Darkmoon (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 3)

by Christine Pope

  Margot and Allegra followed, Margot looking cool and summery in a pale coral dress, dark hair as always pulled back in a low ponytail on her neck. Allegra tended to subscribe to my Aunt Rachel’s school of boho fashion, and wore a long embroidered black skirt and black T-shirt, her mousy graying hair piled haphazardly on her head in a bun.

  Of all of them, she was the only one to smile at me, and even murmured, “How are you feeling?” as she entered the house. I nodded and sent her an answering smile, but didn’t want to go into any detail then. They’d all find out soon enough.

  “This way,” I said, pointing toward the dining room, even though of course they’d been in there many times before and knew the way just as well as I did.

  The briefest incline of her head from Margot and a furrowed brow from Bryce were all I got in reply. Great. If they were going to be this difficult now, when I’d barely said hello, how were they going to react to the rest of what I had to say?

  Chin up, I led them to where Connor and Lucas were already waiting. They sat on the side of the table opposite the doorway, with Connor closest to where I would take my seat at the head of the table. As soon as the elders spied the two Wilcoxes, it was like watching the fur on a cat’s back bristle. Bryce went ramrod straight, Allegra’s eyes widened, and Margot’s mouth tightened.

  Speaking quickly, I said, “You’ve already met Connor, but this is his cousin, Lucas Wilcox. Lucas, this is Bryce McAllister, Allegra Moss, and Margot Emory.”

  As I said Margot’s name, I could see Lucas’ gaze linger on her, and I held my breath, praying he wouldn’t do or say anything inappropriate. Flirting with the waitress was one thing, but Margot? She’d rip his head off.

  However, he only smiled, the slow, lazy smile that most of the Wilcox men seemed to share, and said, “Very pleased to meet you.”

  For one long, horrible second, none of the elders replied. Then Allegra, bless her, said, “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Wilcox.”

  “Lucas, please.”

  “Lucas,” she responded, a fluttery little smile playing around her lips.

  Margot only tilted her head and then sat down, while Bryce said nothing at all, gruffly pulling out a chair with a brusque movement that surely would’ve scratched the wooden floor if it hadn’t been protected by a rug.

  “Well, then,” I began, after everyone was watching me with expectant eyes. Well, except Connor; he knew most of what I wanted to discuss, and although he hadn’t completely agreed with all of it, saying he thought the elders weren’t going to react well to what I had to say, he’d told me he would support me in whatever I decided to do. Pulling in a breath, I continued, “There’s been a lot going on lately, and since it affects both our families, I thought it was high time we sat down and talked about it like rational adults.”

  A sniff that might have come from Margot greeted this statement, but since she didn’t actually say anything, I decided to just plow ahead.

  “Our two families have been in — well, maybe not an all-out war, but definitely a cold war, for far too long. Maybe there was a reason for it once — ”

  “You damn well know there was a reason,” Bryce cut in.

  “—But now that Connor and I are together,” I went on doggedly, “it’s silly for us to keep acting like the Hatfields and McCoys or something. You all know that Connor and I are having a baby. Well, we recently found out that it’s not just one baby. We’re having twins.”

  Since Lucas already knew that, he didn’t react, but only watched the other three. Both Allegra’s and Bryce’s eyes widened, while Margot’s narrowed, as if she were trying to determine what such an unprecedented occurrence might actually mean.

  None of them said anything, though, and I glanced over at Connor, unsure what to do. I hadn’t exactly been expecting congratulations, not from this group, but I also hadn’t expected to get quite so completely stonewalled.

  Goddess help me, I could really use a drink right now. Since that was out of the question, I took a sip of ice water, then said, “Because these babies — these children — will belong to both clans, Connor and I think the best way to manage things is to have homes in both territories. We just made an offer on a house in Flagstaff yesterday.”

  That got their attention. Margot let out a shocked “what?” before she could stop herself, Allegra gasped, and Bryce spluttered, “You should have consulted with us before taking a step like that!”

  “Why?” I said coolly, somehow relieved that they’d reacted in such a way. Now I could act like a calm and collected adult, rather than a transgressing child. “So you could have said no and given me a bunch of silly reasons why it would never work?”

  “It’s a very big step, Angela,” Allegra began tentatively, only to have Margot override her, saying,

  “I doubt any of our reasons would have been silly.” She shifted in her chair, seeming to pin Lucas down with a sudden flash of her dark eyes. “Was this your idea?”

  If it had been anyone else, I would’ve questioned how she could have possibly known that. Margot had said numerous times that she was not psychic, but I was beginning to have my doubts.

  But, being Lucas, instead of appearing discomfited, he merely replied, “Well, I’d actually been telling Connor for some time that he needed to live someplace a little more suited to the Wilcox primus. And then when it came out that he and Angela were going to have a baby, it got more urgent. A house became available, they looked at it and loved it, and the rest, as they say, is history.” He shrugged and reached for his own ice water, taking a sip before adding, “I really don’t see anything that strange about any of it.”

  “You wouldn’t,” she said in cutting tones. “It’s fairly obvious you Wilcoxes do things very differently from us McAllisters. But Angela should’ve consulted with us — ”

  “She’s consulting with you now,” Lucas responded breezily. “She could’ve just shown up here with her moving boxes and not told you anything. She is an adult, you know, and capable of making her own decisions.”

  For the first time in my life, I saw Margot Emory at a loss for words. Her mouth opened, then shut again, and I saw her knuckles whiten as she gripped the edge of the table. Whether this unprecedented response was due to what Lucas had said or the completely unconcerned way in which he’d said it, I wasn’t sure, but in that moment I had to choke back the impulse to break into incongruous laughter. And that, I knew, would go over even worse than Lucas’ reply to Margot.

  Connor spoke for the first time, saying, “We’re only trying to do what’s fair — ”

  “Fair?” Bryce exclaimed. “How is any of this fair?”

  “Is it fair to expect the primus of the Wilcoxes to live here full-time in Jerome?” I asked.

  “No, we would prefer it if he stayed where he was supposed to be — in Flagstaff,” Margot snapped.

  “You know that wasn’t going to happen,” I replied. “Besides, if we were going to be completely fair” — I put an unnatural emphasis on the word, staring straight at Bryce as I said it — “then technically I should be spending three-quarters of my time with Connor in Flagstaff, considering I’m half Wilcox myself.”

  I might as well have thrown a live grenade into the center of the table. “What?” Bryce burst out, while Allegra shook her head, saying, “That’s impossible!”, and Margot stared at me as if she’d never seen me before.

  “It’s true,” I said. “That’s what we found out when we went to California. My mother was shacked up with a Wilcox out there. End result: me.”

  The words came out sharper-edged, more flippant than I had intended. Probably because the mystery of why my father had gone there at all, and had sought out Sonya McAllister, still hadn’t been explained. It chafed at me, stirred up emotions I wasn’t sure I wanted to analyze. All my life I’d wanted to know who my father was, but finding the truth had only caused more problems.

  Finally, Margot spoke. “This — you must be mistaken.”

  “No mistake,” L
ucas said quietly, this time sounding quite sober, unlike his usual ebullient self. “Andre Wilcox left Flagstaff a little more than twenty-two years ago, and no one’s seen him since. The timeline fits. Not that Angela’s mother would have known. She thought his name was Andre Williams.”

  “So he lied to her. Typical,” Bryce said.

  “Enough,” I told him, sending him what I hoped was my best prima stare. It seemed to work; he subsided and pushed up against the back of his chair, as if to create a little more distance between us. “Yes, it turns out I’m half Wilcox. Ironic, isn’t it? Here you’ve been doing your damnedest to keep me here in Jerome, away from the Wilcox clans, and it turns out you both have an equal claim.”

  “Not entirely equal,” Allegra said in her sweet voice.

  Everyone turned toward her.

  As if unsettled by being the center of attention, she reached up to smooth a wisp of flyaway hair from her forehead. “It may be true that you are half Wilcox, but you are also the prima of the McAllisters. That means our claim is the stronger one. You can’t just…abandon us.”

  “Did I say anything about abandoning you?” I replied, irritated. “All I’m saying is that you have to accept that I’ll be here part of the time and in Flagstaff part of the time. Even if there’s some crisis, it’s only a little more than an hour to get here. It’s not like I’m buying a flat in Paris or something.”

  “And what happens afterward?” Bryce asked.

  “Afterward?” I repeated.

  “After you have the baby — I mean, the babies.” His steely eyes seemed to bore into Connor, as if he held him directly responsible for my current condition. Never mind that I’d been a willing participant in those activities.

  “You mean after the curse kills me?” I asked harshly. “No point in mincing words.”

  “Angela!” Connor and Bryce both burst out, even as Allegra recoiled and Margot watched all of us in silence, her expression grim. Lucas said nothing, only sat still in his chair, his dark eyes troubled.

  “Why avoid talking about it? It’s not that we aren’t trying to do what we can about the curse, but seeing as we’ve hit sort of a dead end — ”

  “I’m working on that,” Lucas cut in, his voice strained. “My own contacts didn’t give me any leads on finding Andre’s mother, so I hired a private investigator.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask why there wasn’t a magical solution to tracking down my missing grandmother, but maybe no one in his clan had that kind of talent. None of the McAllisters did, either; my cousin Becca was great at finding lost keys, earrings, and items like that, but people? Not so much.

  “Well, then,” I said. “We’re doing what we can, but we always need to plan for contingencies, right? And if something happens to me” — pausing, I swallowed before pushing on — “then it’s important that Connor and I have a proper home together in his own territory. You can fight about which clan has which rights, but in the end the children should be with their father. Now they’ll have a good place to live, and if the curse decides to take me out, well, I won’t be happy about it, but at least I know I won’t have to worry about them being safe.”

  An uneasy silence fell. I supposed none of them really wanted to argue with what was, in effect, a spoken last will. Finally, Connor spoke.

  “But we’re not going to let that happen. We have months and months to figure this out, and we will. Angela — that is, we — just wanted to let you know where things stood with us. Her ob-gyn is in Flag, so as time goes on and her appointments come closer together, then we may be spending more time there than here. I hope you’ll understand the reason why.”

  He said this last with a challenging note in his voice, as if daring one of them to protest. But although the three elders exchanged uneasy glances, none of them said anything for a few seconds. At last Allegra replied, “That does make sense, Connor. Thank you.”

  The tense line of his jaw relaxed slightly. I could tell he’d been expecting them to put up more of a fight on that point. Maybe they were just tired. I knew I was.

  Since that seemed as good a point in the conversation as any to wrap things up, I told everyone, “The inspector went over the house yesterday and didn’t find any issues, although we’re waiting on the final report. That means we may be ready to move in as early as the end of next week, depending on how the title search goes. I’m going to talk to Rachel, of course, but I’d appreciate it if the rest of you could spread the word and let everyone else know that I plan to divide my time between here and Flagstaff.” Exactly how, I wasn’t sure. Spending the summer up amongst the cool pines at seven thousand feet seemed infinitely preferable to the heat of the Verde Valley, but I knew I couldn’t disappear for that long a stretch. Oh, well, we’d work it out somehow.

  “We’ll do that, prima,” Margot said formally.

  They left after that, giving only a token goodbye to Connor and Lucas, whose gaze seemed to follow Margot as she went out to the foyer. I couldn’t help giving a rueful shake of my head. Yes, he’d been on his best behavior, but that hadn’t seemed to earn many points with her.

  Not that I had time to worry about that now. I had enough problems of my own to deal with.

  11

  Distant Relations

  “Are you serious?” Sydney squealed into the phone. “You bought a house?”

  “Yes,” I said, wincing a little and wishing that I’d turned down the speaker volume before I called her.

  It was late Saturday afternoon, a few hours after the elders had departed. Connor and I had left Lucas to watch TV at the house for a while so we could go and talk to Rachel, tell her about the house and the twins…and Andre Wilcox. We’d brought up those subjects in basically that order, so by the time we got to Andre, my aunt was already looking a little glassy-eyed. “A Wilcox?” she kept repeating. “Your father is a Wilcox?” And I’d had to tell her that yes, we were almost positive, but that we were still trying to see if we could track him down somehow, just to confirm. Since she appeared so shell-shocked, I decided not to mention that we were also looking for him in case he knew something to help with breaking the curse. A long shot, but I couldn’t forget Marie’s words about going back to the beginning. He was my beginning…or at least the only part of my beginning still alive. Maybe. We really didn’t have positive confirmation either way.

  “I am so jealous,” Sydney told me, and I had to drag my thoughts back to present. “And here I am, still living at my parents’ house.”

  I didn’t bother to point out that we were living very different lives. Trying to sound off-hand, I replied, “Well, Connor had the money from selling his brother’s house, so it’s really more that he’s buying it and I’m just being listed on the deed. Anyway,” I went on, before she could interject, “it’s got a secondary master suite, so you and Anthony should come up and visit and hang for a while after Connor and I get settled.”

  “I am so there,” she said, apparently abandoning the green-eyed monster for the moment. “When do you think you’ll be settled? I need to know so I can ask for some time off from work.”

  Somehow I managed to avoid bursting into laughter. Patience had never been one of Syd’s strong suits. “I don’t know,” I said carefully. “Maybe a couple of weeks?”

  “So…mid-June?”

  That might be doable, but it also felt like it might be putting some pressure on us. “I have a better idea. Why don’t you guys come up for the Fourth of July weekend? I know it’ll be a lot cooler here than in Cottonwood.”

  “That’s for damn sure. I already feel like I’m dying of heat prostration, and it’s barely June.”

  I knew the feeling. At least her parents’ house had air conditioning. Lovely, lovely air conditioning. However, I figured I could put up with the heat for a while, since there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Or, more correctly, a big house with dual-zone A/C, in the unlikely event that you’d even need it in Flagstaff. “Well, check with Anthony and let me know
. I haven’t had time to research it much, but I’m sure they must be doing fireworks or something up in Flag.”

  “I will.” She paused, then said, “I can’t believe you and Connor bought a house.”

  Neither can the rest of my family, I thought, but only said, “I know, it’s kind of crazy. But it was such a good deal that we would’ve been crazy to pass it up.”

  “So how long are you down here?”

  “We’re going back up on Monday, probably.”

  “Do you guys want to go out tonight, since you’re in town? I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

  I hesitated. Normally I would’ve said yes, even though it wouldn’t been a lot of fun to sit and drink mineral water while everyone else was having wine or cocktails. If nothing else, though, it might have helped to get out and socialize, and take my mind off my problems and my stiff-necked family.

  But Lucas was here, and it would have been rude to dump him so Connor and I could go out with our friends. Not that Lucas probably couldn’t find something to occupy himself, left to his own devices. Still, I hadn’t been raised to treat guests that way, and I didn’t think I should start now.

  “I know,” I said. “And we have so much more we need to talk about, but — ”

  “More?” she demanded. “There’s more besides buying a house?”

  You have no idea. “Um, yeah.” Since everyone in town knew about the twins by now, I figured it was safe enough to mention it. “Well, I’m having twins.”

  “Twins!” she squealed, and again I had to hold the phone away from my ear. “Oh, my God, that is awesome! Do you know what they are yet?”

  “No, it’s way too early.” Did I even want to know? Secretly, I was sort of hoping it would be one of each. Nice and neat.

  “Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed. “Well, it’ll be fun no matter what they are. If they’re the same, you can get them matching outfits and stuff.”