Darkmoon (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 3) (6 page)

“That new?” he inquired.

“Yeah,” I said casually. “What, did you think I was going to keep borrowing my aunt’s Jeep indefinitely?”

“Guess not,” he replied, with another one of those grins. “I’ll call Marie from the road, and you can follow me over to her place.”

That sounded workable; I’d walked to her house before but hadn’t driven there, and it was probably better to have Connor guide me in. And there was definitely more street parking at her place than at Connor’s.

The last time I’d been in Flagstaff, spring hadn’t truly arrived, no matter what the calendar might have said. But today I could see only a few small patches of snow lingering on Mt. Humphreys’ north face, and while the wildflowers were sparse compared to what grew around Sedona and Jerome, the aspens and oaks and sycamores had leafed out, making the landscape a bit lusher than what I was accustomed to.

Irises bloomed along the front walk of Marie’s house, not the usual purple-blue, but deep crimson and yellow and some that were almost black. I parked behind Connor’s FJ and got out, feeling the cool breeze catch at my hair. As usual, it was a good ten degrees cooler in Flag than it had been back in Sedona, but now the air just seemed refreshing rather than biting.

“I take it you got a hold of her,” I said as I joined Connor where Marie’s walkway met the sidewalk.

“Yeah. It was almost like she was waiting for my call.” He shrugged. “With anyone else I’d say it was a coincidence, but — ”

“But in this case it probably wasn’t.”

“Probably not.”

I reflected then that the McAllisters’ current lack of a seer wasn’t necessarily all bad. Having someone around who knew what was going to happen before it actually did happen could be a bit disconcerting.

Connor rang the doorbell, and, as before, Marie opened the door almost at once. Yes, he’d called her on the way up, but still….

Too bad she wasn’t a poker player, because her usual impassive expression would have stood her in good stead on the pro circuit. As it was, I gave her a half-hearted smile as we entered the living room. The last time I had been here was when we were planning Damon’s death, and what a grim, cold meeting it had been. Today she had the windows cracked open, letting in a fresh-smelling breeze, and a slim vase of ruby-colored glass held a bouquet of irises from the garden. There was even a pitcher of water and three glasses sitting on the low coffee table in front of the couch.

I shot a sideways glance at Connor, and he offered the smallest lift of his shoulders. Apparently he didn’t have any more idea than I did why Marie would provide us such hospitality this time when she certainly hadn’t ever before.

“It’s good to see you, Angela,” she said, and I almost tripped over the rug as I made my way toward the couch.

“Um…thank you,” I faltered. “It’s good to see you, too.”

Marie’s gaze shifted to Connor, and he said, “So…things are better. A lot better. But Angela and I have some news we’d like to share.”

His remark didn’t surprise me; we’d agreed that Marie needed to know about the baby. It seemed only fair, since my clan’s elders had been informed of my condition. The Wilcoxes didn’t have clan elders, not in the same way we McAllisters did, but Marie — and, to a lesser extent, Lucas — seemed to have something of the same capacity in their family.

Then again, it was entirely possible that Marie already knew….

“Connor and I are going to have a baby,” I said, even if making such a proclamation turned out to be unnecessary.

Her expression didn’t change. “Ah. So it has come at last.”

“What has come at last?”

For the first time since I’d met her, Marie appeared almost nervous. She reached for the pitcher of water and poured some in each glass, then handed one to me. “The joining of the Wilcox and McAllister clans.”

She made it sound as if it were something she’d been expecting for some time. “And so…that’s a good thing, right?” I ventured. “So Damon was right? This will break the curse?”

Even as a look of relief began to spread across Connor’s face, she shook her head. “No. That is, the two lines being commingled in such a way is not enough to end the curse. But it is the reason you must make the attempt.”

I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. “Making an attempt isn’t good enough. Damon tried — Jasper tried, too, from what I’ve heard. So how is this any different?”

Marie picked up her own glass of water and took a sip, and after a brief hesitation, Connor did so as well. From the tight set of his shoulders, I gathered he’d drunk the water to keep himself from telling Marie she was being no help at all. Goddess knows I felt like saying more or less the same thing.

“Because it will not be a
primus
seeking to break the curse, but a
prima
. The energy involved is completely different.”

That made some sense, I supposed. Maybe. “So what do I have to do?”

Her eyes shut. I noticed how long and thick and black her eyelashes were, just like Connor’s…and those of most of the Wiloxes I’d met. The blood ran strong and true in this family, no matter what it was mixed with, apparently. Then she opened her eyes and, rather than looking at me, seemed to stare through me, as if her gaze was intended to pierce something that no one but she could see.

“It is not my place to tell you everything. You must make the journey yourself. But I can tell you that sometimes you must go back to the beginning to see your way through to the end.”

Well, that was helpful. Any more vague, and she could have pulled that pronouncement out of a fortune cookie. “Um…do you want to give me any more details?”

She blinked, and suddenly the faraway gaze was gone, replaced by a stern and not all that approving look. “As I said, you must make the journey for yourself. Just because I sensed this coming, and knew you would play a key role, does not mean I know everything. I’ve told you what you need to do.”

No, you haven’t,
I thought.
So I have to make a journey. Never mind that I have no idea where.

Connor spoke for the first time. “It might help to know a little more, Marie. Unless you want us to fail the same way Damon did.”

Her mouth tightened. “It’s not that I want you to fail, Connor. It’s simply that there are some matters it’s not my place to speak of. This is Angela’s story — and yours as well, to a lesser extent. You are the
primus
of this clan, true, but we’ve already learned that the
primus
does not have the power to make a difference here.”

Frowning, he glanced over at me. I didn’t really like the sound of that, and I guessed he didn’t, either. It could have been that I was misreading her statement, but it almost sounded as if she was saying Connor couldn’t possibly hope to prevail when his own brother, a much stronger warlock, hadn’t managed to do so. Thanks for the no-confidence vote, Marie.

But since I’d already come to the realization that it was a
prima
’s turn to sort out this mess, I couldn’t be too angry with Marie for having her own doubts. It would have been nice if she could’ve given me a smidge more information, although I’d already figured out that wasn’t exactly her style. Maybe that was just standard seer practice; if you didn’t get too specific, later on you couldn’t be blamed for seeing things incorrectly if events didn’t turn out as expected.

“Well, sounds like we need to get our thinking caps on,” I said in a too-bright tone that made Connor raise an eyebrow. “Thanks for the insight, Marie. We’ll let you know if we come up with something. Connor, let’s talk about all this over lunch. I’m starving…eating for two, you know.”

And with that I got up from the couch, grasping the strap of my purse as I did so, and he rose a second or two later. Actually, I wasn’t all that hungry, but it seemed as good an excuse to get out of there as anything else I could think of.

If Marie saw through my little subterfuge, she didn’t show any sign of it…not that I really expected her to. She stood up as well, saying, “I know you wanted more from me, but this is the best advice I can give. Don’t allow what you think you know to get in the way of what you need to know.”

“Thanks, Marie,” Connor said, obviously realizing that I was about to utter a few pithy words about his cousin and her “advice.”

I sent her a smile that probably wouldn’t have fooled anyone, let alone Marie Wilcox, and then Connor and I were headed out the front door and back to our cars.

“Don’t say it,” he told me, just as I opened my mouth to speak. “I get it. I really get it. Let’s just go back to the apartment and regroup, okay?”

“All right,” I said with some reluctance.

“You take the spot behind the building. I’ll park my car on the street.”

“Connor, you don’t have to do that — ”

Rather than argue, he bent down and kissed me, smothering my protests. Not that I minded; the kiss ignited all the fire I had forcibly banked down the past few months, and right then I didn’t care who parked where as long as we were together at his apartment. Soon.

I followed him back downtown, then turned in at the alleyway that led to the rear of his building. He disappeared around a corner, apparently in search of a parking space — no easy feat in the historic section of town on a bright and breezy May afternoon. Since I didn’t have a key, had taken the one he’d given me this past winter and shoved it into a compartment in my jewelry box, all I could do was wait at the back entrance to the building until he returned a few minutes later, over-long hair flying in the wind.

“Turning into a hippie?” I asked, lifting a hand to push the heavy dark strands away from his face.

“Just didn’t care, these past few months.”

My heart twinged, and I reached out and touched his hand, not saying anything. He gripped my fingers for a few seconds before letting them go so he could open the door.

Nothing seemed to have changed since the last time I entered the hallway. It still smelled of mildew and damp, still looked as if someone needed to get into the corners with a good stiff brush and some heavy-duty cleaner. In silence we climbed the stairs to the second floor. Connor opened the door to the apartment, and I held my breath. It felt like years since I’d been here, and I didn’t know what to expect. Maybe he’d let the place go after I left. Maybe it would be a total disaster.

But as I entered the familiar short hallway and glanced around, it seemed as if nothing much had changed. Everything looked neat and clean, nothing out of place except the usual collection of finished paintings stacked up against the walls in various spots. Some of them I didn’t recognize, which meant he’d kept working after I was gone. Good. I hated to think that our separation might have affected his art. I remembered then that he’d had another gallery show scheduled for the end of April, and wondered if he’d gone through with it, or whether he’d canceled the whole thing. Since quite a few paintings I remembered seemed to be gone, it looked as if he’d had the show after all.

“Connor — ” I began, but didn’t get much further than that, as he’d reached out and pulled me against him, brought his mouth against mine, pushing my lips open with his tongue, tasting me.

The purse fell from my suddenly nerveless fingers and dropped with a heavy thud against the wooden floor. At the same time, Connor scooped me up in his arms and headed for the stairs, moving up them so quickly that I didn’t have time to think about anything except the strength of his embrace and the thudding of my heart in my chest.

And then we were in his bedroom, and his hands were on my blouse, pulling it over my head, and his fingers were working the front clasp of my bra before he slid the straps down my shoulders and pulled the whole thing away from my body, tossing it onto the chair under the window. His hands cupped my breasts, and I moaned, needing his touch, needing the magic of flesh against flesh, his lips and tongue caressing me even as he undid the button and zipper of my jeans and pushed them down. I kicked off my flip-flops and did the same with my jeans, and then his hand was sliding down over my backside, cupping it as he pulled me against him, lifting his head from my nipple so he could kiss me again.

I went to work on his shirt buttons, undoing them one by one until his beautiful chest and stomach were revealed. Slipping my hands over him, I caressed my way down his torso until I came to his jeans and undid those as well.

Oh, he was so ready, so thick and hard it looked almost painful. A groan wrenched its way out of his throat as I moved my hand up and down his shaft. “Not too much,” he warned me. “It’s been a while.”

“So you don’t want me to do this?” I teased, lowering my head so I could take him in my mouth, taste the familiar salt of his skin, run my tongue over the silky yet rock-hard flesh.

“No — yes — Angela — ”

I took pity on him then, pulling him against me as we sank down onto the bed. His fingers brushed their way up the inside of my thigh, feather-light and yet awakening more fire, more heat, before they reached my core, stroking me, caressing me. I cried out, knowing I was close, so close, because it had been so long. An eternity without him.

But now he was here, and I was here, and it was the most natural thing in the world for him to slip into me, to fill the aching emptiness that had been a painful void ever since he sent me away from him. Two into one again, not Wilcox and McAllister, not
prima
and
primus
, not even Connor and Angela, but simply two souls merging into a perfect, ineffable one. There was no need for me to say the charm, because we had already kindled a life between us.

In that moment, I refused to believe any evil could come from such joy.

W
e dozed
in each other’s arms afterward, maybe for only five or ten minutes, maybe as much as half an hour. Neither one of us was paying much attention, but eventually Connor stirred and said, “So did that work up an appetite?”

I realized it had. By then it was past one, and my stomach was telling me that I had better put something in it. “I think it just might have.”

With a groan, he rolled over, then bent to retrieve his discarded underwear. I did the same, afterward going to the bathroom to clean up as best I could. It wasn’t like before; I didn’t have a change of clothes here with me. Still, I straightened my hair and patted some cool water on my flushed cheeks before returning to the bedroom for the rest of my clothes.

“I guess you’d been saving that up for a while,” I teased.

Connor slipped into his shirt and began to button it up. “Well, I think it was the toes that did it.”

Arching an eyebrow at him, I glanced down at my pink toenail polish. “What, are you telling me you have a foot fetish or something?”

“Or something,” he said with a grin.

I shook my head and retrieved my own top. After slipping it over my head, I climbed back into my jeans. I’d just finished fastening them shut when I looked up to see Connor standing in front of the dresser, holding the concho belt he’d given me for my birthday.

“I hated that you left this behind,” he said quietly. “Will you take it back now?”

Something in the simple request made my throat tighten. “Yes, Connor,” I said. “Oh, yes, I want it back.”

We both knew I was talking about a lot more than just the belt.

He came to me and fastened it around my hips. I felt the heavy weight settle against me and smiled. “I might as well wear it as much as I can now,” I joked. “In a few more months I’m going to be as big as a house.”

“And you’ll be beautiful,” he said, bending to kiss me gently on the cheek. “And when that happens, we’ll just put it in a drawer until you can wear it again.”

The smile slipped from my lips, and I stared up into his face, wondering how I could have ever lived a whole two months without him. “I love you, Connor.”

“I love you, Angela,” he said solemnly, seeming to understand that we needed to say it to one another, to re-bind us to each other. “There’s something I want to show you, and then we can go eat.”

I wondered what that something was. Since he was looking very serious, I attempted to lighten the mood a bit. “I thought you already showed me
that
,” I replied, flashing him a grin, but he didn’t smile, only took my hand and led me out of the bedroom.

We went downstairs. I let go of his hand, then bent down and retrieved my purse from the spot where I’d dropped it. Afterward, he wrapped his fingers around mine before leading me across the landing to the apartment he used as his studio. He paused there, saying, “Just promise you won’t freak out.”

“Wow, Connor, real reassuring.”

I thought maybe he’d grin at my response, but his expression remained somber as he pushed open the door. “I mean it.”

And when I walked into the studio, I realized why he’d made that request.

All around me was…me.

That is, paintings of me. Large ones, all the way down to tiny pieces you could hold in the palm of your hand. Obviously all done from memory — a painting of me standing in the snow, ponderosa pines dark and stately in the background. Sitting in the chair by his bedroom window, with the winter light streaming in and wakening reddish tones in my dark hair. The largest one, still on the easel, a stylized portrait of me with my hands outstretched, my face raised to the sky. It was a pose I’d used often during our seasonal observances back in Jerome, but of course Connor couldn’t have possibly seen me doing such a thing.

In all of them he’d painted me as looking far more beautiful than I thought I was in real life. But then I realized he’d been painting me as he saw me, and not as the world did.

It was overwhelming. I had no idea what to say. I only stood there, staring, for the longest moment. Finally I managed, “And here I thought you only did landscapes.”

Then we did burst out laughing, more to break the tension than anything else. Connor sobered abruptly, however, and said, “I couldn’t get you out of my mind. Every time I closed my eyes, you were there. Every time I turned around, I thought I could hear the sound of your voice. It was as if you’d become a ghost, too, and were haunting me. But if I could paint you, think of your face that way, it helped. A little.”

“They’re — ” I broke off, not sure of how to put it. If I said they were beautiful, was I praising his art, or my own features? It just felt…strange. “They’re incredible.”

“So you’re not freaking out?”

Was I? No, not really. Everyone handles pain in their own way, and if painting me over and over again helped Connor come out on the other side of his grief, who was I to say that was wrong? “No, Connor, I’m not freaking out. I won’t say it’s not overwhelming, but it’s not freak-out worthy.” I smiled up at him. “I mean, I’ve got people coming next week to knock out the walls in my kitchen. I needed something to focus on, and I figured remodeling the kitchen was as good a distraction as any.”

He tilted his head to one side, seeming to consider me. “We really are a pair, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are,” I told him. “Now buy me some lunch before I pass out. As I told Marie, I’m eating for two.”

“Angela McAllister, I would love to buy you lunch.”

W
e ended
up at the Lumberyard Brewery, partly because it was walkable, and partly because by then I really was starving, craving something heftier than tapas or a sandwich.

“You sure you’re okay with eating at a brewery?” Connor asked after the waitress had handed us our menus and left to fetch us some water. “I mean — ”

“It’s okay,” I cut in. “I was never much of a lunch drinker anyway. As for the rest….” I shrugged. Thank the Goddess that I really hadn’t drunk excessively after I got back to Jerome, except for that first night. Part of me had wanted to, had wanted to down bottle after bottle in an attempt to erase Connor from my mind. That wouldn’t have solved anything, though, and I’d told myself I wasn’t going to let him affect me that way. Even so, I’d had more than I should. I could only hope a glass here and there hadn’t hurt the baby, but there wasn’t much I could do about it now. “I’m not such a lush that I can’t give it up for a while. What worries me is that I think I heard somewhere that you’re not supposed to eat chocolate when you’re pregnant. Now,
that
would be a hardship.”

Connor grinned and shook his head. The waitress came by then with our waters and asked if we wanted anything else, but we both demurred. I had a feeling Connor could have used a beer at that point, even though it seemed he was planning to abstain right along with me. We both ordered burgers, and I asked for a side of mac and cheese in addition to my cheeseburger. After the waitress left, he remarked,

“You weren’t kidding about eating for two.”

“Nope,” I replied, swirling the straw around in my glass, watching as the lemon slice bobbed up and down between a couple of ice cubes.

“Have you seen a doctor?”

I looked up from my water to see Connor gazing at me intently. It seemed pretty clear that he wanted a lot more detail than what I’d already provided. Fair enough. “Yes. I went to Planned Parenthood, because at that point I really didn’t want to see my own doctor. I’m around ten weeks, and they want to have me come in for an ultrasound if I’m not going to get my own doctor in Cottonwood. But otherwise they said everything looks fine and I’m totally healthy, and it’s really not a big deal.”

“It
is
a big deal,” he said, his tone quiet. “And we both know that.”

He was right, of course. To the doctor at Planned Parenthood, mine was just another in a long line of pregnancies she’d encountered, and since I was young and healthy and everything looked normal, she couldn’t possibly understand what this baby meant in terms of my personal survival.

“You should come with me to see our healer,” he continued. “I mean, if you’re not going to your own doctor.”

That suggestion gave me pause. True, that was the way we witches usually dealt with such matters; a healer’s gifts were often far more reliable than modern medicine. And I’d met the Wilcox healer when the Damon-wolf had bitten my leg. She seemed pleasant enough, an attractive woman in her late forties or early fifties. What was her name? Eleanor?

Even so, I hesitated. Going to see the Wilcox healer seemed so…final. As if I were choosing sides. And we’d had enough of that.

“I don’t know, Connor,” I said at last. “I think I’d rather just go to a doctor. I mean, I don’t even know where — ” Breaking off, I hesitated. I’d been about to say,
I don’t even know where we’re going to end up.
It seemed that Connor and I had reconciled, and that was wonderful, but there were still some logistical issues we needed to work out. After all, my clan needed me, and his needed him. Settling down permanently in either location was going to leave one family or another out in the cold.

He seemed to understand, and nodded. “It’s something we’ll have to figure out eventually, I know. So do you want to see a doctor near Jerome, or would you be open to choosing one here in Flag?”

It would actually make more sense to find someone in Flagstaff, just because it was a much bigger city and had some very good medical facilities. “Do you know anyone?”

“I can get some recommendations. Eleanor has a lot of experience, but I know a couple of my cousins went ahead and got their own ob-gyns. I’ll get the information from them.”

That sounded good, and refreshingly normal. That was probably what most expecting couples did — ask their friends and family who was best equipped to take on such an enormous responsibility.

The waitress came by with our food then, and conversation ceased for a few minutes as we made some serious inroads on the plates piled with food in front of us. After I’d demolished about half my burger, though, I stopped and said, “But I guess all that is moot if we don’t figure out what Marie was talking about.”

“Well, you need to see a doctor no matter what — ” He stopped himself there, but I knew what he’d been about to say. Curse or no curse, we needed to make sure everything was all right with the baby, although I had a feeling it was fine. In general, it wasn’t until
after
the Wilcox heirs made their appearance in the world that their mothers needed to start worrying.

“I know,” I said. “And I will. But if she wants us to go back to the beginning….” I stopped, picking up a french fry and dipping it in some ketchup. After taking a bite, I chewed thoughtfully for a minute. She’d said there were things I needed to find out for myself, things she couldn’t tell me. That made me think she must be referring to my own beginnings, which were mostly shrouded in mystery. I knew I’d been born in California and that my mother had brought me back to Jerome when I was barely two months old, but I knew nothing beyond that. I’d never even seen my birth certificate; Aunt Rachel had taken care of the paperwork when I got my driver’s license.

“What is it?” Connor asked, setting down the last bit of his burger. “You look like your brain’s going a mile a minute.”

“The beginning,” I said slowly. “My beginning. There has to be something…something important. Maybe it’s something I need to figure out in order to break the curse.”

His eyes begin to gleam. “That makes sense. You really don’t know all that much, do you?”

“Hardly anything. I tried asking a few questions when I was younger, but my aunt said she really didn’t have that much to tell me, that my mother had barely said a word about what she’d been doing in California.” Talking about it now, I realized how strange that was, how little Aunt Rachel had claimed to know.

“So what’s the plan?”

“Finish lunch,” I replied, pulling the dish of mac and cheese toward me now that I’d thoroughly killed my burger and fries. “Then I think we need to go back to Jerome.”

W
e took my car
, and Connor packed his beat-up old Northern Pines athletic bag with some toiletries and a couple changes of clothing, just in case. As I drove us back to the highway, he called Lucas and let him know where he was going. I could tell Lucas was more than pleased about the reconciliation, but Connor ended the call before his cousin could wax too effusive.

“I think he’s ready to start planning the wedding now,” Connor remarked, slipping his iPhone back into his pocket.

“He’d probably have to arm-wrestle Sydney for the privilege.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Connor’s mouth turn up in a grin, but then it faded. “I want that, too,” he said quietly. “I want to make this official.”

Something in my chest seemed to turn over. Maybe it was just that everything seemed to be happening so fast. Then again, Connor and I were meant to be together. We’d hit a bump in the road — a little parting gift from Damon, I supposed — but we were back on track now. Marriage was just the next step, a practically foregone conclusion.

“I do, too,” I told him. “But I think we need to focus on — on making sure that we’ll
have
a real future. You and me and the baby. The wedding can come later.”

Talk about your role reversals. Usually it was the woman charging gung-ho into wedding planning and choosing flowers and menus and bridesmaids dresses and all that, but as much as I wanted to be married to Connor, I also wanted to make sure our marriage would last. And that meant breaking the curse so it would no longer be a threat to us…or to our child’s spouse, or any more of the Wilcox wives.

“You’re right, of course.” He turned to look out the window, at the ranks of ponderosa pines flashing past. Here there weren’t many wildflowers yet, but grass gleamed green between the dark pine trees.

Spring. A time for beginnings…including my own.

It was not quite four o’clock by the time we pulled into my garage. I’d left the house just six hours earlier, and yet it felt as if everything had changed in those few short hours. Then again, I supposed it had.