The Witches of Canyon Road, Books 1-3

by Christine Pope

  “Wow, that’s pretty good.” Actually, it had been flawless, as far as I’d been able to tell. Since I’d never been around the real-life actor, I had no idea whether Simon had gotten the height right, but his face and general build had been perfect. “I guess if this warlock gig doesn’t work out, you could always be a celebrity impersonator…or a stunt double.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.” He was smiling now, clearly amused by my comment. “For now, though, I think the warlock thing is working okay for me.” A pause, and then he said, “How are you with fire?”

  “Well, I’m not a pyro or anything,” I replied, my tone cautious.

  “I meant, could you always call the fire, even though you didn’t have any other magic?”

  “Yes.” That, and unlocking doors, had been about all I could do. But at least I’d been able to touch my finger to the wick of a candle and make it light, or get a fire going in a hearth without having to use a lighter or kindling.

  “Good. Then that much magic has always been a part of you.” He looked around at our surroundings, at the frost-yellowed grass beneath our feet. “Let’s move over to the driveway. It’s probably safer.”

  At first I wasn’t sure what he was driving at, but then I realized that the spot where we stood was pretty combustible. “Right.”

  I followed him out of the garden and over to the driveway, which was very wide at that spot, spreading out from the narrow, nearly one-lane trail it was near the gate to the property, to an area wide enough to match the large three-bay garage. The gravel here was so immaculate, it looked as though it had been refreshed right before we moved in…or rather, right after the actor who’d occupied the place before us had vacated the property. It was so smooth and perfect that I really, really hoped I wouldn’t scorch it too badly.

  “Let’s try a small wall of flames first,” Simon said, stopping about twenty feet from the garage door.

  I gave a half-hearted chuckle. “Oh, is that all?”

  He didn’t smile. “You were able to perform an illusion without breaking a sweat, and also to teleport yourself into the house. This shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Easy for him to say. Even though I had seen the evidence of my growing powers for myself, I still worried that I wouldn’t be able to pull this one off. But I knew I had to try. I had to see just how strong my magic really was.

  I drew in a breath and focused on the section of driveway where I wanted the flames to go. Nothing big, just something a few feet high and a few feet long. Enough to show that I could do it, but not so much that the fire I’d called would get out of hand.

  And…nothing.

  “It’s not working,” I said.

  Simon came up to me, placed his hands on my shoulders. “You’re tense. Why does this task frighten you so much?”

  “Because….” I paused, trying to figure out why I couldn’t bring the fire the way I’d been able to perform the other stunts he’d asked of me. According to Simon, it was only a matter of degree; I’d been doing something similar for half my life. “I guess because I’m worried about what will happen if I can’t control it. There’s no chance of anyone getting hurt if I cast an illusion on my hair, or even if I teleport into an empty kitchen. But fire….”

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” he said, fingers digging into the taut muscles of my shoulders. He wasn’t being gentle, but it still felt good…except that I still had to do my best not to tense up because of his closeness. Only a few inches more, and he would have been pressing against me from shoulder to groin. And yet his touch was almost impersonal, more like a massage therapist doing his job than someone who was looking for any kind of physical intimacy.

  Since I didn’t quite know how to react, I decided to do my best to ignore the fingers kneading the back of my neck. “I’m a worrier. It’s what I do.”

  He chuckled, the sound warm and throaty at my ear. “Well, I suppose sometimes that’s helpful, but right now, it’s just getting in your way. I’m here. I’m watching. The second it looks as though you might lose control, I can take over. There’s really no risk involved.”

  Those words did reassure me somewhat. I hadn’t stopped to think that Simon could step in if the experiment went sideways…literally.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll try again.”

  Another breath, another glimpse of the core of magic that burned deep within me. It knew it had the power; I just needed to get out of its way.

  At once a wall of flame three feet high burst into existence a few feet from where we stood. No illusion here — I felt the heat of that fire coming toward me in waves.

  “Awesome,” Simon said. He let go of my shoulders and stepped back a pace. “Make it a little taller.”

  I nodded, and the fire rose another foot. However, it didn’t advance, didn’t move except for the natural flickers of the individual flames. “Good enough?” I asked.

  “I’d say that was a more than adequate demonstration. Can you put it out?”

  A blink, and the flames were gone. There weren’t even any scorch marks on the gravel surface of the driveway, which made me let out a little sigh of relief. I supposed we could have fixed any damage one way or another — maybe by creating a helpful illusion — but better that we didn’t have to go to those lengths in the first place.

  “Perfect.” He extended a hand, and I took it. “I’d say this calls for some lunch.”

  I was ravenously hungry. Was my hunger caused by all the magic I’d just been playing with, or simply because I’d eaten only an English muffin for breakfast, and that was now hours earlier? I couldn’t say one way or another, but it definitely felt good to pull a bunch of sandwich makings out of the fridge and pantry and proceed to create quite a mess in the kitchen.

  “I knew you could do it,” Simon told me as he spread dijon mustard on some whole wheat bread. “You just needed to have more confidence in yourself.”

  Well, I would have been the first to admit that I was sorely lacking in confidence, at least when it came to magic. Then again, I’d had every reason to believe my powers…gifts…whatever you wanted to call them…were basically nonexistent.

  “I think it’s more than just confidence,” I replied, carefully placing a slice of provolone on top of the mound of ham I’d slapped on a slice of bread. “It has to be something else.”

  “Like what?”

  Since Simon appeared to be done with the dijon, I reached for it and spread a thin film of the mustard on a second piece of bread. Satisfied with the result, I finished assembling the sandwich and put it on one of the plates he’d set out. “I don’t know for sure,” I said. “Maybe it’s this place.”

  One eyebrow went up. “Santa Fe?”

  “I know that sounds crazy, but I just didn’t show any signs of magical ability until I came here.”

  He was quiet for a moment, appearing to consider my words as he finished up with his own sandwich. Once he’d put it on a plate, he said, “I never thought of Santa Fe as being particularly powerful that way.”

  It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “Places are magical?”

  “Of course they are. You’ve been to Sedona, right?”

  “Lots of times.”

  “And you’ve never felt the energy there?”

  Well, I always thought I could sense something special in Sedona, but I never knew for sure whether I was falling prey to all the hype about its supposed energy vortexes. Then again, the one thing the Wilcox and the McAllister clans had agreed on back when they were feuding was that neither clan could establish a branch there, supposedly because they didn’t want either family to gain an advantage by gaining access to Sedona’s mystical powers.

  “I guess so,” I said slowly. “But it isn’t something I tried to actively work with, probably because I never thought I had enough magic for it to matter one way or another.”

  “Maybe it wouldn’t have worked for you. I don’t know.” Simon picked up his sandwich and took a bite. “
Let’s go sit down.”

  We took our sandwiches and some glasses of iced tea we’d poured for ourselves over to the kitchen table. After we’d both taken our seats, I said, “You think it wouldn’t have worked because my powers weren’t ready to wake up?”

  “Possibly.” He took another bite of sandwich, washed it down with some tea, and added, “Yours is a really rare case, so it’s hard to say what would have worked and what wouldn’t. Maybe Sedona’s energies weren’t the right kind to mesh with yours. I don’t know about Santa Fe — I mean, it’s a place that artists and musicians and writers have been coming to for more than a hundred years, so it has to have its own kind of energy, even if it isn’t talked up as much. Maybe, for whatever reason, that energy did speak to you.”

  I wondered if that was what Rafe’s grandmother had seen, the vision that had come to her while I was still in the womb. But then, if she’d seen that it would be this place that would finally bring me to my powers, you’d think she would have also seen that things between Rafe and me weren’t going to work out so well.

  Or so you’d think. Visions could be tricky things. My cousin Caitlin, who still functioned as the McAllister clan’s seer even though she was married to a de la Paz and living in Tucson, had once said she really didn’t have control over hers, that they’d come on her when she least expected them. And although her visions mostly did seem fairly literal, they weren’t always helpful because they showed her things and places she didn’t necessarily recognize. It must have been rough to have those strange images intrude whenever they felt like it, and although I’d bemoaned my lack of powers, I also was secretly relieved that I hadn’t turned out to be the McAllisters’ next seer.

  As to what had awakened my own powers, I supposed in the end it didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were definitely alive and kicking now, and I could control them. It was also gratifying to know that I could use several different talents, too, that, like my parents, an array of magic seemed to answer my commands. Even the two of them hadn’t been able to manage anything more than the single innate power they’d been born with, until they’d figured out how to combine their energies. I wasn’t like that, though; clearly, I didn’t need anyone’s help to teleport one minute and call the fire the next.

  “Maybe it did,” I said. “If that’s the case, then I’m glad I came here, even with everything that happened with Rafe.”

  Simon ran a finger along the edge of his plate, not quite looking at me. “I thought you were going to let that go.”

  “I am,” I said. “I will. But I also can’t pretend that it didn’t happen. For now, yes, I can ignore the Castillos. Eventually, though, we’re going to have to come to some kind of reckoning, if for no other reason than our clans need to find a way to get past this.”

  He looked up, and his gaze met mine, dark and searching. It was hard not to look away, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what I might find in those night-black eyes. However, I didn’t detect much of anything, except possibly a bit of rueful surprise. “Spoken like the true daughter of a prima,” he said. “And you’re right, of course. But it will definitely help that when you talk to them again, you’ll be coming from a position of strength. You won’t be someone Genoveva Castillo can boss around.”

  Hopefully not, although I could still see how it might be hard to face down the Castillo prima, even if armed with a whole new set of magical talents. “Well, I doubt she’ll want to have much to do with me,” I told Simon. “I’m pretty sure most of the negotiations will take place between her and my parents. Since I’m not engaged to Rafe anymore, I should be mostly out of the picture.”

  “Good,” Simon said, and I looked at him with some surprise. He went on, “That is, it will be good if they leave you out of their crap. Then you’ll be free to do what you want with your life.”

  That would be a blessing. I’d spent so long thinking I had no control over anything, that I had to marry Rafe and try to make a life with him, that it was almost dizzying to contemplate what my future might be now. My life would no longer be shaped by plans made before I was even born. I could do anything, go anywhere.

  Well, within limits. Witches and warlocks didn’t just pull up stakes and settle in another clan’s territory without express permission, and that permission was unlikely to be granted. We’d always stayed in our own little enclaves and hadn’t ventured out much. But still, when I went back to Arizona, I could go where I wanted. I could stay in Jerome, or move up to Flagstaff.

  Or even head south to Phoenix or Tucson, depending on what happened between Simon and me.

  That thought sent a flush of embarrassment to my cheeks. It was way too early to be thinking about that sort of progress in our relationship. I still wasn’t even sure how I felt about him. And I definitely didn’t want to be one of those girls who immediately glommed on to another guy when their first relationship went south.

  “That’s kind of overwhelming,” I said with a laugh that I hoped didn’t sound too forced. “I think I’d rather concentrate on the next few days.”

  “We can do that. In fact, I was thinking we should go out tonight. You know, to celebrate.”

  The notion seemed somewhat daring, despite Simon’s reassurances that he’d be able to mask our magical natures from other witches and warlocks. But then I thought, why not? Today I’d seen a real breakthrough. If that wasn’t a cause for celebration, I didn’t know what was.

  “Yes,” I said, “let’s go out.”

  8

  Trespassers

  Rafe

  The air hit him as he exited the plane, warm, muggy, despite it being early November. The plane they’d taken from Albuquerque to San Antonio was so small that it hadn’t even connected up to one of the airports’ two terminals, had let its passengers disembark using one of those rolling portable staircases.

  Behind him, Cat dug her sunglasses out of her purse and planted them on her nose. At least they didn’t have to worry about baggage claim, because they hadn’t brought anything with them. If the situation went south and they ended up having to stay here overnight, they’d have to shop for some supplies, but Rafe hoped that wouldn’t be necessary.

  “This way,” he said, leading his sister across the tarmac and into the nearest terminal. He ignored the baggage claim and threaded his way through the crowds so they emerged on the walkway in front of the building. A long line of Ryde vehicles waited there, ready to take all the disembarking travelers to their various destinations.

  He and Cat climbed into the nearest unoccupied vehicle, a low-slung van built for carrying lots of luggage. Too bad all that space was going to waste, but he couldn’t worry about it now.

  “Destination?” the Ryde’s built-in AI inquired.

  Rafe pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up the address Daniel had given him. “Um, 217 Sandstone Court.”

  “Thank you, sir. We will arrive in approximately twenty minutes if current traffic patterns hold.”

  “Great.”

  The van pulled away from the curb and waited for a few seconds for the pedestrian traffic in front of them to ebb. Then it navigated toward the access road, presumably so they could exit the airport altogether.

  Which they did a minute or so later, heading toward downtown San Antonio’s gleaming skyscrapers, although Rafe knew that downtown wasn’t their destination, but rather one of the suburbs that seemed to surround the city. From this distance, the city didn’t look all that different from Albuquerque, although the skyline was a bit more complicated, and of course there were no Sandia Mountains to lend a certain graphical outline to the landscape.

  “What are you going to say to this guy?” Cat inquired, pulling her phone out of her backpack-cum-purse, presumably to check for any messages or missed calls. It didn’t seem that she’d missed anything too important, because a second later she slid the phone back into her bag.

  “Hopefully, nothing at all,” Rafe replied. “I mean, if I get close enough and am able
to tell that he isn’t a warlock, then he definitely isn’t our guy. That dark power I sensed down there off San Francisco Street couldn’t have come from a civilian.”

  “And if you can tell he’s a warlock?”

  “Then we’ll have a little chat.”

  Cat didn’t look terribly impressed by his tough-guy reply. To be honest, Rafe wasn’t exactly sure what he would do if this turned into a magical confrontation. Duels between warlocks — or between witches — might have occurred back in the bad old days, but they certainly weren’t how differences of opinion were handled now. He supposed he was relying on the element of surprise; for one thing, he found it unlikely that this Robert Marquez would even know he was coming, and also, Rafe knew that his own power of transformation was a rare one. Probably Marquez wouldn’t know how to react if the warlock confronting him suddenly turned into a wolf and leapt at his throat.

  Of course, there were logistical problems to this plan, namely, that he wouldn’t have the luxury of removing his clothes so they wouldn’t get damaged during the transformation. And he hadn’t brought any spares with him.

  Hmm.

  Cat’s mouth quirked slightly, which meant she’d probably guessed that he wasn’t quite as prepared as he should have been. To his relief, she didn’t comment on his lack of a solid plan, but shrugged and said, “Well, I hope this guy’s in the mood to chat. I’m here for moral support, but my talent isn’t exactly the sort of thing you’d bring to a knife fight, so to speak.”

  No, it wasn’t. Too bad that ghosts couldn’t do much to affect the living. They could exert their will on inanimate objects — hence the furniture that got moved around at their cousin Tony’s house whenever Victoria, the ghost in residence, got irritated with something Tony had done. However, she couldn’t hurt Tony, couldn’t do much except try to make his circumstances slightly uncomfortable. And since Tony was the kind of guy who pretty much took everything in stride, it all sort of rolled off his back.