Strange Magic (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 9)

by Christine Pope

  An expression of consternation passed over his face. “It’s in the car.”

  As was hers. “Why don’t you give me the keys?” she suggested. “Then I can go get both our phones.”

  He didn’t look too thrilled by that proposal, but he didn’t protest, instead began digging around in his jeans pocket for the keys. As he did so, however, the girl began to stir, her eyes fluttering open. For a second it looked as if she was about to scream again, but then her gaze grew more focused as she took in Evan, kneeling in the grass next to her. Incongruously, she even began to smile.

  Well, Zoe supposed she might smile, too, if she opened her eyes and expected to see a monster, and instead saw Evan McAllister staring down at her. At the same time, though, an odd little spark of jealousy flared in her. That girl had no right to be looking at him like that….

  “Are you okay?” Evan asked. His air was calm, but slightly worried, just as any normal person might be if they found someone passed out under a tree. “We were walking by and saw you lying there….”

  “I — ” The girl blinked and shook her head. Zoe realized the resemblance between her and the stranger was superficial enough, since the nameless young woman wasn’t Hispanic and had blue eyes. It was just the long dark hair and what she’d been wearing, really. “I thought I saw something, but now I don’t know. Everything just went black.”

  “Probably the sun,” Evan said easily. “It’s pretty bright today. Do you live near here? We can walk you back to your apartment….”

  The girl’s gaze flicked from Evan to Zoe, and her eyes narrowed slightly. She probably had just noticed that the hot guy who’d come to her rescue wasn’t alone. “No, I’m fine. I mean, yeah, I live here, but I think I’m okay.” She pushed herself to a standing position while Evan watched. Zoe didn’t know him very well, but she could tell from the way he kept watch that he was ready to dive in and help if the girl turned out to be not as steady on her feet as she’d thought.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. Thanks.” And then she hurried past Zoe, not even giving her a second glance. Zoe didn’t know whether the rudeness was because she was embarrassed by the way she’d fainted, or because of disappointment that her rescuer wasn’t alone.

  Either way, she was gone, walking swiftly down the path toward one of the banks of apartments.

  So, too, was the monster, but Zoe couldn’t even be all that relieved about its disappearance. She somehow knew, deep in her gut, that once again it had only been sent away from their immediate vicinity, not back to whatever plane of hell it had come from. They’d have to track it down once more and try all over again.

  In the meantime, though, she knew she needed a drink. There had to be someplace around here where they could find something to take the edge off.

  Maybe once she’d gotten a beer or two into him, Evan would open up enough to explain exactly why his talent hadn’t saved them this time.

  He must have still been off balance from their encounter with the monster. That was the only reason Evan could think of as to why he was now sitting in a place called BJ’s Brewhouse, having a brown ale while Zoe sipped at a margarita. The restaurant was packed, too, and he hadn’t been sure they’d even be able to get a table, but one miraculously opened up just as the hostess took Zoe’s name. More prima magic? He couldn’t hazard a guess. Right then he was feeling a little shell-shocked, but he had picked up one vital piece of information.

  At least now he knew that she drank.

  “I’m really sorry about that — ” he began after the waiter had dropped off their drinks and disappeared.

  Zoe waved her hand. “Whatever. At least I was able to get rid of the thing. But you need to be honest with me, Evan. Do you think that’s going to happen again?”

  In other words, Are you going to blow it again? “I don’t know,” he replied. He hated not being able to give her a more definitive answer than that, but he had no idea what else he could say. It was on his lips to tell her that this sort of thing had never happened to him before, but that kind of excuse would just make him sound like some poor bastard in an erectile dysfunction commercial. Lifting his shoulders, he added, “This really isn’t like the times I’ve had to fix spells gone wrong up in Jerome.”

  “I guess not.” She sipped some more of her margarita, and Evan had to force himself not to stare at the way her full lips puckered around the straw. “And I know all I did was make it go someplace else. It’s not banished.”

  Of course not. He’d already figured as much, because if Zoe really had managed to get rid of the creature altogether, she would have looked a lot happier as they left the scene of the crime, as it were. Thank the Goddess that the girl who’d fainted was apparently the only witness.

  And that girl…Zoe’s sharp eyes couldn’t have missed the superficial resemblance between the two of them. Evan doubted it was a coincidence.

  Almost as if she’d been reading his thoughts, she said, “I don’t like that she looked like me. I mean, not exactly, but….”

  “It makes sense,” Evan said. “You summoned it here. Even though you keep driving it away, it’s going to keep trying to come back to you, or at least to people who look sort of like you.”

  She winced slightly. “I know. And that just makes the whole situation suck that much harder. I have no idea what we can do to warn people. I mean, there are probably a ton of girls my age in the Phoenix area with long dark hair. Maybe not quite as many who wear skirts, but still.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. It wasn’t exactly the sort of information you could feed to the local police departments, or the local news, telling girls in that enormous group that they might be targets. The creature’s patterns wouldn’t even help him to track down who the next victim might be. Why it had come here, some twenty miles away, when there had to have been suitable targets much closer to Zoe’s home in Fountain Hills, Evan couldn’t begin to guess.

  A long pull at his beer didn’t help much to settle his state of mind, either. This had all been a huge mistake. What was the point of coming at all if he couldn’t even use his talent to help the de la Paz clan? He wouldn’t allow himself to be too concerned about what his failure might do to clan relations, because everyone knew that sometimes there were instances where a witch or warlock’s talent failed them, for whatever reason. However, he really didn’t want that to happen to him in this instance.

  For some reason, what he hated most was the idea of letting Zoe down.

  “Can you feel it?” she asked then, her voice carefully neutral.

  On the drive here from the apartment complex, he’d attempted to reach out with his gift and see if he could get any sense of where their quarry had gone. Right then, he hadn’t been able to feel anything. He tried again now, hoping that maybe the beer would have loosened him up enough that he could get past his disappointment and worry, and accomplish something useful.

  All he got was a complete blank, not even the faintest sensation that something was off in the greater Phoenix area. “No,” he replied, his tone flat. “Not a damn thing.”

  “Maybe it’s lying low,” she said. “Maybe I hurt it a lot this time.” She paused then, one pink-polished fingernail tapping against the straw in her margarita glass. “This may sound strange, but I really don’t like the idea of hurting it. I mean, I brought it here. This is all my fault. It probably doesn’t even know what it’s doing.”

  Possibly. Evan just didn’t have enough context to begin to guess what might be going on in the creature’s mind — if anything. It could be acting on pure instinct, in which case Zoe’s feelings of guilt might be somewhat misplaced. If he’d known her better — and if he hadn’t worried that she might misconstrue the gesture — he would have reached over and patted her free hand where it rested on the tabletop, just to give her some of the reassurance she so obviously needed.

  But since he wasn’t quite that brave, he had to settle for saying, “I know it’s hard, Zoe. I guess maybe yo
u have to look at it this way — however it ended up here, it’s someplace where it doesn’t belong. It’ll be a mercy to send it back where it came from.”

  Those words elicited a nod, although she didn’t look all that convinced. She drank some more of her margarita, big dark eyes studiously looking away from him. Once again he was astonished by the length of her lashes, the way they could shutter her expression and make her very hard to read.

  At last she said, “I suppose you’re right. So…what are we going to tell my parents, or Aunt Luz?”

  “The truth.” He might have been blowing it mightily so far, but Evan wasn’t stupid enough to try to conceal anything from the de la Paz prima. She needed to know what was going on.

  “They’re not going to like it.”

  “Probably not. But I have a feeling they’d rather hear an unpleasant truth than a lie.”

  Zoe tensed somewhat at the word “lie,” but she didn’t try to argue with him. “You’re right, of course.” She turned away from him so she could dig through her purse, producing her cell phone a moment later. “I’ll go ahead and call, and let them know what happened.”

  “Wait,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. “So you don’t want me to tell them the truth?”

  “No, it’s not that.” Evan hesitated, trying to stop and analyze why exactly he’d told her that she shouldn’t call her parents, or the prima. After all, they needed to be kept apprised of what was going on.

  But then he realized he’d told her not to call because he had experienced another of his twinges, one so faint that it almost hadn’t registered at all. If they had another lead, they should go ahead and follow up on it. Maybe that way they’d have something more promising to report.

  “You felt it,” Zoe said. Her tone was flat, so Evan knew it wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” he said. “Not much. But something. So I guess we’d better get moving.”

  She nodded, then bent her head slightly so she could take a long pull at her margarita, draining the rest of what was left in the glass. That sounded like a good idea to Evan; he finished off the inch of beer he had remaining, then lifted a hand so he could flag down the waiter and pay the tab.

  Or rather, attempt to pay it. As soon as their waiter left the little leatherette case with the bill on the tabletop, Zoe swooped in and grabbed it.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” she told him. “You’re down here helping out my clan. That means drinks are on me.”

  “Okay,” he said, not bothering to protest. After all, she did have a point. Besides, you only had to look at her house to know that her family had a hell of a lot more disposable cash than he did.

  She appeared pleased that he hadn’t argued, and slipped a twenty into the sleeve that held the check. Then she slung her purse over her shoulder. “Well, let’s go. Any idea where we’re headed?”

  “Not yet,” he admitted. “Maybe north.”

  “‘Maybe north’?” she repeated, looking skeptical.

  “It was a tiny twinge. Let’s just get in the car and see what happens.”

  Her mouth quirked slightly at his reply, but she didn’t say anything else, only slipped out of the booth and headed toward the front door. As Evan followed, he thought of the possible implications of his last remark and wanted to groan. No wonder Zoe had appeared as if she was fighting back a grin.

  Because it was only too true that the back seat of the Barracuda had seen more than its fair share of action….

  Evan didn’t say anything as they pulled out of the parking lot at BJ’s Brewhouse and headed back to the freeway. Just as well, because Zoe couldn’t help wanting to grin every time she glanced over at him. It had been an innocent slip-up, but since she’d already been harboring a few impure thoughts about him, she had to force herself not to look over her shoulder at the back seat so she could gauge whether it was big enough for certain extracurricular activities.

  Instead, she sat quietly in the passenger seat and watched as they headed west on the 60. However, when they came to the interchange with the 101 Loop, Evan passed it by. So were they not heading north after all? Or had the twinge he’d felt been farther west, and then north?

  That seemed to be the case, because he jogged onto the 10 Freeway, and then the 51 so they were pointed north once again. Zoe knew this part of town a little better, just because her mother liked to shop at the Biltmore shopping center, and they were only about five minutes away from the exit now. Had the creature decided to prey on young women shopping at the MAC cosmetics store there, or was it thinking that maybe lurking in the dressing rooms at Saks Fifth Avenue was a better idea?

  She shuddered at the mental image that thought conjured, and Evan glanced over at her. “You okay?”

  “Sure,” she replied. “So…do you know where we’re going yet?”

  “Not really. I can feel it sort of pulling me in this direction, but that’s about all.”

  To her relief — or maybe her disappointment, since she’d found herself thinking if they ended up at the Biltmore center, maybe she could pop into the MAC store and replace the lip gloss she’d lost the week before — Evan passed the exit at Camelback Road and kept going, although she noticed that he stayed in the far right lane, just in case he had to get off the freeway quickly. A few more miles flashed past, and she wondered if he really was going to go all the way up to the top of the 101 Loop. Once there, he’d have to decide whether to head east or west, since the 51 dead-ended where it T-boned into the 101.

  However, almost as soon as the thought crossed her mind, Evan turned on his blinker and got off at Cactus Road.

  “So it’s here somewhere?” she asked.

  “I think so,” he replied, his voice tense. “Someplace east of here.”

  Zoe nodded but didn’t say anything. From the way his hands were clenched on the steering wheel, she could tell that he didn’t like having to maneuver in this kind of traffic. Things had been clotty enough on the 51, since it was now past six o’clock, but the surface streets here were a lot worse.

  Then she sucked in her breath and grasped the strap of her purse, as if clinging to that strip of leather might help to give her the reassurance she needed. Because coming up on the left was the Paradise Valley Mall, a place she’d avoided ever since Matías Escobar had tried to kidnap her there.

  “What is it?” Evan asked. His eyes were fixed on the road ahead, but obviously he’d noticed something.

  “Nothing,” she replied. “I mean, that’s the mall.”

  Behind the dark Ray-Bans, his eyes flicked over to the left and then returned to the motorists around him. Good idea, because he had to tap his brakes as some jerk in a Subaru cut right in front of them, headed for one of the mall entrances. “The mall?”

  “Where I was almost kidnapped.”

  “Oh.” He paused for a few seconds, clearly searching for something to say. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I ever heard the actual name of the place where it happened.”

  “It’s all right. I wouldn’t really expect you to know. It’s just…I haven’t been back here since.”

  Another hesitation. “I can understand that,” Evan said, the words coming out slowly and evenly, as if he was weighing each one with care to make sure he wouldn’t upset her. “But if it makes you feel better, I don’t think that’s where we’re going.”

  “We’re not?” She couldn’t think of what else might be around here that would be of interest to the creature. Off to the right were some condos, and then past that a golf course —

  Evan abruptly stomped on the gas, sending the Barracuda shooting forward in a neck-cracking show of velocity. As Zoe clutched the “Jesus handle” above her head, she realized Evan was taking advantage of a small opening in traffic so he could cut over into the driveway that led to the Stonecreek golf course.

  “We’re going golfing?” she quipped, knowing how flat the joke must have sounded.

  “We’re not,” he replied, slowing the car to a more reasonable s
peed so they wouldn’t bottom out on one of the speed bumps in the driveway. “But maybe your monster is.”

  She couldn’t really think of what to say in reply to that remark, so she just held on to the handle as Evan maneuvered the car into an open parking space. There were a few left, probably because people wanting to stop by the clubhouse on their way home from work wouldn’t have made it this far yet.

  Neither she nor Evan were wearing what you could call golf clothes, although Zoe thought she’d probably blend in just a bit better, since at least she did look like someone who could be going to the clubhouse. But Evan, with his faded jeans and henley shirt with the sleeves rolled up, wasn’t exactly what you could call country club material.

  This wasn’t a country club, though. She knew that much, because there were members of the clan who liked to play golf, and they tended to talk about it at family gatherings, even though that sort of thing bored her out of her skull. Anyway, this wasn’t the kind of place where you had to pay six figures to be a member, and so she guessed she and Evan would have a little more burn time before some staff member decided they looked out of place and came over to investigate.

  “Where to?” she asked, after slinging her purse over one shoulder. Maybe dragging it along was a bad idea — fighting off monsters while having a Coach bag getting in the way could be a problem — but she didn’t much like the idea of leaving it in Evan’s car, either. She’d done that at the last place they’d encountered the creature, and had regretted not having her cell phone close by.

  “That way,” he said, then pointed toward a stand of pine trees a few hundred yards off.

  It did seem like the kind of place where a monster might hide itself. What the creature thought it would find on a golf course, she had no idea, but they weren’t really here to investigate the inner workings of its mind. They just needed to send it back where it had come from before it could cause any more trouble.

  She followed Evan as he set out with a determined stride. Thank God she’d decided to wear these flat sandals when she got dressed this morning, rather than the wedges she’d first tried on. She could manage the wedges pretty well under normal circumstances, despite their near four-inch lift, but they definitely were not designed for traipsing around on a golf course.