witches of cleopatra hill 07 - impractical magic

by Christine Pope

  Jenny actually felt a little sorry for the little boy and girl, since she was sure they probably would have rather stayed home than sit through this interminable ceremony. Right then, she just wanted it to be over herself so she could get to the good part — the reception and all that lovely champagne. She figured she’d earned a glass or two. Or three or four.

  But even though her feet were starting to hurt, and she worried that her stomach was going to growl at any second, she couldn’t help feeling moved when the priest proclaimed that Alex and Caitlin were now husband and wife. And the look in Alex’s dark eyes when he bent to kiss his new bride — well, it awoke a deep, hurtful ache in Jenny’s heart.

  She wanted someone to look at her like that.

  And then she couldn’t help feeling ashamed, because at least she was here, and not buried in a corner of the McAllister plot in the Cottonwood cemetery. Roslyn would never have anyone look at her the way Alex had looked at Caitlin. She’d never see the sun shine again, or watch the moon rise over the Mogollon Plateau to the east of town. She’d never have children, or grandchildren, would never again entrance an audience with the power of her beautiful voice.

  All because of Matías Escobar.

  The familiar burning ache of hate rose in her then, and Jenny forced herself to push it back down. She’d been over this same ground too many times during the last six months. All the hate in the world wouldn’t bring Roslyn back.

  She managed to plaster a fake smile on her lips, since she knew that was what would be expected of her. And sometime during the hubbub of getting Caitlin and Alex out to their limo so they could have their photos taken and still make it to the reception area on time, that smile turned genuine. It was just too hard to see their obvious happiness and not respond.

  Because Jenny had come down a day early to help with the preparations, she had her own car, giving her a spurious sense of freedom. Her younger brother Adam and his wife Mason had driven down with Jenny and Adam’s parents, since they knew parking was going to be tight. They were staying in the same hotel as Jenny, the place where the reception would be held, although on a different floor. Her parents had already made plans for all of them to go out to breakfast together the morning after the wedding.

  Usually Jenny wouldn’t have minded, since she got along fine with her parents, and she liked her sister-in-law very much as well. Right then, though, the prospect of having to play happy family made her want to grind her teeth.

  That’s the crappy part about being a witch, she thought. We all have these rigidly defined clans and these rigidly defined territories, and everyone’s supposed to play by the rules. You can’t just get in your car and keep driving and leave it all behind, no matter how much you might want to.

  Well, except Angela’s mother. She’d kept driving and never looked back. Unfortunately, that hadn’t worked out so well for her in the end, dead in a motorcycle crash at twenty-two, leaving her infant daughter for Angela’s Aunt Rachel to raise.

  Since the first set of photographs that would be taken at the reception site would include only the bride and groom, Jenny knew she had a little time before she had to drive over to the hotel, about fifteen minutes away. No rest for the wicked, though — she went through the church with a couple of the de la Paz cousins, helping to pick up any discarded programs and generally tidying things up before she was able to make her escape not quite half an hour later.

  At least the hotel was close by. Jenny was able to grab one of the last parking spaces before hurrying over to the large event space where the reception was being held. Inside, the place felt packed — mostly because everyone seemed to be crammed into the bar area — but she managed to squeeze through the throng and make her way to the less crowded part of the room where everyone would sit down for dinner.

  After a quick glance around, she determined that Alex and Caitlin were nowhere in sight, which meant they must still be off getting their pictures taken. Just as she turned, she almost bumped into the brown-haired stranger she’d spied earlier in the church.

  He had a flute of champagne in either hand, and held one out to her. “Here,” he said, his voice as pleasant and friendly as his features. “You look like you could use this.”

  “That bad, huh?” she responded, gratefully taking it from him.

  “Well, you’re carrying it well, but I’ve been to too many weddings not to recognize the ‘I need a drink’ look common to maids of honor the world over.”

  She couldn’t help chuckling at that remark. It didn’t stop her from taking a large swallow of the champagne. It hit her stomach with a flare of warmth and a welcome fizz. “Thank you.” Since he seemed nice, and she didn’t have any place she absolutely had to be in that moment, she added, “I’m Jenny McAllister.”

  “I know,” he said, and she gave him a blank look.

  “How? We haven’t met before, have we?”

  “No.” He tapped the breast pocket of his dark gray blazer, where she could see one cream-colored edge of the wedding program peeking out. “I saw your name in here.”

  “Ah.” She sipped some more champagne, and that gave her the courage to ask, “Friend of the groom?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I was his T.A. at UA. I’m Colin Campbell.”

  Something about the phrase made her want to laugh, but that could have been the champagne talking. But at least it explained why Colin seemed older and still could have known Alex. “Marketing?” she asked.

  “No, journalism. He took a few classes but then switched over to communications and marketing. Probably smart of him.”

  Colin’s tone was wry, compelling her to inquire, “Smart how?”

  “Well, let’s just say it’s kind of challenging to be a journalist in the internet age. No one seems to think you should get paid for your work. Actually, I ended up getting out of it, too.”

  “Oh.” She supposed she should have realized that, but frankly, the Verde Valley wasn’t exactly a hotbed of in-depth journalism. They had the Verde Valley Independent for the local stuff, but otherwise most people either watched TV or hit the web to get their information, depending on their generation and habits. “That’s too bad.”

  “So what do you do?” he asked, clearly wanting to change the subject.

  Typical question for this sort of gathering, especially coming from a civilian who had no way of knowing that he was surrounded by witches and warlocks of various clans and talents. But it grated on Jenny, because she didn’t have a very good answer to that question. For a while she’d worked as a dispatcher for the police department down in Cottonwood, but that job hadn’t lasted very long. Even in a place as small as Cottonwood, she’d gotten more of a taste of the dark side of human nature than she’d really wanted, so she’d quit. Unfortunately, leaving the job hadn’t allowed her to escape reality’s darker aspects. No, they’d intruded on a bright March day last spring, when the phone call came to tell her that her little sister was dead.

  Hoping he hadn’t noticed her hesitation, Jenny said, “Oh, a little bit of this and that. Lately I’ve been helping to run the art gallery downstairs.”

  “‘Downstairs’?” he repeated, looking confused in an adorable sort of way.

  “I’m from Jerome. Old buildings, apartments and flats on top of businesses. The business downstairs from me is an art gallery. And the owner is a ci — well, she lives in Scottsdale, so she wanted someone local to manage it for her.”

  Colin drank some of his champagne, then said, “I visited Jerome about ten years ago. Cool place. You like living there?”

  She shrugged. Did she like living there? She really didn’t have much of a basis for comparison. The former mining town had always been part of her life, along with its small, mixed population of witch-folk and civilians. Her clan was careful about who they allowed to live there, always choosing those who could be trusted to keep quiet about the powers their neighbors possessed but never talked openly about.

  But getting the flat above the
art gallery had been sort of a coup, since several of her cousins had cast covetous eyes upon it when it became available. Why the elders had decided Jenny should have it, she wasn’t quite sure, except maybe they had taken pity on her because she was nearing thirty and was still unattached, and so deserved to get something of a break. Anyway, it was a great space, with a bedroom and an office, and a front deck that overlooked Main Street and provided amazing views of the entire Verde Valley, all the way to Sedona’s red rocks. It was definitely something to sit on that deck and drink a glass of wine and watch the rocks turn redder and redder as the sun set.

  “It’s fun,” she said. “Small. Everyone knows everyone else.”

  “So is that a good thing or a bad thing?” he asked with a grin.

  The light that danced in his hazel eyes was definitely something she could get used to. “I guess it depends on who you ask.”

  “Well, what if I asked you?”

  Was he flirting? It felt like he might be flirting. Jenny couldn’t say for sure, because she pretty much sucked at that sort of thing. But she decided she might as well go along for the ride. If nothing else, it was refreshing to be talking with someone who didn’t know anything about her or her background, or the sister she’d lost so tragically. “I’d say it’s a good thing some days and a bad thing on others.”

  “Diplomatic. Or maybe evasive.”

  “Realistic?”

  “I’ll go for that.” He raised his champagne flute, and she clinked her glass against his, unable to suppress a smile. There was something infectious about the way his mouth quirked, not really smiling, but edging toward it.

  It seemed the best thing to do was to drink some more champagne. There were probably a million things she should be doing right then, but it felt good to stand there and not-quite-flirt with a good-looking stranger. It wasn’t as if Alicia or Danica couldn’t handle something if Caitlin suddenly required one of her bridesmaids to be there for her.

  But then Jenny heard her Aunt Tricia — Caitlin’s mother — calling for her, and she knew playtime was over.

  “Duty calls,” she said, and looked around for a place to set down her champagne flute.

  “I’ll take that,” Colin offered, plucking it out of her fingers. “Maybe I should hang on to it. You up for a second round later?”

  He was going to stick around, wasn’t going to take off after he’d had a few free drinks. Something in her relaxed slightly.

  “I’ll be around,” she said with a grin, and went off in search of her aunt.

  3

  God, she was gorgeous. For some reason, Colin hadn’t been expecting that, even though the photos of her late sister showed that Roslyn McAllister had been an extremely pretty girl. But Jenny….

  Wow. He’d done his best not to stare too hard as she disappeared into the crowd, but that simple dress she was wearing had hugged her backside in a far too distracting way. And the long blonde hair bouncing down her back —

  He went and got another flute of champagne, although he knew he really should watch it. This was supposed to be a fact-finding mission, not some frat party blowout. Not that most frats served champagne at their parties.

  So he headed off to a corner of the room and did his best to look inconspicuous. From what he’d been able to tell so far, there seemed to be three fairly distinct groups here. The first, and by far the most numerous, were obviously Alex’s family, although it seemed a lot of them had the last name of de la Paz rather than Trujillo. The second batch were McAllisters, a few red-haired like the bride, including her mother, but most of them with sandy brown or dark blond hair. And then there were the darkly handsome Wilcoxes, including Danica’s parents, whom Colin recognized from the trial.

  They all looked far more relaxed now, talking and laughing, Danica’s father holding a glass of red wine, while his wife and daughter had champagne. As did the tall man, maybe a few years younger than Colin himself, who was clearly with Danica and who had the chiseled looks of an actor or model. He wasn’t, though, or at least he didn’t ping Colin’s radar that way. He’d known enough actors and guys who modeled when he was in college and out of it, and they all had a faint aura of knowing exactly how good-looking they were. The guy standing next to Danica didn’t, for whatever reason. Which didn’t prove much. But still, something about him felt a little off, even though Colin couldn’t quite put his finger on what the difference was.

  He supposed he should just be glad that he’d gotten this far without being called out as a gate crasher. True, the crowd was large, and mixed people from three different families, but even so, Colin thought he was conspicuous enough that someone should have wondered who the hell he was. Then again, several people had probably spotted him talking to Jenny, and so must have decided that he was either her date, or maybe just a friend.

  The hard part was yet to come, though. A reception as big as this was obviously going to have set seating arrangements, with place cards and all that crap. About all he could do was hang back, maybe pretend that he was talking with the bartender, until almost everyone had sat down and he could scope out the gaps at the tables. No wedding ever had one-hundred-percent attendance; there was always someone who didn’t show up, whether their absence was due to illness or bad traffic or sheer absentmindedness.

  He hoped one of those gaps would occur at a McAllister table. His story about being Alex Trujillo’s teaching assistant at UA would be a lot easier to sell to them, since they wouldn’t know him nearly as well as Alex’s own family. Also, Colin thought he would blend a lot better with the McAllister contingent.

  Maybe I can convince them I’m a distant cousin or something, he thought. At the very least, I wouldn’t have to be explaining my connection to Alex to them.

  Probably not, though; he watched as everyone flowed from the bar area into the main dining room, and, judging by the way the McAllisters interacted, they seemed like a pretty tight-knit group. Trying to insinuate himself in with them didn’t seem like a very good idea, as much as he would have liked to listen to what they were saying and attempt to glean some more information about Jenny.

  Which isn’t why you’re here, he told himself again. He could try to rationalize that Jenny was Roslyn’s sister, and so maybe she’d have some inside information, but he knew that wasn’t the reason he wanted to know more about her. He wanted to know more about her because of…her.

  Stupid, and possibly dangerous. He was here under false pretenses, and if she figured out he’d come snooping around because of journalistic curiosity, she’d probably tell him to go straight to hell, that her family’s tragedy wasn’t an excuse for him to play junior detective. At least, he was pretty sure that if their situations were reversed, he’d feel exactly the same way. And then there had been the way he’d lied to her already, hinting that he’d turned his back on journalism when the money started to dry up.

  Maybe it would be smart for him to slip out now. This was a fool’s errand, anyway; he didn’t honestly think that Eileen Kosky had seen anything truly out of the ordinary in that mall parking lot, only Alex Trujillo using a stun gun or something similar to dispatch Matías Escobar.

  And yet….

  Colin glanced into the dining room, saw Jenny settling herself at the head table. Someone must have just said something amusing, because she was laughing, head tilted back to show that fine throat of hers, long blonde hair spilling down toward her waist. So many women these days used extensions and crap like that to make their hair look better, but he didn’t think Jenny McAllister had resorted to those sorts of subterfuges. Her sister had had the same hair, long and honey-blonde and full. It must run in the family.

  Standing there and staring, Colin knew he wasn’t about to leave. He quickly looked around and noticed a table off in one corner that seemed to be composed of some Wilcoxes and some McAllisters, which meant they probably didn’t know one another very well. And there were two empty seats at that table. Perfect.

  He sauntered over and sat down,
and then sent everyone what he hoped was his most charming smile. His sister Kate had always hated that smile — “when you put that thing on, Mom lets you get away with murder,” she’d grumbled more than once — but Colin had found it useful on several occasions, up to and including talking his way out of the speeding ticket that one female cop had been about to give him.

  Well, he’d just have to hope his smile would pass muster here.

  “Hi,” he said as he settled into his seat. “I’m Colin.”

  The group at the table sent him various looks of greeting or inspection, depending on who was doing the looking. Next to him was an extremely attractive woman in her thirties, her dark hair in an elegant coil at the back of her head, and just beyond her sat a man maybe a few years older, dark and handsome like most of the Wilcoxes Colin had seen so far.

  “Nice to meet you,” the man said. “I’m Lucas, and this is my wife Margot.”

  She turned a cool smile on him, the sort that made Colin acutely aware that he’d done a half-assed job of steaming his neglected sport jacket. He also had to hope he didn’t have anything stuck in his teeth. “Hello, Colin,” Margot said. “Are you a friend of Alex’s?”

  “Yes,” Colin lied. Margot’s dark eyes seemed to pierce right through him, and he had to pray that she couldn’t smell the lie. “My girlfriend was supposed to come with me, but she got a migraine at the last minute, so I had to fly solo today.”

  “Well, we won’t bite,” Lucas said with a grin. Unlike most of the other people at the table, he had what looked like a glass of Scotch on the rocks at his place setting, instead of champagne.

  “Unless you ask nicely,” said a man sitting across the table, obviously a McAllister, with his sandy hair and blue eyes. He looked a few years younger than Colin, and sat next to a man who also appeared to be in his middle twenties. Their chairs were a little closer together than one might expect from two guys attending a wedding, leading Colin to believe that they weren’t exactly just friends. “I’m Kirby, by the way. And this is Matthew.”