That inner voice sounded very sensible. I knew I’d better pay attention to it, because I knew that my need to belong could get me in trouble if I allowed it to. Much smarter to take it easy and wait to see how things progressed with Simon.
One way or another, though, I really didn’t see myself staying here in New Mexico for much longer.
Simon had set the table and lit the tall, thin tapers in the holders of glazed bisque that stood like sentinels on the linen runner. He also found all the serving pieces we needed for our dinner, including a big pasta bowl and another bowl for salad, and helped me dish everything up.
“Is this guilt because I did all the cooking?” I asked with a laugh as he took the salad out to the dining room table.
“I wouldn’t call it guilt,” he said, his expression quite serious. “More like…wanting to help.”
“Well, thanks for that. I think we’re ready.”
And we were. It was probably way too much food for two people, but leftovers were always a good thing. Speaking of guilt, one of my guilty pleasures as a kid had been to sneak a piece of leftover garlic bread and heat it in the toaster oven for breakfast, even though I knew we were supposed to be saving whatever was left for another meal. I’d have to try that the next day and see if it still had as much savor as it did when I was ten years old.
We sat down at the table, which stretched away for what felt like miles from our two lonely place settings at the head. “Good thing you didn’t make me sit at the other end,” I said as I took my place to Simon’s right, just below the head of the table. “We would have had to use semaphore flags.”
“Or megaphones,” he agreed, wrestling with the cork from a bottle of chianti we’d picked up at the grocery store. “I don’t think I’d try to inflict that on you. I’m still trying to decide whether the Texas oil guy has a huge family, or whether he picked a table this big because he needed something that would fit in the space.”
“Probably the latter,” I said. “If he had a big family, you’d think they’d be here watching the house for him. I know I wouldn’t let my father sell a place like this.”
“I’m glad you like it.” Simon finally got the cork out and set it on the table, then gestured toward my glass. I handed it to him so he could fill it up, then put it back down by my place setting. “How would you like to buy it?”
My eyes didn’t exactly pop out of my head, but I could feel them widen. “Um, hate to break it to you, Simon, but I don’t have four or five million extra bucks just lying around.”
“You could, though.” He finished pouring his own wine, then sent me a speculative look. “Or hadn’t you gotten around to thinking about what you could do with those teleportation powers of yours?”
“To rob banks?” For a second, uneasiness swirled through me. He couldn’t be serious, could he? Then I caught the dancing light in his black eyes and said, “Very funny. No, I hadn’t thought about that kind of thing, because you know we’re not supposed to use our powers for self-enrichment or to take advantage of others.”
“Tell that to your Wilcox relatives.”
I repressed the urge to stick my tongue out at him, because Simon had a definite point there. No one liked to talk about it, and as far as I knew, my father’s clan was pretty much on the up and up these days, but I knew that the Wilcoxes in the past had indulged in a lot of shady practices to plump up their portfolios. They came out of the stock market crash in 1929 pretty much unscathed, and their investments and bank accounts had only grown by leaps and bounds since then. Still, even though some of their early methods probably wouldn’t have held up to FCC scrutiny, that wasn’t quite the same thing as teleporting into Fort Knox and walking out with bars of gold in my backpack or something.
“Anyway,” I went on in quelling tones, “I don’t think I’d want to settle down this close to the Castillos. The sooner I have them in my rearview mirror, the better.”
“I can’t blame you for that.” Simon paused, then raised his glass in a toast. “To settling down wherever it makes you happy.”
That was a toast I could happily make, so I clinked my wine glass against his and took a healthy swallow of chianti. It was fruity and full, and better than I’d expected it to be.
After that we were occupied with dishing out salad and spaghetti, and helping ourselves to some garlic bread as well. As I ate, I thought of how much fun this was, to be playing house like this, even though I knew our time here was limited. And there were other aspects to playing house….
I watched Simon from underneath my eyelashes as he ate. No, I thought objectively, he wasn’t as handsome as Rafe, his face thinner, his features sharper. But I liked his thick, sooty hair, and those black, black eyes with their heavy lashes. It was an interesting face, one with good bones beneath it. And if I didn’t have quite the same urge to hurl myself into Simon’s arms, I told myself that was a good thing. There had been something about the way I reacted to Rafe that made me not quite myself. That lack of control could have gotten me in trouble, if it weren’t that he’d been so clearly bent on sabotaging our relationship.
One way or another, I was well out of it.
And it was good for me to be friends with Simon first before anything romantic passed between us. I couldn’t compare our relationship to the intense bond my parents shared, but I knew that in civilian couples, it was often far better for love to evolve from friendship. That way, you had something in common besides plain old lust.
“This is incredible,” Simon said once he’d slowed down a bit, having made some serious inroads in his plate of spaghetti. “Better than I’ve ever had in a restaurant.”
“Thanks.” My cheeks heated a bit at his praise; I knew my spaghetti sauce was good, but only because Rachel had taught me to make it. “I’ll have to let Rachel know. She’s always happy when people like her recipes.”
“Definitely.” He set down his fork and sipped some chianti. “But I don’t want to make you cook every night. Plus, I had an idea earlier this afternoon.”
“Oh?” I asked, my tone guarded. I told myself that Simon wouldn’t suggest anything that might get me in trouble, but….
He didn’t seem put off by my obvious caution. “Well, I was thinking about how it seems fairly easy for you to handle a bunch of different types of magic. So I was wondering about you managing two different spells — for lack of a better word — at the same time. What would happen if you cast an illusion spell to alter your appearance…and also blocked your magical gifts so that no other witches or warlocks in the vicinity would know what you were?”
“That sounds hard,” I said, feeling less enthusiastic than ever. It was one thing to expand my magical gifts, but quite another to push me past what I could comfortably manage.
“It could be, but it would also be an awesome test of your talents. I was thinking we could try it by going out to dinner tomorrow night in one of Santa Fe’s best restaurants…which also happens to be just around the corner from Genoveva’s house.”
“Oh, no way,” I told Simon, my voice flat. “Are you kidding? What if we get caught?”
“What if we do?” he responded. “It’s not like she can put us in witch jail or something. She’s no relation to you. Besides, you could teleport us out of there if anything went sideways.”
“Teleport in front of a bunch of civilians.”
“I doubt it would come to that.” He stared at me, black eyes shining. “Come on, Miranda — don’t you want to test your talents? And it would also totally give the finger to Genoveva Castillo.”
His voice was hard as he said her name. I didn’t know what Simon had against the Castillo prima, except that she’d done her best to coerce my family into making me marry her son. Since obviously Simon wasn’t a fan of that idea, I could see why he might not be too thrilled with her. Still….
“Maybe,” I said cautiously. “But I’d want to practice first.”
“Of course,” he responded. “We’ll practice tomorrow. But
I’ll still make reservations at Geronimo.”
I could have argued, I suppose. But part of me wanted the same thing Simon did — to show Genoveva Castillo that maybe she wasn’t in quite as much control of the situation as she thought.
And who would turn down dinner in a five-star restaurant?
Not me.
I stared at myself in the mirror. All that day I’d practiced altering my appearance, right down to changing the plain dark T-shirt I wore over to a beaded wrap sweater, one I paired with slim jeans and high-heeled boots, since I hadn’t actually brought anything that glamorous with me.
The face looking back at me from the mirror wasn’t mine, though. I’d decided to go with someone who was around my same height and age — my cousin Jessica Rowe. Her hair was a little darker than mine, her eyes the same piercing blue as her father’s rather than my smoky green, but otherwise we were fairly similar in appearance. I figured that was better, just because it was easier to hold the illusion and at the same time do that trick of hiding my true nature, that inner light which tended to announce itself to every other witch and warlock in the vicinity.
Simon hadn’t let me off so easy when it came to him, though. I’d protested that there wasn’t anyone in the Castillo clan who probably even knew what he looked like, and so I didn’t know why I had to cast the illusion on him at all, but he still told me I needed to change his appearance as well.
“A really extreme change,” he told me. “I know you can do it.”
I had to hope his confidence wasn’t misplaced.
When I met him in the living room, he looked at me in approval. “That’s good — similar but not exact. How does it feel?”
“Fine,” I said. “Once I set the illusion in place, it pretty much holds until I take it away.”
“All right, then. My turn.”
I pulled in a breath. Simon had said he wanted an extreme change, so that was what I would give him. My cousin Jason was as blond as his parents Levi and Hayley, tall and blue-eyed, with a definite Norwegian ski team captain vibe going on. I couldn’t think of anyone who looked less like Simon, which made Jason’s the perfect face to borrow.
Even though I knew what I was doing, I had to prevent myself from taking a step backward when the transformation was complete. The man standing in front of me was my cousin Jason’s double, hair appearing nearly white under the bright illumination from the chandelier overhead.
“Go take a look,” I instructed him, and Simon turned from me so he could go into the powder room down the hall and inspect himself in the mirror.
“Wow,” he said. He didn’t come back out right away, so I guessed he was leaning close to the mirror and looking at himself from all angles. I couldn’t really blame him, since I’d done basically the same thing, just to reassure myself that the illusion was perfect. When he emerged, he was shaking his blond head. “This is incredible. Who is this guy, anyway? Some male model?”
“My cousin Jason.”
“He looks like he should be the captain of a lacrosse team or something.”
“I was thinking Norwegian downhill skier, but yeah.”
A grin flashed across Simon’s face. That was how I could tell he was still under there, despite the illusion — those might have been my cousin Jason’s features, but the way he smiled was very much Simon. The difference was subtle, though, and I knew that no one we’d be seeing at the restaurant would be able to tell anything was off.
“We should get going,” he said. “Our reservations are in twenty minutes.”
“Okay.”
I tried to ignore the way my heart pounded as I pulled on my jacket, then followed Simon out to the car. The closer we got to the heart of town, the more nervous I got. It didn’t matter that the illusions were flawless, or that I knew I was safely blocking my magical nature, just as Simon was hiding his. I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow Genoveva Castillo would reach out from behind the walls of her compound and grab me as we passed, that she’d be able to see beneath the illusions and the spells we’d cast to hide our witch blood no matter what we did.
But then we were turning up Canyon Road, going much farther up on the street than I’d managed to explore in my brief time here in Santa Fe. We passed the restaurant, a place called Geronimo, then turned right so we could enter the parking lot from the proper side. It was extremely cramped and already full, but a valet appeared and said he’d take care of it for us.
Simon thanked the man and took a valet ticket from him before leading me slightly downhill to the restaurant’s entrance. As soon as we were inside, I saw a large fireplace almost exactly opposite the door, and an elegant little bar off to my left. I didn’t have time for any more of an inspection than that, however, because a girl around my age approached Simon and me, asked about our reservation, and then guided us to an intimate little room toward the back of the restaurant.
I noticed he hadn’t given his own name for the reservation, but an alias — Robert Marquez. Probably just trying to be careful, although I wondered how he was going to reconcile the discrepancy between the name on the reservation and the name on his credit card. Well, Simon had been very careful so far, and so I had to believe that he already had all the logistics planned out.
As the hostess brought us to our table, though, a tingle at the back of my neck told me that the occupants of the table over by the window were also of witch-kind — a man and a woman I didn’t recognize, probably around my parents’ age. Of course my first instinct was to panic, but Simon only put a reassuring hand on my arm, presumably to help guide me into my seat. However, I knew what he was really doing was making sure I didn’t react in a way that would draw their attention.
Heart pounding, I sat down on the banquette up against the wall, then murmured a thank-you to the hostess as she handed me a menu. Looking completely calm, Simon sat down as well, and accepted another menu from the hostess. She told us that our server would be with us shortly, then left the room.
I opened my menu and pretended to be perusing its contents, but really, I was only using it as cover so I could murmur to Simon, “What the hell are we supposed to do now?”
“Have dinner,” he replied, looking magnificently unperturbed by the situation. “They haven’t noticed anything, have they?”
Shooting the couple in question a quick glance from the corner of my eye, I shook my head. “Not that I can tell.”
“And they won’t. It’s going to be fine.”
Easy for him to say. Or rather, this was all easier for him because the worst that would happen if we were caught was that he’d be sent packing back to Arizona. I, on the other hand, would have a mountain of explaining to do.
The witch at the table did glance over at us, but after a panicky second in which I felt my heart begin to race again, I realized she wasn’t looking at me at all, but instead had bestowed a single admiring look on my companion before returning her attention to the warlock opposite her, who was probably her husband. I supposed I couldn’t blame her too much; my cousin Jason’s looks attracted attention wherever he went, something I probably should have considered before I decided on him as Simon’s avatar.
He smiled. “Better decide on what you’d like to eat, so we can choose a wine.”
Fine. My panic began to subside, mostly because it seemed as though the pair of Castillo witches at the other table didn’t have a clue that more of their kind were sitting only a couple of yards away. The spells seemed to be working. I couldn’t ask for much more than that.
I looked over the menu quickly and decided on the filet mignon. Simon said he wanted the ribeye, and so that made the wine choice fairly easy. When the waiter appeared to take our order, Simon asked for one of the restaurant’s Bordeaux wines, pronouncing the name of the winery with a lot more ease than I would have expected.
“You speak French?” I asked after the waiter had gone.
“Not really,” Simon replied, reaching for his water so he could take a sip. “But it ne
ver hurts to teach yourself some of the pronunciation so you don’t sound like an idiot when ordering at a fancy restaurant.”
I supposed that made some sense, although it wasn’t the sort of reply I normally would have expected from a guy my age. Then again, Simon wasn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill twenty-one-year-old.
Because of the presence of the witch couple seated across the room from us, we couldn’t really talk about my work with magic, or anything that might give away the fact that Simon and I were no more civilians than they were. Luckily, he went right into talking about the latest release in what he said was his favorite superhero movie franchise, coming out at Thanksgiving, and other commonplaces. He seemed to notice how tense I was, and so carried the bulk of the conversation himself — a relief to me, since all I had to do was smile and nod my way through most of it.
The wine was excellent, the food even more so…and I was finally able to relax just as I was having the last few bites of filet, because the pair of Castillo witches got up from their seats and left. It took all my effort not to hold my breath as they passed our table, but then they were gone, seemingly without noticing anything strange about the young couple sitting in the corner.
“Thank the Goddess,” I breathed once they were gone. “When they ordered dessert, I thought I was going to lose it.”
“But you didn’t,” Simon replied, still looking completely unperturbed. “And now they’re gone…and I think they proved my point.”
“What point?” I asked, still feeling a little off center, thanks to our near-miss.
“That you can maintain two enchantments at the same time without breaking a sweat. And while enjoying a very good Bordeaux. You truly are a marvel, Miranda.”
I’d wanted to be annoyed with him for putting me in such a position in the first place, but it was hard to be too mad at someone who called you a “marvel.” Still, I tried to sound nonchalant as I said, “Well, I don’t know about that, but it wasn’t quite as hard as I thought it might be.”
The Witches of Canyon Road, Books 1-3 Page 42