Strange Magic (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 9)

by Christine Pope

  As they walked, she had to fight to keep her gaze from locking on Evan’s butt in those nicely faded Levi’s. True, there wasn’t anyone around to see her staring, and his focus appeared to be fixed forward, but what if he turned around unexpectedly? Then he’d catch her staring at his ass, and she couldn’t imagine that would go over particularly well.

  Also, the setting sun kept catching in his deep red hair, and she found herself wanting to run her hands through it, to feel it soft and heavy against her fingertips. A certain warmth moved through her, one that had absolutely nothing to do with the heat of a Phoenix afternoon beating down on them, and she made herself push those thoughts away. She couldn’t be thinking about Evan McAllister like that. A distracted witch was a witch who made mistakes, and she’d screwed up enough for one day.

  Then he lifted a hand, as if telling her to stop, although he didn’t speak. One finger held to his lips, just in case she hadn’t gotten the memo, he pointed toward the stand of pine trees. Zoe narrowed her eyes as she looked in the direction Evan had indicated, which was west, into the setting sun. Her sunglasses were still in her purse, and if she paused now to dig them out, she might lose her focus.

  But in the next moment she forgot all about her sunglasses, because she caught a glimpse of a dark form moving among the trees, one she was pretty sure wasn’t a caddy searching for a lost golf ball. A chill moved down her spine, despite the lingering warmth of the day.

  What in the world was the creature doing here? Was there something about trees that had attracted it? After all, they’d found its last “victim” under a tree. Maybe that girl had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Zoe didn’t know, and she didn’t dare ask Evan his thoughts, because it seemed clear enough to her that they needed to remain quiet so they might have the best chance of sneaking up on the thing. Whether you could sneak up on an otherworldly creature at all was something she didn’t know for sure, but they had to try.

  She came up to stand next to Evan, and together they moved gingerly toward the clump of tall pine trees. The shadow they cast was dark and cool, and she could feel it the second they were within the shelter of its shade. At the same time, she again felt that tingle travel down her spine, and wondered if it was the same sort of thing her companion experienced when he drew closer to the creature.

  Because this time she could tell it was there. It had stopped, possibly because it had detected their presence in the same way they could sense it. Beside her, Evan might have been a statue, he stood so still. Was he communing in some way with his gift, trying to think of how he could use his own particular talent to get rid of the monster?

  Zoe hoped so. At the same time, though, she couldn’t forget how he had completely choked only an hour earlier. So she pulled in a breath and gathered her own strength, remembering how she had called the fire to her and used it to drive the creature away. The prima energy, not yet fully developed but still so powerful, burned within her, waiting.

  Evan took a step forward. From within the trees, Zoe saw a glint of baleful golden eyes. Had its eyes always been that color? She couldn’t even remember.

  Or was the creature changing somehow, morphing into something else, like in those old Aliens movies, the ones that Zander loved but which always gave her nightmares?

  Ice flooded through her at that notion, but she wouldn’t let herself react. She had to be calm, no matter what happened.

  Another step. Zoe forced herself to move forward as well. The charms on her bracelet jingled faintly, and she winced. Could the creature hear the metallic clink over the not-so-distant sounds of traffic out on Cactus Road? Once again, she didn’t have a clue.

  Evan stopped then, his head lifted into the wind, as if he was listening to something only he could hear. She hardly dared breathe, in case the sound of her breaths might be too loud.

  And then from inside her purse came the infamous coyote-howl theme from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, the ringtone Zander had programmed into her phone as a joke and which she’d left there because she thought it was kind of funny, too, and at least different from the Taylor Swift or Katy Perry tunes her friends tended to favor.

  At the moment, though, Zoe didn’t think it was funny at all. She grabbed her purse, frantically digging through its contents so she could find her phone and silence it, but the damage was done. A horrible howl came from the stand of pine trees, and in the next instant, the creature burst out from the shadows.

  God, it had changed. It seemed bigger somehow, and she hadn’t been seeing things when she’d noted those glaring yellow eyes. At the same time, however, its features had shifted slightly, had become more human-looking, although still distorted.

  She stared into that oddly altered face for a second, frozen in place as its gaze met hers. And then it seemed to fly upward, its body shattering into a million pieces which then coalesced into a whirling, smoky shadow, right before it disappeared.

  Evan turned toward her, face so still she couldn’t begin to guess what he was thinking. But the chill in his voice when he spoke was enough to tell her exactly how he felt.

  Just one sentence, but it was enough to make her feel about two feet tall.

  “Next time we go monster hunting, maybe you should shut your phone off first.”

  One screw-up after another. Could this day get any worse?

  6

  They were both silent on the way back to the car. Evan knew he’d been kind of harsh, and he wished he’d kept his mouth shut, but there wasn’t much he could do about that now. Zoe’s jaw was set as she climbed into the passenger seat; once she’d buckled herself in, she pulled the phone out of her purse, looked at the display on the home screen, and said, “That was my Aunt Luz. I should probably call her back.”

  He didn’t bother to argue, just nodded, because he knew you didn’t ignore a call from your prima, even if she happened to be your aunt. Or maybe especially because she was your aunt and would just keep calling until she’d reassured herself that you were okay.

  Just what the hell had that been back there? The creature, obviously, but it had changed, shifted into something different from the thing he’d first seen outside the apartment building out in Superstition Springs. It was bigger, looked more formed somehow, although Evan couldn’t exactly put his finger on what had caused that change.

  Yanking his thoughts back to the present, he paused at the exit from the golf course onto Cactus Road, not sure where to go.

  Zoe murmured, “Turn right. We can take this street back into Scottsdale and then cut down to pick up Shea Boulevard and head back to Fountain Hills.”

  Back to her house. But where else could they go? It wasn’t like he could pick up any sense of the monster. When it had shattered apart like that and then transformed into that strange swirling smoke, it was as if the tenuous connection he’d shared with it had been broken as well. He couldn’t feel it at all. So he might as well take Zoe home.

  As to what he planned to do next, well, he didn’t have a frigging clue. Maybe he should just pack it in and go back to Jerome after he dropped Zoe off. It was clear enough that he’d gotten in way over his head here.

  They inched along in the thick traffic, surrounded by people intent on getting home after a long work week. Evan thought it might be nice to only be concerned with the mundane minutiae of civilian life, of paying the bills and not pissing off the boss, rather than stuck trying to hunt down a monster that defied description. But no, that wasn’t really true. Being a member of a witch clan came with its own particular set of unique problems, but he’d still rather be out here with Zoe, running around after the creature she’d summoned, instead of stuck in a cube farm somewhere shuffling paperwork around.

  She had that damn pink phone out and was pressing a button on her contacts list. Her aunt, obviously, because in the next moment she said, “Aunt Luz? Yes, I’m fine — we’re fine.” A pause. “Yes. I mean, we saw it. But it — ” Another pause as she bit her lip in frust
ration, clearly wishing she could get a word in. “No. It disappeared again. And it was up at the golf course across from the Paradise Valley Mall. No, because my phone went off and it scared it away. Or something like that.” She stopped again, her free hand twisting a long lock of shining dark hair into a spiral.

  Evan made himself stop looking and returned his attention to the traffic in front of them. The girl was distracting as hell, even when she was obviously irritated. Just another reason for him to get back to Jerome. For all he knew, it was Zoe’s mere presence that had somehow been interfering with his powers. He’d never had anything like that occur before, but as his cousin Rachel was fond of saying, just because something had never happened in the past didn’t mean it couldn’t happen eventually.

  Zoe ended the call by saying, “We’re on the way back to the house. So I guess we’ll see you in a few.” Then she shoved the phone back in her purse, her lower lip looking mutinous.

  He had to ask, even though he thought he knew the answer. “Everything okay?”

  “No, not really. My aunt is annoyed that we didn’t catch the thing and put it in a box and send it back where it came from.”

  “She really said that?”

  “Of course not.” Zoe shook her head and let out a breath. “With Aunt Luz, it’s all in the way she says it, you know? And she’s really not happy that we saw it twice and still couldn’t get rid of it.”

  Well, Evan wasn’t too happy about that, either. Once more, his feelings of complete inadequacy when it came to dispelling the creature threatened to overwhelm him. He needed to keep it together, though. During that last encounter, even though he’d been shaken by the change in the creature’s appearance, he’d started to get more of a sense of the thing, of the way he might be able to shift the spell Zoe had used to bring it here to instead send it back wherever it had come from. If he’d had only a minute more to analyze the situation —

  But he hadn’t, because Zoe’s damn phone had gone off at exactly the wrong moment. While he’d snapped at her about that, it really wasn’t her fault. He had his own cell phone shoved in his jeans pocket, and it could also have rung at a horribly inopportune time. No, it hadn’t, mostly because he didn’t get that many calls, but it could have.

  “Well, she’s welcome to try for herself,” he said grimly, and Zoe chuckled. It wasn’t much of a laugh, almost more a small throat-clearing, but at least it was something.

  “You go ahead and tell her that,” she said. “I’d love to see her reaction.”

  “No, thanks,” he replied. “Your prima probably has a low enough opinion of me already.”

  That remark made Zoe’s eyebrows go up. “Why would you say that?”

  “I haven’t done that great a job today, have I?’

  She hesitated, then shrugged. “I guess neither of us have. But I don’t know if Aunt Luz could have managed much more, even if she is prima. Maybe at tracking it down…she got a lot of that from my abuela, from Maya. They’re both really good at sensing when magic has been used, and when people are in de la Paz territory who shouldn’t be. But maybe that wouldn’t apply in this situation, because we’re not talking about a witch or a warlock here. We’re dealing with something entirely different.”

  That was for sure. Evan thought again of the alterations in the creature’s face. It had begun to look more human, even though it still had a long way to go. Was that the real problem, that in some way the spell hadn’t been adequate to bring Zoe’s “dream man” fully formed to this world, but if it had time enough…?

  He shut down that line of thought real fast. Because otherwise he’d have to entertain the notion that, given sufficient time to change and develop, the monster could become a man, the one Zoe had called to her. Would she accept him, if he finally looked at her with the face she’d dreamed of?

  Something in his expression must have bothered Zoe, because she said then, “Don’t worry, Evan. We’ll figure it out.”

  Better that she thought he was beating himself up over his failures that day. He made a noncommittal sound and kept driving.

  Because no way in hell would he tell her he was worried that the monster might become a man, and that might leave Evan…where?

  Exactly where you are right now, he told himself. Absolutely nowhere.

  They pulled up in front of her house, and Zoe frowned. Parked in the driveway was her aunt’s silver Lexus, but next to it was a black Ford Taurus, a car she didn’t immediately recognize. As Evan turned off the engine, he followed her gaze to the unfamiliar vehicle.

  “Someone you know?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she replied, mentally ticking over possible members of the clan that Aunt Luz might have recruited for the search. Zoe wasn’t too thrilled at any of the prospects. Bringing in Evan hadn’t seemed too bad, because he wasn’t a member of the family, and so less likely to start spreading stories.

  Also, if she had to have help in this venture, better a handsome McAllister warlock than one of her numerous cousins.

  “But I guess there’s only one way to find out,” she added, then pushed on the handle so she could climb out of the car.

  Evan did the same, and together they went up the walk toward the front door. It did feel sort of strange to approach the house this way, since she was used to pulling into the garage and entering from the door that led into the laundry room. Once again she noticed the way he glanced around at his surroundings, taking them in. He did seem to notice a lot. Quiet, but you got the feeling that he was absorbing a lot of details even though he didn’t talk about them.

  They went inside. Almost at once Zoe heard voices coming from the living room, and so she headed in that direction, Evan still at her side. As those voices became more distinct, she realized whose car that had to be sitting in the driveway.

  Her Uncle Jack, who worked for the Scottsdale police department. He’d probably driven one of the Scottsdale P.D.’s unmarked cars instead of his own Jeep Wrangler, for whatever reason.

  She wasn’t sure how she should feel about him being here. Yes, he was her favorite uncle, but in a way that made the situation even worse. She really didn’t want him to know how badly she’d messed things up.

  But…he was also the person in the clan who was best at defensive magic. Not like her cousin Alex, who could create a protective dome that shielded him and anyone else within a ten-foot radius from just about anything you could throw at it, but Jack knew the sorts of spells to help ward off dark magic, to create a zone around yourself so that the ill will of others couldn’t affect you. No one had thought twice about a cop utilizing those sorts of spells, since his work did tend to bring him in contact with some not very nice people. However, Zoe had wondered from time to time why anyone else would really need those spells. All was well within their clan, and now that the Arizona witch families were all cooperating with one another, there didn’t seem to be much to protect yourself from, magically speaking.

  All right, she had thought that way…until Matías Escobar had nearly succeeded in kidnapping her. Then the reason for the existence of those spells had become pretty damn clear. And she could see why her aunt would have thought to summon Jack Sandoval now.

  Zoe arranged a smile on her face as she entered the living room, even though she wasn’t feeling all that cheerful. More like anxious and worried and a lot more inadequate than she wanted to be. But she didn’t need to broadcast those emotions to everyone in the room.

  Because there was Uncle Jack, and both her parents, and of course Aunt Luz. A casual observer might have thought they were just having a simple family get-together, because they were talking quietly, and a pitcher of iced tea and some glasses sat on the coffee table. But Zoe knew from the tension in their postures that this was no social visit.

  “Hi, Uncle Jack,” she said, since it seemed the best way to ease into the conversation, and because she’d noticed the way his gaze had shifted toward her the second she and Evan had emerged from the entryway. “This is E
van McAllister.”

  Her uncle rose from where he’d been sitting on the sofa and extended a hand. “Hi, Evan. Jack Sandoval, Scottsdale P.D.”

  “I’m not under arrest, am I?” Evan said with a slight smile, and a chuckle went around the room.

  “Not at all,” Luz said. She, too, got up from the sofa and then stopped a pace or two away from Zoe’s uncle, while Zoe’s parents remained where they were on the love seat, although they were clearly paying attention to every word being said. “But it sounded as if you could use a little backup.”

  “We did have a couple of setbacks,” Evan began, sounding apologetic — so apologetic, in fact, that Zoe felt compelled to step in.

  “Because we’re dealing with something we’ve never seen before,” she said quickly. “But I know we’ll get better at tracking it. And at knowing what to do when we catch up with it.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Jack said. “But at the same time, because we’re dealing with a new threat, it makes sense that you should be better equipped to protect yourselves.” Although he’d been smiling, his expression sobered abruptly. “We almost lost you once, Zoe. Do you really think we’re going to let that happen again?”

  She wanted to protest that of course it couldn’t happen again, that this situation was completely different, and Matías was safely locked up where he couldn’t hurt anyone ever again…but she held her tongue. It was impossible to say for sure what might happen, and in the meantime, better that she and Evan be as well-armed as possible.

  “No,” she said. “I get it.”

  “Good.” Her uncle’s gaze slipped over toward Evan, quietly assessing. Zoe could tell that the McAllister warlock wasn’t too thrilled by being inspected in such a way, but he didn’t say anything, only stood there and looked back at Jack as if he was used to being subjected to that kind of scrutiny. The two of them were almost the same height, and in a weird way the scene reminded Zoe of a sequence from an old western, where two gunfighters would stare each other down to take their measure before pulling out their guns and trying to blow each other’s heads off.