The Witches of Canyon Road, Books 1-3 Page 33

  “Go ahead and sit down,” Daniel said, indicating the pair of chairs that faced his large antique desk of burnished curly maple. That piece of furniture must have cost him a lot, but Rafe had to admit it looked impressive.

  Cat and Rafe took a seat. She sent him a quick sideways glance, one he couldn’t quite interpret. Was she worried that the news must be bad, since Daniel hadn’t immediately given them any information?

  After opening up the shining silver laptop that sat on his desk, Daniel went on, “Well, this is what I’ve found so far. Or rather, what I didn’t find. Robert Marquez is a fairly common name, and I found 202 people with that name in the greater San Antonio area.”

  Great. Rafe had feared he might hear something like this from his cousin, but he hadn’t known the number would be that high. “Needle in a haystack, huh?”

  “Not quite that bad.” He tapped away on the laptop’s keyboard. “Since you said the Robert Marquez you were looking for was young but still an adult, I narrowed the search to those between the ages of twenty-one and thirty. That brought us down to ninety-seven people. Two of them actually had moved out of the area and not updated their information, so they’re probably not the person you’re looking for. For the rest, I sent a few spiders crawling across the internet to see if I could locate any evidence of them traveling to the Santa Fe area in the past month.”

  “Did you find something?” Cat asked.

  Daniel nodded. “Two of the Robert Marquezes in question had vacationed in Santa Fe during the month of October. One of them stayed at the El Dorado Hotel, so he probably wouldn’t be your guy, right, Rafe?”

  “Probably not,” Rafe replied. “I mean, I suppose he could’ve actually stayed at the hotel and used the Airbnb for his other activities, but that doesn’t sound as likely.”

  One of Daniel’s eyebrows lifted at the “other activities” remark, but he didn’t comment on it. “I couldn’t find any information about where the other Robert Marquez was staying. If he’d been using an Airbnb, you’d think it would have shown up somewhere, but I’ll admit they lock their accounts down more tightly than most hotels do. It’s still possible he was staying at the place you visited.”

  “Do you have a photo of this guy?” Rafe asked.

  “Sure.” Daniel turned his laptop around so both Rafe and Cat could see the display on the screen. It was clearly a DMV photo of some sort, or maybe from a work I.D. The man in the picture stared straight forward, unsmiling, and appeared to be around Rafe’s age, maybe a little older. That fit the parameters they’d set. As for the rest….

  “He’s kind of cute,” Cat said. “I mean, that photo’s not doing him any favors, but….”

  “Which means he probably fits the Airbnb owner’s description of him being good-looking,” Rafe finished for her. His gaze swiveled back to the image on the screen. Too bad you couldn’t tell from looking at a photo whether someone was a warlock or not. He didn’t know much about the witch clan that ruled the part of Texas where San Antonio was located. The Montoyas, who’d been there almost as long as the Castillos had been in New Mexico. This Robert Marquez could be part of their clan, or not. It was impossible to know for sure.

  Well, unless he went and paid him a visit in person.

  “Do you have an address for this guy?” Rafe asked.

  “Yes,” Daniel replied, and then frowned slightly. “You’re not thinking of going to see him, are you?”

  “What else am I supposed to do? He’s the only lead I’ve got — and if it turns out he really was the person staying in that Airbnb, then the last thing I want to do is give him any warning that I’m coming.”

  “Mom will never give her permission for that,” Cat said.

  Rafe wanted to snap that he didn’t give a rat’s ass about their mother’s permission, but he knew Cat had a point. It was considered common courtesy to ask a neighboring clan for leave to enter their territory. Then again, if Robert Marquez was part of the Montoya family and had come here to Santa Fe without asking whether it was all right, then he was just as guilty of violating clan etiquette. One would have thought that Genoveva should have detected the presence of a strange warlock in her territory, but she’d been distracted lately, what with getting ready to have Miranda come to Santa Fe, and laying all the groundwork for the wedding so plans could be put into motion without much forewarning. Rafe supposed she could have missed the subtle warning signs of such an incursion.

  “I think she’s otherwise occupied right now,” he said evasively, and Cat raised an eyebrow.

  “I doubt she’s so occupied that she won’t notice you disappearing for a few days to go racing off to San Antonio. That’s a long drive, in case you didn’t know.”

  He knew well enough, since he’d driven to Austin once, and the two cities weren’t that far from one another. “Who says I’d drive?” he asked. “We’re in Albuquerque — the smartest thing to do would be to head over to the airport and catch a flight. I could be in San Antonio in a couple of hours.”

  Cat turned a pleading gaze toward their cousin. “Daniel, please tell him he’s being crazy.”

  “I’m not going to comment on the craziness of the plan, but Rafe’s right. He could be there pretty fast.” A glint entered Daniel’s hazel eyes. “You want me to check flights for you?”

  “Great, you’re both crazy.” Cat crossed her arms and settled back in her chair. “Or maybe I’m crazy, too, because if you’re going to go tearing off to San Antonio, you sure as hell aren’t going to do it alone.”

  “I don’t think — ” Rafe began, then stopped when he saw the mulish set of his sister’s mouth. Clearly, if he was going, then she was going, too. He could waste his breath on trying to dissuade her, but he knew it probably wouldn’t do much good. Turning toward Daniel he said, “Yeah, check on the flights.”

  At once his cousin began typing away. After a moment, he paused and said, “It looks like there’s one leaving in an hour. Puddle jumper, but that’s probably what you want anyway. Most of the bigger airlines go to the hub in Dallas.”

  A small plane on an obscure airline. That sounded perfect — and a hell of a lot better than spending ten hours on the road one way. Rafe got his wallet out of his pocket and fished out his credit card. Handing it over to Daniel, he said, “Go ahead and book it. Two seats.”

  As his cousin took the card from him, Cat shook her head. “I seriously can’t believe that we’re doing this.”

  “Oh, believe it,” Rafe said. “I’m going to find Miranda, no matter what it takes.”

  Even if that meant going into a neighboring clan’s territory without permission…and without his mother’s knowledge. Right then, he wasn’t sure which was worse. Not that he cared.

  He had to do this, consequences be damned.

  7

  Meditations

  Miranda

  A soft breeze played with my loose hair. The day had continued sunny and mild, almost too mild for early November, although I could tell it was warmer here in this quiet corner of Tesuque than it had been in Santa Fe. We were in a river bottom in this part of the world, so I supposed the lack of altitude had something to do with the milder temperatures.

  Simon and I stood in the garden, the sun shining down on both of us. He’d suggested that we work out of doors, since the weather was so nice, and I hadn’t been about to argue with him. Soon enough real winter would descend, and the chance to stand outside for long periods would be gone until the following spring.

  Where I’d be when winter and spring came, I had no idea. I supposed a lot of that would have to do with how these practice sessions went. A little thrill went through me as I thought of what it might be like to no longer be a nunca, someone other witches and warlocks looked at in pity.

  “Think about your magic for a moment,” Simon instructed me. He stood a few feet away, the breeze ruffling his short, thick hair. It was crisp and lively, with just the faintest wave.

  I wondered what it would be like to run my fi
ngers through that hair, then wanted to shake my head at myself. Thinking about Simon’s hair had nothing to do with magic.

  “What about it?” I asked. “I mean, I’m not trying to be a pain, but isn’t our magic always just sort of…there? I thought the whole point was not having to think about it. Using magic is pretty much like breathing for our kind.”

  For a moment, he didn’t reply, only stood there and watched me carefully. I couldn’t detect any disapproval in his gaze, but he also wasn’t smiling. At last he said, “Well, yeah, that’s true…up to a point. But you could argue that there are lots of disciplines in this world that use focused breathing. Different kinds of meditation…yoga…even biofeedback. For most witches and wizards, you’re right — they don’t have to really think about it. But you’re not most witches.” He paused, head tilted slightly one side as he regarded me the way you might look at a lock that needed to be picked, eyes narrowed. “So tell me — when your magic kicked in and you had those experiences of teleporting, what did it feel like?”

  “It felt….” I paused to consider his question. What the hell had it felt like? Mostly, I’d just been trying to figure out what the heck was going on. “I’m not actually sure. At first, I was just scared. I didn’t know what was happening.”

  “But then…?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, realizing that was not what Simon wanted to hear. Still, I needed to tell him the truth. “I mean, every time my magic kicked in, I was stressing out about something. It didn’t feel good, I can tell you that much.”

  “Extremes of emotion — like when Rafe rejected you at the altar.”

  Did he really have to bring that up? I’d been starting to feel a little better about life, mostly because I’d gotten that phone call to my mother out of the way. Now, though, it was almost as if I was living that horrible scene in Loretto Chapel all over again, the strange glitter in Rafe’s eyes, the cold indifference in his tone as he tossed me aside like a piece of garbage.

  “I guess you could call it extreme,” I muttered.

  At once Simon came over to me and took my hand. Annoyed as I was with him in that moment, it did feel good to have his fingers wrapped around mine. His skin was warm and smooth, friendly. “I’m sorry, Miranda,” he said. “I know you don’t want to think about what happened. We need to get past that, though. You need to understand that strong good emotions can help you far more than negative ones.”

  “I know that intellectually,” I replied. “It’s just difficult to internalize, I guess.”

  “It’s all right.” He smiled, and the sunlight glinted on his even white teeth. “How about you just try breathing for a minute or two? Slowly, in through your nose and out through your mouth.”

  Since I was feeling jittery, I thought that following his advice was probably a good idea. Following his instructions, I pulled in air through my nose and gently released it from my mouth, and then did the same thing again. And again.

  Slowly, the tense, angry sensation that had tightened the muscles in my neck and shoulders began to dissipate. I continued to breathe, savoring the bright, clean scent of dry, sun-warmed grass, the dark, rich aroma of fallen leaves against damp soil. I almost fancied I could smell the house itself, warm and snug under the clear, shimmering sky.

  “Good,” Simon said softly. “Now, while you’re still breathing, reach inside yourself. Reach for the bright center of your magic. It’s there…you know it’s there. Without it, you couldn’t have sent yourself from the chapel to my apartment…to me.”

  Almost against my will, my eyes closed. Somehow I knew I had to turn my focus away from the clear, shining beauty of that November morning and deep within myself. Simon was right. A nunca could never have done the things I’d done over the past few days. The magic was inside me. I just had to learn how to bring it out.

  There. It was like staring into the heart of the sun, or into the depths of a volcano. Bright, so bright it almost hurt my eyes, even though I knew I was looking at the thing with my mind’s eye and nothing else. Shimmering gold and copper, turning and twisting in on itself, practically vibrating with power.

  Did everyone’s magic look like that, or was there something special about mine, something about being born of a prima mother and a primus father?

  Simon’s voice was almost a whisper. “Do you see it?”

  Afraid to open my eyes, I nodded.

  “Good. We’ll try something simple, something you’ve already done before. Miranda, send yourself into the kitchen. You know you can do it — it’s only a few yards away. It’ll be easier than the teleportations you’ve already performed. Send yourself into the house.”

  Part of me wanted to argue, to tell him that I’d already tried this sort of thing and failed miserably. The magic did what it wanted; it didn’t come on cue. And yet….

  There it was, coiled and gleaming within me. I’d never seen it before. Maybe it had been waiting for this moment to reveal itself.

  All right, magic. Send me into the kitchen.

  At once the sensation of the sun beating down on my head was gone. Cautiously, I opened my eyes, saw that I stood next to the kitchen counter. The water glasses Simon and I had drunk out of earlier were still there.

  “Goddess,” I breathed.

  I’d done it. I’d reached out to my magic and asked for it to do as I wished…and it had.

  Footsteps at the back door, and then Simon was walking across the kitchen floor, coming toward me. He paused a foot or so away, then said, “You did it.”

  “I did, didn’t I?”

  “Hey.” He reached toward my face and I almost flinched, not sure what he was doing. One finger touched my cheek and came away shimmering with moisture.

  “Oh, jeez.” At once I raised a hand to wipe away the tears, tears I hadn’t even realized had been rolling down my cheeks.

  “Are you okay?” Simon asked, dark eyes filled with concern.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “These are happy tears. I guess — I guess I just hadn’t thought I’d really be able to do it.”

  He didn’t say anything, only put his arms around me and held me close. It felt different from Rafe hugging me — the two of them were about the same height, but Simon was thinner, not as well muscled. As if that mattered. What mattered was the reassurance and compassion I could practically feel flowing from him into my own body.

  Once or twice I’d thought about giving Simon a hug but had always stopped myself. Now I wondered why the hell I’d been holding back.

  Still, I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. I knew I certainly wasn’t ready to do anything more than exchange a hug. This embrace had been more to share the wonderful feeling I was experiencing, not an invitation to further intimacy.

  I stepped back but made sure to smile at him so he’d know the small distance I’d put between us wasn’t any sort of rejection.

  Clearly, he wasn’t offended, because he returned my smile as he said, “I’m proud of you. I knew you could do it, but it’s not easy to overcome years of negative reinforcement.”

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Now,” he said, “we practice some more.”

  It was strange to think of magic as something that needed to be practiced, but my magic apparently wasn’t like anyone else’s, and so I had to work with it in a way that was different from the way every other witch and warlock approached their powers.

  Simon wanted me to do something simple at first. “Change your hair color,” he said.

  I lifted an eyebrow at him. We were back out in the garden, enjoying the sunshine. “I really don’t think I’d look good as a blonde.”

  He grinned. “No, probably not. But that isn’t the point. Your father can do illusions, right? So try casting an illusion over your hair.”

  That sounded easier than actually changing the color right down to the cellular level. I pulled in a breath and thought of my favorite color, a deep, deep green tinged with blue, almost teal.

  Right before
my eyes, I saw the long locks of brown hair that hung over my shoulders shift over to that same greenish teal. Wondering, I ran my fingers through it and saw that every single strand was that color. Or rather, there were variations in that teal green color, emerald and turquoise and dark aqua, just as my own hair varied, with glints of dark mahogany and near black buried within the brown. It amazed me that my magic could do something so complex and yet so real-looking.

  “I like it,” Simon said. “It’s very anime…and it brings out the green in your eyes.”

  “Maybe I should keep it,” I suggested, and he laughed and shook his head.

  “Nah, I think I like the natural color better. But that does look cool. You could always change it up if you were going to a comic convention or something.”

  “Yeah, because I always hang out at those.” I paused, and slanted him a sideways glance. “Do you?”

  “I’ve gone a few times. It’s fun. They have one here in Santa Fe, but you just missed it — it’s held in the middle of October.”

  The words slipped out of my mouth before I stopped to consider their implications. “Well, maybe next year.”

  Simon’s expression turned speculative, as if he was thinking over what I’d said and deciding whether or not he should comment on it. All he said, though, was, “Maybe.” A lift of his shoulders, and he added, “Try turning it back now.”

  That was easier, since all I had to do was think of the way I looked every time I saw myself in a mirror. At once my hair shifted back to its regular brown.

  “Good.” Simon reached up to rub at the back of his neck. “It doesn’t seem as though illusions are too much work for you, which is good. Sometimes they can come in really handy.”

  “Can you do them?” I asked, genuinely curious. He’d mentioned before that he had command of more than one power, but I still had no real idea as to the true extent of his magical talents.

  “Sure,” he replied. For just a moment, his appearance shifted to that of a popular actor, someone my cousin Jessica Rowe had a massive crush on, a man with warm brown hair and strikingly bright blue eyes. I blinked, startled, and once again Simon was standing there, the sun glinting down on his black hair.