Darkmoon (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 3)

by Christine Pope

  “Maybe,” I ventured, trying to find the right words to tell her she didn’t need to exist in this limbo any longer, “maybe it’s time for you to be with them.”

  Her fine penciled brows lifted. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that they’ve been waiting for you — waiting such a long time. Your girls need their mother…and your husband needs his wife.”

  “But they left me,” she protested, her tone almost petulant. “I waited and waited here — ”

  “I know, I know,” I broke in. “But it’s sort of like” — I racked my brains, trying to think of an analogy she’d understand — “it’s like you made a plan to take the train, only you got off a stop ahead of them. So they’ve been waiting for you at their stop all this time, while you’ve been here, thinking that they must be horribly late. All you have to do is go meet them at their station.”

  Blue eyes widening, she nodded. “Of course. Ralph was so absentminded, he was always forgetting the timetables for the trains and such. I can see how he would have gone to the wrong place to wait for me.”

  The power pulsed within me again, and I asked, following its inner guidance, “What would Ralph be wearing to meet you at the station? And your girls?”

  “Well, if it was Sunday, he’d have on his good black suit, and that fedora of his I loved so much, the one with the green feather. And the girls would be wearing the dresses their Nana smocked for them, and their patent-leather shoes, and — oh, my!”

  I could understand why she’d let out that shocked exclamation, because the window that overlooked the street suddenly didn’t seem to be a window any longer, but rather a portal through which a pure white light blazed. And out of that light stepped three figures, the tallest one in the middle, flanked by smaller shapes that resolved themselves into two small girls, probably four and six at the most, wearing, as Mary had described, darling smocked dresses in pink and blue, and the shiniest patent-leather Mary-Jane shoes I’d ever seen. The man with them wore a black suit, his fedora cocked at a jaunty angle.

  His hazel eyes widened as he caught sight of Mary, and he cried out, “Mary! Oh, Mary — is that you?”

  Tears streamed down her face. “It is, Ralph. Oh, my darling, I thought I would never see you again!”

  She ran to him, and he took her in his arms, holding her close. In that moment they looked very solid — or perhaps it was more that they were solid to one another. The two little girls ran to them, reaching up with their arms to be hugged as well, and the whole family embraced in the middle of the living room, while the white light continued to pour in from the place where the window used to be.

  At last I said softly, “Ralph, you’ll be taking Mary with you now, won’t you?”

  He nodded. His face was pleasant, not handsome, but something in the way Mary was gazing up at him told me she thought he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. “Yes, I will. I’ve been waiting a long time for her.” He turned, searching her big tear-filled eyes. “Are you ready, my dear?”

  “I am.” She wrapped her arm around his waist and took the hand of the little girl wearing blue, while he clasped the small fingers of the younger child in pink. “I’m sorry I didn’t come with you from the beginning.”

  “You’re here now, and that’s what matters.”

  He began to lead them toward the light, but at the last minute Mary paused and looked over her shoulder, her eyes meeting mine. “Thank you, Angela,” she said, and they walked into the light, the radiance blazing brighter and brighter until I had to shield my eyes from that retina-scorching glare.

  Then they were gone, the window just a window, the living room returned to its regular self, the abandoned remote sitting on the coffee table. I began to laugh, and then for some reason, the laughter turned to tears.

  And that’s how Connor found me when he returned, his hands full of takeout bags. Just me standing in the middle of the living room, crying for no apparent reason.

  * * *

  “So how did you know what to do?” he asked some time later, after he’d calmed me down enough for me to tell him what had happened.

  “I — I don’t know,” I confessed. “It was sort of like…well, when we had to confront Damon. Somehow the power in me understood, even when I didn’t. I guess I just felt so bad for her, thinking of her being here by herself after we moved out, and it woke up something in me. Sorry — I know that sounds kind of crazy.”

  “Not as crazy as you think.” Quietly, he picked up the last bacon-wrapped date and set it on my plate. I flashed him a grateful smile. He reached over, touched my hand for a brief second, then went on, “Just like you said, you’ve had the power come to you when you needed it. For whatever reason, you understood it was time for Mary to move on. So…you helped her.”

  “But that’s not my talent!” I protested. “Talking to ghosts, yes. Helping them cross over? That’s what a medium does, isn’t it? We McAllisters had one once, but she died when I was just a little girl. I even tried a few times, thinking I could coax a few of our ghosts into moving on, since it was so clear that they were clinging to what was familiar in Jerome rather than facing the next step in their existence. But I could never get them to listen to me. Not until now, I mean.”

  Connor seemed to ponder my comments for a moment, one index finger tracing idle swirls on the tabletop. “We don’t have anyone like that, either. Nor anyone who can talk to ghosts like you do. Most of our powers seem to be concentrated pretty firmly in this world, for whatever reason. I know you think your talent is just talking to ghosts, but people grow and change. Why not their talents, too? Maybe yours are simply…evolving.”

  “I’d say yes, but I’ve never noticed that about any of the McAllisters. What they do is just…what they do. So my aunt never loses anything, can tell you down to the square inch where anything is in the apartment or the store, or even Tobias’s place, come to think of it.” I smiled, recalling the time he’d dropped a contact lens and she’d gone unerringly to the very spot where it had fallen. “And Margot can cast illusions so real you’d swear you could touch them — until your hand goes right through the wall she conjured, or whatever.”

  “So that’s her talent,” Connor murmured. “I was sort of wondering. Now we’ve got to get her and Lucas together. They’d clean up in Vegas.”

  “I’m serious, Connor.”

  “So am I.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything for it except for me to smack him in the arm. He managed to wince and chuckle at the same time. “Anyway,” I went on, trying to shoot him an evil glare, one that wasn’t very effective because I could feel my lips start to twitch with answering laughter, “what I was trying to say is that I know what the people in my clan can do, but it’s the same thing they’ve always done. It doesn’t really change. Our powers start to show up when we’re around ten or eleven, sometimes later, but after that, they are what they are. So I don’t see how mine could suddenly morph into something new.”

  He lifted his glass of mineral water, polished it off, and then poured himself some more from the bottle sitting on the table. Afterward, he tilted it slightly toward me, offering me some. I shook my head. The fizzy bubbles were starting to get to my stomach. “Well, remember what Maya said?”

  I shook my head, not understanding what he was getting at.

  “She said nothing like this had happened before, that never had a prima and a primus been together the way we are, so we’re basically in uncharted territory.”

  “But she was only talking about us being together,” I pointed out. “She wasn’t talking about our talents.”

  “Okay, maybe, but take it a step further. Maybe the mere fact of us being together, being joined like this, is doing something to our talents…having them, I don’t know, evolve or something.”

  That sounded vaguely ominous. Not that I’d always enjoyed being able to talk to ghosts, but at least I was used to it by now. Although I was happy for Mary, glad that she had finally been
able to reunite with the ones she loved, my role in her moving on made me uneasy. I’d already had enough changes in my life. I didn’t really want to cope with the possibility that I myself might be changing, too.

  “Well, if that’s your hypothesis,” I said, “then it should be easy enough to prove. Try taking on the appearance of someone who isn’t your approximate size.”

  Now it was his turn to look uncomfortable. He didn’t protest, though, only asked, “Like who?”

  “How about Maya herself? She’s at least a foot shorter than you are.”

  He expelled a breath, then nodded. “Okay. Let me think about that for a second.” His lids dropped, as if he were trying to visualize her with his mind’s eye and didn’t want any interference from the outside world.

  And there was Maya sitting at the table with me, her dark eyes glinting with mischief.

  “Holy shit!” I exclaimed, and Connor winked back into existence, replacing the Maya illusion that had been there a second earlier.

  “So I’m guessing it worked,” he said.

  “That’s for sure.” Pausing, I studied him for a few seconds, making sure he looked exactly like himself and nothing else. Which he did, from the sweep of the heavy black hair at his brow to the finely sculpted lips, those lips I loved to kiss. “Did it…feel…any different?”

  His head tilted slightly as he considered the question. “Maybe. I was definitely seeing the world as she would see it — you know, from about a foot lower down. That did feel kind of strange.”

  I supposed it would, for someone used to seeing things from a commanding six-foot-three. “Anything else?”

  “Not really. I mean, I visualized Maya in my mind, the same way I visualized Lucas when I took on his appearance. And it just…happened. But I’d never been able to do anything like that before.”

  So it seemed we were both changing…or at least our powers were. What that meant, I had no idea.

  * * *

  Although we really didn’t have that much stuff to move, several Wilcox cousins I vaguely recognized from the Christmas party came over with their pickup trucks and SUVs to assist with transferring our things to the new house. I didn’t know if they were just trying to be helpful, or whether what they really wanted was a peek at their primus’ new digs. Whatever the reason, I was grateful for their help, because pretty much everything was taken care of by the time four o’clock rolled around. Connor shared a beer with them, then waved goodbye as they all took off, leaving us alone in the new house.

  “Well,” I said.

  “Well, indeed.” We were standing on the front walkway, watching as the last of the vehicles disappeared around a bend and into the trees. Connor reached out and brushed away a wisp of hair that had escaped my ponytail. His expression was hard to read — tired, yes, but there was a peace to it I hadn’t seen for a long time. But then a corner of his mouth lifted, and he asked, “Do you want me to carry you over the threshold?”

  “Connor, I’ve been in and out of the house all day,” I replied. “Do you think it matters?”

  “It matters to me.”

  I laughed. “Okay, then. Just be glad we’re doing this now and not when I’m seven months pregnant.”

  “True.” And he scooped me up in his arms, lifting me like I weighed nothing, then carried me through the open doorway. After pushing the door shut with one foot, he set me down in the entry. “Maybe I’m doing this backward,” he said, “but I really do want to make it official.”

  Before I could do anything but stare down at him in stupefaction, he got on one knee and fished a small black box out of one pocket.

  “Connor — ”

  “We’ve danced around this, Angela, and there’s no reason to do that anymore. We’re together. I can’t imagine a life without you. So will you marry me?” And he opened the box, revealing a beautiful ring, obviously an antique, with a filigreed mounting of either white gold or platinum, and a square-cut diamond flanked on either side with emerald-cut sapphires.

  I didn’t even stop to think, my heart answering as the words rose to my lips. “Oh, yes, Connor, I’ll marry you. Of course I will.”

  He slid the ring on my finger, and I reached out and took both his hands, pulled him back to his feet, brought him toward me so I could kiss him again and again and again. And then his arms were sliding around me, lifting me, and he carried me upstairs, through the welter of boxes in the master bedroom, to the bed that had been delivered that morning and which I had just finished making up.

  That bed definitely got a proper christening.

  * * *

  Afterward, we lay there for a while, feeling the breeze blow in through the open windows, a breeze that smelled of pine and sun-warmed grass. I gazed down at the ring, thinking how perfect it was, how perfectly it fit me. “How did you pick it out?” I asked, turning my hand so the light from the window struck the diamond, scattering sparks all around the room.

  “I guess it sort of picked me out. There’s a shop around the corner from the tapas place that sells antiques but also has a selection of antique jewelry, and when I was out I stopped in to take a look. Can’t even say why, really — it was just an impulse, I guess.” We exchanged a smile at that comment; lately, our impulses seemed to be directed by a higher power. “I saw the ring, and just thought it looked like you. I couldn’t really imagine you wearing some mass-market ring from a regular jewelry store.”

  How well he knew me. If he’d bought me something like that, I would’ve worn it, because it had come from him. But this ring was an individual, something I knew I’d never see coming and going.

  “Also, I know you like blue, have all that turquoise jewelry, so I thought the sapphires were nice.”

  “It’s perfect,” I told him. “Just like you.”

  “You’re going to give me a swelled head if you keep talking like that.”

  “I’d rather give you a swelled something else.”

  My hand moved lower, touching him, feeling him already growing hard as my fingers brushed against his shaft. He chuckled, shifting so I could reach him better, and I listened as his breathing quickened, felt my own body throbbing in response, the warm golden rush of heat going all through my veins. It seemed right to make love here, in this house that was ours, with the amber light of late afternoon slanting through the trees and making everything seem as if it were adrift in an enchanted forest, in a place of perfect peace, perfect harmony, perfect joy.

  And then, content, we fell asleep in one another’s arms.

  * * *

  The ringing of Connor’s phone roused us both. I startled awake, blinking into the half-light of late dusk, a little disoriented. Then I remembered where we were. The new house. We were home.

  Connor muttered a curse, then fumbled for the phone on the nightstand, nearly knocking over the lamp in the process. His reflexes were good enough that he was able to grab it before it crashed to the floor, though, and, still grumbling, he righted it before finally grabbing the phone.

  “It’s Lucas,” he said after glancing briefly at the display.

  “Then you’d better get it, I suppose.”

  He tapped the screen and then held the phone to his ear. “No offense, Lucas, but this had better be important. We just moved everything over, and — ” Falling silent, he seemed to listen intently, at last saying, “Okay, we need to write that down. Angela…?”

  I made a flailing motion with my hands. Right then I had no idea where anything I could write with might be, belatedly realizing that I’d dumped my purse on top of the dresser hours ago, and that I should at least have a pen in there, if not any actual writing paper. Grabbing my underwear, I sort of hopped into them as I crossed the floor and retrieved my purse. The pen had of course drifted to the bottom, but eventually I dug it out and gave it to Connor. No paper was to be had, but then he seemed to spy the discarded packing slip for the mattress on the floor, and leaned over to pick it up. Scribbling furiously, he said, “You’re sure? I don’t w
ant to drive all the way out there and then…. No, okay, you’re right. Well, I’ll tell Angela. Thanks for everything, Lucas.” He hung up and turned back toward me, as I’d slipped under the covers once I’d given him the pen.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  A pause, during which he reached out and cupped my cheek, ran those long, sensitive artist’s fingers of his along my jaw. “He just heard back from the private investigator.

  “He found your father.”

  13

  On the Reservation

  No big surprise that I had a hard time sleeping that night. The P.I. had done enough poking around that eventually he found someone who admitted that an Andre Bedonie was living a few miles outside Cameron. I’d asked Connor where Cameron was, and he said, “It’s a wide spot in the road about fifty miles due north of Flagstaff. There’s a trading post — kind of a tourist trap, but they have good food.”

  At the time I’d thought that was a good sign. Even if we drove out there and it was the wrong Andre Bedonie, or it turned out no one with that name lived there at all, we could at least get a decent meal to assuage our disappointment.

  Now, though, I lay in the unfamiliar bed and stared at the unfamiliar ceiling, hearing the exotic night sounds of the forest outside. In fact, the only thing around me that was familiar was Connor, sleeping soundly, breaths too light to quite be called snores escaping from his open mouth. I wanted to reach out, snuggle into him, but he needed his rest, since he’d been slinging boxes with the rest of the cousins that afternoon.

  I was tired but not sleepy, my mind roiling with the news of this latest development. My father, only fifty miles away. For how long? How many years had he lived there, tucked away on Navajo lands? Ever since he got back from California?