Strange Magic (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 9)

by Christine Pope

  “Did you try to talk to it?” Evan asked. To be honest, he wasn’t sure if he would be capable of rational discourse if he were ever confronted by such an apparition. Zoe, however, seemed fairly calm about the whole thing, if embarrassed that she’d been driven to such lengths.

  “I did, at first. But then it made this horrible snarling noise and reached for me, and it just felt so wrong that I did what I could to drive it off.”

  “How?”

  “My — my powers. I mean, the prima powers I have inside me. I’m not as strong as I will be once I’m matched with my consort and my gifts are fully awakened, but it was enough to make the thing go away. I had to hit it twice before it ran, though.”

  Evan paused for a moment and resisted the urge to run a hand through his hair. So apparently there was now some monster running around the greater Phoenix area, a monster with the ability to walk through walls. Which meant it probably could come and go as it pleased, wherever it pleased.

  Great.

  Still…he had to respect what Zoe had done to get rid of the thing. Yes, it was her mistake that had summoned it here in the first place, but to stand her ground and try to fight back, rather than run away and get help? Those actions seemed to indicate some pretty serious cojones, so to speak.

  But then, she would be the de la Paz clan’s next prima. Evan had never met Maya de la Paz, but he’d heard the stories about her. She made his late Great-Aunt Ruby sound like a pushover. It seemed Maya’s daughter was just as tough, and her granddaughter as well. At least he could count on some good backup while he was here, although in that moment, he had to admit to himself that he was somewhat at a loss. Zoe had no reason to be lying about what had happened, but he still couldn’t catch one whiff of the creature, whatever it was. And if he couldn’t do that, then they stood a slim chance of catching it and sending it back to whatever plane of hell it had come from.

  In the meantime, he figured he might as well start at the beginning and work out from there. “Did you do any preparations for the spell back at your house?”

  Zoe looked confused for a second, then nodded. “Yes. I found the spell here, but I did all my research at home.”

  “Research?”

  She didn’t exactly sigh, but her chest rose and fell as she let out a breath. Evan made sure to keep his eyes fixed on her face, but it wasn’t easy. He hadn’t counted on her being so distracting, and he didn’t quite know what to do about it. “Which hot telenovela guy I wanted my ‘perfect’ consort to look like.”

  That had to have been excruciating for her to admit. He said, “Thanks, Zoe. Then I guess that’s where we should go next.”

  “Our house?” Luis asked.

  “If it’s okay.”

  “Of course,” Andrea said hastily. “You can follow us there. It’s about fifteen minutes from here.”

  “Sounds good.” Evan set the water he held down on the little painted table next to him, careful to use the coaster, then stood up.

  Zoe got up from her seat as well, reaching down to retrieve the purse that had been sitting on the floor next to her.

  “What do you think you will find?” Luz asked, her tone frankly curious.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I’ve got to start somewhere.”

  Could this have been any more embarrassing? Zoe didn’t know. All she did know was that she thought she would rather have admitted the truth behind the creation of her consort to the judge-y older man she’d first imagined, rather than the actual Evan McAllister.

  Damn, he was smoking hot. She hadn’t even contemplated that possibility, mostly because she’d just assumed that someone who wielded his powers and had his kind of responsibility had to be someone a lot older than she was. All right, he still had to have a few years on her, looked to be somewhere in his late twenties, maybe as much as thirty, but that wasn’t such a big age difference, was it?

  She told herself that even entertaining such a thought was crazy. Evan had to be way too old to be considered consort material, or surely the McAllisters would have sent him down to see if he was the “one.” In general, candidates weren’t more than three years older than the prima-in-waiting they were trying to match. Trying to guess someone’s age could be tricky, but she thought he had to be at least twenty-eight or twenty-nine, maybe even more than that.

  And when they left the house to go to their cars — her parents in their Audi SUV, Zoe in the Fiat her parents had bought her for her twenty-first birthday — she watched as Evan headed toward a shiny black piece of muscle car parked just behind her parents’ SUV. She didn’t know much about cars, but whatever he was driving, it was pure sex on wheels, just like he was sex on legs.

  Stop that, she commanded herself. He’s here to help. He’s not your future consort.

  Too bad, though. She’d never seen a guy with hair his color, a deep, deep red that you almost thought was brown until the sunlight touched it. He didn’t have a redhead’s complexion, though; he was sort of fair-skinned, but she hadn’t seen any freckles, and she guessed he’d be more tanned in the summertime when he had a chance to get outside more. From what she’d heard, Jerome was a lot colder than Phoenix.

  Then again, wasn’t just about any place colder than Phoenix?

  She pulled away from the curb, and the shiny black monster Evan was driving fell in behind her. A glance in her rearview mirror told her he’d put on some sunglasses for the drive. It was hard to tell for sure, but she thought they were black Ray-Bans, to match the car.

  Sigh.

  With some difficulty, she forced her concentration forward, on making sure that she didn’t inch too close to her parents’ Audi, and she frowned at herself. Being all distracted and girly around the man who’d been sent to help her was exactly the wrong thing to do. She needed to focus. He’d said he hadn’t been able to detect the creature, but what did that mean? Maybe it really was gone, and what Luz had sensed was just a weird echo of a false positive. Or maybe she’d sensed something else entirely, and not the creature Zoe had summoned.

  Which in a way was worse. She didn’t want to think that her hometown harbored an even worse threat than the monster. No, it was probably that Evan had never encountered anything like this before in his life, and so the usual rules just didn’t apply.

  That thought didn’t reassure her very much, but she told herself that the McAllister elders wouldn’t have sent him here if he didn’t have something to contribute. This was a different kind of magic from what he was used to. He was bound to need some kind of an adjustment period.

  So her thoughts hummed along as she followed her parents down to Shea Boulevard, and then up into the hills east of Scottsdale. Just beyond was the Fountain Hills suburb where her house was located, although they had to climb some more hills to reach her street. The whole time she was acutely conscious of the gleaming black car a few yards behind her. She wondered about it. From what she’d heard, the McAllisters weren’t really into material stuff and tended to live like a bunch of hippie leftovers in their ramshackle mountain town. But there was definitely nothing ramshackle about that car.

  Her parents turned onto their cul-de-sac, and then up into the driveway and the far left garage bay where they always parked the Audi. Right next to that was her mother’s BMW, while the far right bay was reserved for Zoe’s Fiat. In another year and a half, her younger brother Zander would be driving, but by then she should be long out of the house, married to a consort she hadn’t even met yet.

  If she ever met him.

  She decided she could heave an exaggerated sigh, since there wasn’t anyone around to hear it. So that’s exactly what she did, right before she grabbed her purse from where it had been resting on the passenger seat and got out.

  Her parents were already standing in the driveway, waiting for Evan, who had parked at the little bit of curved curb in front of their house. As he came up the drive, he pushed up the sleeves of his shirt, clearly bothered a little by the heat. It might have only been e
arly March, but temperatures had inched into the eighties the last few days.

  Not that she minded, because now she could see his forearms, strong and with a dusting of dark hair. She wondered if it was just plain brown, or whether it was also dark red. On his left wrist he wore a bulky dark watch, one of those sporty chronograph things.

  Oh, yeah, definitely hot.

  She swallowed, and was saved from having to act like a rational human being by her mother saying, “Come on in, Evan.”

  They all went inside. Zoe could tell from the startled flicker of his gaze upward that he was surprised by the opulence of the house, its gleaming columns and shining travertine floor. Well, they probably didn’t have houses like this in Jerome. Everything there was old, and often not all that well-maintained. Or at least that was what the cousins who’d been brave enough to venture there claimed. Zoe had never been, because the prima-in-waiting was supposed to stay in her own territory. Previously, that particular rule hadn’t felt too limiting, because the southern part of Arizona was a pretty big place to roam around in, but now she found herself wishing she had been to Jerome, just so she’d have a better idea of how foreign her own surroundings must feel to Evan McAllister.

  “My room is upstairs,” she offered. Both her parents lifted their eyebrows, and she went on, “Well, that’s where I was doing my research. On my computer,” she added for emphasis in case they still didn’t get it. “And then my lab is out in the casita.”

  “Lab?”

  “My talent is potions, and some healing. That is, making healing potions. I can’t just lay on hands and heal someone like Valentina and Alba, our two healers, can. So I do a lot of work out in the casita.”

  “Why don’t we look at the casita first?” Evan asked. Apparently he’d also picked up on the vibe that her parents didn’t particularly want him in her room.

  Which was stupid, because he had acted completely professional this whole time, not a flicker in his eyes to indicate that he’d even noticed she was female. Zoe could tell, because she’d done her best to watch him sideways and from under her eyelashes, so he wouldn’t notice. It was definitely safer that way, but….

  Since she’d already allowed herself her one sigh of exasperation for the hour, she said, “Sure. It’s this way.”

  He offered a faint smile for her parents, who also smiled in return, although Zoe had the feeling that they’d started to pick up on some vibes and weren’t happy. Or maybe it was only that they didn’t like the idea of having an attractive unattached warlock around their daughter. Evan didn’t wear any rings; she knew, because she’d looked at his left hand almost as soon as she laid eyes on him.

  Also, the secret was out now when it came to primas and their consorts. Yes, it was always better to be with the one who completed her soul bond, because then a prima’s powers would be able to reach their fullest potential. However, a prima didn’t have to be with her soul mate to be pretty powerful on her own. And that made Evan’s presence here problematic, to say the least. Because she could already feel how attracted she was to him. So attracted that she couldn’t prevent the thought from crossing her mind that if she could be with him, then this stupid consort search would have to stop, and her family would finally leave her alone.

  She knew better than to betray anything of what she was thinking, however. Instead, she took Evan through the kitchen and out the door that opened onto the cover patio. A little beyond was the infinity pool, and off to one side was the casita — pool house, lab…whatever you wanted to call it.

  The door was always kept locked, and she’d left her purse in the house, but that didn’t matter. Zoe laid her hand on the doorknob and it turned easily. Inside was the space she’d taken over once her talent with herbs and potions had really begun to manifest itself. Long tables to either side, and an apartment-sized gas stove for the times she needed to use heat to get the effect she desired. Sprays and sprigs of all sort of herbs hung from the walls, lending their riot of scents to the air. The ductless A/C unit on the far wall hummed into the quiet.

  “Wow,” Evan said as he looked around. He appeared genuinely impressed, too, although Zoe didn’t know him well to decide whether she was reading his expression accurately.

  “So this is where I work,” she said. Now that they were alone together, in this space where she usually kept the blinds drawn to avoid damaging any sensitive potion components, she couldn’t help feeling a little awkward. He seemed so much taller when he was standing close to her like this. Of course, it didn’t help that she was barely five foot three in her bare feet. She had always hated that she hadn’t inherited her mother’s height, had turned out to be vertically challenged just like her grandmother Maya.

  “It’s quite the work area.” He moved away from her, taking a few steps farther into the room so he could inspect the equipment and all the herbs hanging from the walls. “Where do you get all these?”

  “We have a garden in the side yard,” she explained. “I grow what I can there. But I also have to buy a lot of imported stuff, because the climate here isn’t that great when it comes to cultivating things. We looked into building a greenhouse, but the association wouldn’t allow it. Said it wasn’t allowed under the CC&R’s, or something stupid like that.”

  During this speech, Evan’s eyebrows had knotted together, as if she’d suddenly started to babble in Spanish and he was having a difficult time following what she’d just said. “Association?”

  Right. Homeowner’s associations probably weren’t a thing in Jerome. “Homeowner’s association. There are all these rules we have to follow if we live in this neighborhood. You can’t paint your house pink or purple. You can’t add a second story if the house wasn’t built that way originally. You can’t leave cars on the street overnight. That kind of thing. It’s so everything stays looking nice.”

  “Sounds kind of extreme.”

  Zoe shrugged. She’d spent her whole life here, so she was used to the way things worked. “Better than having pink and purple houses everywhere, I guess. Although purple is my favorite color.”

  He smiled at that, just a little. What a great smile, too, with the way his hazel eyes seemed to light up, and how the crinkles showed at the corners of those eyes.

  But she shouldn’t stare. Had she been staring? Crap, she’d better say something fast. “Anyway, I work in here when I’m not doing stuff for school.”

  “You’re in college?”

  “Just the local community college. There didn’t seem to be much point in trying for ASU — the logistics would have been a total pain, since it’s way across town instead of only a few minutes from the house. Anyway, I would have had to drop out once — well, once I found my consort. So I just didn’t bother with the whole thing.”

  A nod. He even looked vaguely sympathetic, as if he’d figured out that being the future prima of a clan wasn’t exactly a bed of roses. So many restrictions, so many things you couldn’t do….

  “Did you do any of your research in here?” he asked then, his tone turning brisk.

  “Some. I mean, I brought my laptop in here a few times when I had a long-simmering potion that I had to babysit.”

  “Hmm.”

  What he meant by that, she had no idea. She leaned against one of the lab tables and watched as he moved to the far end of the room, where a blind-covered window took up most of the wall. He paused there for a long moment, then raised one hand to touch the wooden blinds. A faint frown pulled at his dark brows.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Do you sense something?”

  Why he’d be able to do something like that here, when he’d come up empty back at Aunt Luz’s house, Zoe didn’t know. But magic wasn’t always logical. It had its own whimsical nature, and sometimes did as it pleased.

  Evan didn’t answer right away. When he spoke, he sounded abstracted, as if he was concentrating on something far away. “Maybe,” he said at last. “I don’t know for sure. I did feel something, like a finger trailing throu
gh still water. Something upsetting the pattern.”

  Which sounded suspiciously like what Aunt Luz had said about sensing a snag in an otherwise smooth piece of silk. Same concept, only a different metaphor.

  “Which means it’s still out there,” Zoe said. Deep down, she’d really been hoping that once the creature got bored with wandering around Phoenix, it would pop back into whatever dimension it had come from. But she should have known the universe wouldn’t be that kind.

  “Yes,” Evan replied, still in that same somewhat faraway tone. His fingers — long and strong-looking — moved down the edge of the blinds. “Somewhere to the south, I think, but the sensation is so faint that it’s really hard to tell.”

  “Maybe we should drive that way, see if we can find anything,” she suggested. As the words left her mouth, though, she thought of how desperate she must have sounded.

  And how much of that was really wanting to go find the creature, and how much just wanting to have Evan drive you around in that car of his? she thought then.

  Zoe really didn’t want to know the answer to that question.

  To her surprise, he appeared to take her suggestion seriously. “That could work. If we get closer to where it’s gone, then it might be easier for me to get a clear read. Right now I might as well be asking a Magic 8 ball to tell me where the thing is.”

  “Okay,” she said at once. If he really was going to go along with her crazy idea, then they should go now before he had a chance to change his mind. But…she should probably propose that she should drive, just in case he couldn’t focus on driving and tracking at the same time.

  But when she ventured to ask the question, he shook his head. “No, it’s actually better if I’m driving. Sometimes I feel as if the car is helping me just as much as my talent is.”