Spellbound

Chapter 1-1

1

“Are you crazy?” Caitlin McAllister said, eyes widening. Then she winced. “Sorry…wrong word.”

“It’s all right,” Danica Wilcox replied with a shrug. Everyone had been tiptoeing around her for the past five months, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t heard the whispers anyway. All right, maybe no one had used the C-word out loud. They’d probably thought it, though, even if that thought was couched in euphemisms such as “Danica doesn’t seem like herself.”

No kidding. She didn’t feel like herself, either. Ever since the rogue warlock Matías Escobar invaded her mind, Danica had been haunted by the sense that he’d stolen some vital part of her heart or soul, something she hadn’t even realized she needed until it was gone.

She and Caitlin were sitting in the family room of the house that Caitlin now shared with her fiancé, Alex Trujillo. Stacks of bridal magazines and catalogues were piled on the coffee table in front of them. Caitlin and Alex had set the date for early November — anything sooner would have probably been too hot down in Tucson — and Danica had come here to get the final fitting for her dress, even though the wedding was still almost two months off.

Well, that was the public reason Danica had given for coming to Tucson. She supposed she should be glad that her parents hadn’t vetoed the trip altogether, since it meant driving several hundred miles all by herself. However, they’d probably decided that Caitlin’s house was a safe enough destination. Besides, Matías was now securely locked up in a maximum-security facility, as were his two partners in crime. They certainly didn’t present any threat, to Danica or anyone else.

“I have to go see him,” she told Caitlin. “I need…closure.”

“I’d think his being behind bars would be all the closure you need,” Caitlin replied. Then she shook her head and retrieved her iced tea, which was sweating slightly despite the air conditioning going full blast, from where the tall glass sat on the coffee table. “Anyway, you know your parents would freak if they found out you’d gone within fifty miles of that place…and they’d kill me for letting you do it in the first place.”

Her friend had that right, on both counts. But Danica had no intention of allowing her parents to discover her real reason for coming down here to Tucson. “Yeah, they probably would. But how would they know in the first place?”

At that reply, Caitlin frowned. “I don’t want to lie to anyone — ”

“Who says you’d have to lie? You just have to not say anything.”

“That’s totally splitting hairs, Danica.”

She didn’t say anything, just waited for Caitlin to cave. Which Danica knew she would. Caitlin hated confrontations. And maybe, just maybe, she’d realized that Danica’s wish for closure wasn’t quite as crazy as it sounded.

After a tense few seconds, Caitlin huffed out a breath. “Okay, fine. I’ll cover for you. How long do you think it’s going to take?”

“A little over three hours, I guess. It’s about an hour and a half one way.” Danica couldn’t let herself feel relief. Not exactly. In one way, the very thought of facing her former tormentor made her stomach clench. But she also knew this was something she had to do, that she couldn’t move forward if she didn’t ask him the questions she’d been holding in for months. “If I leave in the next twenty minutes, then I can be there for the one-thirty visitation block.”

Caitlin’s eyebrows lifted. “Sounds like you already had this planned out. So why ask for my permission?”

It wasn’t that Danica was asking for permission…more that she wanted her friend to understand why she had to do this. She’d learned quickly enough that visiting someone in a maximum-security prison wasn’t exactly the same as stopping by a hospital to bring some flowers. First she’d had to submit to a background check, and then she’d had to call to schedule an appointment. Through all this, she’d had to use her real name, but that wasn’t a big problem. Because of her fragile mental state, she’d never been called to testify against Matías after the ordeal. In fact, her name hadn’t been included in the case at all, because there had been plenty of evidence to convict him of Roslyn McAllister’s murder without dragging Danica’s k********g into it.

“I just — I just wanted you to know. And I could have canceled the appointment if I had to. That’s not such a big deal.”

For a long moment, Caitlin didn’t say anything. At last she nodded. “Okay. I’m not going to say I get it, not really, but…do what you have to do.”

She still sounded dubious, so Danica asked, “Is Alex going to wonder where I’ve gone? I mean, I don’t want to drag him into this, too.”

Caitlin shook her head. “I haven’t said anything to him because I figured it was your business. Luckily, you should be back here before Alex gets home from work.”

He’d started a new job a month earlier, working in the marketing department of a local TV station. His dream job, according to Caitlin. Everything seemed to be going their way. Danica couldn’t begrudge her friend her current happiness, but at the same time, she wished she could look forward to a future that was even half as idyllic.

In the meantime, she had an appointment to keep.