Darknight (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 2) Page 21

  “That’s Jessica, right?” I whispered to Connor.

  His gaze tracked to where I was looking, and then slid back toward me. “Yes.”

  “She’s pretty.”

  “I suppose so. Damon isn’t the type to attach himself to unattractive women.”

  Which didn’t surprise me much. “And she’s another cousin?”

  “Yeah. Her great-great-whatever grandmother was Jeremiah Wilcox’s younger sister. Jessica’s always had a crush on Damon — I know some of the cousins she went to high school with used to tease her about it.”

  That seemed strange to me, that she’d be pining after someone so much older than she was, but attraction was a weird thing. So maybe she really didn’t mind being the sacrificial lamb, so to speak.

  Then Connor tensed, murmuring, “Wow.”

  I’d been covertly watching Damon and Jessica move farther into the hall, then get intercepted by Lucas, who was smiling and pointing at the closest painting with an enthusiasm I could see even from twenty feet away. He was definitely the most un-Wilcox-like Wilcox imaginable, and I wondered at his friendship with Damon, since they seemed so diametrically opposed in their temperaments. But I looked to see what had attracted Connor’s attention, and realized my Aunt Rachel and Tobias had just entered the gallery.

  They both appeared more than a little ill at ease, which, considering they were surrounded by Wilcoxes, was fairly understandable. Behind them came Margot Emory and Henry Lynch, who also looked as if they’d like to be just about anywhere else.

  “Holy crap,” I said. “I didn’t think they were really going to show.”

  “We’d better go say hi, then,” Connor replied.

  I didn’t question why he wanted to go greet my family members when he hadn’t made a move to do the same with his own brother. But as Damon appeared more or less occupied at the moment, it seemed prudent to leave him alone and focus our attention on the McAllister contingent.

  Connor took my hand, and we moved toward the entrance to the exhibit space. I managed to get a smile more or less fixed on my face, although my heart had begun to pound and my stomach felt as if it had a flock of sparrows rather than butterflies zooming around in it. Silly, really. I was going to say hi to my aunt and Tobias and two other people I’d known all my life. This wasn’t the same as facing all those Wilcoxes for the first time.

  Even so, I had to take a breath as we approached Aunt Rachel. Tobias smiled at us, but her expression was hard to read — strained, yes, but underneath the tension was something else as she gazed around her. Surprise, maybe? It was entirely possible that she hadn’t expected much from Connor’s art, had inwardly thought he must have bought his way into having an exhibition.

  “Hi, Rachel, Tobias,” I said, sounding almost normal. “I’m really glad you could make it — all of you.”

  Henry nodded, although Margot only acknowledged me with the barest lift of her eyebrows. Probably she’d come along only to provide support for Rachel and Tobias, and not because she cared about seeing Connor’s art.

  For the first time, my aunt seemed to really look at Connor — at him, not at the brother of the Wilcox primus. “This is really quite amazing,” she said. “I had no idea you were such an accomplished artist.”

  Of course you didn’t, I thought, because you couldn’t be bothered to learn anything about him, except that he was a Wilcox.

  “Thank you,” he replied. “I’m — that is, Angela and I are both really glad you could make it.”

  “Yes, it’s quite a cozy scene,” came Damon’s voice, and I could actually feel the muscles at the back of my neck tense up.

  I wasn’t the only one, either; Connor’s jaw tightened, and both Margot and Henry stepped forward to flank Aunt Rachel and Tobias.

  “Oh, now,” Damon went on, “surely there’s no need for you to all be bristling at me like that, is there? We’re all on neutral ground, after all.” But even as he spoke the words, I saw Connor’s cousin Marie and a few others whose names I couldn’t recall converging on our little group. Lucas, however, was staying at the far end of the gallery, chatting up an attractive woman with striking pale hair, clearly a civilian.

  Great. The last thing I needed was for all our family members to reenact the rumble scene from West Side Story right in the middle of one of Sedona’s ritziest art galleries. I felt Connor’s fingers tighten around mine, and I cast about frantically for something innocuous to say that would defuse the tension. Nothing came to mind, however.

  “Now, now,” I heard a woman say. “Look at all of you, snarling at one another like two wolf packs fighting over the same bone.”

  Her voice was vaguely familiar, and I half-turned to see Maya de la Paz approaching alone, although when I looked past her, I saw standing a few feet away some of the tall young men from her clan I recognized from bodyguard duty back in Phoenix. Alex, however, was not among them.

  “P-prima?” I stammered, and she smiled at me.

  “Hello, Angela. I must say you are looking very well. As for the rest of you” — her gaze moved from the quartet of McAllisters to the Wilcoxes — “this is an art exhibit. There is plenty to look at, and free champagne. Don’t call any more attention to yourselves than you already have.”

  For a moment, no one moved. Then Damon let out a clearly forced laugh, and snaked his arm around Jessica’s slender waist. “Come on, darling. Let’s take a look at Connor’s daubs, shall we?”

  They moved off, but not before he shot a truly venomous glance in Maya’s direction. She appeared singularly unimpressed.

  “We’ll look around, too,” Tobias said, and took my aunt’s hand in his. They headed toward the nearest painting, and after a brief hesitation, Henry and Margot followed them.

  “Thanks, Maya,” Connor said.

  “It is nothing. I wasn’t sure what would happen, with McAllisters and Wilcoxes in such close proximity, so I thought it best to make the trip up.” Her dark eyes glinted as she smiled up at Connor; she was tiny, so her head didn’t even reach his shoulder. Not that it mattered. What Maya de la Paz lacked in height, she more than made up in cojones. “Besides, I wanted to see Connor’s work. I wondered if he was ever going to put that degree of his to use.”

  His expression turned sheepish, but I overlooked that, wondering at the familiar way she addressed him, and how she knew he’d been an art major. It wasn’t the sort of thing I had expected her to know.

  Those questions must have been clear on my face, because Maya let out a chuckle and said, “And now you want to know how I could know Connor at all, when his clan and mine are not exactly what one would call close.”

  “Hardly,” he said with a grimace and a quick glance toward his brother, now safely on the other side of the exhibit space.

  “It’s simple enough, though, isn’t it?” she went on. “Connor wished to get his degree at ASU, which has a very good art program, but since ASU is in my clan’s territory, he had to come to me to get permission when it was time for him to transfer from Northern Pines in his junior year. I’ll admit I wasn’t sure at first, but it was clear to me soon enough that he is nothing like his brother. So I gave him the dispensation, and he lived down in the Phoenix area quietly enough for four years, which is more than I can say for some of the younger generation in my clan.”

  At that remark, Connor looked as if he wanted to sink into the floor. I rescued him by saying, “That was very generous of you, Maya — and I’m very glad you could make it here tonight.”

  “I was curious,” she admitted. “But your work is wonderful, Connor, so I’m glad you’ve decided to get it out there so others can see it.”

  “Thank you,” he said. His wasn’t the sort of complexion given to easy blushes, but I could see a brief stain of color along his cheekbones before it faded. “It was mostly Angela’s doing, but — ”

  “She might have convinced you, but it was your hand that held the brush.” Her gaze was warm, as if holding both of us within it. “I will adm
it that when your aunt first contacted me, Angela, I was sure that Damon’s actions were going to bring us all to the sort of clan warfare that hasn’t been seen for more than a hundred years. But when I learned you were with Connor, I told Rachel that all would be well, that he was not typical of his clan.”

  So that was why I’d heard nothing else after Maya had supposedly told Damon that “it wasn’t over.” Well, actually, it was — once she got the true lay of the land and realized I was not with the primus, but his brother, a man she obviously liked and possibly had some affection for. “I appreciate that — we both do.”

  “Yes,” Connor added at once, although I could tell he was squirming a little inwardly at the “not typical of his clan” remark.

  “Well,” she said, “I wish to look more closely at these paintings of yours, Connor, so I will leave you now. I think we will not have any more disruptions this evening.”

  No, I sort of doubted that. Even Damon wasn’t the type to make a scene, not here anyway, so I thought the rest of the evening should go more or less smoothly.

  Which it did, with various Wilcoxes coming up to congratulate him on the show, and even Aunt Rachel and Tobias approaching us once we were safely alone and praising his work. And, in an exchange that made me want to laugh, Lucas sidled up to me, nodded toward Margot, and asked who that “exquisite creature” was. Somehow managing to keep a straight face, I told him she was one of the McAllister clan elders and probably wouldn’t be all that receptive to any advances from a Wilcox.

  “But is she single?” he persisted.

  Somehow I managed to talk him down, and he went off to get another glass of champagne. Connor and I did get a chuckle out of the whole thing, because I couldn’t imagine anyone less likely to have romantic success with Margot Emory than Lucas Wilcox.

  By the end of the night, more than half the pieces on display had discreet little “sold” labels attached to their description cards. I didn’t even want to calculate how much Connor had just made in one evening, but I knew it had to be a lot.

  The only sour note in the evening came from, of course, Damon. He’d made a perfunctory pass of the paintings, didn’t even acknowledge Connor at all, and left early with Jessica in tow, murmuring something about ducking around the corner for a real drink. As he left, though, he shot me a look of such venom that I couldn’t help recoiling, although I knew I was perfectly safe here.

  Despite that, I couldn’t help wondering why on earth he should be so angry with me. I’d kept a low profile the entire night, allowing Connor to bask in the praise of family members and strangers alike. I certainly couldn’t think of a single thing I’d said or done to provoke such ire.

  Well, nothing except convince his brother to put his art on display when Damon always hated the idea…nothing except allow Connor to step out a little further from the primus’s shadow. When I thought of it that way, then I supposed I could see why Damon might be so angry. He didn’t want his brother independent; he wanted him under his thumb, the same place he’d wanted me. That we were both proving to be so difficult to manage had to be a thorn in his side.

  What he would do about it — if anything — I had no idea.

  14

  The Shadow of the Wolf

  Since the show was such a success, Connor threw himself into his work even more than he already had, painting sometimes eight or ten hours a day while Joelle ran the gallery. I wasn’t quite so dedicated, but I kept plugging away at my jewelry. If nothing else, it gave me something to do.

  Maybe I should have felt neglected, but it was so good to see Connor happy and painting that I really didn’t mind all that much. And although I couldn’t persuade Aunt Rachel to come up to Flagstaff — that would have been asking way too much — I did borrow Connor’s FJ once or twice to drive to Sedona so she and I could meet for lunch. For some reason, I didn’t want to go back to Jerome without him. It would’ve felt like a capitulation, like I knew they still didn’t accept him. In my mind, I’d resolved that I would only return to Jerome with my consort at my side, and only when I knew they would take him in, if not with open arms, at least with the acknowledgment that he was their prima’s chosen life mate.

  So March arrived, still bitingly cold. It was far too early for the trees to start budding in Jerome, let alone Flagstaff, but something in the shift of the angle of the light told me spring wasn’t too far off. I’d spent two months here, two months more than I had ever expected I would. Strange to think of that, and even stranger to realize that I enjoyed it here, enjoyed the new sights and sounds and people. I’d even made friends with a couple of the female Wilcox cousins, two girls who were around my age and all too ready to gossip whenever the occasion arose — which meant basically every time we got together.

  “Aunt Janelle is just going nuts,” Carla Wilcox told me over coffee one bitingly cold morning. A freezing fog had descended on the town, and I was surprised she’d braved the icy roads to meet me at a coffee shop a few doors down from the apartment Connor and I shared.

  “Seriously,” Mason Tillman put in. She and Carla were cousins of some kind, but I’d given up trying to sort them all out. She was a senior at Northern Pines and had a loft apartment here downtown, so she’d walked to the coffee shop, too.

  Aunt Janelle was Jessica Lowe’s mother, apparently. It sounded as if she wasn’t all that resigned to the Wilcox curse descending on her daughter’s head, no matter what Jessica herself might think about it.

  “So what is she doing about it?” I asked, then took a sip of my chai latte.

  Carla rolled her eyes and let out an exaggerated sigh. “There isn’t much she can do. I mean, Damon’s the primus, so she’s sure not going to go up against him, and Jessica has been mooning over Damon for, like, forever, so she won’t listen.”

  “She told her mother that she’d rather have a year with Damon than fifty years with someone else,” Mason added.

  Ugh. Why couldn’t Jessica have a crush on Channing Tatum like a normal twenty-something?

  “It’s just creepy,” Carla said. “I mean, not that I think he’s creepy, of course, but he’s almost eleven years older than she is, and she’s never been interested in anyone else. She totally flipped out when he got married to that civilian woman, and then when she died, Jessica was actually happy, which, I’m sorry, is just wrong.”

  Yes, it was. I guess I was just surprised that a couple of Wilcoxes would think that as well. Obviously they were not quite the great monolith of evil I’d been raised to think they were. I liked Carla and Mason, and I thought Sydney would like them, too. My opinion of Damon was just as low as it had ever been, and I couldn’t really warm up to Marie, either, but these two girls and Lucas and a few others were far nicer than I’d ever imagined any Wilcox could be. They were so open, too — Carla telling me the first time we talked that her talent was what she referred to as the “mother of all bumps of direction.”

  “Seriously,” she’d said. “It’s part of the reason I decided cultural anthro would be a good major. I never get lost, like, ever. I could probably get dropped in the wilds of Peru somewhere and find the nearest highway and hike out, no problem.”

  At the time, I’d reflected that it seemed as if everyone had a better talent than I did. I was even falling down in the ghost-talking department. Mary Mullen seemed to have taken a powder forever, as far as I could tell. Maybe all the headboard-thumping had driven her right on to the next plane of existence.

  I swirled the stir stick in my chai, watching pale brown traceries appear in the foam. “Jessica would have to be in high school when Damon’s wife died, wouldn’t she?” I asked, attempting to do the math in my head.

  “Yes,” Mason replied. “And seriously, I tried to tell her that crushing on someone that much older when she wasn’t even legal yet was gross, but she wouldn’t listen. Wouldn’t even date anyone else, which was crazy, because she was always pretty and had so many guys who wanted to ask her out. But no, she said she knew in her heart that
she was meant to be with Damon, and that was that.”

  No wonder she’d latched on to him the second he’d decided to go trolling for a baby mama, since that whole plan for kidnapping me hadn’t worked out so well. “Then I guess there isn’t much anyone can do about it,” I said. “And whatever she was thinking in high school, she’s certainly an adult now, so I guess it’s none of our business.”

  Carla frowned. “I suppose. But if we don’t talk about them, who will we talk about? Everyone else is so normal.”

  Oh, if only my aunt were around to hear that pronouncement. She’d probably fall over in shock at the mere notion of referring to a Wilcox as “normal.” “Well, I have a question, actually,” I ventured, finally gathering the courage to ask about the thing that had been bothering me for weeks.

  “Ooh, what?” Mason asked.

  “What’s the deal with your cousin Marie? I swear, I’ve probably only exchanged twenty words with the woman, if that, but I keep getting the impression that she really doesn’t like me very much.” There, I’d said it. Marie’s vague hostility still puzzled me, but when I’d tried to broach the subject to Connor, he’d just told me I was imagining things. I still didn’t know Carla and Mason all that well, but one thing I did know was that they didn’t have much of a filter. If they were thinking something, they were basically saying it.

  The two of them exchanged a glance. “Honestly?” Carla said after a brief pause. “I don’t really know. She’s never been all that friendly to anyone. I mean, she and Damon are sort of close, or as close as either one of them can be, since neither of them is exactly the friendly type, but I think that’s partly because he’s the primus and she’s our seer, so they have to work together on — well, on stuff,” she finished lamely.

  It was pretty clear that she’d been thinking of my kidnapping and then realized that probably wasn’t the best example of “working together” to bring up around me. I decided to let it go. Done was done, and in the end, everything had turned out for the best. I was willing to forgive a lot when it came to my ending up with Connor.