“Fingers crossed,” I said. “He might have already called someone to have it towed, because he knows that will inconvenience us. I wonder if he knows it’s Cat’s car and not yours?”
“I have no idea.” Rafe picked up his wallet and placed it in the pocket of the jeans he now wore. “He does seem to know more about all of us than I would like. But I can’t do much about that.” His gaze met mine, intent, worried. “What’s our next step?”
“Well, you’ll need to let Genoveva know that I’m back, and safe,” I replied. “But first I’d really like to call my parents and tell them I’m okay. Simon tricked me into thinking I was communicating with my mother, but it was really him the whole time.”
A scowl creased Rafe’s brows. “That’s pretty low, but about what I’d expect from him.” He got his phone out of the jeans I’d recovered from Simon’s house, unlocked it, and handed it over to me. “They’ll be relieved to hear from you. They knew you were missing, knew the Castillo clan was doing their best to locate you, but….”
“But you probably had a lot of fun convincing them to let you handle it, rather than have them come here and try to help,” I finished for him, and he gave me a rueful smile.
“Yeah, something like that. They gave me two days.”
“Well, now you don’t have to worry about it, because I’m here.” I reached over with my free hand and touched his arm briefly, then punched in the number for my mother’s cell. It picked up on the first ring.
“Rafe? Have you heard something?”
She’d answered so quickly, I wondered if she’d been sitting there, staring at the screen, willing Rafe to call her. “No, Mom. It’s Miranda. I’m fine.”
“Oh, thank the Goddess.” My mother let out a little huff of a breath. “Where are you?”
“I’m at Rafe’s house. We were able to get away from Simon.”
“This Simon person. Who is he? I checked with Zoe because Rafe thought he might be a de la Paz, but she’d never heard of him.”
“He’s — ” I paused and looked over at Rafe, and he gave me an encouraging nod. “Mom, he’s Joaquin Escobar’s son.”
“Goddess….”
That was about my reaction when I’d learned the truth about him. “How was that possible, though? I mean — ”
“Marisol was pregnant when your father and Isabel Castillo and I rescued her from Escobar. We never heard anything further about the child, though, so everyone just assumed she — well, we all thought she must have ended the pregnancy. Who could have blamed her?”
Who, indeed? The thought must have crossed her mind many times, but I supposed that Marisol, being a good Catholic in addition to being the prima of her clan, had decided she couldn’t go through with it. Instead, she’d done everything she could to hide the truth of who Simon really was.
Since I hadn’t responded right away, my mother went on, her tone musing, “Even his name was a clue — Simón Santiago was the consort of the former prima. I suppose Marisol gave her son that name in some kind of twisted tribute. I don’t understand how they could have kept his existence a secret this whole time, though.”
“Because she gave him to Simon’s half-sister Olivia to raise. Then it sounds like he got bounced around the clan when he turned out to be too much for her to handle. No one knew he was Marisol’s.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes. He — ” I honestly didn’t know how much I should tell my mother. There were things that, frankly, I didn’t want either her or my father to know. “He confided in me because he thought he was in love with me, thought we were going to be some kind of perfect match — you know, the son of a prima and a primus and the daughter of a prima and a primus. But I didn’t feel the same way. Rafe came and rescued me.”
“Rafe?” my mother said, disbelief clear in her voice. It was obvious enough that she hadn’t expected too much from my Castillo fiancé.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “We got out of there. And we’re definitely going to get married, although we don’t know when that’s going to happen. We need to deal with this Simon situation first.”
“Your father and I — ” my mother began, but I didn’t let her get any further than that.
“Let us handle it,” I said. “I’m pretty sure the resources of the entire Castillo clan are enough to handle one bastard of a dark warlock, no matter how powerful he might be.”
“‘Us,’” she responded, her tone musing. “You already think of yourself as a Castillo?”
I looked over at Rafe, who was sitting quietly, letting me have my conversation with my mother. He must have been burning to get in contact with his own family, and yet he had let me reach out first, as if he knew my family was the one that needed the most reassurance. “Something like that,” I said. “Anyway, we’re on top of this. Of course, I’ll be in touch if we need help.” I paused, then asked, “Is Dad there?”
“No, he went up to Flagstaff for the day — he needed to finish winterizing the house there. He’ll be upset that he missed your call.”
I was also unhappy that I wouldn’t get a chance to talk to him now, but I reassured myself that I could call him the next day. Sooner or later, I’d have to get a new phone — a real phone, not one that Simon had hexed.
Which reminded me that, while I’d retrieved Rafe’s jeans and all the valuables contained in them, I hadn’t done anything to get my own stuff back. Everything I owned was hanging in the closet at the house back in Tesuque, and my purse was still sitting on the dresser. Great.
“I’m bummed about it, too,” I said, bringing myself back to the conversation with my mother. “But I’ll call again tomorrow. I need to go, though.”
“All right, Miranda.” A little pause, and she added, “Tell Rafe thank you from all of us. We’re so grateful for what he did.”
“I will, Mom. Love you.” I pressed the button to end the call, then handed the phone back to Rafe. “Well, that’s settled. Of course, I just realized that all my belongings are still at Simon’s house. I need to try to get them back.”
“Well, considering the way you basically snapped your fingers and made my jeans reappear, that doesn’t sound like it should be too much work.”
I hoped not, although in this case I’d be retrieving a bunch of items, not a single pair of pants. Still, the principle should be the same. I shut my eyes for a moment, thinking of my clothes hanging up in the closet, the weekender bags on the shelf above them, the toiletries in the bathroom. Since I’d never been upstairs in Rafe’s house, I didn’t know what the bedrooms looked like. I’d have to have everything appear here and then move it later.
When I reached out with my magic, though, it was as if I had hit a blank wall. Again and again I attempted to push through and lay magical hands on the items I needed, and again and again I was thwarted. At last I let out a frustrated breath and said, “I think the little stunt with your jeans pissed Simon off. He’s not letting me through to get my stuff.”
He frowned. “You’re sure?”
“Pretty sure. I can try again later, but I think for now we’ll just have to write it all off. I can call the bank and cancel my cards, and I needed to get a New Mexico I.D. anyway, but literally all I’ve got right now are the clothes on my back.”
“We can take care of that,” Rafe said, his tone reassuring. One hand reached out and took mine, strong and warm and comforting. “I’ll take you shopping just as soon as I talk to Cat. I’ll get you anything you need.”
A part of me worried that it wouldn’t be safe to venture out into Santa Fe, but I tried to tell myself that Simon wouldn’t attempt anything in front of a bunch of civilians…would he? Anyway, I could take that invisible bubble of protection with me. I needed to go out, if only to get some new underwear and a toothbrush.
“Thanks.” I squeezed his hand. It felt so good to be here with him, to know that he loved me and wanted to be with me, that all of these other minor annoyances were just that — annoyances that could be handled
easily enough.
His phone buzzed, and he looked down at the screen. Letting go of my hand, he swiped the screen to accept the call and mouthed it’s Cat at me. I nodded, thinking that was just about perfect timing. He could let her know that he’d gotten me away from Simon, and then the two of us could go shopping. Yes, we’d need to sit down with Genoveva and Louisa and the rest of the clan’s strongest witches and warlocks, and begin to prepare for what was about to come, but surely the world could spare me an hour to get some replacement underwear and toiletries.
“Hey, Cat,” Rafe said. “Great news. I — ” He stopped there abruptly, face going stony and cold, so without expression that he was almost unrecognizable. “When?” A long silence as he listened to his sister’s reply. “We’ll be right over. Just — just hang in there.” He ended the call and set the phone down on the coffee table, then stared at it as if he’d never seen it before.
Fear lanced through me, although I still had no idea of what was going on. “Rafe? What is it? What’s the matter?”
He stared at me for a moment, still with that horrible stony expression on his features, the one that turned his face into that of a stranger. The room was so quiet, I thought I could hear my heart beating in my chest. What was wrong? Why was he looking at me like that?
At last he said, “My mother is dead.”
And as I looked at him in horror, I realized this was far from over.
One way or another, Simon would have his revenge.
Mysterious Ways
The Witches of Canyon Road: Book Three
1
Partings
Miranda McAllister
Rafe wouldn’t let me drive him over to his parents’ house. Just as well, probably, since I didn’t have my I.D., no way of proving that I even had a license. But with both of us reeling from the shocking news of his mother’s death, a death most certainly caused by some very nasty dark magic, I’d wanted to do at least one small thing for Rafe, wanted to help however I could. He still wore the same cold, stony expression that had settled on his features as soon as we heard the news, an expression that betrayed nothing of what he might be feeling.
His mother is dead, I thought. How the hell do you think he’s feeling?
That question was a lot more complicated than it might have been for most people, however. My fiancé and Genoveva Castillo hadn’t exactly shared what you would call a warm and loving relationship. All his life, she’d tried to control him, and he’d fought back every way he knew how. And a large part of their fractious interactions had to do with me.
Well, not because of anything I’d personally done. No, it was more that Rafe had hated being saddled with an arranged marriage, no matter who he was being forced to marry. I couldn’t really blame him for feeling that way; I’d had my own rebellious thoughts on the subject as well, although most of the time, I’d done what I could to look at the whole thing as an adventure. We had gotten off to a rocky start, but we’d both come to realize that we were just as intended for one another as a prima — a clan’s head witch — and her consort, even though I certainly wasn’t the prima of the Castillo clan.
No, that would be Rafe’s older sister, Louisa, now that Genoveva was gone.
The reality of her death hadn’t truly sunk in yet. Maybe it would all start to feel real once I was surrounded by Rafe’s family, could share in their loss. The horrible thing was that — well, all of it was horrible, but the circumstances just provided an additional dollop of irony — from what Cat, Rafe’s younger sister, had told us, it sounded as though Genoveva had basically dropped dead in the middle of the wake for their cousin Marco, right in front of more than a hundred Castillo relatives.
I knew Simon Gutierrez was behind all this.
No, Simon Escobar, I reminded myself. Gutierrez was his mother’s last name, and for all I knew, it was the name Simon used most of the time — I didn’t know for sure, since he’d told me so many lies — but his true lineage came from the dark warlock who’d been his father, Joaquin Escobar. Even twenty-plus years after Joaquin’s death, that name was powerful enough to evoke a shudder in most of Arizona’s witches and warlocks.
The Castillos hadn’t suffered much at his hands, although Rafe’s grandmother had given her life to ensure that my parents would triumph over Escobar in the end. Now, though, Joaquin Escobar’s son had brought the fight to their territory.
How he’d managed this particular bit of mayhem, I didn’t know. Genoveva Castillo was the prima of her clan, a woman who commanded formidable powers. But Simon’s magic was at an entirely different level than hers, since he was the son of a prima and a primus, the male equivalent of a prima. Yes, I was also the offspring of two clan leaders, but neither one of them was as strong as Joaquin Escobar had been, and I knew my powers weren’t equal to Simon’s.
Up until a week ago, I hadn’t known that I possessed any real powers at all.
I glanced over at Rafe. His jaw was set, his gaze fully fixed on the road — probably because that way, he wouldn’t have to look at me. Honestly, I didn’t even know what to say to him. I had a feeling that any condolences I offered would have fallen dreadfully flat.
And past all of that, I couldn’t help but think this was all my fault. If Simon hadn’t developed an unhealthy obsession with me, then he wouldn’t have seen Rafe as a rival, wouldn’t have used his powers to strike out at the Castillo clan to get revenge on Rafe for helping me to escape the estate where I’d been staying with Simon.
If Simon could kill Genoveva — a terrible stratagem I knew had been deployed to throw the Castillos into chaos — then no one was truly safe. I’d cast a spell of protection over Rafe’s house, and I intended to do the same when we got to the enormous hacienda-style mansion that had been Genoveva’s home, but I didn’t think I could protect everyone. The Castillos would have to pitch in and deploy their own measures to defend themselves against Simon Escobar’s dark magic, or else…well, I didn’t want to think what might happen if their defenses weren’t up to the task.
Rafe pulled up to the house, but cars blocked the driveway and circled the block. The vehicles were here because of all the Castillo relatives who had come to attend their cousin Marco’s wake, Marco, who had also died by Simon’s hand, if indirectly. I supposed I should have thought of how everyone would still be lingering at the house, but clearly I wasn’t the only one who’d been blindsided, because Rafe cursed under his breath and went around the block again so he could cut over to the next street and park there.
We both got out of the car. Instinctively, I went to him and took his hand in mine. His fingers felt cold, and for a second he didn’t respond. Then his grip tightened, hanging on to me like a drowning man reaching for salvation.
I didn’t tell him it was going to be okay, because that was probably a lie. But I did look up at him and say, “I’m here, Rafe.”
He didn’t quite smile, but one corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “I know, Miranda. And thank God for you. I don’t — ” The words broke off there, and I could see his jaw clench. “I’m not sure how I’m supposed to do this.”
What could I say? So far, I’d never experienced any real loss, no real grief. Oh, of course there had been older members of the McAllister and Wilcox clans who’d passed on during my lifetime, but I hadn’t been close to any of them. I still had both my parents, had my Great-Aunt Rachel and her husband Tobias, had Cousin Lucas and Margot and so many others. Of course, most of Rafe’s family was also still alive, but the loss of a mother had to hit far too close to home, even a mother who’d done her best to be as prickly and difficult as possible.
We went up the walk to the wide front door, which was ancient oak barred with dark iron. A funeral wreath hung on it; Genoveva Castillo had always been someone to follow the conventions. Looking at it, I had to remind myself that the wreath had been placed there for Rafe’s cousin Marco, and not for Genoveva herself. That time of mourning would come next — if Simon Escobar allowed us that time. I w
orried that Genoveva’s murder was only the opening salvo, and what was to come next might even be worse. How much worse, I didn’t know, but if Simon was good at anything, it was at leaving death and destruction in his wake.
Rafe didn’t bother to knock, only opened the door so we could both enter. Of course there was no point in standing on ceremony, since this was the house he’d grown up in, the place that had been his home until a few years ago. The large entry with its formal round table in the center — now topped by an arrangement of white lilies and palm fronds — was empty, but I could hear a murmur of voices coming from the living room.
We’d barely stepped inside before Cat and Rafe’s middle sister, Malena, came up to him, sobbing, her dark eyes wet and bloodshot, sleek black hair starting to come loose from the low knot she wore at the back of her neck. He didn’t say anything, only awkwardly folded them both in his arms while I stood quietly to one side and took a quick glance around the room. All of the Castillos present were understandably subdued, most of them damp-eyed and solemn. Past Rafe and Cat and Malena, I saw Louisa coming toward us, her head held high and still perfectly coiffed, even as her eyes gleamed bright with unshed tears.
“Rafe,” she said quietly, and Cat and Malena stepped away so the new prima could approach her brother.
He reached out to take Louisa’s hands. “What happened?”
She pulled in a breath. I could tell she was trying hard to remain dignified and in command of herself, even though she must have wanted to dissolve into tears like her sisters. The weight of her new mantle as prima had to weigh so very heavy.
The Witches of Canyon Road, Books 1-3 Page 50