Darker Paths (The Witches of Canyon Road Book 2)

by Christine Pope

  “I know,” I replied, then shot him a grin. “But we both have to eat, and I like doing this. Really, it’s good to give my brain a break. Magic is amazing and exhilarating, but….”

  “It can be kind of exhausting. I know.” He seemed to pause and think for a moment before adding, “I don’t know much about them, but I wonder whether you should try making potions at some point. With your cooking background and your natural talents, you might be able to come up with some interesting stuff.”

  I’d never thought of that. Well, again, why would I, when before a few days ago, I had no idea that I had any magical gifts at all? Before, I’d had barely any alternatives to work with, and now I had almost too many. There weren’t a lot of people in the McAllister clan who dabbled in potions, mostly because they did have an enormous potential to go wrong if you messed up something. However, I remembered that Zoe Sandoval, the prima of the de la Paz clan, was something of an expert.

  “Does your prima do much of that anymore?”

  “Much of what?” Simon asked, looking rather confused.

  “Make potions. Wasn’t that her talent, back before she even became prima?”

  “Oh, right,” he said quickly. “I’d forgotten about that. I guess it’s because I always just thought of her as our prima and didn’t think much about what her gift had been before she took over the de la Paz family.”

  I supposed that made some sense. Even with my own mother, I’d always thought of her as prima first and someone who could talk to ghosts second. And of course she had that grab bag of other abilities she could access as necessary, thanks to her bond with my father.

  “Well, I’ll think about it,” I said, eyeing the onions and peppers in the pan. Since they looked cooked enough, I began to slide them into the rest of the sauce. “It’s too bad it’s late fall, because one talent I would have liked to try is coaxing growing things along. There were several witches in Jerome who had that green thumb, so to speak. It’s a handy talent, but I don’t much see the point in making plants grow now, when the next frost will just come along and kill them.”

  “Unless you kept it away.” Simon had been standing on the other side of the island as I worked, presumably to stay out of my way, but now he came closer and leaned up against the counter a foot or so away from the stovetop. “You’ve already shown you can change the weather. You could create a warm zone where the frost never forms, or the snow never comes. If it was small enough, it wouldn’t upset the overall balance of the weather in a certain area, but it would give you more time to grow things.”

  His suggestion was something else I’d never considered, but I didn’t think I would want to do something like that. It felt far too much like open interference. Nature had its own patterns, and I knew better than to mess with them much more than causing a few random rainstorms.

  “I could do that,” I allowed. “But I think I’d better not. It’s probably safer that way.”

  “Okay. I get it.” Then his dark eyes sparkled with some inner mischief. “I guess we’ll just have to think of something else to try.”

  “I suppose I can sleep on it.” I turned the burner way down, then glanced at the clock on the oven behind me. Five-twenty. The sauce needed to simmer for at least an hour. More would be better, though. “Dinner at seven? I want to go see if my mom responded to my text, but — ”

  “Go ahead,” Simon said with a smile. “How about we meet back around six-thirty to get the pasta going?”

  “And the garlic bread,” I added. “Don’t want to forget about that.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  Still smiling, he let himself out the side door. A brief glimpse of him as he headed down the walkway that led to the caretaker’s house, and then he was gone.

  I felt a smile on my lips, too, and then shook my head. It was easy to be with Simon, partly because, while he of course was interested in exploring my talents, he knew when to back off and take it easy, seemed to know when I needed some time to myself.

  A girl could get used to that sort of thing.

  After double-checking that the sauce wouldn’t simmer too high while I was gone, I went to my bedroom and picked up my phone from where I’d left it sitting on the dresser to charge. Sure enough, I had a new message from my mother.

  I’m glad to hear that you sound so settled and happy. Your father and I still wish you would tell us where you are, but I won’t press you on that. Take care, and keep in touch.

  I texted back, Thanks, Mom. Maybe soon. I’ll let you know.

  Because really, it seemed clear to me that I could handle just about any kind of magic I put my mind to. At this point, it was all about practice and control, but I could work on that just as well back home in Arizona as I could here. Of course, there was something secure and sheltered and safe here, in our little getaway in Tesuque, but this idyll couldn’t last forever anyway. This place was expensive…very expensive. Simon and I could pool our resources, and we still wouldn’t be able to afford even a tenth of what it probably cost.

  Anyway, it was probably a little early to be contemplating buying a house together. But we could go back to Arizona, and I could show my parents that my sleeping magic was now fully awakened, and then Simon and I could decide what to do next. He didn’t sound all that attached to Tucson, so I didn’t think it would be too hard to convince him to stay in Jerome with me. Of course, housing was always tight there, because the town was so tiny, but we could live in Cottonwood or Clarkdale for a while until something became available….

  And you are getting so far ahead of yourself, it’s not even funny, I thought, shaking off daydreams of Simon and me moving into one of the big Victorian houses on Paradise Lane, up where my parents lived part-time. Just because things didn’t work out with Rafe, there’s no reason to jump into the picket fence and the cat and the kids with someone else.

  That inner voice sounded very sensible. I knew I’d better pay attention to it, because I knew that my need to belong could get me in trouble if I allowed it to. Much smarter to take it easy and wait to see how things progressed with Simon.

  One way or another, though, I really didn’t see myself staying here in New Mexico for much longer.

  Simon had set the table and lit the tall, thin tapers in the holders of glazed bisque that stood like sentinels on the linen runner. He also found all the serving pieces we needed for our dinner, including a big pasta bowl and another bowl for salad, and helped me dish everything up.

  “Is this guilt because I did all the cooking?” I asked with a laugh as he took the salad out to the dining room table.

  “I wouldn’t call it guilt,” he said, his expression quite serious. “More like…wanting to help.”

  “Well, thanks for that. I think we’re ready.”

  And we were. It was probably way too much food for two people, but leftovers were always a good thing. Speaking of guilt, one of my guilty pleasures as a kid had been to sneak a piece of leftover garlic bread and heat it in the toaster oven for breakfast, even though I knew we were supposed to be saving whatever was left for another meal. I’d have to try that the next day and see if it still had as much savor as it did when I was ten years old.

  We sat down at the table, which stretched away for what felt like miles from our two lonely place settings at the head. “Good thing you didn’t make me sit at the other end,” I said as I took my place to Simon’s right, just below the head of the table. “We would have had to use semaphore flags.”

  “Or megaphones,” he agreed, wrestling with the cork from a bottle of chianti we’d picked up at the grocery store. “I don’t think I’d try to inflict that on you. I’m still trying to decide whether the Texas oil guy has a huge family, or whether he picked a table this big because he needed something that would fit in the space.”

  “Probably the latter,” I said. “If he had a big family, you’d think they’d be here watching the house for him. I know I wouldn’t let my father sell a place like this.”

>   “I’m glad you like it.” Simon finally got the cork out and set it on the table, then gestured toward my glass. I handed it to him so he could fill it up, then put it back down by my place setting. “How would you like to buy it?”

  My eyes didn’t exactly pop out of my head, but I could feel them widen. “Um, hate to break it to you, Simon, but I don’t have four or five million extra bucks just lying around.”

  “You could, though.” He finished pouring his own wine, then sent me a speculative look. “Or hadn’t you gotten around to thinking about what you could do with those teleportation powers of yours?”

  “To rob banks?” For a second, uneasiness swirled through me. He couldn’t be serious, could he? Then I caught the dancing light in his black eyes and said, “Very funny. No, I hadn’t thought about that kind of thing, because you know we’re not supposed to use our powers for self-enrichment or to take advantage of others.”

  “Tell that to your Wilcox relatives.”

  I repressed the urge to stick my tongue out at him, because Simon had a definite point there. No one liked to talk about it, and as far as I knew, my father’s clan was pretty much on the up and up these days, but I knew that the Wilcoxes in the past had indulged in a lot of shady practices to plump up their portfolios. They came out of the stock market crash in 1929 pretty much unscathed, and their investments and bank accounts had only grown by leaps and bounds since then. Still, even though some of their early methods probably wouldn’t have held up to FCC scrutiny, that wasn’t quite the same thing as teleporting into Fort Knox and walking out with bars of gold in my backpack or something.

  “Anyway,” I went on in quelling tones, “I don’t think I’d want to settle down this close to the Castillos. The sooner I have them in my rearview mirror, the better.”

  “I can’t blame you for that.” Simon paused, then raised his glass in a toast. “To settling down wherever it makes you happy.”

  That was a toast I could happily make, so I clinked my wine glass against his and took a healthy swallow of chianti. It was fruity and full, and better than I’d expected it to be.

  After that we were occupied with dishing out salad and spaghetti, and helping ourselves to some garlic bread as well. As I ate, I thought of how much fun this was, to be playing house like this, even though I knew our time here was limited. And there were other aspects to playing house….

  I watched Simon from underneath my eyelashes as he ate. No, I thought objectively, he wasn’t as handsome as Rafe, his face thinner, his features sharper. But I liked his thick, sooty hair, and those black, black eyes with their heavy lashes. It was an interesting face, one with good bones beneath it. And if I didn’t have quite the same urge to hurl myself into Simon’s arms, I told myself that was a good thing. There had been something about the way I reacted to Rafe that made me not quite myself. That lack of control could have gotten me in trouble, if it weren’t that he’d been so clearly bent on sabotaging our relationship.

  One way or another, I was well out of it.

  And it was good for me to be friends with Simon first before anything romantic passed between us. I couldn’t compare our relationship to the intense bond my parents shared, but I knew that in civilian couples, it was often far better for love to evolve from friendship. That way, you had something in common besides plain old lust.

  “This is incredible,” Simon said once he’d slowed down a bit, having made some serious inroads in his plate of spaghetti. “Better than I’ve ever had in a restaurant.”

  “Thanks.” My cheeks heated a bit at his praise; I knew my spaghetti sauce was good, but only because Rachel had taught me to make it. “I’ll have to let Rachel know. She’s always happy when people like her recipes.”

  “Definitely.” He set down his fork and sipped some chianti. “But I don’t want to make you cook every night. Plus, I had an idea earlier this afternoon.”

  “Oh?” I asked, my tone guarded. I told myself that Simon wouldn’t suggest anything that might get me in trouble, but….

  He didn’t seem put off by my obvious caution. “Well, I was thinking about how it seems fairly easy for you to handle a bunch of different types of magic. So I was wondering about you managing two different spells — for lack of a better word — at the same time. What would happen if you cast an illusion spell to alter your appearance…and also blocked your magical gifts so that no other witches or warlocks in the vicinity would know what you were?”

  “That sounds hard,” I said, feeling less enthusiastic than ever. It was one thing to expand my magical gifts, but quite another to push me past what I could comfortably manage.

  “It could be, but it would also be an awesome test of your talents. I was thinking we could try it by going out to dinner tomorrow night in one of Santa Fe’s best restaurants…which also happens to be just around the corner from Genoveva’s house.”

  “Oh, no way,” I told Simon, my voice flat. “Are you kidding? What if we get caught?”

  “What if we do?” he responded. “It’s not like she can put us in witch jail or something. She’s no relation to you. Besides, you could teleport us out of there if anything went sideways.”

  “Teleport in front of a bunch of civilians.”

  “I doubt it would come to that.” He stared at me, black eyes shining. “Come on, Miranda — don’t you want to test your talents? And it would also totally give the finger to Genoveva Castillo.”

  His voice was hard as he said her name. I didn’t know what Simon had against the Castillo prima, except that she’d done her best to coerce my family into making me marry her son. Since obviously Simon wasn’t a fan of that idea, I could see why he might not be too thrilled with her. Still….

  “Maybe,” I said cautiously. “But I’d want to practice first.”

  “Of course,” he responded. “We’ll practice tomorrow. But I’ll still make reservations at Geronimo.”

  I could have argued, I suppose. But part of me wanted the same thing Simon did — to show Genoveva Castillo that maybe she wasn’t in quite as much control of the situation as she thought.

  And who would turn down dinner in a five-star restaurant?

  Not me.

  I stared at myself in the mirror. All that day I’d practiced altering my appearance, right down to changing the plain dark T-shirt I wore over to a beaded wrap sweater, one I paired with slim jeans and high-heeled boots, since I hadn’t actually brought anything that glamorous with me.

  The face looking back at me from the mirror wasn’t mine, though. I’d decided to go with someone who was around my same height and age — my cousin Jessica Rowe. Her hair was a little darker than mine, her eyes the same piercing blue as her father’s rather than my smoky green, but otherwise we were fairly similar in appearance. I figured that was better, just because it was easier to hold the illusion and at the same time do that trick of hiding my true nature, that inner light which tended to announce itself to every other witch and warlock in the vicinity.

  Simon hadn’t let me off so easy when it came to him, though. I’d protested that there wasn’t anyone in the Castillo clan who probably even knew what he looked like, and so I didn’t know why I had to cast the illusion on him at all, but he still told me I needed to change his appearance as well.

  “A really extreme change,” he told me. “I know you can do it.”

  I had to hope his confidence wasn’t misplaced.

  When I met him in the living room, he looked at me in approval. “That’s good — similar but not exact. How does it feel?”

  “Fine,” I said. “Once I set the illusion in place, it pretty much holds until I take it away.”

  “All right, then. My turn.”

  I pulled in a breath. Simon had said he wanted an extreme change, so that was what I would give him. My cousin Jason was as blond as his parents Levi and Hayley, tall and blue-eyed, with a definite Norwegian ski team captain vibe going on. I couldn’t think of anyone who looked less like Simon, which made Jason’s
the perfect face to borrow.

  Even though I knew what I was doing, I had to prevent myself from taking a step backward when the transformation was complete. The man standing in front of me was my cousin Jason’s double, hair appearing nearly white under the bright illumination from the chandelier overhead.

  “Go take a look,” I instructed him, and Simon turned from me so he could go into the powder room down the hall and inspect himself in the mirror.

  “Wow,” he said. He didn’t come back out right away, so I guessed he was leaning close to the mirror and looking at himself from all angles. I couldn’t really blame him, since I’d done basically the same thing, just to reassure myself that the illusion was perfect. When he emerged, he was shaking his blond head. “This is incredible. Who is this guy, anyway? Some male model?”

  “My cousin Jason.”

  “He looks like he should be the captain of a lacrosse team or something.”

  “I was thinking Norwegian downhill skier, but yeah.”

  A grin flashed across Simon’s face. That was how I could tell he was still under there, despite the illusion — those might have been my cousin Jason’s features, but the way he smiled was very much Simon. The difference was subtle, though, and I knew that no one we’d be seeing at the restaurant would be able to tell anything was off.

  “We should get going,” he said. “Our reservations are in twenty minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  I tried to ignore the way my heart pounded as I pulled on my jacket, then followed Simon out to the car. The closer we got to the heart of town, the more nervous I got. It didn’t matter that the illusions were flawless, or that I knew I was safely blocking my magical nature, just as Simon was hiding his. I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow Genoveva Castillo would reach out from behind the walls of her compound and grab me as we passed, that she’d be able to see beneath the illusions and the spells we’d cast to hide our witch blood no matter what we did.

  But then we were turning up Canyon Road, going much farther up on the street than I’d managed to explore in my brief time here in Santa Fe. We passed the restaurant, a place called Geronimo, then turned right so we could enter the parking lot from the proper side. It was extremely cramped and already full, but a valet appeared and said he’d take care of it for us.