Darker Paths (The Witches of Canyon Road Book 2)

by Christine Pope

  Holding back a sigh, he followed Cat out to her SUV, then got in the passenger seat. “Loretto Chapel,” she said clearly and distinctly, and the Mercedes’ self-driving mechanism kicked in, sending them over to Paseo de Peralta so they could loop around downtown and come in at the right angle to get to the chapel’s parking lot.

  Neither one of them spoke. Rafe knew his sister had to be almost as frustrated as he was about their failure to turn up any leads the evening before. It had begun to seem that no matter what they did, they couldn’t get past the veil of anonymity Simon had drawn around himself. And until they were able to dig up something about him that was true, that was real, it didn’t seem likely they had any chance of locating Miranda.

  When they pulled into the chapel’s cramped parking lot, Rafe spied his father standing in the empty space next to the one where Genoveva’s big gray Mercedes sedan was already parked. Good thing, too, because every other spot was already filled.

  Genoveva stood off to one side, elegantly attired in black, the coral cross that had been a family heirloom for five generations hanging around her neck. Next to her was Sophia, also in black from head to toe, the severe costume making her look even more frail and slender than usual. She wore a black hat and veil, although such head coverings hadn’t been required by the church for decades.

  Cat took manual control and pulled into the space their father had been saving for them. His face was calm and sad, a contrast to their mother, whose dark eyes were snapping sparks even at this distance. Most likely she wasn’t very happy about her two younger children being some of the last to arrive.

  However, even she seemed to reconsider the wisdom of chewing out her kids in front of the grieving Sophia, because she only said, once Rafe and Cat had gotten out of the SUV, “Good, you’re here.” The word finally hung in the air between them, although she didn’t say it out loud. “Your sisters are already inside with their families. Go ahead.”

  Apparently the tie had passed muster. Rafe nodded at his mother but didn’t reply, then murmured a quiet greeting to Sophia before he and Cat went ahead into the chapel. It was already full, with several rows of Castillos standing in the back. Despite his irritation earlier, he couldn’t help but be moved by this show of clan support for their lost cousin. Marco had been taken from them far too soon, and they clearly wanted to show him their grief and their love.

  Cat at his side, Rafe walked down the aisle to take his place in the front pew, albeit off to one side so there was enough room for his parents and Sophia to sit. As he’d guessed, Louisa and Malena and their husbands John and Oscar were already sitting down, their small children firmly placed between them in order to keep fidgeting at a minimum. Malena’s daughter Elisa was only two, and Rafe wondered if she even understood anything of what was happening.

  Well, if she didn’t, that would make two of them. Rafe couldn’t make sense of any of it, either. He stared at the shining mahogany casket placed in the center of the altar, surrounded by banks of white lilies and orchids, and scowled. Marco shouldn’t be in that damn box. He should be off with his cousins and friends, maybe fishing, which seemed to be his favorite thing to do other than sampling as many of New Mexico’s local brews as possible. Instead, he was gone, snuffed out as though he’d never been here at all. Anger flooded through Rafe, even though he wasn’t sure exactly what he was angry at. The universe, maybe.

  The low murmur of voices in the chapel died down as Genoveva and Eduardo and Sophia entered. They took their seats at the far right end of the pew where the rest of their immediate family sat. As if on cue, the organ began to play, and the bishop himself, attended by several priests, came down the center aisle, censers swinging, filling the air with the faintly cloying scent that always evoked a faint sense of guilt within Rafe. These days, he only came to church when forced into it by family obligations. Although most of the members of the Castillo clan didn’t seem to recognize the dissonance, he couldn’t help feeling there was something a bit off about being a practicing Catholic and a full-fledged warlock.

  The service felt as though it was dragging on forever, but Rafe knew that was only his own impatience. He had to hold back an ironic smile as his father went up and read from Lamentations: My soul is shut out from peace; I have forgotten happiness.

  Well, wasn’t that the damn truth. He knew he hadn’t had a moment’s peace since Miranda disappeared from his life on Sunday afternoon.

  More readings, more hymns, everyone so solemn and sober-faced, the air heavy with incense. It was so not Marco that Rafe could feel himself scowling all over again. His cousin might not have been Irish, but a good old-fashioned rowdy wake would have suited him much better.

  At last, though, that part of it was over. Then there came the mass exodus to the cemetery, the coffin lowered into the ground, Sophia weeping as Eduardo and Genoveva flanked her, clearly ready to hold her up if she should collapse. Watching all this, Cat quiet and moody at his side, Rafe couldn’t help but experience a traitorous sense of relief once the mourners recited the Lord’s Prayer together and the bishop had delivered his final blessing. Only the reception to get through now.

  While he hadn’t exactly looked forward to the reception at his mother’s house, at least there he would have a chance to talk to Daniel…or so he hoped. First, though, came the weary standing at the entrance with his sisters and parents, solemnly greeting everyone who came through the door, which took a good twenty minutes. He hated these rituals but knew his mother clung to them, and so he stood there with as much grace as he could muster, telling himself he was doing this for Marco, even though his cousin probably would have laughed at the whole procedure, remarking that all it really did was prevent people from getting to the food and drink after being put through the wringer for the past few hours.

  Finally, the last Castillo cousin had come through the door, and Rafe excused himself and headed into the crowd in search of Daniel. Before he’d taken two steps, however, the phone in his jacket pocket buzzed. Who would be calling now, when he was already surrounded by so many of his family members?

  Thinking it might be a client, he ducked down the hallway into his mother’s study and pulled the phone from his pocket. At first he didn’t recognize the number on the screen. Then he realized it was from an Arizona area code, and a mixture of worry and annoyance churned in his gut.

  Angela…or possibly Connor. What the hell were they doing calling now, of all times?

  Ignoring them and letting it go to voicemail probably wouldn’t be a good idea, since he had the feeling they’d only keep calling him until he answered. Taking in a bracing swallow of air, he touched the phone’s screen to accept the call. “This is Rafe Castillo.”

  “Rafe.” Connor Wilcox’s voice, tight with repressed anger. “You want to tell me what this garbage is that your mother sent us this morning?”

  “Um…I don’t know, sir. What did she send you?”

  “An obviously doctored image that she claimed was from your wedding. But anyone with two eyes to see could tell it was pasted together — for God’s sake, the image of Miranda was one that your sister sent right before the ceremony. What the hell is going on?”

  Oh, shit. Shit. Rafe had known from the start that this insane idea of his mother’s was going to get them all in trouble, but he also knew he had no way of dissuading her. And what the hell had she been thinking, sending that thing the very morning of Marco’s funeral?

  She probably realized she needed to follow up, Rafe thought, and went ahead and sent it because she thought it was fine. He knew he should have asked to see the photo in question, but with everything that had been going on, such a minor detail had completely slipped his mind.

  “This really isn’t a good time,” he said, hedging while he tried to come up with some kind of plausible excuse. “I’m at the reception for my cousin’s funeral.”

  A brief silence. Then Connor said, sounding a little less angry, “I’m sorry to hear that, Rafe. Especially so soon af
ter your wedding.”

  There was no missing the emphasis Connor had put on that last word, and Rafe couldn’t help wincing. “Um, about that — ”

  “What about it?”

  The steel underlying those three simple words made Rafe glad that roughly five hundred miles separated him from Connor Wilcox. “The wedding didn’t happen. Miranda teleported away, and, well, we don’t really know where she is.”

  As terrible as those words had sounded in his mind when he’d rehearsed what he might have to say to Connor and Angela, they sounded about a thousand times worse when actually spoken out loud. Rafe waited, gut clenched, for Miranda’s father to respond.

  Another of those long pauses. At last Connor said, “You mean my daughter has been missing for three days now, and you didn’t think to get in contact with us?”

  In the background, Rafe caught pieces of a furious whispered exchange, as though Angela and Connor were having a sotto voce argument they didn’t want him to overhear. “Well, we — ”

  “Rafe, tell us what happened.” Angela’s voice, sounding more worried than angry.

  “It’s complicated.”

  When she replied to that comment, her tone was noticeably sharper. “Everything’s complicated. You need to do better than that.”

  “There was something of a scene at the ceremony. My family and I believe I was caught in some kind of a mind-control spell or something. Miranda used her teleportation power to get away. I can’t really blame her for that.”

  “Wait…she teleported?” Shock was clear in Connor’s voice; of course he couldn’t have known about the strange, erratic powers Miranda had developed during her time here in Santa Fe.

  “Yes, sir. It, uh, it happened once or twice before that.”

  A long silence as Connor appeared to digest that piece of information. Then, “Who cast the spell?”

  “We don’t know. That is, I think it might be a warlock named Simon, but we don’t have much more information about him than that. We’re trying to track him down now.”

  “Unsuccessfully, I assume.”

  “So far. Look — ” Rafe gathered a breath and went on, “I suspect this guy might be a de la Paz warlock who had a crush on Miranda. Did you ever hear anything about something like that?”

  “No,” Angela said at once. “Miranda didn’t go down into de la Paz territory very often, so I can’t even think of how she might have attracted the attention of one of their warlocks. I also don’t know of anyone named Simon, but I’ll check with Zoe Sandoval to be sure.” A long pause, during which Rafe could hear another round of heated whispering between the McAllister prima and the Wilcox primus. “But since it seems you’ve managed to lose our daughter, Connor and I think we’d better come to Santa Fe and help with the search.”

  Oh, God. Genoveva would blow an absolute gasket if that happened, even though she’d basically brought this current crisis on herself. If she’d just held off on sending that goddamn doctored photo….

  Trying to keep his tone calm, Rafe said, “Unless you have a magical ability that lets you know where your daughter is at all times, I’m not sure how your being here is going to help. My cousin is a private detective and is running a search on Simon’s image as we speak. Once we find him, I’m pretty sure we’ll find Miranda as well.”

  “Why would she even go off with this person? If things went as badly at the wedding as you hinted, why didn’t she come straight home?”

  The accusation in those words was clear enough. “I don’t know for sure,” Rafe replied. “She had an acquaintance with Simon, but I don’t think she realized he was a warlock. He was friendly to her. Otherwise, I can’t really comment on her motivations.”

  Silence, followed by a slight rustle coming from the phone’s tiny speaker, as if Angela had handed off the phone to her husband. Sure enough, it was Connor’s voice Rafe heard next. “This all sounds extremely strange, Rafe. And now you say one of your cousins has passed away?”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with Miranda’s disappearance,” Rafe said hastily. “Marco had a congenital heart defect.”

  “Oh.” A hesitation, and Connor went on, sounding slightly awkward, “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. And although our first instinct is to hop on the next plane and go to Santa Fe to look for our daughter, Angela and I know you’re right about one thing — we don’t know what we could do to aid in the search. Our combined powers are strong, but the one talent we’ve never been able to master is the Sight, and that’s about the only thing that’s going to do Miranda any good right now.”

  “Thank you for understanding, sir.”

  “Not so fast. You have two more days. If you don’t find our daughter by then, we’re coming to Santa Fe, even if it doesn’t seem as though it would do much good. But it would be better than sitting here and waiting and wondering.”

  Two days. Miranda had already been gone longer than that, but Rafe had to hope he’d find her before the deadline arrived. Something had to give.

  “I think we’ll find her before then. My cousin Daniel is very good at this kind of thing.” At least, Rafe had to hope he was. He didn’t know all that much about the sorts of cases his cousin handled, but a plush office like his seemed to indicate he did more than follow cheating husbands and wives around Albuquerque.

  “Let’s all hope he is. And when you find something, you call us. Immediately.”

  “I will.”

  “Until then.”

  The call ended there, and Rafe expelled a breath. He supposed it could have gone worse — at least he’d been granted a two-day grace period — but now more than ever they needed to step up the search.

  As he slipped his phone into his pocket, he headed back into the hall. He’d barely made it into the living room before he bumped into his oldest sister Louisa, the prima-in-waiting, who looked supremely irritated with him. In that moment, with her hair pulled up into a French twist and her mouth pressed into a thin line, she very much resembled their mother.

  “Just where the hell have you been?” she asked in an undertone.

  “I had to take a call.”

  “Now?”

  “It was Miranda’s parents.”

  “Oh.” The expression of annoyance vanished, to be replaced by one of concern. “What did they want?”

  “They weren’t too thrilled by that little Photoshop job our mother tried to fob off on them. I managed to talk them down, but if we don’t find Miranda soon, they’re going to be on our doorstep, breathing fire.”

  “Oh, hell.” Louisa tucked a stray strand of hair behind one ear, then glanced over her shoulder at the crowd in the living room. Genoveva and Eduardo stood near the fireplace, talking quietly with Sophia and an elderly cousin from Pecos. Seemingly satisfied that their parents were occupied for the moment, Louisa went on, “We can’t let that happen. You know how Mom thinks she can handle everything on her own. She’s going to go nuts if two of Arizona’s clan leaders suddenly show up here.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Privately, Rafe thought it might do Genoveva some good to get knocked down a peg or two by the northern Arizona prima and primus, but he knew better than to say such a thing to his sister. “I was actually going to talk to Daniel, see if he’s found anything yet.”

  “Okay. I think he was in the dining room the last time I saw him.”

  After delivering that helpful piece of information, Louisa moved back out into the living room, pausing to exchange a few words with a relative, then stopping to check in with her husband, who was clearly in charge of keeping an eye on their two children so she could be free to circulate. Watching her, Rafe thought again how she was the perfect choice to be prima-in-waiting. Her talents were strong, but more than that, she seemed to instinctively know how to handle people, to be in command. Or maybe it wasn’t instinct at all, but only a lifetime of watching her mother operate.

  Either way, he knew Louisa wouldn’t say anything to Genoveva about the phone call from Miranda’s parents — not
yet, anyway. She’d wait to see how it all shook out before issuing any warnings.

  In the meantime, he needed to find Daniel.

  On his way to the dining room, however, he found himself waylaid by Tony, who grabbed him by the sleeve. “Hey, Rafe,” he said. “After this, a bunch of the cousins were going to go to Antonia’s brew pub, have kind of a wake for Marco. Say you’ll come.”

  It did sound like the kind of gathering Marco would have appreciated, a lot more than this quiet gathering with its finger sandwiches and pitchers of iced tea and crystal bowl of punch. But with everything that was going on, Rafe realized he couldn’t make promises he didn’t know if he could keep. “Maybe,” he allowed. “I’ve got some stuff I need to handle, but — ”

  “You should. It would look weird if you weren’t there.”

  That was only the truth. His cousins would expect Rafe to come to such a gathering — he’d been close in age to Marco, and they’d usually hung out when he came down to Santa Fe from Taos. They didn’t exactly share confidences, but they’d always gotten along. A sudden thought struck Rafe. “Hey, Tony — did Marco ever talk about a girl named Tess? An old girlfriend or something?”

  Tony appeared puzzled, then shook his head. “No. I mean, his last girlfriend was a civilian named Barrie. She lived in Arroyo Seco, just outside Taos. But they broke up about three or four months ago, I think. Why?”

  “Just wanted to make sure we didn’t leave anyone out when we were inviting people to the funeral,” Rafe said, which only made his cousin appear that much more confused. But before Tony could ask any more questions, Rafe had turned and begun to pick his way through the crowd, intent on locating Daniel.

  As he went, he thought about how he wished he could just get out of here, go someplace to clear his head. Being around too many people started to get on his nerves after a while, and the best cure was generally some time spent outdoors. Most of the fall color would be faded by now, but he’d always liked the old forest road that cut down from the ski area above Santa Fe to Tesuque.