An Ill Wind

by Christine Pope

  “And we go in and grab the books, and you send us away,” Cassandra said.

  “Exactly.”

  On the surface, it all sounded pretty simple…provided Gabriel’s magic really was powerful enough to do everything he said it could. So far, Tony didn’t see much reason to doubt him. He didn’t know of anyone — except Miranda and possibly her parents — who could teleport from place to place with such ease, not to mention displaying the vast variety of abilities Gabriel apparently possessed.

  “What about the truck?” he asked.

  “What about it?” Cassandra said.

  “Rental companies take a dim view of vehicles not being returned,” he pointed out. “The security deposit is being held against my credit card, remember.”

  “Someone from San Matías will drive the truck back to San Salvador,” Gabriel said. “It will not be a problem.”

  Well, it wouldn’t be a problem if everything went smoothly. If the plan backfired and Vicénte figured out his brother was behind the attempt to steal the books, then Tony kind of doubted any of the Escobar clan’s lackeys in the village would be too eager to give his accomplices a helping hand.

  Of course, if that happened, then the deposit on the rental truck would probably be the least of his worries….

  “We have luggage at our Airbnb, too,” Cassandra said. Now she was frowning slightly, as if she’d realized that there could be drawbacks to Gabriel’s form of instantaneous travel.

  “Which you can pay someone to pack and ship back to the U.S. for you,” Gabriel countered. “Do you think any of that is more important than getting your clan’s books away from my brother?”

  “No,” Cassandra said at once. “You’re right, of course. So when do you want to do all this?”

  “Now,” Gabriel replied. “Or at least, in a few hours. The women go in to clean during the afternoon so that everything is tidy for his evening meal.”

  Vicénte sounded like one demanding s.o.b. He probably didn’t pay them for their work, either…no doubt he figured that the honor of serving the Escobar primus should be enough.

  “All right,” Cassandra said. “Tell us exactly what we need to do.”

  18

  On the surface, it was a simple enough plan. Gabriel would send Alba and Jimena — the two women who kept his brother’s house clean — on an errand to San Matías to get them out of the way for a few hours…and also to provide them with an alibi, just in case something went wrong and Vicénte suspected them of stealing his precious books. They would be seen by enough people in San Matías that it would be clear they had nothing to do with the theft.

  With Alba and Jimena gone, Gabriel would cast the illusion on Cassandra and Tony to make them look like the two women, and they would enter his house through the kitchen as usual, then go to the room on the ground floor of the house that he’d turned into his library. Once there, they would fill up the nylon bags Cassandra had stashed in her purse with the stolen grimoires, and he would send the two of them away with no one the wiser.

  Of course, the simpler the plan, it seemed the more things that could go wrong with it.

  Unfortunately, she and Tony didn’t have much of a choice. Cassandra knew there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of them getting that close to the books without Gabriel’s assistance. They needed him to get them inside the house, and safely away as well. Even going flat out in their rented pickup truck, there was too much risk of someone catching up with them on the way back to San Salvador, or even at the airport. Security here in El Salvador wasn’t the same as it was in the U.S., and it was entirely possible that the Escobars could grab her and Tony somewhere in the terminal before they even boarded their plane. Gabriel could send them away in the blink of an eye. You really couldn’t do much better than that.

  While they were waiting for the proper time to arrive, he played the gracious host, giving them water tart with lemon, feeding them pupusas — traditional masa flour turnovers filled with cheese, or beans, or spicy shredded pork. Although Cassandra had had pupusas at Salvadoran restaurants in Arizona, these were definitely the best she’d ever had, fresh and not doughy at all, and with spices that were subtly different from the ones she’d eaten before.

  He asked about their clans, and was obviously relieved to hear that Tony’s mother hadn’t suffered any permanent harm.

  “I tried to be careful,” he said, “but it’s not always possible to tell how a spell will rebound on a person.”

  “She’s fine,” Tony said. His earlier anger had disappeared, although Cassandra had a feeling he wouldn’t have been nearly as relaxed if he hadn’t heard from his sister Ava that Sophia was almost back to her old self. “My sister says she’s up and walking and doing well.”

  “The mind-reading sister,” Gabriel remarked, and Tony grinned.

  “Yes, Ava. She wasn’t too happy about Cassandra and me coming to El Salvador.”

  “I imagine she was only being protective.”

  “Maybe,” Tony allowed, although he didn’t seem convinced. “Honestly, I think she was kind of ticked I was getting to see a part of the world that she’d never be able to visit.”

  “Yes, it is difficult sometimes, knowing we must all be constrained by the territories we were born in.” Gabriel reached for his water glass, looking contemplative.

  “Is all of El Salvador the Escobars’ territory?” Cassandra asked. She’d been wondering this ever since they’d landed in San Salvador, since she hadn’t felt even the slightest twinge of another witch or warlock’s presence in the capital city.

  “Yes,” Gabriel replied. “Actually, our territory extends slightly over the border into Honduras as well.”

  “But you all live in Pico Negro,” Tony said.

  “Mostly. Some of us have holdings in other parts of the country — like my house here — but in general, the Escobars like to keep to themselves.”

  Well, except when they wander into San Salvador looking for young women to forcibly seduce, Cassandra thought. The story of Gabriel’s mother haunted her. How terrible to have been used in such a way, to know that you’d lost nearly a year of your life, had a child, and yet couldn’t remember anything of where you’d been, of who had done such a thing to you.

  She wondered if Gabriel’s brother Vicénte had done the same thing, or whether he’d taken a wife from among his own people. Then she recalled that Gabriel had said something about his brother starting a family of his own, although he hadn’t mentioned anything else about them. In a way, that was probably good; while Vicénte didn’t sound like a very nice guy, Cassandra still didn’t want to think about being forced into a situation where she or Tony would have to hurt or kill someone who was a husband and a father.

  But no, it wouldn’t come to that. Gabriel would sneak them in to take the books and get them out afterward, and Vicénte would never have to know they’d been in his home.

  “Let me tell you of Pico Negro, so you know what to expect,” Gabriel said then, setting down his half-eaten pupusa. “There are several thousand of us, so it is actually a town larger than San Matías, although it remains hidden from the world. There are no roads, only paths through the rainforest, until you get to the town itself. That part has been paved, mostly to control the mud. We have houses and shops and cantinas, and live a self-sufficient existence.”

  “How do you get supplies in there?” Tony asked.

  “They are brought to San Matías, and then taken by hand cart on the forest paths. It is not as difficult as you might think. Also, people have little cleared plots to grow their vegetables, and we also keep goats and chickens.”

  All the comforts of home. Cassandra wondered how they kept themselves from getting completely inbred, but she supposed the Escobars must have people who kept track of all the cousins, just as the stateside clans did, and they probably did bring in nonmagical people from time to time to dilute the Escobar blood a bit. Did those civilians remain silent because of their love for their witchy spouses,
or did the Escobars have some kind of spell that guaranteed none of their secrets would pass beyond the borders of Pico Negro?

  Gabriel went on, “Vicénte’s is the grandest house in the town, of course. It lies on the northern border of the settlement, and has several garden plots and a shed for his herd of goats. We will enter that way, for Alma and Jimena usually stop to check on the animals before they come into the house.”

  “You’re not worried about your brother being there?” Tony asked.

  “No, because in the afternoons he usually spends time at one of the cantinas, drinking cerveza or tequila.”

  Great, Cassandra thought. So we’re not just dealing with a powerful asshole of a primus here, but a possibly drunk one, too.

  However, Tony didn’t seem too troubled by this particular revelation. “Good. That means he probably won’t be paying too close attention to anything.”

  “I would not be so sure of that. He drinks, yes, but not to the point where he is impaired.”

  Hmm. Maybe a drunk primus would have been better. However, Cassandra knew they’d just have to roll with whatever happened, since they didn’t have any choice at this point. Those books had to be taken away from Vicénte Escobar, no matter what.

  “But he won’t come home while we’re there,” she said, and Gabriel nodded.

  “The chances of that are very small.”

  “Wife?” Tony asked. “Children?”

  “He has none,” Gabriel replied, and now he looked a little troubled. “That is, he had a wife, but she died in childbirth, and the son my brother wanted so desperately died with her.”

  This revelation startled Cassandra…and also revealed the reason why Gabriel hadn’t said much about his brother’s family. While she could understand that such things might happen under normal circumstances, and that this sort of tragedy might not be so very strange in such a remote community, they weren’t dealing with normal circumstances here. “Your clan doesn’t have a healer?” she asked.

  “We do,” Gabriel told her, “but even Lupe could not save Vicénte’s wife. It happens sometimes, despite a healer’s efforts. At any rate, you do not have to worry about anyone else being in the house when we arrive. It is because my brother does not have a wife that he has Alma and Jimena in to clean and cook for him.”

  Well, Cassandra hoped they’d be out of there before the cooking was supposed to start, because she knew there was no way in the world she could fool anyone that she was competent in a kitchen. With coaching, she could make roast chicken and rice, and that was about as far as her culinary talents extended.

  But she reassured herself that they’d be long gone before Vicénte sat down to his evening pupusas, or whatever might be on that night’s bill of fare. She had to confess she didn’t know much about Salvadoran cuisine; the meal she and Tony had eaten that morning had been very similar to the food they’d had in Baja. From what she could tell, a lot of the dishes seemed to cross over.

  And she realized she was distracting herself with ruminating on the differences between Mexican and Salvadoran cuisine because that was better than worrying about their upcoming raid on Vicénte Escobar’s house. Even though she knew he wouldn’t be around, and apparently didn’t have the magical ability to tell when interlopers entered his village, she could feel her stomach beginning to knot up from anxiety.

  That anxiety only worsened when Gabriel glanced out the window, as if to confirm the time of day, then said, “I must leave you for a few moments. I will go to Pico Negro and send the two women down to San Matías.”

  “They won’t think that’s strange?” Cassandra asked. “I mean, you sending them on a random errand like that?”

  “No, because Vicénte often has me act as his intermediary. That is also why no one should think anything strange about me walking with them over to the house.”

  Too good to talk to the help, she thought, but didn’t say anything. She’d never before encountered a warlock who treated members of his own clan like servants rather than family members. It was strange, because although people in a witch family might barter services — gardening for house painting, or tax preparation, or whatever — if they were going to hire people for ongoing domestic help, then it was always civilians.

  But obviously the Escobars were in a world of their own, one that she’d be glad to get away from as soon as possible. Maybe they’d taken up the practice of having their own people act as servants because they kept themselves so isolated. Whatever the reason, it really didn’t matter in the long run.

  “Okay,” Tony said. “Cassandra and I will hang tight here until you come back.”

  Obviously, because neither of them even knew where they were. She was pretty sure this house wasn’t in Pico Negro, but otherwise, they could be any place within the borders of El Salvador…or even in Honduras, since Gabriel had said the Escobar clan holdings extended that far.

  At least the house was beautiful. She could think of worse places to have to hang out and wait.

  “It won’t be long,” Gabriel promised them.

  And then he disappeared.

  Cassandra blinked. Of course she knew intellectually that the Escobar warlock was able to teleport, since he’d brought them here using that means of travel in the first place, but it was one thing to have it happen to you and quite another to sit there and watch a human being disappear into thin air.

  “Kind of freaky, isn’t it?” Tony remarked. He got up from where he was sitting and came over to her, then put his hands on her shoulders and began to rub them gently.

  Ah, that felt good. She hadn’t even realized she was that tense until she felt his fingers massaging the tight muscles of her shoulders and neck. “A little,” she said.

  “Yeah, imagine it happening when you’re standing in a cathedral watching your cousin get married, and his fiancée goes poof into thin air.”

  She turned slightly so she could look up at him. “Is that what happened with Rafe and Miranda? I heard there was some weirdness going on, but I never got the whole story.”

  “Yep, she disappeared in front of everyone. Really crazy, because at the time we’d all heard that she didn’t even have any magic. But they got it all worked out in the end.”

  Despite Simon Escobar’s best efforts. That thought cheered Cassandra up a little; it reminded her that, for all their formidable powers, the Escobars weren’t invincible. They could be beaten.

  She stood up and went to Tony. At once, his arms went around her, as if he knew she needed to feel his touch right then, needed to be reassured that he was going to be at her side through all of this.

  “Do you really think we have a chance?” she asked.

  He bent and kissed her on the top of her head, then brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “Of course we do. I mean, I think we have a much better chance now that we have Gabriel on our side. That guy’s powers are intense.”

  Cassandra couldn’t argue with that assessment. On the other hand…. “I hope he’s really on our side, that this isn’t all just some kind of act to torture us. What if he’s gone to get Vicénte, or other people from his clan? He could have been lying to us this whole time.”

  “But he wasn’t,” came Gabriel’s voice, and both she and Tony startled.

  “I’m sorry,” she said hastily, hoping she hadn’t offended him too much. “I just — that is, I — ”

  “It’s all right,” the Escobar warlock said. Luckily, he didn’t look offended, the expression on his handsome features almost amused, as if he thought it was funny that he’d popped back in on them while they were discussing his possible motivations. “I suppose I would be suspicious, too, if I were in your place. But we are ready — I told Alma and Jimena that Vicénte decided at the last minute he wanted dulce de tres leches cake for his dessert tonight, and that they needed to get fresh cow’s milk down in San Matías. We only have goats in the village, not cows, and so it was not a request that raised their suspicions. And once we are done with this and
are successful, I will make sure to erase that part of their memories so they cannot tell Vicénte that I was the one who sent them down to San Matías.”

  “Going to get milk doesn’t sound like the sort of errand that requires two people,” Cassandra remarked, hoping she didn’t sound too dubious. But come on — two grown women to go fetch some milk?

  Gabriel only smiled. “Normally, I would say yes. But although it is safe enough here, the women of Pico Negro do not leave our little town unaccompanied, which is why the two of them were necessary for this errand. We should have several hours, but it is best if we do this now and get it over with.”

  “Right,” Cassandra said. The knots in her stomach were back, as well as the tension Tony had begun to massage away from her neck.

  “We’re ready,” Tony added.

  He did look ready — chin up, a determined light in his dark eyes. Gazing at him, she thought she’d never loved him as much as she did in that moment…loved him for his unexpected strength, for his dedication to seeing this thing through despite the risks involved.

  “Excellent.” Gabriel was silent for a moment, studying them both. Then he went on, “Tony, you will be Jimena, as she is the taller of the two, and illusions are easier when you don’t have to work quite so hard to make an illusion hide something that is utterly different from its true appearance. So Cassandra, you will be Alba.”

  She nodded. Honestly, she didn’t really care if Gabriel made her look like Mickey Mouse, as long as all this worked.

  And although she didn’t know quite what to expect, since her clan currently didn’t have any illusion-workers, it felt a bit anticlimactic for Gabriel to merely stand there and inhale deeply, then close his eyes. When he opened them, he smiled at her, then Tony.

  “Yes, that should work.”

  There weren’t any mirrors in the room, so Cassandra had no idea what she looked like. However, when she glanced over at Tony, she let out an audible gasp. Standing where he’d been was a tall, thin woman in a plain black skirt and embroidered blouse, her gray-streaked dark hair pulled back into a severe bun.