witches of cleopatra hill 07 - impractical magic Read online

  “You just gave me a great idea. And it’s even better, because I’m staying over tonight and won’t have to drive as far.”

  The look of mystification on Kate’s face only deepened. “Go where?”

  “The Arizona State Prison in Lewis.”

  15

  Jenny kept trying to tell herself this wasn’t so bad. She sat with her parents and with Adam and Mason at a table off to one side of the crowded hall. Maybe she’d gotten the side-eye from a couple of clan members as she’d entered the building, but no one had said anything to her directly. For all she knew, Angela had decreed that everyone should leave her alone. In general, the prima tried not to interfere too much in the goings-on of the clan, but she also didn’t like to see people get bullied. If this mess with Colin had blown up into a full-on catastrophe, that would have been one thing, but so far the only real casualty appeared to be Jenny’s heart.

  At least her parents had had the foresight to choose someplace to sit that wasn’t out front and center. This way she could face away from most of the hubbub, and pretend to be interested in Mason and Adam’s conversation about the house he was restoring, and the plans she was making for her graduation in late May. It had taken a little longer than she’d planned, but she’d be getting her master’s degree in education then.

  And after that, I’m sure she’ll take over the world, Jenny thought, knowing her inner voice sounded especially cranky right then. No, that was just sour grapes. Mason had worked hard for her degree, and Jenny wished her every success. But seeing her brother and his wife together and happy only made Jenny think about what a loser she was. Almost thirty, no husband, not even a steady boyfriend, and a make-work job that existed basically to justify her living in the flat.

  She didn’t even bother to point out to herself that a good number of the McAllisters living in Jerome didn’t have what anyone could call true vocations. They ran shops or restaurants, or lived off the stipend they were sent every month. Nothing wrong with being a slacker in Jerome, she supposed. But Mason seemed so driven, and Adam so happy in his fledgling carpentry career, that Jenny couldn’t help feeling even more dissatisfied with herself than she’d been when she woke up this morning.

  Well, she’d put in her time, shown her face. Maybe she should have walked into Spook Hall with a big letter “A” embroidered on the front of her sweater. Boyd probably would have liked that; he was one of the people who kept giving her the stink-eye, even though he sat tables away.

  Luckily, her own Aunt Tricia and Allegra Moss appeared serene and unconcerned, and Angela, seated with her family at the main table at the front of the hall, was laughing and leaning close to Connor, stealing a quick kiss while the twins were occupied with smearing mashed potatoes all over their faces. Watching them, Jenny couldn’t help but experience a swift, sharp pang of jealousy, followed by a deep, deep ache somewhere in the pit of her stomach. She was still angry at him, but she wanted Colin with her right then, wanted him to sit close enough so he could push her hair aside and give her a swift, secret kiss on the neck before anyone noticed.

  She removed her napkin from her lap and set it down on the table, then pushed back her chair. At once, her mother gave her a startled glance. “You’re going? But they haven’t even served dessert yet.”

  A lift of her shoulders, and Jenny replied, as carelessly as she could, “You know I don’t like pie. Anyway, I have a headache from all this noise.” She summoned a smile, one she knew probably wasn’t fooling anyone. “You all have a nice night.”

  Then she walked away before anyone could offer a protest. Adam and Mason hadn’t even looked startled — they knew just as well as she did why she wanted to leave early — but the look of disappointment on her father’s face did sting Jenny a little. Well, he should be used by now to having a total disaster of a daughter.

  By then it was almost five, and the short, sharp dusk of a mountain evening had begun to fall. It was only a walk of a few blocks from Spook Hall to her flat, but something about the dim purple shading of the streets around her made Jenny shiver and wish that she’d brought something warmer to wear than the wool shawl she’d wrapped around herself. Maybe it was just that the town was so quiet, the streets empty of tourists, nearly everyone else inside the hall, enjoying their Thanksgiving dinner.

  But then she saw it up on Main Street — a shadowy figure moving quickly, a streetlight catching a shimmer of dark golden hair. At first Jenny thought perhaps she was seeing the mythical Maisie, but that had to be wrong. In the flash she’d caught from Colin’s thoughts, the long-dead young woman’s hair was a pale, almost flaxen, blonde, not the warm honey color Jenny had just seen. Her own hair was almost that shade. The only other person in town with hair that color had been Roslyn.

  Roslyn. Jenny stopped dead for a moment, and then began to run, a wild impulse driving her up the street to chase after the specter she’d just seen. When she reached Main Street, however, it was utterly deserted, nothing moving except some fallen leaves on the sidewalk, propelled by a cold November wind.

  Even knowing she must look like a madwoman, she couldn’t keep herself from turning from side to side, staring in every direction, certain she must be able to see something of the strange vision that had brought her running up here. But there was nothing, only the empty street, and the dry, skittering sound of dead leaves on cement.

  She stood there, panting in the cold, dry air. Tears stung at her eyes, and she blinked them away.

  She’s dead, she told herself. She’s gone. She’s not like Maisie. She’s not here.

  And then, fighting the lump in her throat and the ache in her breast, Jenny began to walk home.

  * * *

  The drive out to Lewis only took about forty-five minutes. Traffic was light, most everyone already where they planned to be for the long holiday weekend.

  His parents — especially his mother — hadn’t been happy when he announced that he needed to make a trip for work today.

  “On a holiday?” Lynda asked, but Colin only shrugged.

  “Yesterday was the holiday. And the news doesn’t stop just because it’s Thanksgiving.”

  She hadn’t protested after that, although the disappointment remained in her eyes. Colin was just relieved that he’d actually managed to wrangle an interview with the prisoner at such short notice. But after he’d rattled off his credentials and said he was doing a follow-up article on the Escobar case, he’d been given an appointment.

  This could all be a wild goose chase. But better to try than sit around eating turkey sandwiches and pretending to be interested in one of those interminable football games his father loved to watch. Kate and Jeff-the-Lump had headed off to their condo in Peoria the night before — funny how it was okay for Jeff to drive on Thanksgiving, but not for Colin to do the same thing — and it would have been a quiet day anyway.

  Liam had actually seemed proud that his son had something work-related to do the day after Thanksgiving. They didn’t talk much, but Colin knew his father still secretly hoped he would pull some latter-day Woodward and Bernstein maneuver, or do some kind of meaty investigative journalism of the type that had been publicized in Spotlight.

  Well, if he’d been harder-hearted, he could have tried to expose the McAllister witches, but Colin didn’t have that in him. Whatever strange talents and abilities they might possess, they just seemed like a bunch of people who were trying to live their lives without bothering anyone else. Who was he to go messing around with that?

  And this trip…this was only to satisfy his own curiosity, nothing more. He knew what he’d seen and experienced, but he wanted outside corroboration.

  Even if said corroboration came from a convicted rapist and accessory to murder.

  Colin had visited prisons enough times that he knew the drill by now. Walk through the metal detector, get patted down. Tell the guard on duty who he was there to see.

  “Tomas Aguirre, got it.” The guard made a notation on the clipboard he carried
. “He’s on his way down to the visitation room.”

  At that comment, Colin let himself relax slightly. He’d put in the request, but he couldn’t make Tomas show up. All he could do was hope that the prisoner might be sufficiently bored by life behind bars that he’d come to talk to someone he’d never heard of just because he had nothing better to do.

  As soon as Kate’s offhand suggestion had started ideas pinging around in his head, Colin had first thought of going to talk to Matías Escobar. He was the one Alex Trujillo had blasted with that blue-white light, after all; it made sense that Matías must have some kind of powers as well. There’d been all kinds of ritualistic crap in the apartment the trio had used to torture the girls they’d kidnapped. But then Colin realized that Escobar would most likely not be very cooperative. He’d been cocky to the end, even when the judge had pronounced a life sentence and he’d been hauled out of the courtroom in manacles.

  But Jorge and Tomas —

  Jorge got ruled out as soon as Colin discovered he was locked up in Safford, which was halfway across the state. Whereas Lewis, where Tomas had been incarcerated, was an easy drive from Phoenix. And it didn’t seem to matter that much which of the two cousins Colin ended up talking to. They’d been willing accessories, but clearly under Escobar’s thumb.

  The one thing Colin hadn’t been able to figure out was why they’d allowed themselves to be captured if they actually did possess any kind of supernatural powers. True, Alex Trujillo seemed to have done something to take out their leader, but Jorge and Tomas should have been able to get away. And if not in the parking lot where Eileen Kosky had witnessed the confrontation, then after they’d been locked up. You’d think a couple of warlocks could manage a spectacular jail break.

  Well, he supposed he’d find out soon enough. He sat down on the hard metal chair, which was bolted to the floor, and tried to tune out the conversations around him, the whine of a toddler with his mother a few yards away, the hiccupy crying of a fussy baby held by a tired-looking young woman on the other side of the room.

  Happy Thanksgiving, Colin thought, feeling just about as tired as that woman looked.

  A door on the other side of the glass partition opened, and a young Hispanic man entered the small cubicle with its single chair. His black hair was pulled sharply back from his face and into a ponytail, when it had been cut quite short at the time of his trial, but Colin still recognized him. He was a good-looking man, but not as handsome as his cousin Matías.

  “Hello, Tomas,” he said.

  Tomas Aguirre scowled as he stared at Colin through the glass. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Colin Campbell, Tucson Daily Sun. I thought the guards would have given you that information.”

  The frown only deepened. “They did, but I thought someone was messing with me. I thought — ” He broke off then, as if realizing what he’d been about to say might only get him into trouble.

  “Thought what?” Colin asked. “That I might have been someone else, and was only pretending to be a reporter? You expecting someone to break you out?”

  “You’re crazy, man.”

  “What, none of your witch friends interested in seeing you a free man?”

  At that question, shock flared in Tomas’ black eyes. Then he seemed to gather himself, and crossed his arms as he gave Colin a flat stare. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, pendejo.”

  Colin ignored the insult. Lord knows he’d been called worse over the years. “You don’t? Then do you want to explain what eyewitnesses described as a ‘flash of blue-white light’ in the parking lot of the Dillard’s at the Paradise Valley Mall? It seems to have been what took out your buddy Escobar.”

  The frown returned, digging a deep furrow into the space between Tomas Aguirre’s brows. He darted a quick glance left to right, but the people to either side of them were engaged in their own discussions, the woman with the toddler begging the man behind the glass to ask “Andy” — whoever that was — to make sure the problem was handled, while on Colin’s right was a hard-faced man apparently attempting to coax the inmate on the other side of the glass to tell him where the “stuff” was. No one was listening to Colin and Tomas’s conversation.

  Again the inmate said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  But there was a hint of confusion in his expression, as if he was trying to figure out how Colin could possibly have figured out that there was more to Tomas Aguirre — and his crimes — than met the eye. Confusion, and possibly worry.

  Good. Colin leaned back slightly in his chair, hoping he looked unruffled and as if he had all the time in the world. Which he sort of did; he wasn’t needed back at work until Monday. But Aguirre didn’t need to know that. “I’m just curious,” Colin said. “You’d think someone with those kind of powers wouldn’t stay behind bars for very long. From what I’ve been able to discover, though, it seems as if you and your cousin and even Matías Escobar have all been model prisoners. What’s up — someone tell you to keep quiet? What else could possibly happen to you that hasn’t already?”

  Tomas Aguirre’s mouth twisted. Not in anger, but almost as if at some inner torment, as though he was remembering something too painful to bring up. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Interesting. Similar to his former protests, but not really the same. “So enlighten me.”

  Once again the other man shot a quick glance from side to side. Since their companions in the visitation room were clearly occupied with their own problems, it didn’t seem likely that they’d pay any attention to what he or Colin were saying. “What do you know?”

  “I know there’s something off about the McAllister family, and probably the Wilcoxes and the de la Pazes as well.”

  “‘Off’?” A bitter chuckle. “You don’t know, man.”

  “So tell me. Or are you scared they’re going to still do something to you?”

  At that question, Aguirre looked as if he wanted to spit on the floor. He collected himself, though, and shook his head. “Nah. They already done their worst.”

  “By putting you in here?”

  Tomas gave the glass partition separating them a scornful glance. “This place? This ain’t nothing compared to what they done.”

  Colin tried to think of what would be worse than prison and came up short. Well, hanging, probably, but even the great state of Arizona didn’t dispose of its death row inmates that way anymore. Besides, Tomas Aguirre wasn’t on death row. He’d been an accessory to a capital crime, which meant he’d be in here for a long, long time, but he still could be looking at parole in another twenty-five years or so. He wouldn’t be young when he got out, true. But he also wouldn’t be the first person to start his life over at fifty.

  “So what did they do?”

  Another long silence, one in which Aguirre seemed absorbed in staring down at his hands, which had the familiar bluish-black prison tattoos across the knuckles. It also looked as if he had far more complex tattoos on his forearms, strange symbols that Colin didn’t recognize, although he couldn’t see much of them because of the half-rolled-up sleeves of Tomas’s blue denim prison shirt.

  Then, almost in a whisper, “They took it away.”

  “Who took what away?”

  True hatred flared in Aguirre’s dark eyes. “The prima and the primus. Stinking McAllister witch and her Wilcox husband.”

  Prima? The only other times Colin had heard that word used was to refer to either a ballerina or an opera singer, and he had a feeling Tomas wasn’t talking about either one of those. More importantly, though, he’d called a McAllister woman a witch. He might have been speaking metaphorically, but Colin didn’t think so.

  “So what did this McAllister witch and her husband do?”

  “Took our powers away — Matías and Jorge and me. Made us into a bunch of civilians.”

  Civilians. That was it, the slip of the tongue that Jenny had self-corrected on more than one occasion. Civilians
must be people without magical powers.

  Muggles, Colin couldn’t help thinking, and forced himself to keep from smiling. Not that any of the people he’d met in Jerome bore much resemblance to the witches and wizards of J.K. Rowling’s world.

  “They can do that?” he asked.

  Tomas Aguirre shrugged. It was a careless gesture, but Colin thought he could see the pain beneath it, could tell that the other man was trying to appear dismissive because he didn’t want to admit how much the loss of his magical talents had hurt him. “Looks that way, doesn’t it? I never heard of it before, but then, a prima and a primus have never been united before. They got ways of using their powers that go way beyond what regular witches and warlocks can do.”

  And the primus was the McAllister witch’s husband. No first names, but that wasn’t as important to Colin right then as the mere fact that Tomas Aguirre had basically admitted witches and warlocks were real, and that he was one of them. Or at least he used to be.

  “Are there a lot of you?”

  Another shrug. “Some. Guess it depends on what you mean by ‘a lot.’ It runs in families. They all got their territories. Mostly they try to keep quiet about who they are.”

  No kidding. Colin had already known that, but it didn’t hurt to get some corroborating information from an insider. “So,” he said, “you’re with the de la Paz clan?”

  Once again Aguirre looked as if he wanted to spit. “Hell, no. I’m not one of them. I’m with the Santiagos.”

  “They’re also here in Arizona?” It sounded to Colin as if witches were kind of thick on the ground, actually.

  “No. California.” He sat up straighter in his chair and gave Colin a menacing look. “And I wouldn’t go poking around there, if I were you. The de la Pazes, they’re soft, but old man Santiago would blast the crap out of you and bury you in an unmarked grave if he caught a reporter sniffing into his business.”

  “Good to know,” Colin replied, trying to sound as casual as possible, even though Tomas’s words had sent a shiver down his back. “But thanks, I’ve got my hands full here in Arizona.”