Darkmoon (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 3)

by Christine Pope

  “So anyway,” he continued, “that’s why I’m not all that thrilled about going to California. It’ll probably be fine — I mean, we’re going straight to Newport Beach, and we’re not going to be hanging around all that long. But I’ll be a lot happier when we’re on our way home, and crossing the border into Arizona and back into Maya’s jurisdiction.”

  Well, in light of what he’d just told me, I couldn’t really argue with that. “Hey,” I said lightly, “we McAllisters are great at flying low and avoiding the radar. It’ll be fine.”

  He nodded absently, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. I had to keep my attention on the road, as we were just now entering the outer bands of the greater Phoenix area, and the traffic had begun to thicken. Just as I was cutting over to get on the 101 Loop so we could avoid driving through the downtown area, Connor’s phone rang.

  Looking a little surprised, he pulled his cell out of his pocket, glanced at the display, then put it to his ear. “Hi, Lucas.”

  I raised an eyebrow but remained silent, maneuvering through traffic as we began to climb up the overpass.

  “No, we found a place online last night, but — really? That sounds great.” A pause, and then he said, “Can you text me the address? I don’t have anything to write with.” Another short silence while Lucas apparently was speaking, and Connor replied, “We will. Thanks again.” Then he ended the call and looked over at me, his expression far more cheerful than it had been a few minutes earlier.

  “What did Lucas want?” I asked.

  “He was calling to let us know that a golf buddy of his has a timeshare in Newport, and he said we could use it since the guy and his wife are going to Scottsdale this week instead.”

  “‘Golf buddy’?” I repeated. “Since when does Lucas play golf?”

  “Since…forever, I guess. Remember, you met him in the dead of winter. Not exactly golf weather in Flagstaff.”

  “True.” I couldn’t help chuckling a little. “I guess I just can’t get used to how…mainstream…so many of you Wilcoxes are.”

  “Yeah, we’re not a bunch of hippies like the McAllisters,” he agreed, but I could tell from the quirk at the corner of his mouth that he was teasing me. “But yeah, Lucas fits in with that crowd pretty well. As far as I can tell, they’re a bunch of rich guys who play a lot of golf and don’t seem to do much else. I have no idea where they get their money.”

  “I’m sure they probably think the same thing about Lucas.”

  “Probably.”

  After that we slipped into a companionable silence as we pushed on through the Valley sprawl, driving through all those bedroom communities of Phoenix: Peoria, Glendale, Avondale, Goodyear. We stopped in Goodyear and grabbed some burgers at the In-N-Out just off the freeway, since there probably wouldn’t be much else until we hit Quartszite, a few miles from the border. After that we got back on Interstate 10 and began to head out into the vast, desolate desert that stretched between Phoenix and L.A.

  It was certainly the farthest I’d ever driven in my life, and I had to force myself to keep my attention on the road rather than keep looking around me. Not that this particular stretch of desert had that much to recommend it, although some late wildflowers were still clinging to their blooms at the side of the road.

  “Just let me know when you want to switch places,” Connor said, breaking the silence somewhere outside a wide spot on the road called Tonopah.

  “How about in Blythe?” I’d looked up our route online the night before, just to familiarize myself with the waypoints. I knew Blythe was right at the Arizona/California border, and it seemed as good a place as any.

  “Sounds good,” he replied, adjusting his seat slightly so he could lean back a little more. He didn’t exactly close his eyes and go to sleep, but I could tell he wasn’t in a chatty mood. Just as well; I adjusted the volume on the stereo, glad that I’d decided to pay a little extra for satellite radio, and let the Foo Fighters serenade us across the desert.

  Even though I’d glanced at Google maps so I’d know where I was going, they didn’t give much of a sense of scale. I felt as if we were driving forever, unending mile after unending mile flashing past as I let our speed drift up past eighty. No big deal, as the speed limit was seventy-five, but even so I felt as if we were standing still. Finally, though, we reached Blythe, made a pit stop at a fast food place there, and got some iced teas to perk us up. We switched places after we filled up the Cherokee, Connor getting into the driver’s seat as I gladly reclined in the passenger seat. Four hours of driving was enough for me.

  But if the Arizona desert had seemed interminable, it was even worse on the California side. It seemed to stretch out forever, and oddly, the landscape was far more desolate, a real wasteland. At least in Arizona there had been wild grass and cactus and scattered wildflowers. Here I saw only widely spaced scrubby bushes, and in some places not even that. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought we were driving across the surface of the moon.

  At last, though, we hit Indio, then Palm Springs, and after that we began to drop down into Southern California’s immense suburban sprawl. I thought I’d gotten a sense for what that was like in Phoenix, but this was far more than that, mile after mile of houses and industrial parks and big-box stores and chain restaurants. I turned and looked at Connor, wide-eyed.

  “There’s just so…much of it.”

  “I know.” He didn’t look as appalled as I felt, but I could tell he didn’t care for our surroundings all that much, either.

  And it went on, and on, until at last we dropped down from Interstate 10 to I-15, and from there to another freeway whose number I didn’t catch, and then another, still with the overwhelming spread of suburbia on every side, rows of houses that looked the same, shopping centers that looked the same…cars and people that looked the same. I knew that wasn’t true, not really, but in that moment I was very glad that I’d grown up in wacky little Jerome, where everyone knew each other and every house was a little different, and there wasn’t a perfect right angle to be found.

  All the while, though, we were heading steadily south and west — well, steadily until we came to an abrupt standstill on the 55 Freeway, in someplace called Orange. I glanced at the clock; it was a little past three-thirty, which seemed early for rush hour to me. Then again, “rush hour” in Jerome was waiting for a tourist to get the nerve to make a left onto 89A.

  “How much farther?” I asked, attempting to stretch. The Cherokee’s seats were comfortable enough, but after more than seven hours cooped up in the SUV, I just wanted to get out. Thank the Goddess I wasn’t at that stage of pregnancy where you had to pee all the time.

  “Miles or minutes?” Connor asked with a grin.

  “Minutes.”

  “Hard to say. I was kind of hoping we’d be getting in early enough that we’d miss some of the traffic, but….” After letting the words trail off, he gave an eloquent lift of his shoulders. “I think it’s still about twenty miles to Newport Beach, but if it stays this backed up, that could take us more than an hour.”

  “Crap,” I said.

  “Normally I’d say we could pull off, go get a snack somewhere and wait for it to die down, but from what I’ve heard, this probably isn’t going to clear up until at least seven.”

  “Great.” I shook my head, wondering why people would put up with this sort of congestion when there were so many other places they could live. “No, let’s just keep going. I suppose we’ll get there eventually.”

  “And we have a five-star timeshare waiting for us at the end of it instead of a Motel 6.”

  “True.” That made me perk up a little, and so I tried to tell myself to be patient as we inched along. Things did get marginally better once we passed a minor fender-bender, and so we were able to rocket to a full twenty miles an hour instead of doing that horrible stop-and-go thing.

  At last we were pulling off the freeway and onto a major road, which, while also congested, still moved a bit faster, and w
e came to the crest of a hill before dropping down toward Pacific Coast Highway.

  “Wow,” I said, since I couldn’t think of anything remotely appropriate.

  The Pacific Ocean sparkled ahead of us, deep blue, whitecaps catching the lowering sun and sparkling as if someone had tossed a bag of diamonds on the water’s surface. It seemed to stretch on forever, the horizon so much farther away than I had ever seen it, I in my world bounded by hills and mountains on every side.

  “Yeah, that’s….” He let the words fade away, then shook his head as we coasted down the hill toward our destination.

  Here everything was clean and perfect and manicured, from the carefully clipped trees to the smooth green lawns. I’d never seen so much grass in my life. We turned into the timeshare property, slowing down to accommodate the speed bumps, and eventually pulled up under a porte cóchère. I found myself wishing we’d borrowed Lucas’ Porsche, because even though my Cherokee was brand-new and shiny, it couldn’t really compete with the Mercedes and Beemers and other luxury cars I saw around us.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing at a low-slung convertible parked off to one side. I’d never seen anything like it.

  “Tesla. It’s electric…and expensive.”

  I’d never really been into cars, but that convertible was something else. And electric? Cool, I supposed, and maybe practical here in Southern California, but I wondered what its range was. We had a lot of wide-open spaces in northern Arizona.

  We got out of the Cherokee, and a cool breeze touched my skin. It felt damp and heavy compared to the dry air I was used to. The breeze carried with it a strong, almost wild scent, one I’d never smelled before but knew had to be sea salt. In that moment, I didn’t just feel as if I was in another state…I felt as if I’d somehow landed on a different planet.

  And yet I’d been born here.

  Connor opened the hatch, and we retrieved our meager luggage. Right then I sort of wished we’d gone to the Motel 6. I wouldn’t have felt quite so out of place.

  But the people at the front desk were very friendly, and gave us a map of the compound — it was probably bigger than all of Jerome — and told us where we could park. We got back in the car, drove slowly through the winding streets of the complex, and eventually ended at the unit that was our destination.

  When Connor unlocked the door, I said “wow” for the second time in the space of an hour, and for good reason. This wasn’t a dinky hotel room, but an entire apartment, with a separate living room and dining room, not to mention a full kitchen. Best of all, it had sliding glass doors that opened to a balcony, and that balcony offered a breathtaking ocean view.

  “Feeling better?” Connor asked as I stood there, mesmerized.

  “I — this is amazing, Connor. I had no idea.”

  “Neither did I, but I suppose I should have known. Lucas doesn’t exactly hang out with the low-rent crowd.”

  “Guess not,” I said shakily.

  He glanced up at the clock. “So…it’s after five. What do you want to do?”

  Good question. It wasn’t that late, but I was feeling wiped out after that drive. Maybe it would be better to take the rest of the evening to unwind, to relax and be tourists, and then get a fresh start the next morning.

  “Freshen up a little, and then walk on the beach.”

  “No food?” he asked, teasing me.

  “Oh, that, too. But I think I want to watch the sun set over the ocean.”

  “They’re on Daylight Savings Time here. That sun may be setting later than you think.”

  “And there are no restaurants here with ocean views?”

  “Touché. I’m sure we can find something.” He held out a hand to me, and I went to him, let him fold me against him, felt the warmth of his body on mine. We stood like that for a long moment, and then he relaxed his embrace somewhat. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go sightseeing.”

  * * *

  All my weariness seemed to drop away with the touch of that fresh ocean breeze, the feel of the cool sand beneath my toes. It was colder than I’d expected, chilly enough that I wished I’d brought a sweater with me. Even so, I saw people all around me in shorts and tank tops, or girls in bikinis catching their last few rays for the day.

  To his credit, Connor didn’t seem to be openly gawking at any of them — so much so that I said, “It’s okay to look, you know. I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of opportunities for bikini-wearing in Flagstaff.”

  “You might be surprised. We do have a lot of hot tubs up there.” Then he shook his head. “Why should I be looking at those girls? You’d look just as good in a bikini.”

  I sort of doubted that, but it was gallant of him to say so. “Well, for the next month or so, anyway. After that I’m going to start looking like a beached whale.”

  “You don’t know that. With one of my cousins, you could hardly tell she was even pregnant. Lucas used to tease her that she must be carrying the baby in her shoe.”

  Somehow I doubted I would be that lucky, but I only shrugged and said, “Maybe.”

  We walked for a while, and then my stomach growled, causing Connor to grin and comment that maybe it was time to get something to eat. Of course we knew nothing about the area, but a few minutes on Yelp helped direct us to a nearby restaurant. Again, I felt woefully underdressed, even though I’d changed into a fresh top and jeans before we left the hotel. Once I started eating, though, I stopped worrying about my style — or lack thereof — and just concentrated on the amazing sea bass and twice-baked potato. I did regret not being able to have a glass of wine with my meal, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from enjoying myself.

  It was easy to forget why we were really here, our true reason for coming to California. Connor and I might have been just another young couple enjoying a night on the town. Looking at us, no one would be able to guess that we possessed powers far beyond the ordinary, or that we were suffering under a curse cast many, many years earlier, in a time and place so far removed from where we were now that they could have been something out of a fairytale…albeit a Grimm one.

  But I knew it wasn’t a fairytale, but my life. Connor and I needed this time together, I knew, to return to one another, to be a couple. We’d have our meal, and then we’d go back to that luxurious little apartment Lucas had so thoughtfully procured for us. And then Connor and I would make love with the sound of the waves in the background, and we’d fall asleep in one another’s arms, dreaming only of each other, keeping tomorrow for tomorrow.

  And that is exactly what we did.

  6

  Unburying the Past

  We took our time the next morning, sharing the shower, luxuriating in one another’s company. There was a restaurant on the resort’s grounds, so we wandered over there to fortify ourselves for the day. By the time we were done, it was past ten o’clock, and I knew I couldn’t delay any longer.

  “So….” Connor said as we climbed back into the Cherokee. By tacit agreement, he got into the driver’s seat. “Hospital or house?”

  “House,” I replied. I’d briefly toyed with the idea of going to Hoag Hospital to see if there was any more information I could dig up, but realized that was a dead end. There might be the remotest chance that there were nurses or doctors still on staff who’d been there when they delivered me, but I kind of doubted it. Twenty-two years was a long time. At least at the house, even if no one was around who remembered Sonya McAllister, there was a slim chance that she might have left something behind, something that could have been kept, just in case.

  All right, a very slim chance. But I didn’t have much else to go on.

  It turned out that 822 Oceanfront Drive was at almost the opposite end of Newport Beach from the resort where we were staying. We inched our way up Pacific Coast Highway, drove past the Porsche dealerships and yacht dealerships and restaurants, passed the turn-off for the hospital where I’d been born, and then turned left into a development that was built right up against the beach. T
he houses were all on the large side, vaguely Cape Cod in style with their clapboard siding in various shades of brown and cream and deep gray-blue. I didn’t know a lot about real estate, but I knew anyplace built this close to the ocean had to be extremely expensive. And yet this was where my mother had lived during her time here, had probably conceived me? I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that.

  “Maybe it’ll turn out that your father is some long-lost millionaire or something,” Connor suggested, although I noticed he gave me a quick glance to make sure I hadn’t taken the quip the wrong way.

  “Maybe,” I allowed. I knew that my mother had told Rachel before she left that she wanted to see the ocean, but this seemed to be taking that idea to the extreme.

  Parking was horrendous, of course, but then Connor spotted a convertible Beetle pulling out of a space just ahead of us, and he hit the brakes, waiting for the car to get out of the way. Then he somehow managed to jigger the Cherokee into the too-small spot while I held my breath and hoped he wouldn’t hit the Mercedes in front of us or the Land Rover behind us. Somehow he managed it, though, and we both got out, feeling once again the wind in our hair and tasting salt on the breeze.

  “Which way?” he asked.

  I looked up at the street signs, trying to calculate which way the house numbers ran. “Up there,” I said, pointing to my left.

  In this development, the garages faced out on the street, while the front yards were actually on the ocean side of the houses, their gates opening directly onto the sand. After a few steps, I decided to take off my flip-flops and walked along barefoot, although Connor didn’t seem too eager to abandon his hiking shoes. We progressed slowly, reading the house numbers.