Protector (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 5) Read online

  “Thank you, Caitlin,” Luz said, sliding out of her seat and taking her glass of lemonade with her. “Alex, would you get Caitlin something to drink? She must be parched after all that talking.”

  As Caitlin murmured her thanks, Alex got up from his own chair and said, “Is lemonade all right, or would you rather have some water? I don’t think my grandmother has much of anything else.”

  “Lemonade is fine,” Caitlin replied, watching as Luz shot her an encouraging smile before going down the hallway that led to the living room.

  Alex poured a glass and inclined his head toward the chair his mother had just vacated. “Want to sit down?”

  “Definitely.” She took a seat, then managed a half-smile as Alex handed her the glass of lemonade. After sipping some, she nodded. “That’s better. Although right now I could use a margarita.” She paused. “No, scratch that. After what Matías did, I don’t think I’m going to want a margarita for a long time.”

  Frowning, Alex sat down. Even though she’d taken him and his mother to the house where the warlocks had brought the girls, shown them where the circle had been drawn, Caitlin hadn’t been very specific about exactly what had gone down in there. “What did he do?”

  She bit her lip and looked away, out through the stained-glass-bordered windows in the nook, the ones that had fascinated Alex when he was younger. One finger drew a line through the condensation on the outside of the glass as she appeared to contemplate the desert-y loveliness of the back garden, with its gravel walks and careful plantings of native flowers and shrubs and cactus. At last she said, “I told you he brought us back to that house for margaritas, right? Well, they were drugged or something. I had just a sip of one, and it made the spell he had cast so much worse. It was so hard to fight it.” Shuddering slightly, she picked up her glass of lemonade and drank deeply, as if by doing so she could erase the taste of the tainted drink Matías had given her earlier that afternoon.

  “But you did fight it,” Alex reminded her gently, wishing he’d left it alone. He didn’t like to see her so upset, eyes tragic, her jaw set. In that moment, he realized he’d barely seen her smile so far, and certainly never laugh.

  He wanted to hear her laugh.

  “I did,” she said. “I still don’t know how, exactly, but….” Looking up from her drink, she faced Alex squarely. In the warm late-afternoon light, her eyes seemed to glow almost green. “I wasn’t telling you the truth earlier.”

  Puzzled, he asked, “You weren’t?”

  “Not really. I mean, I was trying to dance around the issue. The reason I knew something was off about Matías and his gang, and maybe part of the reason I was able to get away, is that I’m a seer. I felt how awful he was. In fact, I knew something terrible was going to happen even before we left Jerome. I just didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t want to tell anyone, because then they’d know.”

  “So…no one in your family knows you’re a seer?”

  She shook her head, and he tried not to stare at the waves of coppery hair that seemed to dance with the movement. “I couldn’t tell them. I know it was wrong. But…I didn’t want to be a seer. I still don’t. But I will, because otherwise I don’t know how we’ll ever find Danica and Roslyn.”

  Right then he wished with all his soul that he knew Caitlin better. If that were the case, maybe it would be all right to get up from his chair and go to her, take her in his arms and give her the hug he thought she so desperately needed. This whole thing had to be so rough on her, from losing her friends to realizing that the one thing she had wanted to keep secret was the only thing that might save them.

  But he was too chickenshit to do that. Or maybe cautious was a better word. Diego probably would have gone to Caitlin and given her a hug, but he and Diego were very different people. Alex had to settle for a completely inadequate, “I’m sorry.”

  Even that seemed to floor her. She blinked, then said, “You don’t think I’m a jerk?”

  “A jerk? Why would I think that?”

  “Because I should’ve told someone I’m a seer! I’ve been hiding it, pretending that I can only do the small, regular things — you know, lighting a candle without a match, unlocking a door without a key, whatever — when all this time I could have been helping my clan.”

  It was clear she’d been beating herself up over this for some time, so Alex didn’t see any reason why he should. “Well, I suppose that’s between you and your clan elders,” he said mildly. “And you’re going to use your gift to find your friends, so….” He let the words trail off, mostly because he wasn’t sure what else she expected him to say.

  If Caitlin intended to argue further, that resolve appeared to have faded. She wrapped her hands around the glass of lemonade but didn’t drink. “I’m going to try, anyway,” she murmured, then added in clearer tones, “I’m not sure how much good I’ll be. Not really. I’ve spent way too much time trying to repress my gift, and now I don’t even know how to use it properly.”

  “It’ll come to you,” he said, trying to sound encouraging. “Our gifts, talents, whatever you want to call them — they want to be used. A little practice, and you’ll be amazed at what you can do.”

  At first she didn’t reply, only stared at her fingers where they still encircled the tall, moisture-beaded glass. She had pretty hands, with strong but delicate fingers, although the pale pink polish she was wearing had already started to chip off. No rings, which relieved Alex a little. She did seem a bit too young to be married or even engaged, but witches and warlocks tended to marry early, so it wasn’t outside the bounds of possibility for her to already be committed to someone.

  Like that should even matter. No matter how pretty she was, they’d only just met. He didn’t know anything about her.

  Well, except one thing. He thought he liked her, liked her odd combination of toughness and vulnerability. As if she had a lot more to her than even she realized.

  “What about you?” she asked, and he tilted his head.

  “What about me?”

  “When did your gift show up?” A shy smile. “It’s a pretty cool talent. I’ve never heard of it before.”

  Neither had anyone in his clan. He rocked back in his chair and grinned. “I was eleven. I was playing soccer with some friends from school and some other kids from the clan. Nothing formal — just kicking the ball around on a Saturday afternoon. Well, Humberto Almeida — he was this big kid, older than most of us, almost fourteen — he launched that ball right at me. Hard. I could tell it was going to hit me right in the face, probably break my nose. You know how you can see something about to happen, and you know there isn’t anything you can do to stop it?”

  Caitlin nodded, a small smile playing around her mouth. It was a pretty mouth, with that defined Cupid’s bow at the top and the full lower lip, all overlaid with a faint gleam of soft peach lip gloss. And Alex realized he’d better stop staring at it.

  Somehow he managed to tear his eyes away and drink down the rest of the lemonade in his glass. “Well, it was like that. This ball coming right at my face. And then at the last minute, this shield or whatever you want to call it shimmered out of thin air and surrounded me, and the ball bounced right off. At first everyone was too shocked to say anything, but then the kids started calling out, ‘Do it again! Do it again!’ and running for the spare balls we had sitting off to one side so they could start throwing them at me.”

  “Ouch,” Caitlin said.

  He grinned. “Yeah, something like that. Because the shield or whatever it was didn’t come back. I took off for home, running like I had the zombie horde or something after me, and told my mom what had happened. I asked her why the shield hadn’t come back, and she thought about it for a minute and said it was probably because I didn’t think I was really going to get hurt, not like I would have if the ball Humberto had kicked had really gotten me in the face.”

  “So how did you start practicing with it? Have someone throw knives at you?”

  He
r tone was wry, but really, she wasn’t that far off from the truth. “Not knives. Not at first, anyway,” he added, and her blue-green eyes widened. “But having Diego come at me and threaten to pile-drive me was pretty effective. He was in wrestling in high school.”

  “Double ouch.”

  “I might have had a few bruises that needed explaining away. Gradually, though, I got control of my gift instead of having it control me. And now I can summon it when I need it, instead of having it pop up out of nowhere while watching the 3D version of the latest Avengers movie or whatever.”

  Again she smiled slightly at that image, but her expression turned thoughtful as she said, “I like that. Having control of my gift instead of letting it control me. I guess that’s what I was letting it do when I was so afraid all the time of what the next vision would be, and when it might show up.”

  Privately, Alex wondered how pleasant the next round of visions would be for her, considering she was going to use them to track down the warlocks who’d kidnapped her friends. He decided it was better to let that go for now. “It makes a huge difference. And maybe you’ll find out that being the McAllister seer isn’t so bad after all.”

  The dubious glance she gave him spoke volumes about what she thought of that prospect, but she didn’t contradict him. She didn’t really have the chance, because his mother entered the kitchen, her expression troubled. In one hand, she held a cordless phone.

  “Caitlin,” she said. “Your mother would like to talk to you.”

  Some of the pretty color drained from Caitlin’s cheeks, but she raised her chin and nodded. “I had a feeling she would.” She extended her hand, and Luz gave her the phone while at the same time shooting Alex a worried glance.

  He wasn’t sure what to do — get up from the table and give Caitlin her privacy? Stay where he was and pretend he couldn’t hear every word she was saying? — but she solved that problem by standing up from her chair and moving out of the breakfast nook and past his mother, going to pause in the corridor.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  A long silence, during which Luz shook her head slightly, which led Alex to believe that Caitlin’s mother, who seemed to be one of the McAllister elders, wasn’t being quite as zen about the revelation of her daughter’s powers as Caitlin had hoped she would be.

  “That’s not going to happen,” Caitlin said, her voice firm and carrying clearly enough down the hallway. “I know you’re worried. I’m worried. But I can’t help Roslyn and Danica by hiding in Jerome and letting everyone else do the heavy lifting.”

  Another long pause.

  “Fine, if Connor and Angela want to bring Marie in on this, there isn’t much I can do about it. That’s their call. But I’m pretty sure she won’t be able to help.”

  Alex lifted his eyebrows at his mother, and she shrugged slightly. Even though Caitlin had told him she was going to stay down in Tucson until this thing was settled, some part of him hadn’t believed she’d really stand up to her family and do it.

  Which meant it looked like she actually was going to be crashing at his house for a while. That could get…interesting.

  “…you know Angela won’t tell me to go back to Jerome. That’s not how she does things. Maybe that makes all you elders crazy, that she’s not laying down the law right and left. But unless she comes down here and point-blank tells me to go home, I’m not changing my mind. It’ll be — well, maybe ‘fine’ isn’t the right word, but they’re all looking after me here. You have nothing to worry about.”

  Brave words. Alex hoped they were true. Oh, he and his mother and everyone else in the clan would do whatever it took to solve this problem, not out of any loyalty to Caitlin or the McAllister family as a whole, but because it reflected badly on the de la Pazes to have something this awful happen on their home turf.

  “I’m hanging up now, Mom. You do whatever you have to on your end, but I’m staying. My phone’s gone, but I suppose Luz Trujillo gave you a number — right. She’ll be able to get ahold of me.” A click, and Caitlin came back into the kitchen, looking annoyed. Her expression smoothed itself slightly as she handed the phone back to Luz.

  “Well, she’s not happy with me, but I don’t think she’s going to send anyone down here to hogtie me and drag me back to Jerome.”

  “That is good,” his mother said, her voice grave, although a certain glint in her dark eyes seemed to indicate she was somewhat amused by Caitlin’s declaration of independence. “Then we should be going. Maya takes her dinner early, and my cousin Raisa will be here soon to cook her meal.”

  Was it really that late? A glance at the clock on the microwave told him it was a quarter to six. The whole day had practically slipped away, a day in which almost anything could have been happening to Danica and Roslyn. But there wasn’t much they could do about that, except hope that Caitlin’s visions would be of some help now that she wasn’t actively trying to block them.

  They all left the kitchen, stopping in to the living room to say their goodbyes to his grandmother. She still sat on the couch with her glass of water, but her eyes were closed, as if she had dozed off after Luz had returned to the kitchen. As soon as they entered the room, however, she blinked, and focused a sharp enough gaze on all of them.

  “So you’re back to Tucson now?” she inquired.

  “Yes, mamita,” Luz replied. “I believe the Wilcox seer will be coming to speak with you tomorrow.”

  Maya nodded, hands twitching at the knitted afghan in her lap. Her expression was weary, but at the same time almost amused. No doubt she never thought she’d see the day when a Wilcox witch would be approaching her openly, particularly for advice. “Well, that should be…interesting.”

  Luz flashed her mother a smile, then bent down to give her a goodbye hug and a quick kiss on the cheek. Once she had stepped away, Alex bent down to do the same, while Caitlin lingered in the background, looking uncomfortable. Well, she wasn’t the only one who felt uncomfortable; he had to force himself not to wince at how frail his grandmother seemed as he embraced her, how cool and papery her cheek was against his lips. He’d had almost six months now to get used to her condition, but he was beginning to think he’d never fully accept it.

  After Caitlin said a quiet goodbye to Maya, they all went back out to his SUV and got in. It would be almost seven-thirty by the time they got back to Tucson, and that was if they didn’t hit any traffic. Should he take Caitlin out for dinner somewhere, or fix something at home? For all he knew, his mother would want them both to come back to her house. Alex wasn’t sure he liked the idea of that; he’d rather have Caitlin to himself for a while, if for no other reason than she looked tired now, and having to be “on” around his mother and father and sister for dinner might be more wearing than she would like.

  They were all quiet during the drive, as Phoenix finally dropped behind them, even while the sun began slipping down to the horizon. He was grateful for that, since he got the distinct impression Caitlin was fairly talked out and didn’t need his mother grilling her all the way back to Tucson. For himself — well, he wanted to talk to her some more, but not with his mother around.

  To his relief, Luz only asked, “Is there anything else you need, Caitlin?” once they were off the freeway and headed back to the store.

  The McAllister witch shook her head. “No, thank you, Mrs. Trujillo.”

  “Luz,” his mother corrected her gently, and beside him, Caitlin managed a weary smile.

  “Thanks, Luz, but I have everything I need in my luggage. Right now I think I just want to sleep for a hundred years.”

  And dream? Alex wondered, but he didn’t ask. Caitlin hadn’t gone into a lot of detail, so he wasn’t sure what kind of visions she had, whether her “sight” visited her when she was asleep, or whether she had waking dreams as well. Witches could experience both kinds, depending on how their powers manifested, or so he’d been told; the last de la Paz seer had died when he was still a toddler.

  “I can imagine,” Luz
said, her tone gentle. “Well, the spare room at Alex’s place is very comfortable. I’m sure you’ll be fine there.”

  Caitlin nodded, a lukewarm response, but Alex found he didn’t mind too much. If she’d acted too enthusiastic about staying over at his place, that might have sent up warning flags to his mother. On the other hand, maybe having Caitlin McAllister shacked up at his house was exactly what Luz wanted, since God knows his mother had been pestering him about settling down ever since Diego finally got himself hitched. Whatever her motives, Alex decided he was too tired right then to figure them out.

  They pulled into the parking lot at the mercado, two spaces down from where his mother had parked her silver Lexus. By then it was full dark, except for the faintest dark orange smudge on the horizon. “I’ll go in and check to make sure everything is okay,” Luz said.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” Alex asked. “I left Manuela in charge.”

  “Yes, and she has a good head on her shoulders. But it never hurts to check in.” Luz put her hand on the door handle but didn’t pull on it. Instead, she looked toward Caitlin where she was sitting quietly in the passenger seat, then said, “We will talk more in the morning. But for now, try to get as much rest as you can.” She didn’t bother to add, You’ll need it, but her meaning was clear enough.

  “I will, Luz. And — thank you.”

  “You are most welcome, Caitlin.” Then Luz finally did get out of the SUV, closing the door behind her before she strode purposefully through the back entrance to the store, through the break room.

  Alex didn’t quite let out a sigh, but he knew he’d be lying if he didn’t admit to a certain sensation of relief. Not that he didn’t get along with his mother, but he could tell Caitlin wasn’t as inclined to talk openly when Luz was around. “So,” he said, as he turned the key in the ignition, “you hungry?”