Darker Paths (The Witches of Canyon Road Book 2)

by Christine Pope

  Well, within limits. Witches and warlocks didn’t just pull up stakes and settle in another clan’s territory without express permission, and that permission was unlikely to be granted. We’d always stayed in our own little enclaves and hadn’t ventured out much. But still, when I went back to Arizona, I could go where I wanted. I could stay in Jerome, or move up to Flagstaff.

  Or even head south to Phoenix or Tucson, depending on what happened between Simon and me.

  That thought sent a flush of embarrassment to my cheeks. It was way too early to be thinking about that sort of progress in our relationship. I still wasn’t even sure how I felt about him. And I definitely didn’t want to be one of those girls who immediately glommed on to another guy when their first relationship went south.

  “That’s kind of overwhelming,” I said with a laugh that I hoped didn’t sound too forced. “I think I’d rather concentrate on the next few days.”

  “We can do that. In fact, I was thinking we should go out tonight. You know, to celebrate.”

  The notion seemed somewhat daring, despite Simon’s reassurances that he’d be able to mask our magical natures from other witches and warlocks. But then I thought, why not? Today I’d seen a real breakthrough. If that wasn’t a cause for celebration, I didn’t know what was.

  “Yes,” I said, “let’s go out.”

  8

  Trespassers

  Rafe

  The air hit him as he exited the plane, warm, muggy, despite it being early November. The plane they’d taken from Albuquerque to San Antonio was so small that it hadn’t even connected up to one of the airports’ two terminals, had let its passengers disembark using one of those rolling portable staircases.

  Behind him, Cat dug her sunglasses out of her purse and planted them on her nose. At least they didn’t have to worry about baggage claim, because they hadn’t brought anything with them. If the situation went south and they ended up having to stay here overnight, they’d have to shop for some supplies, but Rafe hoped that wouldn’t be necessary.

  “This way,” he said, leading his sister across the tarmac and into the nearest terminal. He ignored the baggage claim and threaded his way through the crowds so they emerged on the walkway in front of the building. A long line of Ryde vehicles waited there, ready to take all the disembarking travelers to their various destinations.

  He and Cat climbed into the nearest unoccupied vehicle, a low-slung van built for carrying lots of luggage. Too bad all that space was going to waste, but he couldn’t worry about it now.

  “Destination?” the Ryde’s built-in AI inquired.

  Rafe pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up the address Daniel had given him. “Um, 217 Sandstone Court.”

  “Thank you, sir. We will arrive in approximately twenty minutes if current traffic patterns hold.”

  “Great.”

  The van pulled away from the curb and waited for a few seconds for the pedestrian traffic in front of them to ebb. Then it navigated toward the access road, presumably so they could exit the airport altogether.

  Which they did a minute or so later, heading toward downtown San Antonio’s gleaming skyscrapers, although Rafe knew that downtown wasn’t their destination, but rather one of the suburbs that seemed to surround the city. From this distance, the city didn’t look all that different from Albuquerque, although the skyline was a bit more complicated, and of course there were no Sandia Mountains to lend a certain graphical outline to the landscape.

  “What are you going to say to this guy?” Cat inquired, pulling her phone out of her backpack-cum-purse, presumably to check for any messages or missed calls. It didn’t seem that she’d missed anything too important, because a second later she slid the phone back into her bag.

  “Hopefully, nothing at all,” Rafe replied. “I mean, if I get close enough and am able to tell that he isn’t a warlock, then he definitely isn’t our guy. That dark power I sensed down there off San Francisco Street couldn’t have come from a civilian.”

  “And if you can tell he’s a warlock?”

  “Then we’ll have a little chat.”

  Cat didn’t look terribly impressed by his tough-guy reply. To be honest, Rafe wasn’t exactly sure what he would do if this turned into a magical confrontation. Duels between warlocks — or between witches — might have occurred back in the bad old days, but they certainly weren’t how differences of opinion were handled now. He supposed he was relying on the element of surprise; for one thing, he found it unlikely that this Robert Marquez would even know he was coming, and also, Rafe knew that his own power of transformation was a rare one. Probably Marquez wouldn’t know how to react if the warlock confronting him suddenly turned into a wolf and leapt at his throat.

  Of course, there were logistical problems to this plan, namely, that he wouldn’t have the luxury of removing his clothes so they wouldn’t get damaged during the transformation. And he hadn’t brought any spares with him.

  Hmm.

  Cat’s mouth quirked slightly, which meant she’d probably guessed that he wasn’t quite as prepared as he should have been. To his relief, she didn’t comment on his lack of a solid plan, but shrugged and said, “Well, I hope this guy’s in the mood to chat. I’m here for moral support, but my talent isn’t exactly the sort of thing you’d bring to a knife fight, so to speak.”

  No, it wasn’t. Too bad that ghosts couldn’t do much to affect the living. They could exert their will on inanimate objects — hence the furniture that got moved around at their cousin Tony’s house whenever Victoria, the ghost in residence, got irritated with something Tony had done. However, she couldn’t hurt Tony, couldn’t do much except try to make his circumstances slightly uncomfortable. And since Tony was the kind of guy who pretty much took everything in stride, it all sort of rolled off his back.

  Anyway, it wasn’t as though Cat could call San Antonio’s spirits to her defense if things got nasty. They wouldn’t, though. It would turn out that Robert Marquez was just a civilian who’d come to Santa Fe at the exactly wrong time, and that would be the end of it.

  Well, except for the part where they’d be back to square one in terms of locating Miranda.

  By now they were well away from the airport, moving along a street that was your standard American suburban sprawl — fast food places, nail salons, tire stores, chain restaurants. It made him glad that he lived in Santa Fe, that his hometown was the sort of place where you could tell from a single glance precisely where you were, rather than this homogeneity of twenty-first-century commercialism. Well, to be fair, some of the sections of Santa Fe farther away from downtown didn’t look that dissimilar from what he saw now, but he rarely ventured into those parts of the city.

  The Ryde turned off the main drag and into a neighborhood of modest tract homes that had probably been built right around the year 2000. They were starting to look a little shabby now, but were still mostly well-maintained, the grass mowed, some late flowers still blooming in flowerbeds.

  It didn’t really look like the sort of area where a warlock would be holed up. True, those of witch-kind tried not to flaunt their wealth, but they tended to live in nicer neighborhoods than this. Still, Rafe knew better than to make assumptions.

  The self-driving vehicle slowed and then came to a stop in front of a one-story house with a faux-stone façade. The garage door stood open, and inside Rafe spotted a large red pickup truck. Next to it was a big American motorcycle — a Harley, he guessed, although he supposed it could also have been an Indian. A well-muscled guy was working on the Harley, engine parts neatly laid out on a tarp next to the bike.

  The man’s back was to the street, so Rafe couldn’t get a look at his face. And from this distance, he wasn’t able to tell whether the guy was a warlock or not.

  “Wait here,” he told the Ryde vehicle. Then he glanced over at Cat. “You ready?”

  She pulled in a breath, her gaze shifting toward the guy in the garage before it returned to him. “Not really
, but I’m not going to wait in here, either. Let’s go.”

  They both got out of the van. The man working on the bike must have heard them approach, because he straightened up and looked over at them, expression clearly puzzled. “Can I help you?”

  He wasn’t a warlock. Rafe wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed that apparently they were no closer to finding Miranda, or relieved that at least he wouldn’t have to get into a magical battle here in suburban San Antonio.

  Cat stepped forward, and the man — who must be Robert Marquez, since his appearance more or less matched the photo Daniel had shown them back in Albuquerque — set down his wrench and stood up, expression shifting from one of puzzlement to obvious interest. Well, she was his sister, and so Rafe had never paid all that much attention to her looks, but it was clear enough from the male attention Cat tended to attract that she was pretty gorgeous.

  “This is going to sound strange,” Cat said. “But were you in Santa Fe a day or so ago?”

  “Yeah,” Marquez responded, still more interested than annoyed.

  Smiling, she pulled out her phone and showed it to the man, who squinted down at the screen as she asked, “Have you ever seen this girl?”

  At once he shook his head. “No.”

  The smile gone, a frown pulled at Cat’s brows. “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” Marquez said. “I think I’d remember if I saw a girl who looked like that. Or like you,” he added with a smile, obviously doing his best to be charming.

  Cat, however, was in no mood to be charmed. Frown still puckering her forehead, she asked, “But you were staying in an Airbnb downtown?”

  “No. A cousin of mine lives in Santa Fe, so I couch-surfed at his place for a few nights.” Marquez stopped there, a frown of his own altering his otherwise pleasant features. “What’s this about? You cops or something?”

  “No,” Cat said quickly. “We’re just — that is, the girl I showed you is our cousin. She’s missing, and she was last seen in downtown Santa Fe. We had reports that she might have been hanging out with someone named Robert Marquez.”

  “Sorry to hear that.” The man scrubbed a hand through his thick black hair. “I never saw her. You got the wrong Robert Marquez.”

  Well, shit. Rafe supposed he should have mentally prepared for this particular outcome, but he still couldn’t quite tamp down the wave of disappointment that passed over him. It seemed obvious enough now that “Robert Marquez” had just been an alias used by the dark warlock — or whatever he was — who’d been occupying the Airbnb above the wine tasting room. The guy standing here in front of them now had nothing to do with any of it.

  “It’s all right,” Rafe said, giving a subtle nod at Cat so she’d know they were done here. In response, she began to move toward him.

  “We’re really sorry to have bothered you,” Cat said. “Your name was the only lead we had.”

  “It’s all right.” It seemed he’d noticed the way she’d stepped back to be with her brother, because he added, “I wish I could have helped you more.”

  “No problem,” Rafe said. “We’ll let you get back to what you were doing.”

  “Sorry,” Cat said again, and then the two of them were hurrying back to the waiting Ryde. They slid into the back seat, and Rafe shut the door behind them.

  “Airport,” he said, his tone curt, but the Ryde had been programmed to ignore those variations in tone.

  “We will be there in approximately twenty-five minutes, given current traffic patterns.”

  “Great,” Rafe growled, and they pulled away from the curb.

  For a moment, neither of them said anything. At last Cat ventured, “Well, at least he wasn’t a warlock. Because that could have turned into a real mess.”

  “I know.” Rafe leaned back against the headrest and expelled a disgusted breath. “What a waste of time.”

  “It wasn’t a waste,” she said, her tone a little too reassuring. Clearly, she wasn’t happy about how things had turned out, either, but she wanted to sound supportive. “At least now we know that the ‘Robert Marquez’ at the Airbnb was a fabrication.”

  “And that’s all we know. We don’t know who took Miranda, we don’t know where she is…we don’t know if she’s okay.”

  Cat reached over and patted his hand briefly, then returned to clutching the strap of her backpack/purse. “We don’t even know if someone actually ‘took’ her, Rafe. I mean, she sure teleported out of that chapel under her own power, you know? True, we haven’t been able to find her at any of the local hotels, but she could have gone farther than Santa Fe. For all we know, the dark magic you sensed downtown doesn’t even have anything to do with this. It could be a total coincidence.”

  Yes, he supposed it could. He’d rather believe that, rather believe that Miranda had teleported herself off to someplace warm and tropical to recover from his rejection, than think she was being held captive by someone who meant her no good. Of course, that begged the question of what a user of dark magic would be doing lurking around downtown if he wasn’t trying to kidnap Rafe’s fiancée, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to think about that right now. His head was beginning to hurt.

  “Yeah, whatever,” he said, but Cat didn’t appear offended by his tone.

  “It sucks, I get it,” she said. “So we go home and regroup. I’ll try talking to some more ghosts.”

  “Because that worked so well the first time.”

  “It’s worth a try. Annalisa Jimenez usually hangs out down by Burro Alley. She might have seen something.”

  If he recalled correctly, Annalisa was a girl from around the turn of the last century who’d found herself in love with a priest, and hanged herself in her bedroom out of despair. No wonder she was still roaming around downtown, her spirit forever restless.

  Rafe reflected that it must really suck to be a ghost.

  “Sure,” he said, not bothering to hide the weariness in his voice. “Why not?”

  Cat shot him a sideways glance but apparently elected not to reply. She always had been pretty good at being able to tell when he was in a mood.

  The Ryde van turned off at the exit to the airport. Rafe wondered how long they’d have to cool their heels while waiting for a return flight; he hadn’t booked one because he hadn’t known how long all this would take, although Daniel had reassured him that there were three flights to Albuquerque leaving between five and nine p.m., so at least it wasn’t as if they’d be stuck here all night.

  Well, no matter how long the wait, he knew he’d spend most of it in one of the airport’s bars.

  They pulled up to the curb in front of the terminal where they’d arrived an hour earlier. Rafe was just swiping his phone over the reader built into the back of one of the seats when Cat suddenly grabbed his arm.

  “What?” he asked irritably. Good thing that little bobble hadn’t screwed up the reader. He just wanted to pay and get the hell out of here.

  “Witches and warlocks,” she said in an undertone. “Can’t you feel them?”

  Now that he was paying attention, he could. That tingle at the back of his neck wasn’t his spider sense, but his witch blood telling him that there were more of his kind standing only a yard or so away. As his gaze traveled past the van’s windows, he saw a small group of men and women, five in all, clustered near the curb. They appeared to be mostly in their forties, maybe a little older. Clan elders? It was hard to say, because not all clans even had elders, and when they did, the term “elder” didn’t necessarily have anything to do with age. However, Rafe was pretty sure these must be some of the more powerful witches and warlocks in the Montoya clan, no matter whether they were elders or not.

  “Guess we’d better see what they want,” he said.

  “You know what they want,” Cat muttered, but she unbuckled her seatbelt with an air of grim resignation, as though she knew there wasn’t much they could do other than try to get this over with as quickly as possible.

  They both
got out of the Ryde. At once the group of witches and warlocks moved toward him and Cat. The witch in the lead, a woman around his mother’s age, stepped out a little in front of the others. She was dark, obviously of Hispanic ancestry just like Cat and himself, although her hair was dyed an improbable dark red. Arms planted on her hips, she said, “We need to talk, Mr. Castillo.”

  Rafe didn’t bother to ask her how she knew who he was. Witches and warlocks had their way of ferreting out those sorts of things. “If it’s someplace where we can get a drink, I’m all for talking.”

  A flash of irritation passed over her sharp features, but she said smoothly enough, “Certainly. This way, if you please.”

  She headed into the terminal, and Rafe and Cat followed while the rest of her group brought up the rear. He had no idea if their little procession looked as odd to civilian onlookers as it felt to him, but he guessed probably not. Like most witches and warlocks, they were all dressed normally enough, the men in jeans and cowboy-style shirts, the two other women also in jeans, although the witch who led the group was wearing a long tiered skirt and a knit top, along with embroidered cowboy boots. Well, this was Texas.

  They all trooped into the airport bar, heading toward one of the booths in the back. “You two go ahead and sit down,” said the lead witch.

  Rafe could tell exactly what she was up to. If he and Cat sat down first, then the witches and warlocks would fill in around them, making it impossible for the two of them to attempt any kind of an escape. Not that he’d really planned to do any such thing, because doing something so foolish would only make the situation worse.

  Still, he saw the flash of panic in his sister’s eyes and wished he could do or say something to reassure her. Unfortunately, surrounded by all those hostile faces, he wasn’t able to do much other than send her a quick smile as he slid into the booth. She followed suit, her body rigid with tension, and he hoped she would let him take the lead here. They needed to make sure they kept their stories straight.