an impressionistic blur of warm-hued autumn aspens — hung on the wall that faced the front door, and on the low table beneath it sat the same slate fountain, water quietly playing into the silence.

  “Nina?” he called out.

  Still nothing.

  The house had three bedrooms — the master, one that had been Lisa’s before she moved out, and one that Nina had converted into her studio. Rafe headed that way, mostly because he hadn’t heard any signs of life in the main part of the house. Miranda and Cat followed, neither of them speaking.

  As they approached the open door to Nina’s studio, he at last heard something, a quick, whispery sort of sound. He glanced back at Miranda, and she gave a small lift of her shoulders, even as her worried gaze met his. Clearly, she’d heard the same thing.

  He peered around the corner of the doorway and froze. Nina stood there, brush moving rapidly across the canvas. However, instead of one of her usual
landscapes, it was a rectangle of solid black, the paint growing thicker and thicker as she kept adding more and more from the palette perched on a small stand next to her.

  “Nina?” he asked, having to work to get even those two small syllables out.

  She didn’t move, gave no sign that she knew anyone was there at all. Her brush kept swiping across the canvas.

  Then she spoke, her voice only a cracked murmur. “They’re coming. They’re coming. They’re coming.”

  And behind him, Cat let out a gasp and fainted dead away.

  8

  Army of Darkness

  Miranda

  I didn’t stop to think, only dropped to my knees, immediately reaching for Cat’s wrist. Thank the Goddess — there was her pulse, too fast, but strong enough.

  Rafe’s stricken gaze met mine. “Is she…?”

  “She’s okay,” I said. “She just passed out. We need to get her to a couch or something.”

  Nodding, he bent and picked her up, then left the muttering Nina behind and headed back the way we’d come, back to the living room. Once there, he set Cat down on the sofa. Her head lolled on the pillow, dark hair streaming over it almost to the floor.

  Rafe straightened, staring down at his sister. His expression was a tortured combination of anger, fear, and confusion. “What the fuck is going on?”

  I didn’t have a clue. “A different kind of spell?” I suggested. “One that affected your cousin and your sister in different ways?”

  “Maybe.” He ran a hand through his hair, eyes never leaving Cat’s pale face. “You’re sure she’s okay?”

  “Well, I’m not a healer or anything, but she’s breathing and her heartbeat sounds fine. Luckily, she just sort of slumped down instead of going over backward, or she could have cracked her head open on that tile floor.”

  “Shit, you’re right.” Rafe hesitated, then glanced down the hallway toward Nina’s studio. “‘They’re coming.’ Who’s coming?”

  Again, all I could do was lift my shoulders in mystification. “I don’t know. Is Nina a seer?”

  “No,” Rafe replied. “At least, I never heard that she was. Her talent is color, I guess. That’s why she became a painter. She can see a color once and always replicate it, always match it. She once joked that she probably should have been an interior decorator, because she would have made more money at it.”

  I thought of the rectangle of pure black that sat on Nina’s easel and shuddered. No color matching going on there, that was for sure. But I could see evidence of what Rafe was talking about in the room around me — the shades of the throw pillows on the beige couch coordinated exactly with the colors of the paintings that hung on the walls. More of Nina’s work, I guessed, if the painting in the entryway was hers as well. The styles were the same, a sort of impressionism that bordered on the abstract.

  And I vaguely recalled Rafe saying once that they didn’t have any seers in the Castillos, although I couldn’t remember the context of the conversation. Not that seers were the end-all, be-all when it came to being forewarned. They were often helpful, but, if the experience of my cousin Caitlin was anything to go by, it was more like the visions controlled her rather than vice versa. Even if the Castillos had had a seer, it wasn’t as though we could have gone to her — or him, although seers tended to be female — and asked for the exact location where Simon was holed up, or to clarify just what the hell Rafe’s cousin Nina meant when she kept saying, They’re coming.

  It felt sort of horrible to have left her in that room, adding more and more black paint to her canvas. On the other hand, she appeared otherwise safe and unharmed, and Cat was our more immediate concern.

  She blinked, then opened her eyes. At first, they didn’t seem able to focus on anything in particular, but then she blinked again and frowned slightly at Rafe.

  “Where am I?”

  The question was such a cliché, I almost wanted to break into nervous laughter. Then again, I could see why she would be confused. Even though she’d been to this house before, I got the feeling that she didn’t exactly hang out here.

  “We’re at Nina’s house,” Rafe said, relief clear in his expression. After what had happened to Malena, he was probably expecting the worst. “You passed out. Do you remember anything?”

  Cat pushed herself up to a sitting position, then rubbed her forehead. “I think I was feeling that pressure again, although it was worse than before. It felt like I couldn’t breathe. It’s still not gone completely, but at least I don’t feel like I’m going to faint again.” She looked around the room. “Where’s Nina?”

  I glanced up at Rafe. His mouth tightened slightly, but since he didn’t tell me not to say anything, I guessed it was all right to give a truthful answer to Cat’s question. “She’s in her study. She’s…in a fugue state or something. You don’t remember the black canvas, the way she said ‘they’re coming’?”

  “No.” Cat frowned, this time with her fingers pressed against her temple, as though her head still hurt. “Or…I kind of remember the canvas. I just don’t remember what happened next.”

  “We’re not really sure what’s going on,” Rafe said slowly. His gaze moved from Cat to me. “Miranda, could it be another spell?”

  “Maybe,” I replied, then added, “Probably. I don’t know why or how, though. I guess the best thing to do is cast a protection spell and see if it stops?”

  “Yes, try that.”

  I closed my eyes briefly, visualizing a protective bubble encasing the house and its occupants, driving away any negative energies and preventing new ones from penetrating the shield the spell created. Almost at once, I felt better, as though some faint, foul smell had been driven from the room, even though I really hadn’t noticed it previously.

  “That’s better,” Cat said, almost as soon as I opened my eyes. “It’s gone completely now.”

  Despite this promising development, Rafe still looked troubled. “Well, I guess that proves that your protection spells work, and Malena’s really didn’t. Which means we still have a lot of work to do.”

  I nodded, and held back a sigh. The strain of the day was already getting to me, and we still had a lot of houses to visit. But I couldn’t shirk my duty. About all I could do was hope that the protection spells cast by other members of the clan were more effective than Malena’s. The Castillos had more than a hundred households here in the greater Santa Fe area. It would take me several days to get through them all…and I didn’t know if we had that much time.

  Just as Cat began to ease her legs over the side of the couch so she could stand up, Nina entered the room. The oversized chambray shirt she wore was smeared with black paint, and she wore an expression that was just about as confused as I felt. She blinked when she saw us gathered in the living room. “Rafe? Cat? What — ?”

  “It’s okay, Nina,” Rafe said quickly. “We brought Miranda over to place a protection spell on the house.”

  Nina’s brows drew together. She was a pretty woman in her forties, slender and not very tall, her black hair pulled up into a messy knot on top of her head. “Malena did that yesterday.”

  “It’s just a precaution,” I said. “We weren’t sure if her spell was strong enough.”

  “Oh.” Nina blinked again, then looked down at her stained shirt. “Do any of you know what happened to my canvas? It’s covered in black paint, but I don’t remember how it got there.”

  “Um, no, we don’t,” Cat replied. She stood up and tugged at her sweater, then smoothed her skirt as best she could. I could tell she was annoyed at having to wear such proper attire, which I had to admit wasn’t very well suited to collapsing in hallways. “Maybe you were experimenting?”

  “Maybe,” Nina said, still in that same bemused-sounding tone. Her gaze slowly wandered to me. “Did you cast the spell?”

  “Yes. Everything should be fine now.” I had no idea whether those words were true or not, but I had to believe it would be okay. After all, Rafe and I were fine, a
s were Eduardo and Cat. That is, Cat had fainted, but not when she was in her own home, which was already protected by one of my spells.

  “And we have other houses to go to,” Rafe added. “But maybe it would be a good idea if you took a break for a while, Nina. I think you’ve been in there painting for too long today.”

  “Possibly,” she said absently. “I did start right after breakfast. Well, it was nice meeting you, Miranda.”

  And then she drifted out of the room, back down the hall toward her studio. So much for taking a break.

  “Should we do anything?” Cat murmured in an undertone, although I guessed that Nina was already out of earshot.

  Rafe gave a helpless shrug. “What can we do? She seems okay, just a little out of it. And maybe her disorientation will go away the longer she’s protected by Miranda’s spell and the more time she has for the dark magic to wear off.”

  Cat looked down the hallway where Nina had disappeared, then tucked a lock of hair behind one ear. “Maybe. I guess we can ask Yesenia to look in on her, too.”

  “That sounds like a good idea.” Rafe took me by the hand. “Are you ready, Miranda? We’ll need to do this a few more times.”

  “Hopefully not exactly like this,” I replied, thinking again of that black canvas, the urgent murmur of they’re coming…they’re coming….

  “Hopefully not,” he agreed.

  But of course there was only one way to find out.

  To my relief, though, we didn’t have any more uncanny encounters after that. Everyone seemed a little puzzled by my coming around to perform the same spell that Malena had done just the day before, but no one seemed inclined to argue. Also, by the time we got to the last few houses, it was obvious that the word had gone out about Malena’s condition, because people stopped asking about why I was casting these spells, and instead told Cat and Rafe they hoped their sister would have a speedy recovery.