witches of cleopatra hill 06 - spellbound

by Pope, Christine

  But Danica knew she couldn’t drag Mia’s stuffed animal along with her to the cabin. The kid would probably start crying the moment she realized the bunny wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon.

  Crouching down, she held the toy out to Mia, saying, “Thank you for the bunny, Mia, but I’m going to be staying up at the cabin for a few days. There are bears out in those woods, so I think the bunny might be safer here with you.”

  Mia’s big brown eyes widened, and she reached out and snatched the bunny back with surprising force. “Bunny.”

  “That’s right. You keep the bunny safe.” Danica straightened, and Margot handed her a brass key on a woven lanyard.

  “Just bring it back when you’re ready. Lucas had a clean-up crew in there after Cody was done with the place, so everything should be in order.”

  “I hope he sent Aunt Diane and Uncle Chris the bill,” Danica said darkly. Not that Lucas couldn’t afford to absorb the cost, but come on.

  “Oh, he did,” Margot replied, her mouth curving in amusement. “They weren’t exactly thrilled.”

  Served them right for letting Cody get away with murder. But Danica wasn’t going to worry about that. Cody was his parents’ problem, not hers.

  Now she merely itched to get away and up to the cabin. What Caitlin had seen for her there, Danica didn’t know for sure. But there was only one way to find out.

  She thanked Margot and left, giving Mia one last wave before she headed down the walkway to where she’d left her SUV. Starting a family had been the last thing on her mind even before the Matías incident, but Danica thought she wouldn’t mind too much, if it meant she could have a daughter as cute as Mia one day.

  The route to the cabin actually took her through the heart of town, so Danica stopped at the grocery store to get a few things on her way out there. Usually the pantry at the cabin was kept decently stocked with canned food, but the frozen stuff was a lot tastier. She also got a sandwich from the store’s deli section for that night, and a couple bottles of wine. True, she generally drank a glass at a time, but she’d just put the corks back in the bottles when she was done and make them last that much longer.

  After that stop, she headed out on Fort Valley Road. By then it was a little past three in the afternoon, but Danica wasn’t too worried about the time of day. There’d still be plenty of daylight for her to get settled, even with bumping the couple of miles over dirt roads to get to the border of the property. All around it was Forest Service land, and she wondered how her family had managed to hang on to its little piece of the woods for all these years.

  Well, that wasn’t too much of a mystery, she supposed. The Wilcox clan did have a long history of getting its own way.

  The Land Rover soldiered along over the rutted road, and then she was turning onto the narrow lane that led to the cabin itself. All around her was the stillness of the pine forest, which was broken occasionally by stands of oak and sycamore, along with groups of aspen trees, their leaves shimmering in the afternoon breeze. Already she could feel herself relaxing. She might have been the only person for a hundred miles, even though she knew the main road wasn’t that far off, and that there were plenty of houses nearby with people in them, should she need any assistance.

  But why would she? Despite what she’d told Mia, these woods were perfectly safe. Maybe a black bear would amble by every once in a while, but in all the years she’d been coming up here, she had yet to see one. Deer and elk and squirrels and rabbits, sure. One time when Danica was around ten, she’d spotted a fox and nearly burst from excitement. But that had been it for anything remotely resembling a predator, unless you counted the hawks and the occasional eagle.

  She came to a stop next to the cabin in a sputter of gravel. The property didn’t have a true garage, only a storage shed, and so she’d have to leave the SUV outside the whole time she was here. No biggie; it was already in need of a wash after that trip down to Tucson.

  Moving her belongings and the items she’d picked up at the grocery store from the Land Rover to the cabin took less time than she’d thought. And it was just as Margot had assured her — the place seemed to be in more or less perfect condition, except for a little dust.

  As she made her inspection, Danica reflected that none of her Wilcox ancestors probably would have recognized the place. It had become sort of a family tradition to update the property once every decade or so, and Lucas had been in charge of the last round of renovations. Not much could be done about the awkward shape of the cabin itself — it had begun life as a simple square and then had rooms added on as needed, before the Wilcox clan abandoned it altogether for a series of impressive houses closer to downtown — but now the interior walls had been covered in thick plaster and painted a warm parchment yellow, and the floors were gleaming new cherry wood.

  Not exactly roughing it, but Danica was okay with that. She dropped her two weekender bags near the entrance to the kitchen and proceeded to put the food she’d bought in the shining stainless-steel refrigerator. That didn’t take much time, either, so after that she took her bags to the master bedroom. She’d never slept there before, since in the past she’d always come to the cabin with her family. It would be a luxury to have that big king-size bed to herself. And the days had been mild, but maybe it would get cold enough to justify having a fire in the bedroom’s stone hearth. The shed always had a good supply of wood, because even during summer visits people liked to sit out on the expansive patio to the rear of the cabin and gather around the outdoor fireplace there.

  Once everything was settled, Danica went out to the porch and stood there for a long moment, letting the cool breeze wash over her face and tug at her long, loose hair. So very quiet here, except for the ever-present soughing of the pines, and the long, falling cry of a hawk high overhead.

  Something within her seemed to relax, a tension she’d been carrying for so long she hadn’t even realized it was there leaving her shoulders and neck. Up here, she wouldn’t have to worry about her parents giving her the side-eye, or the awkwardness of running into friends at the store or at the mall and having them ask why she’d left school so abruptly. She’d more or less gone dark on Facebook, except to lurk, and she left texts and emails and phone calls mostly unanswered, but there wasn’t much you could do about randomly running into people on the street.

  She wouldn’t have to worry about any of that here, though. The food she’d brought would last about four or five days, and then she could decide if she wanted to stay or whether solitude was something to be enjoyed in smaller doses.

  Not that she would really lack for entertainment. Of course the cabin had electricity — she’d always wondered how much it had cost to run a line all the way out to the property — and satellite TV, along with some painfully slow Internet. And she knew the trails around here by heart, since she’d come out to the cabin with her family ever since she was old enough to walk. About a half-mile up the hill, you would come to a narrow ravine with a creek running through it, a creek that flowed year-round. She couldn’t paint like Connor or write like Caitlin, but she could still go there with a book and sit and read while the water rustled away in the background.

  Yes, this could work.

  * * *

  Lying down to sleep that night did feel strange, despite the promise of that king-size bed. She slept on a queen at home, so it wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to having room to move around in her sleeping arrangements. No, it was more that the bed faced the wrong direction, and it was so very dark out here. And quiet. She’d thought her parents’ house quiet enough, since their neighborhood was fairly secluded and not that much traffic passed by, but this was so still she thought she could hear the whisper of owls’ wings as they flew through the sleeping forest that surrounded the cabin.

  She rolled over onto her side and squished the pillow a little to get it into the proper shape. That felt better. Problem was, when she shut her eyes, she seemed to see Matías staring back at her, that knowing half-s
mile on his lips, as if even now he was laughing at her, at her feeble attempts to put her life back together.

  “Laugh’s on you, asshole,” she murmured into the darkness. “You’re the one in prison.”

  And yet…hadn’t he put her in her own kind of prison? Considering how circumscribed her life had been over the past few months, was she any freer than he?

  No. She wouldn’t allow herself to believe that. Sooner or later, she’d be released from the last remnants of his influence. Besides, didn’t she owe it to Roslyn to make the best of her life that she could? Maybe Danica would never be as strong a witch as her sister Mason, who had an uncanny level of control over fire, and to a lesser extent over the weather as well, but there had to be something Danica could do with her own peculiar talent.

  Yeah, great talent, she thought. The ability to never be late. Well, not really late, anyway.

  Because Danica had discovered around the time she was eleven that she could always produce an extra five minutes whenever she needed them. Running late for school? No problem. Need a little more time to go over your notes before a big test? Not to worry. Spent longer than you’d expected getting ready for a date? The guy you were going out with would never know the difference, because time seemed to stop for the rest of the world while she went about her business.

  She had to admit that it had come in handy, but there was nothing particularly interesting or showy about her gift. The clan could always use a seer or a healer or a weather-worker, but this? It didn’t really seem to help anyone except herself.

  A shadow passed by outside the window, and Danica startled, heart beginning to pound in her chest. She lay very still, ears straining into the silence, but she heard nothing.

  Only an owl, she told herself, passing over the moon. There was supposed to be a full moon tonight, after all.

  Except…that shadow had looked a lot bigger than an owl.

  She’d locked the doors and most of the windows, but she’d left a few cracked open to let in some fresh air. Maybe someone had seen her coming out this way, thought that a young woman all on her own might be easy prey….

  Stop it. Just stop it.

  But she couldn’t quite push the fear away, because she knew from personal experience that not all people were good, that some men did enjoy making victims of women. And she might be a Wilcox witch, but she wasn’t that strong. Not really. Although she supposed that extra five minutes could come in handy if she had to flee an assailant.

  Even that realization didn’t seem to help, though. To make matters worse, she didn’t have any weapons with her. Well, unless you counted the walking stick that was always propped up in a corner of the main room near the front door.

  Better than nothing, she supposed.

  She pushed back the covers and got out of bed, glad that she’d gone to sleep wearing a tank top and some yoga pants. At least that way she felt somewhat clothed. After slipping into the flip-flops she’d left by the side of the bed, she padded out into the darkened cabin. It wasn’t completely black because of the moonlight streaming through the unlined curtains at the windows. Because of that faint illumination, she was able to go straight to the walking stick and wrap her hand around it. The smooth wood felt reassuring against her skin, although she had to admit she didn’t know much about using the stick as a weapon. Knock it against the guy’s head and hope for the best, she supposed.

  If there was even anyone outside. For all she knew, she’d dozed off briefly and only dreamed that she’d seen someone moving past her window.

  That didn’t feel right, though. She hadn’t been asleep, and she had seen something.

  Tiptoeing in her flip-flops, she went from window to window, carefully lifting a corner of each curtain so she could peer outside. Each time she saw nothing, only moon-bleached grass and the dark, watching stands of pine trees.

  By the time she’d made a complete circuit of the cabin, Danica was feeling like a complete idiot. No one had come by. Even if she hadn’t been sleeping, her brain must have manufactured that shadow. God knows she was already enough on edge after her confrontation with Matías. She should have left that sleeping dog severely alone.

  She couldn’t do anything about that now, though, except go back to bed and tell herself to stop jumping at nothing. This experiment in solitude was going to be a big fat failure if she couldn’t settle down.

  Still, she’d take the walking stick back with her. No one was around to laugh at her paranoia, and she’d probably sleep better if she knew she only had to reach out and grab the stick if she heard or saw anything else.

  A step toward her bedroom, and another. Then she saw it again — a tall shadow, this time moving past one of the front windows. The moonlight seemed to etch its outlines onto the fabric of the curtains.

  It was definitely shaped like a man.

  Heart pounding, she tightened her grip on the walking stick. Her cell reception was for shit out here, but the cabin had a landline. Unfortunately, the phone was all the way in the kitchen.

  She hardly breathed as she inched her way into the kitchen, wincing when one of her flip-flops slapped a little too loudly against the wooden floor. The phone hung on the wall near the back door, and she abandoned caution and made a beeline for it, transferring the walking stick to her left hand so she could stick the handset under her ear and use her right hand to push the buttons.

  Only…there was no dial tone. Nothing. Terror mounting, she jiggled the receiver several times, but the line remained dead. Had the person roaming around outside cut it, or had the phone line been gnawed by animals, or the pole itself been knocked over?

  No way of knowing for sure right now, and she supposed it didn’t really matter. Dead was dead.

  Then she spied her purse, still sitting on the kitchen counter where she’d dropped it earlier. Thank God. It wasn’t that far from the back door to where she’d parked the Land Rover. She’d grab her purse, get out her keys, and make a break for it. With any luck, the intruder would have wandered over to the far side of the house, and she’d have enough time to climb into the SUV and lock the doors before he could get back to her.

  So much for solitude.

  She reached in her purse and grabbed her keychain, then slung the bag over her shoulder, keeping the walking stick in her left hand the whole time. Okay, so she was right-handed, but she still might be able to land a lucky blow. No way in hell would she go outside without something to protect her.

  After fumbling a little with the back door’s lock, she was able to get outside. A chill wind blew over her, tugging at the ends of her loose hair. She gave a quick glance around but saw nothing. Okay, she could do this.

  Gravel crunched under her flip-flops as she hurried over to the Land Rover. Wincing at the noise, she looked around again, but the property appeared completely deserted, the only sign of life a few dead oak leaves moving as the wind picked them up and scudded them a few inches down the driveway.

  She’d already punched the button on the key fob, so the SUV was unlocked. As she reached for the door handle, something seemed to flicker in her peripheral vision.

  At once she whipped around…then almost dropped the walking stick she held.

  He stood at the end of the drive, watching her. His dark hair blew around his face, seemingly driven by a wilder wind than the capricious nighttime breeze that had played with the oak leaves a moment earlier. The tails of the long black coat he wore also flapped in the breeze, showing a pale band-collared shirt underneath.

  And…he was gorgeous, at least from what Danica could tell in the uncertain moonlight. Regular features, strong chin, the kind of mouth you’d look at and wonder what it was like to kiss. Which was crazy. She sure as hell shouldn’t be thinking such a thing about an oddly dressed stranger roaming uninvited on her family’s property.

  But she was a Wilcox, and since he’d obviously spotted her, she was going to stand her ground. Anyway, she was only a few steps away from the Land Rover’s driver-side
door.

  “Who are you?” she said clearly, her voice carrying on the night air. “What do you want?”

  He didn’t reply, but only stood there and continued to stare at her. Something in that gaze awoke a chill in her body…or maybe it was just the cold wind blowing down from the San Francisco Peaks.

  “You’re trespassing,” she went on. She wouldn’t let his silence unnerve her. Okay, she was extremely unnerved, but that didn’t mean she intended to show it. “I know it’s Forest Service land all around here, but this is private property.”

  His head tilted, and he glanced away from her to the cabin and then back again. Then he seemed to frown, and turned back toward the forest and began to walk.

  There. That was better. He didn’t seem inclined to argue with her, or prolong the confrontation. No, he was only walking calmly into the pine trees, his back to her, and…

  …and then he was gone. It wasn’t that he’d gone out of eyeshot. She’d been watching him the whole time, and it was as if he became blurry, then transparent, then…gone.

  If she hadn’t been holding the walking stick, she might have had her knees give way then and there. As it was, she clung to the stick, letting it hold her up, while she stared into the darkness where a man had just stood seconds ago.

  Had she finally gone completely insane?

  3

  Danica’s cousin Marie lifted one elegant black eyebrow. “You think the cabin is haunted?”

  “I — ” Danica waved a hand, knowing she must sound even crazier than usual. But really, when you got right down to it, ghosts shouldn’t be that crazy a notion to anyone in their clan. After all, Angela saw them all the time, or at least she used to. There probably weren’t as many opportunities for hauntings in the newish subdivision where she lived now, rather than back in the former mining town where she’d grown up. Forging ahead, Danica went on, “I don’t know if it was a ghost I saw, or if the cabin’s actually haunted. I just know I saw…something.”