witches of cleopatra hill 07 - impractical magic Read online

  It wasn’t his mother who opened the door, but his father, also wearing a polo shirt, although one in a warm rusty-red shade that Colin knew his mother had chosen because it looked vaguely autumnal. “Come on in,” Liam Campbell said.

  Colin smiled and went inside, glad that it was his father who’d first greeted him. That would give him a little more time to get his bearings. Liam, an engineer, was probably the last person to start quizzing his son as to how he was feeling. No, he’d offer him a beer and ask if he’d been following the game on the radio on the way over, and that would be it.

  They headed into the house, passing the dining room on the way to the family room, where, as he’d anticipated, the football game was blaring from the sixty-inch TV. Kate’s husband Jeff was in there already, holding a bottle of Heineken and staring intently at the television.

  “Hey,” he said absently, waving with his bottle.

  Colin nodded in reply but headed on toward the kitchen, wondering as he did so how long that particular relationship was going to last. Not that he wished divorce on anyone, but he couldn’t help thinking that his little sister could have done a lot better. She was bright and bubbly and pretty, and Jeff had always seemed like sort of a lump.

  Oh, well. Colin had enough romantic woes to deal with at the moment. He certainly didn’t need to be borrowing any for his sister.

  Both she and his mother were in the kitchen. Naturally. Liam Campbell was not the sort to help out with the cooking, although he did unbend enough to load the dishwasher on occasion. And Jeff took his cue from his father-in-law, only too glad to exploit that particular gender gap.

  Vowing to be nothing like either of them, Colin said, “Need any help with anything?”

  His mother turned from the sink, where she’d been peeling potatoes. Her hazel eyes, so like Colin’s own, glinted with laughter as she asked the standard question. “How are you at potatoes?”

  “Awesome,” he replied, moving toward the sink. They shared this same exchange almost every year, although sometimes he ended up slicing yams instead of peeling potatoes.

  She smiled and handed over the potato peeler, even as Kate, who was standing at the kitchen island and setting rolls on a cookie sheet, frowned slightly and said, “Hey, what’s going on with you?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what’s going on’ with me?” he asked. “Don’t I always offer to peel the potatoes?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Kate finished with the last of the rolls and crossed her arms as she surveyed him with a critical eye. “You look like crap.”

  “Thanks, sis.”

  Lynda Campbell paused in front of the refrigerator and glanced back at her son. “Well, I think ‘crap’ might be a little harsh, but you do look tired, Colin.”

  “Long hours lately,” he replied as he turned on the water and started in on the remainder of the potatoes.

  “‘Long hours,’ my butt,” Kate said. “You live for that kind of thing. I smell girl trouble.”

  “I’m not even dating anyone,” he protested. Well, that was true enough, now that Jenny had dumped him like a bag of dog shit. Actually, that simile was more apt than he wanted to admit. He was dog shit for lying to her the way he had.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Children,” Lynda said mildly. That was all she had to say. When she sounded all calm and placid like that, you knew you had to watch out. Colin’s mother was not the sort to lose her temper, but neither was she kind of person who would allow you to mess with her Thanksgiving.

  Kate subsided, but, judging by the narrow-eyed look she was giving him, Colin knew that she wasn’t buying his story. Sooner or later she’d corner him and get the truth out of him. She always had been good at that kind of thing.

  Well, fine. As long as he could make his confession while everyone else was passed out in front of the TV in a turkey and pie coma.

  After that, Lynda told Colin about her sister’s cruise, during which one-sided conversation he nodded at the right intervals but didn’t say much. It felt good to stand there and peel potatoes and feel vaguely useful. And then of course, some time afterward, things in the kitchen devolved into the usual last-minute chaos involved in getting any sort of elaborate meal together — Liam was rousted to get the turkey out of the oven, since it was too heavy for Lynda to manage, and Kate took over the potatoes, since she announced that she didn’t trust Colin to get the proportions of milk and butter right. And Lynda kept carrying serving bowls and trays out to the dining room — cranberry sauce and stuffing and sweet potatoes and green bean casserole and ambrosia salad and a few other things Colin soon lost track of. Good thing the dining room here was so large, and the table had extra leaves put in it, or there would have been no way all of that stuff would ever fit. As it was, he couldn’t help wondering if his mother had forgotten that it was only the five of them this year.

  Through it all, Jeff didn’t lift a finger to help. Once all the food was on the table, though, he pried himself out of his recliner with some reluctance, then ambled into the dining room and took a seat, eyeing the bounty before him with anticipation all over his meaty face.

  Asshole, Colin thought. And when had he thickened up like that? He’d always been a big guy, had played football in high school and college, but the muscle seemed as if it was rapidly turning to fat. He looked as if he would squash Kate if he rolled over the wrong way in bed.

  There was a mental image Colin really didn’t need. He waited as his father spoke a brief prayer — and wondered if the McAllister witches offered up any kind of grace before they sat down to their own Thanksgiving meal — and then was quiet as the food was passed around the table.

  “Everything looks great, Mom,” Colin said, since he knew Jeff didn’t possess the social skills to offer even that rudimentary a compliment.

  “Thanks, sweetie,” she replied, her cheeks pink. But maybe the flush was a result of her exertions in the kitchen.

  “And the table is beautiful,” Kate added. “You always make everything look so perfect.”

  Which was true. Lynda Campbell could set a table that would make Martha Stewart jealous. But his mother had always taken pride in her house. She’d worked before he and Kate were born, but after that she’d been a stay-at-home mom for many years. Now she had a part-time job at the local library, although Colin knew that was more for her to have something to help keep her busy rather than because she needed to work. His father had always possessed a knack for holding down well-paying jobs, even through recessions and reductions in the work force.

  Too bad he didn’t pass that knack along to me, Colin thought with a mental grimace. But then, whose fault was that? He’d known journalism would be tough, but he’d stuck with it anyway. If he really wanted to, he could’ve tried for a cushy corporate communications job like the one he’d lied about to Jenny McAllister.

  And there was someone he really didn’t want to be thinking about. He did his best to concentrate on the conversation, which was mainly Kate trying to convince their parents to go on a cruise the way Lynda’s sister and brother-in-law had. True, Colin knew his parents were not big on traveling, but even so, he wasn’t sure a cruise was the best way to entice them out of the house, not with so many cruise ships turning into modern-day vomitoriums, thanks to fun things like the norovirus and good old-fashioned food poisoning.

  He knew better than to bring up food poisoning during Thanksgiving dinner, though, and so mostly didn’t say much at all, passing food when asked and offering a tidbit here and there when asked about the Cardinals’ chances of making it to the playoffs this year. Neither Liam nor Jeff seemed to notice anything off about his replies, although Kate kept giving him those sidelong glances when she thought no one else was looking. His mother also seemed more or less oblivious, probably because she was focused on making sure that everyone at the table had enough to feed a small village in Africa.

  Afterward, Colin jumped up to help clear the table before his mother could even begin to move.
She made a small protest, but he just shook his head and said, “It’s the least I could do. You just relax, Mom.”

  A grateful smile was her only answer. Both Liam and Jeff got seconds on pie but carried it out to the family room, clearly hoping to catch the last bit of the game.

  Kate followed Colin into the kitchen, her hands also filled with dirty dishes. He knew that wasn’t her only reason for being there, though. After she’d set down her burden, she turned toward him, hands on her hips. “Okay, spill.”

  “There’s nothing to spill,” he said calmly as he began running the hot water and rinsing off plates. Thank God that his mother had finally relented a few years ago and agreed with Colin that her precious china could survive a bout in the dishwasher, as long as he promised not to use the heat dry setting.

  “Uh-huh.” Kate leaned up against the counter, one brow tilted at an ironic angle. “I haven’t seen you look this emo since you and Shannon first split up. So what happened? I didn’t think you were seeing anyone.”

  Damn it. He was feeling full and tired after the big meal, even though he hadn’t drunk all that much, just two glasses of wine. But he knew his sister would keep pecking at him, especially since she knew she had a captive audience. Neither Liam nor Jeff would be coming in the kitchen anytime soon, not when they had pumpkin pie to keep them occupied, and Lynda had probably followed them into the family room to keep up appearances as hostess, even though Colin knew his mother had absolutely no interest in the outcome of the football game.

  “I’m not seeing anyone,” he said evenly.

  Another of those eloquently lifted eyebrows.

  “All right,” Colin told her. “I met someone, and she’s pretty amazing. But I screwed it up before we could really even get started.”

  “Screwed it up how?”

  He hesitated. The best thing to do would at least attempt to dodge the question. On the other hand, he was getting tired of not being able to talk to anyone about Jenny McAllister. Colin knew his sister would keep anything he told her in confidence. She’d never been the kind of girl to gossip, knew how to be discreet when the situation warranted it. That quality was one of the many things he loved about her.

  Problem was, he didn’t know if she would believe him even if he told her the truth.

  “I lied to her.”

  “Ouch. What about?”

  “What I do for a living.”

  A flicker of confusion passed over Kate’s features. “Since when are you ashamed of being a reporter?”

  “No, that’s not why. It’s — ” He flailed for a few seconds, not sure of the best way to explain. “That is, I knew of this girl because I covered her sister’s murder.”

  “Holy shit.” His sister’s hazel eyes narrowed, and she gave a small nod, as if confirming something to herself. “The Escobar case?”

  “Yeah, that one.” Colin moved on from rinsing the plates to the silverware, carefully segregating the sterling pieces from the stainless serving items so they wouldn’t get spots. “It was dumb of me. I should have told her. But I could tell she was still having a rough time — ”

  “I’d think so.” Kate shuddered, then crossed her arms as if to ward off a sudden chill. Suddenly, she looked very small and thin, and Colin thought again of what in the world he would have done if it had been his sister who’d been Matías Escobar’s victim. “Still, I don’t see why you had to lie. It might have been awkward at first, but — ”

  “Well, there was also how I met her.”

  “What, were you stalking her?”

  Colin let out a humorless chuckle. “No, but I might have been crashing her cousin’s wedding.”

  “Um…what?”

  “You heard me. Not one of my prouder moments. But I was given a tip, and I wanted to investigate it. Meeting Jenny was sort of an accident. That is, I saw her at Escobar’s sentencing, but I would never have approached her then.”

  “But it was okay when you were gate-crashing a wedding?”

  He wanted to flinch at the skepticism in his sister’s voice. “Well, I don’t know about ‘okay,’ but the circumstances were completely different.”

  “So you hit it off.”

  “You could say that.” No way was he going to tell his sister that he’d had a one-night stand with Jenny McAllister. Besides, you couldn’t really call it a one-night stand when the two of them had gotten together the next day, and then again the following weekend.

  “But she found out eventually.”

  “Um, yeah. I went to see her last weekend, and it just sort of…came out.” Well, that was one way of putting it.

  Kate seemed to sense he was leaving something out of the narrative. “How’d she find out? Did you finally confess all, or were you talking in your sleep again?”

  He shot her a pained look. Unfortunately, he knew all the pieces weren’t going to line up unless he told his sister of his suspicions about the McAllister family and the very real evidence of Jenny’s psychic powers — or whatever they were.

  Not to mention his conversation with the ghost of a dead prostitute.

  “This is probably going to sound crazy — ”

  “Try me.”

  For a long moment, he hesitated, and only continued to rinse off serving utensils and flatware and put them in the dishwasher. How in the world was he supposed to broach that particular subject? Oh, I think the girl who dumped me might just be a witch?

  Right.

  Kate tapped her fingers on the granite countertop. From her posture, it seemed fairly clear that she was fighting the impulse to tell him to spit it out. But she also appeared to understand that something was going on here that went way beyond a simple breakup. She waited quietly, letting him gather his thoughts.

  At last he said, “In general, you’d call me a sensible person, right?”

  “Well, yeah, except when you’re crashing weddings, apparently.”

  He didn’t bother to respond to her comment. It would have been nice to chalk that particular indiscretion up to temporary insanity, but he knew it had really been his innate curiosity getting the better of him. “Let’s just say this girl — and her family — are unusual.”

  Kate’s neatly arched brows pulled together. “Like, former hippie kind of unusual, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre kind of unusual?”

  “Neither, but probably closer to the hippie thing.” He let out a breath, then said, “I think they might be witches.”

  She didn’t blink. “I seem to recall you saying more or less the same thing about Shannon.”

  “Not that kind of witch. I mean, really…witches.”

  A long, long pause. Kate flicked a lock of shiny brown hair over one shoulder and then sent a glance toward the kitchen door, as if attempting to reassure herself that no one was going to barge in and hear what they were saying. “Are you sure you haven’t been working too hard? Those stupid pamphlets of yours — ”

  “This has nothing to do with any of that.” He hesitated, stalling for time as he rinsed off the last of the serving pieces, then laid it down on the top rack before closing the dishwasher door. “Let’s just say I overheard a couple of things that didn’t sound right, and I did some digging.”

  “And?”

  “Well, what I found isn’t anything that could be proved in a court of law, but it did seem to indicate that there’s something a little off about the McAllisters.”

  “That’s her family?”

  “Yes. They live up in Jerome. Anyway, add that to Jenny suddenly picking things out of my mind, things she couldn’t have known any other way, and that conversation with the ghost — ”

  “Whoa, whoa.” Kate held up her hands. “Back up a little. A ghost?”

  Colin started to run a hand through his hair, then remembered it was damp from washing dishes and stopped himself at the last minute. “She didn’t look like a ghost. She looked like a reenactor or something. Although I doubt most reenactors can disappear into thin air right under your nose the way she did.”r />
  “You saw that.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Colin answered anyway. “Oh, yeah. I saw it. I wish I hadn’t. Up until that moment, all I had was suspicions. But you can’t have an experience like that and not begin to think that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio. You know what I mean?”

  Beneath her carefully applied makeup, Kate looked a little pale. She swallowed, but she didn’t glance away from him. He loved that about her. He’d just said something that must have seriously shaken up her world view, but she wasn’t arguing with him or trying to tell him he must have just thought he saw a woman disappear.

  “Yeah,” she said after a moment. “I guess I know what you mean.” Another pause, and then she added, “So the girl you were seeing had some kind of vision and saw that you hadn’t told her the truth about being a reporter?”

  “More or less.” Colin couldn’t say much more than that, because he still didn’t know exactly what had happened, just that it had led to Jenny McAllister throwing him out of her life. “Like I said, I know it all sounds crazy. And I keep having this little voice in the back of my head tell me that I’m crazy, that I’m putting two and two together and getting five because I don’t want to admit that I did this to myself. Again, I know what I saw, but that doesn’t mean I have any concrete evidence about the McAllisters. Not really.”

  Kate was silent for a moment, clearly going over what he’d just told her. “There’s no one else who might know anything about the McAllisters? You said the wedding was for Jenny’s cousin. Who was she marrying? You’d think her fiancé must know something.”

  A good suggestion, but Colin had a feeling that the de la Pazes were also not exactly what they appeared to be. They’d close ranks the second he came poking around. Same for the Wilcoxes. What he needed was someone who’d been involved in that world, but who was now no longer inside it. Someone who might have a grudge….

  Of course. He knew exactly who he needed to talk to.

  “What is it?” Kate asked. “You suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree.”