Darktide

by Christine Pope

  A shiver went over me, and Connor pulled me closer to him, let me absorb some of his warmth. I needed it right then, needed his touch to remind me that the two of us had once prevailed in circumstances almost as difficult as these. I was so close to losing hope.

  “The worst isn’t going to happen,” he murmured, bending down so he could brush a kiss against the top of my head. “If Isabel Castillo doesn’t think the threat is great enough, we’ll reach out to the Nevada and Oregon clans.”

  “But first we need to talk to her.” I shifted slightly so I could look up at him, look into those crystalline gray-green eyes. Although he appeared troubled, he certainly didn’t look like someone who was frightened for his very existence. “Do you have her number?”

  “Yes. I found it in Damon’s papers when we were closing up the house to sell it. I’ve only talked to her once, though, to get permission for Margot and Lucas to travel to Castillo territory.”

  “What was she like?”

  Connor gave me a rueful smile. “It was a very short conversation, Angela. She sounded older, and she had a really faint accent, even though I know her family has been in Santa Fe for generations. And she also sounded like the sort of person who doesn’t take crap from anyone, but I could say that about pretty much any prima I’ve met.”

  I made a face. “Not funny.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny. All I’m saying is that I didn’t get nearly enough of a read from her to attempt to guess how she’s going to react to all this. The only thing we can do is try.”

  “Do you have her number with you?”

  “Yeah, I entered it in my contacts list. I figured it was better to have it on hand, just in case.” He moved away from me a little so he could reach in his jeans pocket and extract his phone. After unlocking it, he went to his contacts screen and scrolled down briefly. “Here it is.” Pausing with his finger next to the little green phone icon, he added, “Do you want to do the honors, or should I?”

  “You do it,” I said. I’d never been big on cold-calling people, probably because I hadn’t had much interaction with anyone outside my clan until I went to high school. “You’re the one who’s already talked to her, remember?”

  “Right.” He pushed the button and held the phone to his ear. For a second I wondered why he didn’t put it on speaker. But then I realized that a lot of people might find that kind of behavior rude, if he did it without asking for permission. The last thing we wanted was to piss off this Isabel Castillo before we even got started.

  “Hello?” Connor said. “Is this Isabel Castillo?” A pause, and he went on, “This is Connor Wilcox. I — right. Yes. That would have been a couple of years ago now. There’s something that we — that is, my wife Angela, prima of the McAllisters, and I — need to talk to you about. It’s important.” Another long pause, and he said, “I can understand why you’d want a face-to-face on this, but — ” He stopped there, as if she’d cut him off. “All right. We can be there quickly. No, no, we don’t need to drive. Twenty minutes? Okay. Twenty-five Gonzales Road? Got it. Thank you.”

  He put down the phone, while I stared at him, appalled. “She’s expecting us there in twenty minutes? Have you looked at me lately?”

  Puzzled, he tilted his head to one side and gave me a quick once-over. “You look fine to me. Beautiful, really.”

  When a guy says something like that to you, it’s really hard to get too mad. However, his devoted admiration wouldn’t change the fact that my hair was flat in the back from lying on it during my quick nap, or that I didn’t have on a speck of makeup except for some mascara. “I’ve got to fix myself up,” I said, rising from the sofa. “And you’d better do some primping, too, Mr. Man. I doubt that a T-shirt and jeans are going to do it for the prima of the Castillos.”

  His mouth twitched, but he had the good sense not to argue. Instead, he followed me up the stairs to our bedroom, where we both hurriedly changed — me into an elbow-sleeve top in dark green and a flowy peasant skirt that contained that same shade of some green in its print, along with hues of turquoise and teal. Connor had exactly one pair of what he called “thin pants” — in other words, dress slacks as opposed to jeans — in his wardrobe, but he dutifully climbed into those and a pale gray shirt. While he was trying to find the only pair of dress shoes he owned, buried somewhere in the back of the closet, I popped into the bathroom and did my best to tidy my hair, then brushed on some lip gloss and a bit of taupe eyeshadow. Some turquoise earrings and the gorgeous necklace in multiple shades of turquoise that Connor had given me for Christmas a few years back, and I was about as presentable as I was going to be.

  “You look amazing,” he said as I exited the bathroom. “Maybe we should hang out in Santa Fe for a little while after we meet with Isabel. Aren’t they supposed to have some pretty great restaurants there?”

  I wanted to tell him that we didn’t have time for that sort of distraction, but really, when you factored in the whole teleportation thing, it didn’t matter so much where we were, as long as we were reachable by cell phone. “I think I heard that somewhere,” I said cautiously, knowing deep down that we wouldn’t linger in Santa Fe, not with the situation in Jerome so fraught. Then I recalled the restrictions of our teleportation ability and frowned. “How are we even supposed to get where we’re going? We’ve never been there before.”

  “No problem.” Connor held up his phone, showing me what looked like a fairly impressive stretch of stucco wall, with tall old trees and a glimpse of some adobe buildings behind it. “Isabel gave me the address, so all I had to do was use Google Street View to find the house. Or at least the entrance to the house, which is good enough.”

  I came closer and peered down at the image on the screen. Yes, there was enough detail that we should be able to travel to that spot without too much trouble. It still wasn’t ideal, just because we’d be materializing right on the sidewalk, instead of safely tucked away inside the house where no one could see us, but it was the only way we could get where we were going. With any luck, we’d arrive as no one was passing by. Hard for me to say, since I didn’t know much about Santa Fe, how busy it was, whether there was much foot traffic.

  Well, I supposed we were about to find out.

  “Ready?” Connor asked me. He put his phone in his pocket, then held out his hands.

  “Ready,” I said, grasping his fingers. In my mind, I saw again that low stucco wall, the large sycamore and cottonwood and aspens trees which lined the street.

  And we jumped.

  20

  Margot Wilcox

  She could hear the shrieks of Angela’s twins, along with the more subdued giggles of her own daughter, Mia, coming from the backyard. Margot sat on the deck and sipped some iced tea, keeping half an eye on the trio. She wanted to make sure they didn’t get into the kind of trouble that might necessitate a hasty trip to see Ellen, the Wilcox clan’s healer, but she also wanted the children to have the chance to play on their own without an adult hovering over them. Back when Margot was a little girl, her mother had let her roam wild all over Jerome, but times were different then. Still, kids needed some autonomy.

  She glanced at the display on her phone. Four-thirty. Lucas had run out to the store to get buns for their planned burger cookout tonight. Normally, that wasn’t the sort of food they served in their household, but Margot was doing her best to make their time here enjoyable for the twins, to make it seem as if they were only on some kind of extended vacation. So far, none of the children seemed to have noticed anything was wrong, but she and Lucas had had several private discussions about how long this whole charade could be maintained. It was one thing to come and stay for a few days — the twins had done that once or twice before when Angela and Connor desperately needed some alone time — but as the days began to stretch on and on, Margot wondered how long they could keep this up. Sooner or later, Ian and Emily would start to ask questions.

  They were beautiful children, with their dark hair and green
eyes, just like their parents. Ian was a little taller than Emily, and a good bit taller than Mia, who idolized him and would follow him everywhere like a puppy dog if allowed. Already a few people had started to speculate as to whether that would be a match one day, talk that made Margot want to shake her head. They were just little children, for God’s sake. They had a huge chunk of time ahead of them before they needed to start making those sorts of decisions.

  Once again she glanced at her phone. Stupid, really, since it had only been a few minutes since the last time she checked, but she knew Lucas should have been home by now. The grocery store was less than ten minutes away, and even if he’d gotten distracted by chips and candy bars and cookies and all the junk she tried to keep out of the house but which he was sure would make the twins’ stay more fun, his shopping trip shouldn’t be taking this long.

  Relax, she told herself. He might have stopped for gas, or bumped into someone he knows and started chatting. That would be Lucas all over again.

  It was true; her husband did have a knack for running into friends and relatives every time he left the house. Some might say it was coincidence, but Margot knew it was probably just his gift for luck manifesting itself.

  She knew she was too on edge. It was hard not to be, what with Connor and Angela so worried about the situation with Joaquin Escobar that they’d been forced to send their own children away from Jerome. Margot had had several talks on the subject with Marie, the clan’s seer, but Marie had been able to offer much in the way of helpful insights. She hadn’t seen anything involving Escobar, had in fact said that her vision had felt clouded lately, as if something was blocking her. At first Margot thought possibly the dark warlock had a way of reaching across the miles and blocking other people’s visions of him, but she’d heard that Caitlin had had a vision of Levi’s kidnapping, a kidnapping that had involved Escobar himself, so that explanation didn’t feel quite right. Then again, he could have managed to block Margot but not Caitlin…magic wasn’t what you could call an exact science.

  Either way, Margot would have felt a lot better about the situation if Marie had been able to offer some information about what he was currently up to. Connor had FaceTimed with the children earlier, but he’d seemed preoccupied and didn’t say much beyond the usual pleasantries. That alone was enough to worry her, because Connor wasn’t the type to hold back important information, especially from the person he and Angela had quietly designated as the children’s guardian if anything should happen to them before the twins came of age.

  Margot pushed the phone away from her and stood up. The ice cubes had been melting into her tea for the past half hour, and it needed some freshening. A quick glance told her that the children had abandoned the fort they’d been working on and had retreated to the play area, where Ian was now pushing Mia on a swing and Emily was sitting beside her on another swing and doing her best to keep up.

  They’re fine, she told herself. Don’t hover.

  She went inside, blinking a little at the contrast from the bright sunshine outside with the darker interior of the house. A few toys lay scattered on the family room floor, and she stepped over them on her way to the kitchen, making a mental note to tell the kids to pick them up when they came back inside. A little clutter was all right, but she really didn’t need either Lucas or herself tripping over the damn things when they weren’t paying attention.

  As she poured some more iced tea into her glass, she heard the automatic garage door open and relaxed slightly. All that worrying, just because her husband was running twenty minutes late. It was foolish, because she knew nothing really bad could happen to Lucas; his gift of luck would always protect him.

  She went to put the pitcher of iced tea back in the refrigerator. As she closed the door — and heard the door that led from the kitchen into the garage open — she remarked, “I hope you didn’t forget the cheese. You know Mia won’t eat a burger if it doesn’t have cheese on it.”

  “I’ll make a note of that,” said an unfamiliar voice.

  Standing just inside the door was a dark-haired Hispanic man of middle height, probably in his late forties. She’d never seen him before, but as Margot watched several unfamiliar witches and warlocks filter in behind him, she knew who he must be, impossible as it seemed.

  Joaquin Escobar.

  Instinct took over. She didn’t respond, only turned on her heel and fled for the deck, where she paused long enough to scream, “Mia! Ian! Emily! Run!” And although she had no idea how long it would last, not with Escobar’s null powers enough to destroy any of her own magical gifts, she cast a spell of illusion on the children, cloaking their forms in the shapes of squirrels, making them far more difficult to see.

  Those squirrels immediately scampered away from the play equipment and disappeared into the pine forest which backed up to the property. The adults in their world might have done their best to shelter those children from the harsher realities of the witch community, but Ian and Emily knew enough that if an adult told them to run, they would…and Mia would follow along with whatever they did.

  They’ll be fine in the woods, she told herself, pushing aside worries of bears and stray dogs and any other dangers that might lurk in those woods. They’re children under those disguises…very smart children. Mia had been taught to memorize both Marie’s phone number and the number of the clan’s healer, just in case. They’d run to a neighbor’s house and ask to use the phone. The illusion was only a temporary one, intended to shield them from Escobar’s eyes until they had disappeared into the forest.

  He came onto the deck, his lackeys still surrounding him. Margot noted that they didn’t appear to all be Hispanic, so some of them clearly weren’t Santiagos. Was there another witch clan mixed up in all this? The situation had been changing so quickly, she didn’t know for sure what was happening anymore.

  Only that the darkest warlock in recent history had somehow found his way to her house, and she had no idea what to do next.

  With one hand, he waved toward the forest. “Find those children,” he commanded, and two warlocks and one of the witches left the little group and hurried across the backyard, heading straight into the forest. Then Escobar turned toward Margot. To her surprise, he was almost smiling, a corner of his mouth lifted in an ironic curl. “I suppose you think you are very clever.”

  She crossed her arms, chin held high. Whatever happened, she wasn’t about to let him see how frightened she was. Tone casual, she replied, “No, not really.”

  “What if I told you that I thought you were? Turning those children into squirrels — or at least the semblance of them — was rather inspired, especially done on the fly, as they say. I assume your talent is only one of illusion, and not actual transformation?”

  “Why don’t you let me turn you into a toad, and we’ll find out?”

  At that response, he chuckled slightly. Margot supposed he could afford to be amused; he had her completely outnumbered, and outgunned as well. Her gift with illusions was very strong, but it couldn’t begin to compete with the powers this man commanded. “No, I think we will skip that for now,” he said.

  As he spoke, a satisfied expression settled on his swarthy features, and Margot turned slightly to see what he had pleased him so much. To her horror, she saw the two warlocks and the witch emerging from the woods, each of them gripping one of the children’s arms. Ian was struggling with his captor, whereas Mia only looked bewildered. And Emily — her little mouth was set, as if she was already mentally rehearsing what she would do to the man who gripped her so firmly…once she was old enough to exert her powers, of course.

  “You let them go,” Margot bit out. “They’re children. They have nothing to do with any of this.”

  “Oh, I am afraid I don’t agree with you there,” Escobar said. “This is all about clan versus clan, after all, and so the children are just as much a part of it as anything else.” The falsely pleasant expression he wore shifted, and a cold mask clamped down on his featur
es. “All I want is a trade. I have three of yours. I will give them back in exchange for what should be mine — my fool of a daughter Olivia, the young woman named Lucinda Santiago, and the man you call Levi McAllister.”

  Margot had had no idea that Escobar’s only remaining child had somehow defected. On the surface, it seemed like a fair trade…but would Connor and Angela agree to it? They’d gone to some lengths to make sure Levi was safe. That was before the lives of their children were at stake, however.

  “I — I don’t have the authority to make that bargain,” she said, forcing the words out past her dry throat. How she hated this feeling of helplessness, of knowing there wasn’t a single thing she could do to fix this situation. Her entire life, she’d done her best to feel as though she was in control. Now, however….

  “Oh, I know you don’t,” Escobar replied. “You are only a glorified babysitter. But you can speak to Angela and Connor, make them see reason. They should care little for what happens to Olivia and Lucinda, since they are not kin to them. Even this Levi, who has been adopted into the McAllister clan — I doubt they will think he is worth more than their own children. But I suppose we shall see. You will contact your prima and primus, tell them that they will need to make a trade if they want to see their children alive again.”

  Margot swallowed. Right then she could only be glad that she hadn’t eaten recently, or she worried she might be sick to her stomach. She was also glad that Lucas was safely away; he couldn’t have done anything to help, but he might have tried to confront Joaquin Escobar, with disastrous results. “How will they contact you?”