Cat pursed her lips. “Hmm…I don’t know…three days?”
“All right.” The unit wasn’t all that expensive; reserving it for a day or two longer than he needed wouldn’t be that big a deal. He requested a stay for three nights, starting tonight. Luckily, this particular Airbnb was set up for automatic booking, so he didn’t have to wait for the owner to accept his request. The whole transaction went through in less than a minute, and almost at once he had several emails in his inbox, one confirming receipt of payment and the other a chatty little note from the owner with information about parking, the code for the door lock, that sort of thing.
“So we’re set?” Cat asked as he closed the laptop.
“Looks that way. Let’s head over and see what we can find.”
“Are you going to pack?”
“‘Pack’?” he repeated, not sure what his sister was driving at.
“Well, if you’re really going to inspect the place, you might as well stay. Maybe you’ll notice things you otherwise wouldn’t. Besides, it sounds like the owner tends to come poking around. She’s going to think it’s weird if you don’t have any luggage.”
“She’s going to think it’s weird anyway, since she just found me there a day ago,” he replied, then let out a breath. “But you’re probably right. With any luck, she’ll think I fell so in love with the place that I had to rent it right away.”
Cat’s skeptical expression told him exactly what she thought of that idea, but he would just have to take the risk. After all, he paid for the Airbnb fair and square. If the owner thought it was strange for him to be staying there, so be it. But with any luck, he wouldn’t run into her at all.
“I’ll go throw a few things in a duffle bag,” he said. “Give me a couple of minutes.”
“Okay.”
Once again he went upstairs, this time to get the bag down from the top shelf of his closet. He didn’t bother with any heavy-duty packing, only a spare pair of jeans and some T-shirts, underwear and socks, toiletries hastily stuffed into their own small leather bag. Fewer than five minutes had elapsed since he went upstairs. When he got back to the living room, it was to find Cat on the phone.
“Yes, Mom, I know,” she was saying. “And I’ll be home as soon as I can. I’m helping Rafe with something right now. Okay. Right. I know. See you soon.” She ended the call and shoved the phone in her purse, a scowl of irritation creasing her brow.
“I see Genoveva is in her usual form,” Rafe remarked as he set the duffle bag on the floor.
“Well, she’s a little on edge. Dad is driving Sophia home to Taos so she can get some things together for a few days’ stay, and Mom has been on the phone with the bishop, trying to get the funeral set up. He’s doing his best to accommodate her, but I get the impression he’s also been asking what the hell went on at your wedding.”
“That’s something we’d all like to know,” he said, his tone sour. “But if Dad’s off to Taos with Sophia, that means the two of them won’t be back in Santa Fe for a while. That should give you enough time to come over and help me look at the flat. With any luck, it’ll be haunted, and you’ll be able to pick the resident ghost’s brain.”
“I don’t know about the building itself,” Cat responded, “but remember Annalisa, the ghost who hangs out by Burro Alley? That’s close enough that she might have seen something.”
Right. Cat had mentioned Annalisa when they were in San Antonio, but then they’d gotten broadsided by the Montoya witches and warlocks almost immediately afterward, and what with one thing or another, they hadn’t had time to follow up. Just like Miranda’s bags — loose ends that he shouldn’t have lost track of. It almost felt as though some outside force was doing its very best to keep him off the scent.
Well, try all you want, he thought, but I’m going down there now, and I will find something, damn it.
“Yes, we’ll talk to Annalisa after we check out the Airbnb,” he said. “We’d better take two cars. That way I can stay, and if you need to head home unexpectedly, you’ll have your own vehicle.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
They headed out, he to the garage so he could get in his Jeep Wrangler, Cat to the driveway to retrieve her Mercedes SUV. She didn’t wait for him to back out, but headed west toward their destination, probably so she would have enough time to park in the structure across the street from the Airbnb and then wait for him. Since he was staying there, he’d have access to one of the parking spaces behind the building, which would make the logistics a bit simpler.
Sure enough, she was standing on the sidewalk in front of the wine tasting room, looking in the window a bit wistfully. As he approached, she said, “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a clue early on. Then we can come here and have a drink. I could use one about now.”
“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Rafe replied. “Luck doesn’t seem to have been on my side lately.”
Being Cat, she knew better than to try to tell him he shouldn’t talk that way, or that he was being too negative. Instead, she said, “Then we might as well go inside and see what we can find.”
“This way. The entrance is around back.”
She followed him down the alley and to the small stoop where the back door to the building was located. Of course he didn’t need a code to get in, but he dutifully entered it anyway, retrieving the numbers from the confirmation email he’d been sent. They went up the stairs and on into the flat, which looked just the same as the last time he’d been here. That made perfect sense; the owner had just had it cleaned, and no one had stayed here since.
“Any ghosts?” he asked after he’d shut the door behind him.
Cat moved into the living room and stood there for a moment, eyes shut. At last she shook her head. “No. This place feels unoccupied. But….”
“But what?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. Something about it doesn’t feel clean, though. Like there’s some kind of weird oily magical residue on everything.”
To the naked eye, of course, the flat looked immaculate. But Cat was looking at the place with an entirely different kind of eye. Although she wasn’t precisely a medium or a psychic, her gift for speaking with ghosts had given her a certain sensitivity to these sorts of things. And, considering the scent of dark magic he’d picked up when he’d prowled the area in coyote form, he thought she must also be sensing what he’d found, only experiencing it in a different way.
“I’m glad you can feel it, too,” he said. “Because when I first came here, I wasn’t totally sure, had to wonder whether I was manufacturing that residue because I needed to believe that something was very wrong about this place.”
“No, there’s something definitely here.” Cat put her hands on her hips and surveyed the room, a faraway look in her dark eyes. “Actually, I think it’s stronger in the bedroom.” She crossed over to the short hallway, then went through the first door on the right. “Yes, I can feel it more in here.”
Rafe followed her. He couldn’t precisely smell the wrongness the way he had a few days earlier, but a weird crawling sensation began on the back of his neck. If he’d been in coyote form, he probably would have wrinkled his nose and snarled.
Again, the room looked ordinary and completely in order, the quilt in lively southwest colors lying smooth on the bed, the prints of past art and wine festivals all hanging perfectly straight on the walls. But there was something terribly wrong about it.
“Over here,” Cat said, laying a hand on the dresser. “It feels even stronger here.”
He went to her and began opening drawers, doing his best to ignore that creepy crawly sensation, which had now begun to move down his spine. “They’re all empty,” he said, after he was done with his inspection.
“Maybe not in it.” His sister paused for a moment, surveying the simple oak piece of furniture with the sort of concentration usually reserved for observing a particularly nasty bacteria under a microscope. “Maybe behind it.”
Because the dresser was empty, it was easy enough to move out of the way. At first the wall behind it appeared unmarked, untouched, but….
“Do you see that?” Cat asked.
Rafe squatted down so he could get a better look at the portion of wall in question. Yes, it looked as though someone had wiped it down, but not thoroughly enough. If you squinted and looked at it at just the right angle where the light from the window slanted against the plaster, you could see traces of strange diagrams etched with lettering he didn’t recognize.
“What the hell is that?”
Her lips thinned. “I’m not totally sure, because this isn’t the sort of thing I’ve ever really studied, but those look like sigils for some kind of spell casting — and not the good kind.”
Well, her explanation seemed to reinforce Rafe’s theory that they were dealing with some kind of dark warlock here. “Who would know for sure?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Cat replied, looking flummoxed. “Castillos don’t practice this kind of magic. I mean, one time I found some old books in the library at home that had probably belonged to Grandmother — or maybe even Grandmother’s grandmother. Anyway, I was just a kid and I was interested, so I started leafing through one. The book I found had diagrams like this in it. I didn’t know what they meant, but man, when Mom caught me, she totally chewed me out, said I wasn’t to look at those kinds of books ever again. And the next time I checked, they were all gone. She must have locked them up somewhere.” Cat let out a breath, then shook her head. “Maybe there’s someone in the family who’s studied these kinds of dark spells, but the only person who would know for sure is Mom, and you know she wouldn’t tell us…and she’d demand to know why we were asking in the first place.”
Rafe couldn’t argue with that assertion, because it sounded exactly like something his mother would do. He raised himself up from his squatting position and said, “Well, at least we know there’s some bad juju going on here.” He paused, then asked, “Should I get a couple of pictures?” And he brought out his phone, ready to get some images of the patterns on the wall.
At once, Cat put her hand on his arm. “I wouldn’t.”
Puzzled, he stared down at her. “Why not?”
“Things like this…they have power. Even as digital images stored on a phone. I don’t think you want that kind of energy traveling around with you.”
A creepy little shiver wandered down Rafe’s spine. He’d never thought about it like that, but she had a point. After returning his phone to his pocket, he said, “Okay. Then let’s put the dresser back, and go down and see if we can find your ghost, pick her brain.”
Cat appeared relieved by this suggestion, and that he hadn’t argued with her about taking pictures. If the flat was giving him a crawling sensation all over, Rafe didn’t want to know what it might be doing to his more sensitive sister. One thing was for sure, though — he didn’t care how it might look to the owner if she came snooping around, but he sure as hell wasn’t about to spend the night in this place. That duffle bag was going right back in his house with him.
They moved the dresser back to its original spot and headed downstairs to street level, then walked the half block to Burro Alley. It was a quaint spot popular with tourists, with a large bronze statue of its eponymous burro standing guard at the entrance, making sure only foot traffic got past. Luckily, since it was late afternoon on a weekday in early November, that foot traffic was at a minimum, making it easier for his sister to reach out to the ghost of the girl who’d killed herself over forbidden love for a priest.
“Annalisa!” Cat called out softly. “Are you there?”
A long pause.
“Annalisa?”
Another long, agonizing moment. A couple a few years older than Rafe walked past, carrying bags from the wine tasting room around the corner. They gave Rafe and Cat a single curious glance before continuing on their way.
“She’s here,” Cat murmured to Rafe. Then she said, “Annalisa, can I ask you if you saw someone here in the last day or two?” A few seconds of quiet, and she went on, “I’m not sure what she would have been wearing, but she’s a few years younger than I am, with long wavy brown hair, almost to her waist. Very pretty, with green eyes. Slender, not too tall…you have?”
The relief that coursed through Rafe at hearing those two words was so strong, he almost didn’t catch the next part of the exchange. But then he forced himself to focus, because clearly Annalisa wasn’t done yet.
“Two days ago. She left with someone? Who?”
Rafe’s pulse quickened, and he could feel his hands knot into fists at hearing Miranda hadn’t been alone when Annalisa spied her.
“A young man with black hair and eyes, tall and slim,” Cat said. From the way she spoke, Rafe guessed she was repeating Annalisa’s words so he could hear them for himself. “They went around back to the alley and got in a white vehicle and drove away.”
“Did she get the license plate number?”
Cat narrowed her eyes at him, obviously not pleased by this interruption. “Did it look like he was forcing her to go with him?” A long pause. “Oh, so she got into the car herself and shut the door behind her. Anything else?” Cat appeared to wait, then told Rafe in an undertone, “That was all Annalisa saw. But she doesn’t think Miranda was being coerced or anything.”
Unless the guy had her under a mind-control spell. Once someone started playing around with black magic, it was really hard to know what was possible and what wasn’t.
The description of the dark warlock kept echoing around in Rafe’s head, though, teasing him, as if it should make more sense than it did. Young, and tall and slender. Black hair and black eyes.
Black eyes. Eyes so dark you couldn’t see where the pupil ended and the iris began. Looking into those eyes was like looking into a black hole, a darkness without end.
The shudder that went through Rafe right then was so intense, Cat looked at him in alarm. “What’s the matter?”
Memory came flooding back. The flat above the wine-tasting room. The voice telling him what he had to say to Miranda, hideous words designed to tear them apart, to send her running into the dark warlock’s arms.
Voice tight, Rafe said, “I know who Miranda is with.”
13
Dinners
Miranda
I didn’t know whether there was a witch or warlock somewhere who possessed the kind of magic that would make meal prep a breeze, who could simply snap his or her fingers and conjure a casserole or a soufflé. Or maybe a spell existed in a grimoire someplace that could do the same sort of thing. I supposed it didn’t really matter, because I knew my Great-Aunt Rachel would kill me if she ever caught me taking those sorts of shortcuts in the kitchen.
Because a few clouds had begun to gather toward sunset, and I could already feel the temperature dropping, I thought I’d make a big pot of spaghetti for dinner. Something about the aroma of homemade spaghetti sauce and garlic bread always made a house feel cozy. Besides, it would give Simon and me leftovers for the evenings when I didn’t feel like making something from scratch and we also didn’t feel like going out. And although he’d protested that he didn’t want me to do all this work, I insisted. I liked to cook. It was relaxing and sort of zen when I got in the groove, and right then I wanted to focus on something that was completely nonmagical.
Despite my reassurances that I enjoyed the process, Simon couldn’t help watching with some bemusement as I added tomato paste and wine and herbs in careful proportions to the large saucepan, with nary a cookbook in sight. “Where did you learn to cook like this?”
“My great-aunt,” I replied, then picked up the bowl of onions and bell peppers he’d chopped for me earlier so I could sauté them lightly before adding them to the sauce. “I mean, my mother is a pretty decent cook, too, because Rachel taught her when she was younger than I am now. But I know Rachel liked me to come over and learn directly from her, and I always thought it was fun. My older sister was
n’t really into it, and Rachel never had any children of her own, so I think she appreciated me learning what she had to teach me.”
“That’s cool,” Simon said. “My mother was always a ‘frozen meal from Costco’ or pizza night kind of person. I didn’t get home cooking much, except at the holidays when we’d get a bunch of homemade de la Paz tamales to bring home.”
I’d had that opportunity once or twice growing up, when my mother’s cousin Caitlin came up from Tucson with a platter of tamales from her husband Alex’s aunt. Those de la Pazes definitely knew their way around a tamale, or at least, quite a few of them did. Rachel had taught me how to make tamales, and mine were pretty damn good, but they were still missing a certain something I detected in the de la Paz version of the traditional dish and could never seem to replicate.
“Those are good. I’ve had them once or twice.”
“Right. From Caitlin?”
“Exactly.”
He smiled, and a certain happy warmth passed through me. After all the magical exertions of the morning, it felt good to be doing something as ordinary as making spaghetti sauce. And it also felt good to be here in the kitchen with Simon, to chat about normal family things like cooking and holiday meals. When we’d gotten back from our little excursion to Los Alamos, I’d sent another text to my mother, just to let her know I was doing fine and would be making spaghetti for dinner. I thought she’d like to hear that, because it would let her know I was someplace with access to a kitchen and was able to do pretty much what I wanted.
I hadn’t waited for her reply, but figured I’d check the phone once I had the sauce simmering away. Really, it should have been doing that for most of the afternoon, allowing the sauce to gain in richness as the hours passed. I had to hope it would still come out okay, even though I was sort of rushing things.
Watching me sauté the onions and peppers, Simon remarked, “You know, I really didn’t bring you here so you could cook for me.”
Darker Paths (The Witches of Canyon Road Book 2) Page 17