This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DARKER PATHS
Copyright © 2018 by Christine Pope
Published by Dark Valentine Press
Cover design by Lou Harper
Ebook formatting by Indie Author Services
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems — except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews — without permission in writing from its publisher, Dark Valentine Press.
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Contents
1. Hideaways
2. Tracks
3. Safe Spaces
4. Empty Spaces
5. Permissions
6. Investigations
7. Meditations
8. Trespassers
9. Boundaries
10. Whisperings
11. Explorations
12. Discoveries
13. Dinners
14. Identities
15. Signs
16. Farewells
17. Echoes
18. Transformations
19. Darker Paths
A Peek at Mysterious Ways, Chapter 1
Also by Christine Pope
About the Author
1
Hideaways
Miranda McAllister
Usually I felt better after I had made a decision, had gotten matters settled. Now, though, as I sat on Simon Gutierrez’s couch and watched him smile down at me, I couldn’t help but wonder whether I’d just made a terrible mistake. Yes, the man I was supposed to marry had just stomped on my heart and shattered it into about a million pieces — rejecting me as we stood on the altar at Loretto Chapel in front of the entire Castillo clan — but was disappearing with Simon so he could help me awaken my mostly dormant powers really the right response? The logical thing for me to do was to go back to the casita where I’d been staying at Genoveva Castillo’s house, gather my belongings, and catch a shuttle down to Albuquerque so I could fly home to Arizona.
And yet….
The only person I had less desire to face than Rafael Castillo was his mother, the Castillo prima. There was no guarantee that I wouldn’t run into both of them if I went back to get my things from the casita. I also couldn’t see myself as being courageous enough to say the hell with it and take a flight home while still wearing my wedding dress.
Besides, if what Simon had just told me really was true, if he actually could help me get in touch with magical gifts I hadn’t even known I possessed, then leaving now would prevent me from realizing my potential. Did I really want to be a nunca — someone born to parents of witch-kind but without any powers of their own — for the rest of my life?
That unspoken question seemed to settle things.
If Simon had taken any note of my apparent unease, he’d decided to ignore it. “I have a place where we can go. We’ll be safe there. The Castillos won’t be able to find us.”
“You’re sure?” I asked. “I mean, Genoveva is pretty powerful, and the clan is so big….”
“You’ll have to trust me on this one,” he replied. His night-black eyes were fixed on me, earnest, encouraging. “Just as I was able to hide my magical powers from them, I’ll be able to hide us physically, too.”
He’d hidden those powers from me as well. It was only a few moments earlier that he’d revealed he was also witch-kind, but from the de la Paz clan in southern Arizona. I supposed I would have to trust him to keep us well concealed, because he’d certainly done a good job at making me think he was a civilian, just an ordinary guy with no magical powers at all, someone who’d only been reaching out to a lonely girl in a new town.
And I’d have to believe him when it came to other matters as well. He hadn’t hidden his interest in me, so for all I knew, this was just an elaborate ploy to get me alone so he could finally make his move. However, I refused to believe that. He could have tried to make a pass at me all the times I’d been alone in his apartment, but he hadn’t. Right now, he seemed much more interested in helping me work with my buried powers than getting me in the sack.
Which was a relief. Yes, a very good way to get revenge on Rafe for leaving me at the altar might have been to sleep with Simon, but I didn’t think I could go to bed coldly like that, driven by vengeance rather than love or desire. I’d been hanging on to my virginity my entire life, saving it for Rafe. Even though he’d rejected me in about the worst way possible, I wasn’t willing to blithely throw that virginity away. I couldn’t say what might happen as time went on, but for now I just wanted to have Simon as a friend and nothing more.
“Okay,” I said. “I trust you. But how exactly are we going to manage this?” I remembered then that my meager belongings had been left at Rafe’s house, all packed into two weekender bags in preparation for a honeymoon that had never happened. At least I could avoid going back to the casita, but it didn’t seem as though there was any way to stay out of Rafe’s orbit. “My bags are at Rafe’s, and I can’t exactly go roaming around Santa Fe in my wedding dress.” I made a frustrated gesture at the heavy silk satin gown I wore, whose tight bodice now felt even more confining than when I’d put it on earlier that afternoon. More than anything, I wanted out of that damn dress. True, I’d taken off my tiara and veil a few moments earlier, but still, I was in no shape to go anywhere dressed like this.
“It’s fine,” Simon told me. “I can get your things for you.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “How? Even if you can block Rafe from detecting your powers and realizing you’re a warlock, he’s not going to let you waltz into his house and get my bags.”
“I don’t have to go anywhere near Rafe’s house,” Simon said calmly. “How much luggage did you have?”
“Um, just the two bags. Cat dropped them at Rafe’s house because we thought it would be faster when it came time to leave town, but — ”
“Miranda,” he cut in, stopping the flow of words. “It’s okay.”
He came and sat down next to me on the couch, then took my hand in his. Part of me wanted to pull away, but I knew that would be horribly rude. Besides, something about his touch was reassuring — the warmth of his fingers, the gentle strength I sensed within him. I needed someone to calm me down, because my whole body positively thrummed with nervous energy, probably from that terrible scene at the chapel when Rafe had rejected me…and perhaps also from the realization that I’d just made a huge decision about my future.
“Think of everything you brought with you,” he said, gaze meeting mine, open, friendly. “Don’t tell me — just think.”
This seemed like a pointless exercise, but I didn’t want to argue with him. I remembered how he’d said a few minutes earlier that he possessed a number of different talents, not the one magical gift most witches and warlocks could call their own. Did those talents include magically transporting inanimate objects across miles?
A little shiver went through me at the thought. Just how many magical abilities did Simon actually command?
I supposed I’d find out soon enough.
So I sat there on his slightly saggy couch and felt how his fingers were entwined with mine, how his skin was smooth and warm. I thought of the few possessions I’d been allowed to bring with me here to Santa Fe, the mundanities o
f jeans and tops and jackets, a few precious items like the green tourmaline earrings my parents had given me for my eighteenth birthday and the thick bracelet of hammered silver that my grandfather gave me when I graduated from college. All the little bits and pieces that were supposed to help me create a new life here, far from where I’d grown up in northern Arizona.
And then there they were — a pair of dark wine-colored weekender bags, with my purse sitting on top of one of them. I let out a shocked sound and shifted on the couch so I could look at Simon. “You — you were able to bring them here, just like that?”
“Just like that,” he said, voice and expression both slightly amused, as though he couldn’t quite understand why I should be so impressed by such a simple feat. “Soon enough, you’ll have learned to do these things as well. But for now, it’s probably a good idea if you get changed.”
I had my doubts as to whether I’d really be able to command those sorts of powers, but I didn’t feel like arguing with him. All I wanted right then was to climb out of that heavy, ridiculous dress and get into something more comfortable. Even as I moved, I could feel one of the plastic bones from the bustier I was wearing dig into my underarm.
“Definitely a good idea,” I agreed, then got up from where I’d been sitting. Simon’s bathroom wasn’t very big, but somehow I’d figure out a way to extricate myself from the wedding gown and get into some real clothes. After giving him a quick smile, I went and picked up both bags — since I couldn’t remember which items were in which piece of luggage — and locked myself in the bathroom to change.
My face in the mirror was almost one of a stranger. No real surprise, considering I’d been made up earlier that day by an expert, and I wasn’t used to the subtle contouring the makeup artist had used. But it was more than just the surface paint — those were the eyes of a woman who’d been hurt badly. Underneath the blush, my skin was far too pale.
Mouth compressed, I turned away from the mirror and began the arduous process of unbuttoning the row of tiny satin-covered buttons that fastened the back of the dress. I had a feeling this was the sort of procedure that usually required assistance, but there was no way in hell I was going to open the door and call down the hallway for Simon to come and help me get undressed.
About five minutes later, I finally had everything undone. With a sigh of relief, I let the gown slither to the floor, then stepped out of it and hung it from a hook on the back of the bathroom door. The rest of the process was easy enough — I traded my lace-topped thigh-high stockings for some boot socks, the bustier for a much more comfortable bra. A pair of jeans and a sweater, my favorite low-heeled brown boots, and I was done.
Well, except for the elaborate hair and makeup. I couldn’t do much about the makeup without washing my face and starting all over, so I settled for digging out an elastic hair band from my cosmetics bag and grimly pulling my hair back into a ponytail. The long, loose curls the hairstylist had given me weren’t damaged too badly by this process, but at least they didn’t look quite so over the top when confined in such a way.
There wasn’t much I could do with the wedding dress except roll it into as small a ball as possible and shove it in one of my weekender bags. Taking out the jeans and sweater had freed up a little space, although I knew the gown was going to end up hopelessly wrinkled. But then, what did it matter? It wasn’t as though I was ever going to wear it again. Really, right then I could have cheerfully set it on fire.
I emerged from the bathroom to find Simon standing in front of the couch, zipping up the duffle bag that he’d set down on the cushions. Apparently, he’d been packing while I was changing and putting away my wedding dress. Somehow, looking at the bag he’d put together brought home to me the realization that we really were going to do this. We actually were going to disappear somewhere together.
That uneasy feeling returned to the pit of my stomach. Part of me understood how crazy all this was, that running off with Simon when I hardly knew him possibly wasn’t the best response to Rafe’s rejection. At the same time, I tried to remind myself that if I didn’t take charge of my destiny now, the opportunity might be lost forever. Did I really want to go running back to Arizona with my tail between my legs, defeated and humiliated? I told myself that once Simon and I were settled and he’d begun helping me with my powers, I’d feel a lot better about the situation. Right now I was still jangly and upset from that horrible scene in Loretto Chapel. If nothing else, I needed a quiet place to go where I could calm down and better evaluate my long-range plans.
As soon as he saw me, Simon smiled. I couldn’t detect anything in his expression except approval and relief that we were going ahead with our plans. He’d probably been worried that I was going to make some kind of last-minute protest. “Better?” he asked, taking in my jeans and boots with one quick glance.
“Much better,” I replied. “But how are we going to get to this place you were talking about? I thought your car was in the shop.”
For the briefest second, his smile wavered. Then he shrugged and said, “Oh, it was never in for repairs. I had to tell you that so I’d have a reasonable excuse for why I was riding the train.”
Unease stirred in me again. “So you lied to me.”
At once he stepped away from the couch and came over to where I stood. His gaze meeting mine squarely, he said, “Miranda, I hated to do that. But I couldn’t tell you the truth about why I was here. Not at first, anyway. I had to sort of…ease into things, make certain that you really did possess some hidden powers.”
I reflected that so much of what he’d told me over the past few days had to be lies — going to school at UNM down in Albuquerque, the car that needed repair…the family that had only come to settle in Santa Fe about a hundred years earlier. As he’d hinted, he needed some kind of cover story to give me until he could be sure that my powers really were something he could work with. I didn’t like that he’d stacked falsehood on top of falsehood, but at least I could understand why he’d done it. And he was telling me the truth now, wasn’t trying to hide the fact that he’d lied to me.
“What about this apartment?” I asked. “The job at the wine shop?”
“The apartment is an Airbnb,” he said calmly, still meeting my gaze, expression open and frank. Maybe he’d told some lies to cover his tracks, but he obviously wanted me to know he wasn’t withholding any information now. “And I was covering for someone at the wine shop, a guy who had to go back to Chicago for a few days for some family business. That’s all.”
That’s all. Well, it was a pretty elaborate charade, as far as I could tell, but again, it hadn’t been anything intended to hurt me. Exactly the opposite, really. He’d needed to look as though he had a job and an apartment here in Santa Fe, or the rest of his story wouldn’t have made sense, and we wouldn’t have gotten close enough for him to feel comfortable revealing the truth about himself.
“All right,” I said wearily. Right then I just wanted to get the hell out of town. Although it seemed that Simon had his own ways of making sure we wouldn’t be followed, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the Castillos would track me down here if we lingered for too much longer. “Since your car is okay after all, let’s get going. No point in hanging around here, right?”
“No point at all,” he agreed. “Let me take one of your bags.”
I wasn’t about to protest. Right then I was just so damn tired that I thought I’d be lucky if I could make it down the stairs without stumbling. I nodded and handed one of the bags to him, then followed him as he walked through the short hallway to the front door. He paused to lock the door behind us, and afterward we headed down to the parking lot. Waiting there was a sleek newer-model compact BMW SUV. I looked at it with a raised eyebrow but didn’t bother to comment. After all, it was pretty obvious that his starving student act had been only that — an act, with very little truth behind it. The de la Paz clan had a lot of money; it wasn’t so strange that Simon would drive an expensive car.
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br /> He put the bags he was carrying in the back, then took my remaining weekender bag from me and stowed it alongside the others. In silence, I went up to the passenger door and let myself in. The vehicle was so new, I could still smell the leather upholstery. Had he bought it before he left Arizona? I’d noticed that it had New Mexico plates, but he could’ve acquired those sometime during the past couple of days.
“What about your family?” I asked as we pulled out of the alley and headed west on San Francisco Street. “Your real family, I mean.”
For a second, Simon didn’t reply. Yes, he was in the middle of setting the self-driving controls, but I didn’t think that was the real reason for the delay.
Then he said, “Back in Tucson, you mean?”
“Yeah. It’s not like witches and warlocks generally leave their home territory for extended periods. Where did you tell them you were going?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been taking photography classes at the local community college. There was a workshop coming up within the right time frame, so I said I was going to take it. Since it’s all about shooting in the desert, especially nighttime images, it meant I was going to be gone for ten days in places without a lot of cell service. It seemed the simplest excuse, and one they would have a hard time checking on. I already have a stockpile of images I can show them to prove that I took the workshop, so they won’t be able to get suspicious about that, either.”
That made some sense, I guessed. He couldn’t have told his family the truth about where he was going, because there was no way they would have allowed him to come to another witch clan’s territory and interfere with their business — especially when that business was something as important as the marriage of their prima’s only son to the daughter of the two northern Arizona clan leaders.
Darker Paths (The Witches of Canyon Road Book 2) Page 1
