Darknight (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 2)

by Christine Pope

  My feeling of relief only increased when I got my monthly visitor a few days after New Year’s. Not that getting my period was that much fun, but at least it meant the charm was working, meant that I didn’t have to worry about the curse descending on me. Well, the Wilcox curse anyway.

  Connor asked if I would like to get back to making my jewelry, and offered one of the upstairs bedrooms in the apartment next door for me to use as my studio. That sounded like an excellent idea — after thinking it over for a while, I’d decided to withdraw from my online coursework for a while, and I couldn’t just sit around and watch TV all day. Connor ordered some furniture and equipment for me, had the room painted almost the same cheerful turquoise as my old bedroom back at my aunt’s apartment.

  The supplies, though, I had Sydney bring up. I didn’t want to face the Jerome contingent quite yet, and since my jewelry-making tools and loose stones and other items all fit easily into a few small boxes, she was all too happy to get everything together for me and drive up with Anthony on a Saturday when we could all go out on the town. She seemed to be getting quite a taste for Flagstaff nightlife. Not that I could really blame her. Maybe in the grand scheme of things Flagstaff wasn’t a big city, but compared to Cottonwood it was practically a metropolis.

  All through this placid domesticity, though, I had this niggling sensation in the back of my mind, a feeling that things couldn’t go on like this indefinitely. I wasn’t sure why, because it seemed as if Connor and I were being left alone to live our lives. I tried to tell myself that it was silly, that my unease was probably due to guilt over not returning to Jerome and nothing more, but I couldn’t quite seem to convince myself of that. And as far as I knew, I had absolutely zero precognition, so it couldn’t be some hazy vision of the future trying to work its way into my mind.

  Even so, I managed to shove the feeling away as January began to move into February. Imbolc, the ritual start of spring, came and went with little fanfare; the Wilcoxes didn’t follow the old calendar and holidays the same way the McAllisters did, save the major quarterly observances of the solstice and the equinox. But it was on Imbolc when the homesickness came over me the worst, thinking of how we would be calling on Blessed Brigid, celebrating her with fire and feast. In Flagstaff, February 2nd was Groundhog Day, and that was about it.

  But I pushed the melancholy aside, reminding myself that I was here with Connor, and that was the most important thing. As time passed, either my family would become reconciled to the relationship, or they wouldn’t. I couldn’t put my life on hold simply because they were too narrow-minded to understand that Connor was the only man I’d ever truly want or need.

  A few days after Imbolc, he was just putting the finishing touches on the autumn aspen painting I’d first seen back in December, looking at it with narrowed eyes as he put a dab of color here, a touch of shadow there. I came downstairs from my own studio, fingers tired from wrapping thin copper wire around some new pieces of Kingman turquoise I’d acquired a few weeks earlier.

  “So what are you going to do with that one?” I asked.

  “Stack it up against a wall somewhere, I suppose,” he replied with a shrug. “Or maybe replace one of the paintings in the apartment. It would go pretty well over the fireplace, actually.”

  Coming closer, I admired the sure, strong brush strokes, the way he’d managed to evoke the slanting quality of the autumn light. “Or you could, you know, put it in the gallery.”

  His face went still. “You know I don’t sell my stuff.”

  “Well, why not give it a try?”

  “Because putting my art in the gallery just because it’s my gallery isn’t a good enough reason. It’s like…selling your kid’s finger-paintings or something.”

  “Um, if I had a kid whose finger-painting was this good, I’d sure as hell be selling it.” I wanted to put my arms around him, if only to get that dead expression off his face, but since he was still holding a brush with wet paint on it, I decided that wasn’t such a good idea. “You’re selling my jewelry, aren’t you?”

  “Well, that’s different. People really like it. That’s why I have you working your fingers to the bone, getting together enough stock for Valentine’s Day.”

  That was true. Oh, I wanted to be working, and it was gratifying to see the way my pieces sold so quickly, but the pace at which I’d been churning out earrings and pendants and talismans was a lot more intense than back in Jerome, where the demand hadn’t been as high. “You are a slave driver,” I agreed with a smile. “And I also think you have a weirdly distorted idea of how people are going to receive your work. Why not put a couple in there, see what happens?”

  His expression was still dubious. “I don’t know.”

  “How the hell did you manage to get an MFA if you have so little confidence in your work?”

  “I did, once. But….”

  He let the words trail off, but I had a good idea what he meant. Yes, when he was surrounded by people who encouraged him, he felt good about his art. When he came back to Flagstaff, though, he was stomped on by Damon, who had some weird notion that being an artist wasn’t good enough for a Wilcox. Whatever. Damon seemed to be out of the picture for now, so I certainly didn’t care what he thought…and neither should Connor.

  “Then this should be a real confidence booster. And if they don’t sell, if they sit neglected in a corner for more than a week, then I swear I’ll never bring it up again. Deal?”

  For a minute he didn’t say anything, just stared at the painting, brows lowered. His fingers tightened around the brush he held. Then, slowly, “Deal. I’ll pick two or three and get them installed tomorrow. I needed to do some rearranging anyway, since one artist who was supposed to get me several pieces just emailed this morning and said she was running behind schedule. This can fill in the gap.”

  “Good,” was all I said, but inwardly I was rejoicing. Maybe once he got some outside confirmation of how good he really was, he’d stop this nonsense about only painting for himself. Not that I wanted him to do anything that didn’t make him happy, but he was going to paint no matter what. It was a compulsion. He could go a few days without picking up a brush if he had to. However, he’d get moody if too much time passed without working on something. The gallery wasn’t so busy that he had to spend all day there, especially now the holidays were past, so most of the time he could paint four or five hours a day. We were going to end up drowning in canvases if he didn’t start selling some of them.

  The next morning he took three of his paintings down to the gallery with him — one of a windswept tree on the Grand Canyon’s rim, one a rather brooding winter scene with a dark pine forest, patches of snow gleaming on the ground, and another that looked like it might be someplace in Sedona, maybe in Oak Creek Canyon, with autumn-hued trees hanging over a narrow stream and red rock canyons looming above.

  “Don’t expect too much,” he told me. “Even pieces from in-demand artists can take a while to move. It’s not like buying a postcard or something.”

  “I know that,” I replied. “I dropped about ten grand a few months ago on work for the Jerome house.”

  His eyes widened a little. “So who’s the rich one around here?”

  “We both are, I guess, which makes things nice and even. Just promise that you’re going to put a fair market price on these.”

  “Oh, I was thinking maybe fifty bucks for the big one,” he began, and I swatted him on the arm.

  “Don’t you dare!”

  A flashing grin, and he bent down to kiss me before tucking the two smaller paintings under his left arm and picking up the remaining one, of Oak Creek Canyon, with his free hand.

  “Can you get the door for me?” he asked.

  I hurried over and opened it for him, then watched him go, smiling as I shut the door. Once I was alone, though, the smile faded. What if I was wrong? What if people didn’t respond to his paintings the same way I did? Being good was no guarantee of success.

  Si
nce it was a fairly quiet time of year, his assistant Joelle more or less ran the gallery, so he didn’t stay down there after he’d gotten the paintings installed. He came back up and started working on a new one, now that the aspen picture was drying. It was fascinating to watch his process at this stage, the way he arranged a bunch of photos of the scene he wanted to paint on a tack board to one side, then started sketching in the outlines of the projected painting on the canvas. More trees, these ones like flaming torches in a high alpine meadow.

  I lingered to one side, watching him, wondering if he was going to tell me to leave, but he didn’t. Maybe he’d forgotten I was there. In a way I didn’t mind, because it gave me a chance to really study him, watch the fine profile outlined by the light pouring in through the big windows off to one side, the way his heavy dark hair kept falling forward as he worked and how he kept shoving it out of the way with an impatient hand. His hands were beautiful, too, lean and strong, the fingers long and sensitive. I recalled how those fingers felt, touching me, and a little sigh escaped my throat.

  He turned then and looked at me. “This must be sort of dull for you.”

  “No, I like watching you work, if it doesn’t bother you.”

  “It doesn’t bother me at all. I’m just surprised you’re not working on your own stuff.”

  “I will. My fingers are a little sore.” Which was true. Setting stones and bending wire for six or seven hours a day took far more of a toll than doing the same thing for two or three hours a couple of times a week.

  “Mmm…I’ll have to do something about that.” He set down his pencil and came over to me, lifted my fingers to his mouth and kissed them gently, one at a time.

  Delicious shivers worked their way up and down my spine. “I think maybe you need to take a break, too.”

  “Great idea.” He took my hand and started to lead me toward the door so we could go over to the apartment, but then his phone, stuck in his jeans pocket, started to ring. Ignoring it, he pulled me out to the landing.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?”

  “Not important. It can go to voicemail.”

  I wasn’t about to argue, not with the heat coiling in my belly, needing release. It wouldn’t be the first time we shared a little afternoon delight, and obviously he didn’t think it was going to break his concentration too much. Maybe it would even help.

  His phone went quiet, then started up again. We looked at each other.

  “Go ahead and answer it,” I told him. “If they’re calling back this quickly, they must have a reason.”

  “Or it could be telemarketers,” he argued.

  “I’ve never once heard you have to deal with a telemarketer. I figured maybe you’d put some kind of Wilcox whammy on your phone so only people you want to talk to get through.”

  “Very funny,” he said, but he did pull the cell out of his pocket and look at the display, then frown a little as he lifted the phone to his ear. “Joelle? Is there a problem?”

  Silence as he listened to what she had to say.

  “What? No, that can’t — ” He stopped; apparently Joelle had cut him off. “Okay, well, yeah, I can be down there in a few minutes. Just hang on.” Shaking his head, he ended the call and shoved his phone back in his pocket.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Something wrong?”

  “No.” Incongruously, he began to smile. “Something right. Really right. Joelle said a man came in and asked about my paintings, said he was really impressed.”

  “That’s awesome!” I exclaimed, and reached out and pulled him to me.

  “There’s more. Apparently he owns one of the biggest galleries in Sedona, and he wants to do a show of my work. He’s down there, waiting to talk to me.”

  “Then what are you waiting for? Go!” I let go of him, laughing at his obvious befuddlement. “I’ll still be here when you get back…promise,” I added with a wink.

  That seemed to spur him to action. He hurried down the stairs, and I watched him go, smiling and thinking how well our lives seemed to go when we didn’t have to worry about Damon sticking his nose into them.

  * * *

  Everything seemed to go on fast-forward after that. The owner of the Sedona gallery, one Eli Michaels, came upstairs to see the rest of Connor’s paintings, both in the studio and in the apartment. Thank the Goddess that both places were reasonably clean, and that I was more or less presentable, since Connor and I tended to go out for lunch a good deal and I tried to make sure I was ready to go at a moment’s notice. To tell the truth, I was pretty sure Eli barely noticed I was there; he was far more interested in looking over all those canvases.

  “Impressive,” was his evaluation. “I’d like to do a show at the end of the month, if you can be ready for that. We need to get your work out there as soon as possible.”

  Connor sort of stammered out a “sure,” sounding very unlike his usual confident self.

  “Excellent,” said Eli. “I’ll be in touch. If it’s not asking too much, I’d prefer that you take down the pieces in your own gallery. I’d like this to be a proper debut.”

  “No problem.”

  “Very good. I’ll let myself out.”

  And that was that. Connor and I looked at each other, and I let out a little squeal and flung myself at him. We celebrated properly, upstairs in the big king-size bed, and then went out for a decadent dinner at the Cottage Restaurant, where I had what was probably one of the best meals I’d ever eaten in my life. Then of course I had to call Sydney and tell her the good news, promising her that as soon as I had a firm date for the art opening, I’d let her know.

  When I hung up, though, I realized that I should have been calling my aunt to tell her about it — if things were different. If we hadn’t avoided speaking to each other for the last month and a half.

  I also realized that Connor hadn’t called anyone at all. “Shouldn’t you at least let Damon know? He might surprise you and actually be proud.”

  “I doubt it,” Connor replied, his expression grim. “I’ll let Lucas know. He’ll spread the word.”

  That seemed to be that. I could tell he didn’t want me to press the issue, so I decided to let it alone for now. Once we did have the actual date and time from Eli Michaels — February 27th — I emailed Aunt Rachel and told her the news. She could ignore it if she chose. The decision lay with her. At least the opening would be in Sedona, in neutral territory. I didn’t think anything in the world could have induced her to set foot in Flagstaff, except maybe a phone call from me saying it had all been a terrible mistake and that I needed her to pick me up right now. That might do the trick.

  But since that wasn’t going to happen, it seemed a meeting in Sedona was my best bet for seeing her any time soon. Not that I was going to hold my breath.

  The rest of February whizzed by, punctuated by a lovely Valentine’s Day where Connor and I both took the day off and went up to the Snow Bowl and had lunch in the snow, then came back to town and spent the afternoon making love before going out for another amazing dinner. The fateful Thursday arrived, and we drove down to Sedona, twisting our way through Oak Creek Canyon. It had flurried a little the night before, but the narrow highway was clear, moonlight gleaming on the snow between the trees.

  I honestly didn’t know what to expect from that evening. Sure, I’d been to art openings in Jerome, but they were friendly, folksy affairs for the most part. This was a very different sort of thing, the kind of event announced with glossy postcards sent all over Sedona and Flagstaff, the kind where I actually went out and bought a new outfit, a slinky black wrap dress and boots with actual heels. Connor fussed and worried and ended up wearing his usual dark sweater over jeans and boots, but it worked for him. Besides, no one expects the artist to show up wearing a suit.

  The gallery was almost intimidatingly elegant, with its muted lighting and glossy wooden floors. It was huge, too, so big that Connor’s exhibit only took up one large room — and he was displaying a lot of paintings
, fifty in all. Despite the size of the space, people already crowded the exhibit hall.

  I blinked, realizing I recognized a good number of the attendees from the Wilcox holiday potluck. For some reason, I really hadn’t expected that. Neither had Connor, apparently; he looked at them in surprise, even as Lucas approached us with a grin, plastic flute of champagne clutched in one hand.

  “This is amazing,” he said. “Can’t believe you’ve been hiding this from us all these years!”

  Connor managed a watery smile. “Well, I did get my degree in studio art.”

  “True, but I suppose I never really thought about it. I mean, my degree’s in anthropology, but it doesn’t mean I use it.” He transferred his attention me. “And I’m guessing you’re the one who coaxed him out of his shell?”

  “Well….” I didn’t want to tell Lucas just how much poking and prodding had been involved. That was between Connor and me. The important thing was that he had finally gotten his art out there for the world to see.

  But somehow Lucas seemed to guess, because his brows lifted, and he shot a sly glance at Connor. “That’s about what I thought. As they say, behind every great man is a woman. Good job, Angela.” Then he looked past us, surprise flitting over his features. “Looks like your brother actually did decide to show up. I wasn’t sure.”

  “Great,” Connor muttered.

  “I’ll head him off at the pass,” Lucas said, and clapped Connor on the shoulder before moving off toward the entrance to the exhibit hall.

  I shifted my position slightly so I could see where he was heading. Sure enough, there was Damon, looking elegant in a black jacket over a dark gray dress shirt and jeans. At his side was the young woman I first saw at the holiday potluck. Now that I could get a better look at her, I saw that she had the graceful bone structure most of the Wilcoxes seemed to share, but her hair and eyes were much lighter.