Storm Born

by Christine Pope

  “Go ahead and have a seat,” Connor told Jake and me. “I’ll get Angela — she’s upstairs with the kids.”

  Even as he spoke, I heard some high-pitched giggles that must have come from several small children, followed by a pattering sound that was probably the kids tearing down the upstairs hall. I listened to those noises, so ordinary, and realized that those were my nieces and nephew running around up there.

  “Thanks,” I said, since I felt like I needed to say something, and he left the living room in search of his wife. A few seconds later, I could hear his much heavier tread on the stairs.

  Once he was gone, Jake looked over at me. “Still doing okay?”

  I nodded. In a way, I did feel better now that I’d met Connor, as if the worst was over. Maybe I was being entirely too hopeful about the situation, and yet I wanted to believe everything was going to be all right. “I’m fine, Jake.”

  His hand touched mine, gave my fingers an encouraging squeeze. The same warmth I’d felt before went through me, and I looked away, not wanting him to see the way I’d reacted to his touch. I knew he was just trying to be friendly and give me the emotional support I desperately needed, and so the last thing I should be doing was responding to him in any way that wasn’t equally neutral and friendly.

  Somehow, I managed to smile, and then the uncomfortable moment had slipped past, because Connor returned to the living room with Angela at his side.

  She was very pretty, dark-haired and with the most spectacular green eyes I’d ever seen in my life. When I got up from the couch to greet her, she reached out and gave me an impulsive hug, just as Laurel had earlier that day. As Angela’s gaze met mine, she gave an involuntary little gasp.

  “Wow!” she exclaimed. “I mean, it’s just that I wasn’t expecting….” Her words trailed off, and she glanced up at her husband before looking back over at me. “I guess I wasn’t expecting you two to look at all alike. Connor and Damon didn’t resemble each other very much.”

  “It’s okay,” I said quickly. “I know what you mean.”

  And honestly, feature for feature, we probably wouldn’t have been mistaken for brother and sister, since I looked a lot like my mother, although my coloring was completely different from hers. But if someone just glanced at Connor and me, saw the dark brown hair and the gray-green eyes, then they’d probably assume there had to be some sort of family connection.

  Angela’s gaze appraised me for another minute, as if trying to gauge how shaken I was by this whole thing. Right then, I was thinking that I seemed to be handling it better than Connor, since he still just stood there in front of the other couch, as if he’d forgotten that it was meant to be sat upon. Angela tugged at his hand and went to sit down, and he followed her.

  “Sorry,” he said at last, as she poured iced tea from the pitcher that sat on the table in front of us and handed a glass to Jake and me. “It’s just — I guess I’m trying to figure out how this could have happened.”

  Angela raised a finely arched eyebrow as she gave one of the remaining glasses of iced tea to her husband. “Um, Connor, I’m pretty sure I can explain it to you if you’re having a hard time with the concept.”

  Her remark made him let out an uneasy laugh. “That’s not what I meant. It’s more that with the curse…how was it possible?”

  Curse? What the hell were they talking about? I glanced over at Jake, and he looked almost sheepish. Well, he had said there were things he didn’t want to get into right then, that we’d have time to talk later, and apparently this “curse” was one of those things. Part of me wanted to laugh at the mere notion that a curse could be a real thing, but I supposed once you accepted the truth of witches being real, then you just sort of had to roll with whatever other punches came after that.

  “What curse?” I asked, doing my best not to sound accusatory.

  “It’s a really long story,” Connor replied. “But basically, Jeremiah Wilcox, the primus of the clan when the Wilcoxes first came to Flagstaff, had a Navajo wife. She was a very strong magic-worker. They became estranged, and she fell ill, and when she was on her deathbed, she cursed him and all the men of his line so they’d never know joy in their marriages, and that they’d have only sons, no daughters.”

  “Which is why we can’t quite figure out how you were born,” Angela put in. She’d also poured tea for herself, but she held the glass resting on her knee, as if she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to drink any of it or not. “You’re the first female born to Jeremiah’s line since the mid-1800s…well, until my daughter Emily came along.”

  “But she was born after the curse was broken,” Connor reminded her, and for a moment, their gazes caught and held. A lot of history there, obviously, a huge chunk of story that I might or might not learn one day.

  Angela nodded. “Right. And the curse was very definitely still active when Addie came along.”

  Put that way, it did seem very strange. Yes, I had to accept the curse and all its ramifications, but even with that necessary suspension of disbelief, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the concept of a family having generation after generation of sons but no daughters.

  Next to me, Jake shifted. He leaned forward to set his glass of tea down on a coaster, then said, “But Connor, you were an anomaly, too. None of your grandfathers had more than one son.”

  “True.” Connor rubbed a hand over the dark scruff that covered his chin, expression abstracted. I got the impression that he’d puzzled over that particular conundrum more than once in the past. “We still don’t know if that was because the curse was finally beginning to weaken a little, or because there were other forces at work.”

  Clasping her hands on her knee, Angela leaned forward slightly, green eyes intent on the two of us, although I had the feeling she was watching both of us because she didn’t want to seem as though she was staring solely at me. In a way, I could understand why she would want to stare, would want to analyze my features one by one to see if she could detect other, more subtle points of resemblance to her husband. When she spoke, though, it was only to pick up the thread of Connor’s comment.

  “Magic isn’t science,” she said. “There are rules to it, but those rules aren’t always as hard and fast as we’d like. Like Connor said, maybe the curse was finally starting to loosen its grip on the Wilcox clan. Or maybe there were ripples in time and space that made it possible for you to be conceived, Addie. In the end, what really matters is that you’re here now, and we’re going to do whatever is necessary to make sure you feel you’re part of this family.”

  From the way she spoke, I got the feeling that she and Connor had discussed all this pretty much as soon as he hung up the phone from talking to Jake. Which made sense; it was better to present a united front and act as though we were all one big happy family, no matter what he might have privately thought about having a long-lost half-sister turn up out of the blue.

  “Exactly,” Connor said then. Something about his posture seemed a little more relaxed, making me think it wasn’t that he objected to me personally, but had only had some difficulty trying to figure out how the curse had even allowed me to exist in the first place.

  A sudden notion occurred to me, and I said, “Maybe the curse couldn’t affect my mother’s pregnancy because she left Flagstaff so soon after she was — well, so soon after she slept with our father. She was gone within two days.”

  Angela lifted an eyebrow as she considered my suggestion. “That’s possible. It can take up to five or six days for fertilization to occur.” She stopped then, giving a rueful shake of her head. “Sorry — I know that sounded totally clinical. But it’s definitely a possibility.”

  Actually, I didn’t mind that she was being clinical. It was easier to analyze the situation in cold scientific terms than to think about my mother, barely twenty-one, enjoying herself with her handsome older man, never realizing that the little fling she’d embarked on would end up changing her life forever. So many times, I’d wondered what
she would have made of herself, who she could have become, if she’d never met Jackson Wilcox, had never been burdened with a child before she even had a chance to finish college.

  Of course, if she’d ever actually heard me use that word, she would have told me in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t a burden, that she could have decided not to have me, or to give me up for adoption. Because — for whatever crazy reason — she’d wanted me.

  And because of me, she was now dead.

  No. I shoved that thought aside with as much mental force as I could muster. She was dead because of Agent Randall Lenz. He’d come to Kanab in search of me, but that wasn’t my fault. I had no control over his actions. And I knew I needed to repeat that hard fact to myself as many times as necessary to make myself understand and believe it.

  “It’s a very good theory, actually,” Connor said. “Because when Nizhoni — Jeremiah Wilcox’s Navajo wife — cast that curse, I have a feeling she was thinking of the way the clan had made its home in Flagstaff. Witch clans tend to stay put. I doubted it entered her mind that someone might be carrying a child of Jeremiah’s line and actually leave the area.”

  Angela pursed her lips slightly, her expression dubious. “I don’t know — she was so ill with a fever when she made up that curse, I’m not sure she was thinking that rationally. But for whatever reason, it didn’t stick in this particular case.” She smiled at me then, adding, “And we’re all very glad of that.”

  Through all of this, Jake had remained silent, possibly because although he was a member of the Wilcox clan, he wasn’t immediate family to either Connor or me, and therefore thought he shouldn’t be weighing in on the situation. However, he’d apparently decided it was time to reenter the conversation, because he said, “I’m going to have Joanna train her, if that’s okay.”

  “Perfect,” Connor responded. He glanced at me and went on, by way of clarification, “Joanna is the Wilcox clan’s weather-worker. She’ll be able to get you on the right path.”

  I hoped so. My emotions had been up and down enough that day that I’d been worried I might stir up an unwanted thunderstorm, but apparently, my unsettled mental state hadn’t been unsettled enough to warrant that sort of a response. Anyway, Jake had made it sound as though it really wasn’t that difficult to get a grasp on your inborn witchy powers once you knew what you were supposed to be doing, so with any luck, a couple of training sessions with this Joanna person might be enough to prevent any future unintended tornadoes.

  If I stopped having crazy weather follow me wherever I went, I’d be a lot harder to find. Maybe the universe would finally decide to be kind and make sure Agent Lenz had no further way to track my movements.

  “And,” Connor went on, “even though you’re staying at the cottage now, I assume at some point you’ll want something a little more permanent. Once we can get you new identification and a bank account, I’ll transfer your share of the inheritance to you.”

  Even though Jake had hinted this sort of thing was probably going to happen, my newfound brother’s matter-of-fact statement made me stare at him, not sure I’d heard his words correctly. Just like that, he was going to hand a bundle of money over to me?

  “You don’t have to do anything right away,” I said quickly. “I mean, there really isn’t any actual proof that I’m even your sister.”

  Connor didn’t smile, only looked at me straight on, those eyes that were so like mine fixed on me. When he spoke, his tone was gentle…but also very firm. “I think I’m looking at the proof right now. You’re obviously a witch — and I think it’s pretty clear that you’re a Wilcox. Too many details in your story line up with what I already knew. He tried to keep it from Damon and me, but we both knew that our father hooked up with civilian women from time to time. The curse prevented him from remarrying after our mother died, and I suppose he figured that was the safest way to scratch his biological itch.”

  I couldn’t quite prevent myself from wincing in response to that remark. Although I could tell he noticed — his lips thinned slightly — he didn’t bother to apologize. What was the point? While I might have wanted to paint the situation as some sort of doomed May/December romance, I knew that my mother had only been looking for some casual sex to amuse herself, and clearly Jackson Wilcox had harbored pretty much the same intentions.

  “We can do a DNA test, if you want,” Connor continued. “But I don’t think it’s necessary. Honestly, I’m glad to give you the money. I don’t need it.”

  His words had the ring of truth, and yet, I still had a hard time believing what he was telling me. Did money matter so little to him?

  As I sat there on the couch and stared at my brother, it began to sink in that it wasn’t so much that money didn’t matter…more like he had so much of it, giving a chunk to me wasn’t going to make any difference in his life.

  Obviously trying to defuse the tension between us, Angela said with a grin, “He doesn’t need it because he married a rich chick.”

  He put a hand on her knee, matching her grin with one of his own. “That’s right. This probably feels strange to you, Addie, but we’re more about making sure the money we have enhances and enables our lives than worrying about how much we actually have. When I say it won’t make a difference to me to give you your share of the inheritance, it’s only the truth. Whereas I know it will make a huge difference in your life.”

  “All right,” I said reluctantly. Then, partly because I was honestly curious and partly because I wanted to know what I was getting myself into, I added, “So…how much money are we talking about here?”

  Connor rubbed a tanned hand over the stubble on his chin. “Mmm…about two and a half million, I think. Or maybe closer to three million. I haven’t checked the latest statement from my stockbroker.”

  That might have been the first time in my life I’d ever been rendered truly speechless. I sat there, staring at this man who’d turned out to be my half-brother, and thought I had to have misheard him. No way in the world was I about to have two million dollars — or possibly closer to three — dropped into my lap like that.

  Jake shifted on the couch next to me. Although I couldn’t say exactly how I knew, I got the very strong impression that he wished he could reach over and take my hand, let me hold on to him as I did my best to deal with this latest shock. But while he’d offered such a gesture of encouragement not too much earlier, I guessed he didn’t want to offer that sort of comfort in front of Connor and Angela. Probably a good thing; I was already having a hard time sorting out my thoughts about Jake Wilcox, and better not to wrestle with that particular issue in front of an audience.

  At last, I blurted, “What am I supposed to do with that kind of money?”

  “Anything you like,” Angela said, her full mouth curving a little at the corners. “Finish college…buy a house. Spend a week at a Scottsdale resort getting pedicures and massages. Whatever works for you.”

  I’d honestly never even thought about spa treatments — who had the time for those sorts of things? — but yes, definitely go and get my degree. A house…sure. But I vowed whatever I ended up doing, it would be after soberly analyzing my options and deciding what would be the best return for my investment. I wanted to make sure that whatever my future plans turned out to be, they would have met my mother’s approval…if she’d only lived long enough to see them for herself.

  “Northern Pines University is right in Flagstaff,” Jake offered. “Most of us Wilcoxes go to college there. But there’s Arizona State University down in Tempe, or the University of Arizona in Tucson. You’ll have lots of options.”

  More options than I’d probably know what to do with. In that moment, though, I resolved inwardly to go to Northern Pines. After all, I’d only just discovered this side of my family. Why would I want to travel to the other end of the state to go to college when I had one right there in Wilcox territory?

  “And you don’t have to decide anything right away,” Connor told me. “Work with Jo
anna first to learn how to control your talent. Get settled in Flagstaff and meet more of your cousins.” His eyes met mine, and I saw sadness in those mossy depths. “Give yourself time to grieve.”

  His words were enough to bring back the lump in my throat, and I reached for my iced tea and made myself drink some, hoping that might help. I wasn’t sure whether it really did, but at least doing so made me focus on something other than how much I really didn’t want to cry in front of this newfound family of mine.

  When I thought it was safe to speak, I asked, “And what about Agent Lenz?”

  Connor’s mouth tightened. Voice brisk, he said, “We’ll take care of that. The Wilcoxes are a force to be reckoned with. If he comes snooping around, he’s going to regret it.”

  Looking at the man who was the head of the Wilcox witch clan, I found myself inclined to believe what he had just said. His expression had grown grim, and I fancied he looked far more like our father in that moment than he usually did.

  But then he seemed to relax, adding, “Now that we’ve taken care of business, how about you come upstairs and meet your nephew and nieces?”

  Of course, I agreed. I might have lost one family…but I’d somehow gained another.

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