Magic in the Desert: Three Paranormal Romance Series Starters Set in the American Southwest

by Christine Pope

  I walked down the driveway and paused about six feet from the gate. Because the drive sloped up the hill toward the house and the garage, I had something of a vantage point, could see that this unwelcome visitor was a young man probably around my age or maybe a few years older. Black hair pulled back into a ponytail, warm brown skin, black almond-shaped eyes. Definitely Native American.

  And…gorgeous. Like, the kind of gorgeous I would’ve had a hard time not staring at if I’d been in a club or out with my friends at a restaurant or the movies or the mall. Having someone who looked like that turn up on my doorstep, when I hadn’t seen anyone since the man I’d shot outside Walgreens?

  Well, let’s just say it was a little overwhelming.

  But not so much I forgot that I was here alone, sitting on top of a stockpile of supplies that were a damn good incentive for murder, as far as I was concerned. I hefted the shotgun so he could see it, but didn’t bring it up to eye level.

  “Who are you?” I demanded, while Dutchie sat beside me, wagging her tail. So much for looking intimidating.

  “Jason Little River,” he said, eyeing the shotgun but clearly attempting to keep a pleasant expression on his face. “My friends call me Jace.”

  “So, Jason,” I said, emphasizing his full name, “how did you find this place?”

  He paused, clearly a little disconcerted by the hostility in my tone. “The tire tracks,” he replied, pointing at the rutted road that led to the compound. Since it had started raining on the way back from my last trip into town, the tracks I’d left were fairly defined. Damn. I hadn’t even thought of that.

  But those obvious tire tracks didn’t explain everything. “You still had to get a good way out of town to even see where this road started.”

  “True. I had a friend who lived on Upper Canyon. I came here to Santa Fe — well, I came here hoping he might still be okay. Stupid, I know.” Jason paused, gaze lingering on the shotgun before returning to my face. “And when I went to his house….” Under the heavy backpack he wore, the kind of metal-framed thing serious hikers used, his shoulders lifted. “No one there, of course. I was sort of walking around, trying to figure out what to do next, and I saw the tracks on the road going up the hill past his property. I figured I might as well check it out. The tracks seemed too fresh to have been made before…well, before.”

  I didn’t bother to ask him what he meant by “before.” For all of us survivors, our lives would forever be divided between “before” and “after.” “You say you came here to Santa Fe. Where from?”

  “Taos. I lived on the pueblo there.” A disarming grin, one that under different circumstances might have made my knees melt. “Well, part-time. I also had an apartment in town. You?”

  It was on my lips to say I was the one asking the questions here, but that sounded awfully rude, even under the current circumstances. “Albuquerque.”

  His eyebrows went up. “How’d you manage to get here, of all places?”

  I hefted the shotgun. “I don’t think that matters. I’m here now.”

  He didn’t miss the way I’d shifted the gun, just enough to show I wasn’t thrilled by his questions. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s just — I haven’t seen anyone for almost two weeks. I’m probably a little off.”

  You and me both, honey. Relenting a little, I asked, “So no one was left in Taos?”

  A shadow seemed to pass over his face, but his voice was level as he replied, “No one in the pueblo. When I went into town, I didn’t see anyone, except one woman lurking around one of the hotels. She took one look at me and ran off screaming.” He shrugged. “Since I could tell she wasn’t open to conversation, I didn’t bother to go after her. She could have been armed.”

  “And you weren’t?”

  Again I saw his eyes flicker toward the gun I held. “No. Well, not besides this.” His hand went to his hip, where I could see he wore some kind of leather scabbard, about the size to conceal a hunting knife.

  “Let me see it.”

  From this distance, I couldn’t really hear him sigh, but I could tell his patience was starting to run thin. Holding my gaze, he undid the snap that kept the knife in place, then pulled it out of its sheath. As I’d thought, it was a big piece clearly designed for hunting, with a serrated edge. My father had owned one not unlike it.

  “And that’s all?” I asked.

  He nodded, then went on, “Hey, I have a peace offering.”

  “What?” Saying my tone was guarded would have been an understatement.

  “I’m going to get something out of my backpack,” he said, laying the knife down in the dirt in front of him. “Okay?”

  “Depends what it is,” I told him.

  A grin, one that showed off a dazzling set of white teeth. I had a feeling he’d used that smile to good effect a number of times in the past, but I had to make it seem as if it wasn’t affecting me, even though I could feel a not-unpleasant shiver go through me at the way the smile lit up his dark eyes.

  “I think you’ll like this.”

  He unslung the backpack, setting it on the ground before unzipping it and spending a few seconds going through its contents. His back was to me, so I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing. Almost at once, though, he turned around. In each hand he held a wine bottle.

  “Very nice, but I’ve got a pretty stocked cellar up there,” I said, jerking my chin back toward the house.

  “Ah, but this is La Chiripada cabernet sauvignon. New Mexico wine. You have any of that?”

  I really didn’t have any idea. Besides the wine refrigerator in the kitchen, I’d discovered another trove in the basement, cases and cases of wine, most of it from California and France, from what I could tell, and some odd bits from South America and Arizona. I hadn’t noticed anything from New Mexico, but then again, I hadn’t exactly been looking for it, either.

  As I hesitated, not sure how to respond, I heard the voice in my head.

  He is safe.

  “What?” I murmured under my breath, hoping the stranger wouldn’t notice me muttering to myself.

  He is safe. There is no reason to keep him out.

  “Wait…you actually want me to let him in?”

  Yes.

  To say I was flummoxed would be an understatement. Here it seemed the voice had done everything to keep me safe, to have me avoid other survivors because of the dangers involved, and now he wanted me to allow a strange man to simply walk into my sanctuary here?

  “What happens if he isn’t safe?”

  He is safe. I promise you.

  Even with the voice stating his opinion so flatly, I couldn’t help hesitating. True, he had always protected me, argued with me when I wanted to do things he found too dangerous. So I supposed I should be trusting his judgment here.

  I sent a sidelong glance in the stranger’s direction. He was still standing there, a bottle in each hand, a half hopeful, half anxious expression on his face. There was something so goofy about the combination, so oddly adorable, that I found myself relenting.

  “All right,” I muttered to the voice. “You’d just better not be playing supernatural matchmaker here or something, or we’ll be discussing this further.”

  No answer to that. I hadn’t really expected one.

  Not quite allowing myself to sigh, I transferred the shotgun to my left hand and began walking to the gate. There was a manual release there, since obviously I hadn’t brought the remote with me.

  “Okay,” I told Jason. “I’ve never had La Chiripada.”

  The look of relief that passed over his face was also adorable, and erased some of the strain I’d seen in his features. “Great. Thanks. I appreciate this. Really.” He began stuffing the wine bottles into his backpack, then hefted it onto his shoulders. After that, he shot me a questioning look. “And your name is?”

  “Jessica,” I told him as I pushed the button to open the gate. “Jessica Monroe.”

  Another one of those blazing smiles. “Well, Jessica, I a
m very pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  Chapter Eleven

  We headed up to the house after that, Dutchie dancing around Jason, tail wagging and tongue lolling as if her long-lost best friend had just come home.

  “I hope you’re a dog person,” I told him as we went in the front door.

  “I am, actually. There were always a lot of dogs on the pueblo. I didn’t have one of my own, since I was living in an apartment about half the time, but — ” He broke off, pausing a few paces inside the entryway. His expression was so awestruck that at first I thought he was impressed by the house, which didn’t surprise me too much. It was pretty impressive. But then he said, “Is that bread?”

  “It is,” I said, adding, “and I hope I haven’t just burned it.”

  I jogged into the kitchen, Dutchie tagging along at my heels, since of course the kitchen was her favorite room in the house. Jason followed at a more sedate pace, probably because of the backpack he carried.

  But when I peered into the oven, the bread looked perfect, golden brown and with just the right amount of loft. The timer said I had exactly thirty seconds to go. So I grabbed some potholders and pulled out the pan, setting it on the stove top to cool.

  By then Jason had shrugged off his backpack and leaned it up against one of the cupboards. “That’s amazing.”

  “What is?” I asked, turning to face him.

  “The bread. This.” He waved a hand, as if indicating the kitchen and the house beyond. “It’s like — it’s like it never happened.”

  Again, I didn’t have to ask what he meant by “it.” “Someone definitely put a lot of work into this house. I was lucky to find it.”

  A pause, during which I wondered if he was going to ask again how I had found it…and what the hell I should say in response to such a question. Instead, though, he inquired, “Your family didn’t build it?”

  “Oh, no. We could never have afforded something like this.”

  My reply appeared to make him relax slightly. Maybe he’d been thinking I was some rich girl from the city or something. There was a joke. But I could see how that might have made things even more awkward between us; I knew most of my state’s Native American residents weren’t exactly rolling in cash.

  Well, neither was my family, so I added, “I found some paperwork when I was going through the house. The guy who built it was a real estate developer from Phoenix. I doubt he’s going to be showing up any time soon.”

  A nod, although I could see the way Jason was surveying the kitchen, from the gleaming stainless-steel appliances to the custom cupboards and granite countertops. I had no idea what he might be thinking. In that moment, I was only strangely glad that I’d been so careful about keeping the place clean. In the past, I hadn’t been what you might call the world’s greatest housekeeper, but now I found cleaning the house helped to distract me, and used up some of the empty hours.

  His next question surprised me. “You came from Albuquerque. We were pretty cut off in Taos. Did you ever hear anything more about the disease…where it started, mortality rates, anything like that?”

  That was the last thing I wanted to talk about, but Jace clearly wanted more information than he’d gotten back home. Not that I had a lot to give him. Even so, I thought it best to stall a little while I figured out how much I should say.

  “Water?” I asked, and he blinked, clearly startled by the non sequitur, then replied,

  “Yes, thanks.”

  So I got a glass from the cupboard and filled it up with water from the refrigerator door. When I went to hand it to him, I realized how tall he was, how there were definitely some impressive muscles under the loose-fitting flannel shirt he wore. And even though he had to have been living rough for the past few weeks, I could tell he was clean. In fact, I caught the faintest scent of wood smoke coming from his clothes, and something about the aroma made a little thrill go through me.

  I definitely needed to get it together.

  Stepping away from him, pretending that I needed to go check on the bread, I said, “Things fell apart pretty quickly in Albuquerque, too. We never got a straight story about where it started or anything like that. Afterward….” I let the words trail off as I flashed back to that dark Walgreens, and the man I had confronted there. “I did meet someone who said he’d worked for emergency management downtown. He said the mortality rate was 99.8 percent.”

  “Shit.” With his brown skin, Jace couldn’t exactly go pale, but I still saw the blood appear to drain from his face. Then his dark eyes seemed to go sharp as he focused on what I’d just said. “Wait — you met another survivor? Where is he?”

  Shit was right. I’d just met Jace. Was I supposed to tell him that I’d murdered a man?

  I didn’t see much of a way around it. If we were really going to be sharing this house, I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep that big a secret from him. He needed to know, so he could decide if it was worth the risk to stay.

  “He’s dead,” I said, my voice flat, harsh. “He tried to take my vehicle away from me, all the supplies I’d put together. He pulled a gun on me. So I shot him.”

  Silence. Jace stared at me, obviously trying to process what I’d just said. When he spoke, his tone was a lot gentler than I’d expected. “Because he was trying to steal from you, and you would’ve been dead without that vehicle and those supplies.”

  The question was, would I have been? I could have gone foraging all over again if necessary, could’ve found one of the abandoned vehicles and hot-wired it, another skill my father had taught me. I wasn’t sure what happened to car keys if they were actually on a victim of the Heat, in a pocket or something, when they went to dust. All their clothes and jewelry seemed to disappear, so obviously the heat in their bodies was so extreme that it could destroy everything around them. Or was the explanation that simple? I hadn’t actually stopped to puzzle it out, mostly because I knew in the end it didn’t really matter. Those people were gone, and so were the belongings they had on them.

  “I thought so at the time,” I said slowly. As Jason kept looking at me with that concerned expression on his face, I felt something give way inside, the words flowing out, even though I hadn’t meant to mention anything else of what had happened. “And he had this look on his face, and the night before that, crazy Chris Bowman had broken into my house and attacked me, and — ”

  I couldn’t go on, because out of nowhere tears were streaming down my face, and, to my dismay, I’d begun to sob, the horror of it all coming back to me, something dark and terrible that had only been lurking in the murky sediment at the bottom of my mind, just waiting to return and overwhelm me.

  Jason crossed the kitchen and pulled me against him, his hand smoothing my hair, his warm voice murmuring my name as I wept into his shirt, the flannel soft against my cheek. He smelled of wood smoke and pine needles, and underneath that, clean male sweat, and I breathed him in, reassured beyond measure at the feel of someone so solid, so real.

  And then I realized what I was doing, that I was sobbing in the arms of a man I had just met, and I pushed myself away, shaking my head. “I — I’m sorry,” I gasped. “That was just — that came out of nowhere. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. His dark eyes seemed alight with compassion, with understanding. “I can’t imagine how rough this must have been for you. And I’m sorry that you…did what you had to do. But I don’t think you can blame yourself for that.”

  I went to the paper towel dispenser and tore off a partial sheet, then blotted my eyes. Good thing I hadn’t bothered with makeup since I’d gotten here, except for some gloss to keep my lips from cracking in the dry, cold weather. “Thank you,” I said simply. “But I do blame myself. There had to be something else I could have done — ”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said. “Sounds like you were kind of up against a wall.” Again I was struck by the warmth in his expression…but it wasn’t that kind of warmth, more that he was sorry I’d had to g
o through anything so terrible. “But I’m glad you told me the truth.”

  So was I, oddly enough. I’d just told him the worst thing about me, and he hadn’t even blinked. That had to be a good sign.

  “I’m glad, too,” I told him, wanting to put the whole thing behind me. Somehow I knew Jace wouldn’t press the issue any further. “Now, how about some of this bread?”

  And like that, Jason Little River came to live at the compound. He took over the larger of the secondary bedrooms, putting his meager belongings in the closet there. I noticed that he hadn’t brought any personal items with him, no photographs of family or anything like that, unlike the wedding photo of my parents that now lived on the mantel in the living room, or the shot of all of us at one of Devin’s football games, which was now sitting on the dresser in the master bedroom.

  When I asked him about his family, his expression grew shuttered. “All gone now,” he said, and didn’t seem to want to talk about it anymore. Since I understood all too well what it felt like to lose everyone around you, I didn’t press the issue. Although I didn’t know a whole lot about life on the pueblo, I knew it had to be a fairly close-knit community, a sort of huge extended family very unlike what I’d grown up with. His loss was probably even more painful than mine. If he wanted to open up about it later, after he’d had time to work through it in his own way, then I would be there to listen to him.

  He was impressed by the compound, by all the lengths its builder had gone to so it would be self-sustaining. Even so, after one morning of walking around and inspecting everything, just a day or two after he moved in, he told me, “We should really be thinking about getting some livestock. This place isn’t big enough for cattle, but maybe some goats?”

  “Goats?” I repeated, not bothering to keep the skepticism out of my voice. “You’re not suggesting we eat a goat, are you?”