Spellbound

Chapter 1-3

On the drive back to Caitlin’s house, Danica kept wishing she’d had the guts to throw her belongings in the back of the Land Rover so she could have driven straight home to Flagstaff from the Florence prison facility. But she’d told everyone she’d be spending the weekend down in Tucson, going over wedding stuff with Caitlin, and if she’d bolted like that after being in Tucson for barely a day, her behavior would have raised even more eyebrows.

Actually, this whole wedding thing was making her a little crazy. Danica knew that Caitlin had tried to take as much of the burden off her as possible, had asked Roslyn’s older sister Jenny to be her maid of honor, even though Caitlin had once hoped that Danica would fill that role. But no way could she do all the wrangling that being maid of honor involved. Jenny was still grieving over her sister’s death, but she was also Caitlin’s cousin. She’d already been maid of honor at several other McAllister weddings and knew the drill. And it seemed as if Jenny was glad to have something to take her mind off Roslyn’s death.

Whereas Danica couldn’t seem to focus on much of anything at all. She’d dropped out of school for now. Her parents told everyone that she’d be back, that this was just a temporary sabbatical, but was it?

She didn’t know. She’d been intent on coming down here to confront Matías, to ask him the question that had been preying on her mind ever since she’d woken up enough to understand what had really happened during those days when she’d been the dark warlock’s captive. And now that she had her answer, what the hell was she supposed to do?

Nothing, probably. She’d been doing a whole lot of that lately. Her parents had wanted her to see a shrink, but that experiment had been a dismal failure. No one in the Wilcox clan was a psychologist or even a counselor, and so she’d had to try talking to a civilian. And what was the point of that? She couldn’t discuss any of the real details of her situation. No, she’d had to basically lie her a*s off and say that she’d been drugged by Matías, when she’d actually been controlled by his unique — and extremely dangerous — magical powers of coercion.

After three visits to the psychologist, she’d put her foot down and said no way, that now she felt guilty about lying to her shrink on top of everything else, and that was the end of that. Ever since, she’d been loitering around her parents’ house — she couldn’t have stayed in the apartment she once shared with Caitlin, since Caitlin had moved in with Alex and Danica’s parents wouldn’t hear of their daughter living alone after what had happened to her — and not doing much of anything. Watching TV. Eavesdropping on other people’s lives on f*******:. She’d probably be as big as a house, except the one thing that seemed to help was walking around the neighborhood. Her family’s home was located in the Country Club Estates section of Flagstaff, and so there were plenty of artificial lakes to roam around, lots of tree-lined streets where she could walk and breathe in the clean air and not think about much of anything at all.

When Danica got back to the house Caitlin shared with Alex, there didn’t seem to be any sign of him, even though it was almost six thirty. She parked the Land Rover on the street, and went up and rang the doorbell.

Caitlin let her in, eyes full of questions, but she appeared to realize that Danica wasn’t much in the mood for conversation.

“Alex?” Danica asked briefly.

“He called about a half-hour ago. Something came up, so he won’t be home for dinner.”

“That sucks.”

“I know. This is his dream job, so I’m trying not to say anything, but this is the fourth time in the last two weeks that he’s gotten stuck there late.” She sighed and pushed a lock of bright copper hair away from her face. “I’m doing my best to be understanding, but it’s just tough sometimes. I want to be with him, you know?”

“I’m sure it’ll be okay,” Danica said, glad that she could focus on her friend’s problems rather than her own. “He’s new, so he’s probably just trying to prove himself.”

A nod, although Caitlin didn’t look all that convinced. “Maybe. Anyway, since we’re free agents, we might as well go out. I’ll take you downtown.”

And that was where they headed, to a restaurant Danica had wanted to try for a while, since it was owned by the same company that ran a couple of eating establishments up in Flagstaff. They ordered some truffle fries to nosh on, and each got a glass of wine. That was about all Danica thought she could manage; she’d never been much of a drinker.

Then again, after the day she’d had….

“You want to talk about it?” Caitlin asked, sipping at her glass of pinot grigio.

“Not really.” How in the world could Danica tell Caitlin that her cousin had ended up dead because Matías had gotten a hard-on for her instead?

Luckily, Caitlin only nodded. Unlike a lot of people, she knew when not to push. “So…what now?”

“I don’t know. Go try on those shoes you picked out. Get stuck full of pins at the bridal shop one last time. Go home.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Danica felt like telling her friend that she was the one who could see the future, so she should be advising Danica on what was supposed to happen next, not vice versa. But it didn’t always work that way.

The malbec she’d ordered suddenly tasted sour, but she took another swallow anyway. “I’m just…I don’t know. It’s like I know that that asshole did a number on me, but I can’t figure out a way to fix it.”

“Maybe you don’t have to fix it,” Caitlin said gently. “Maybe you just have to learn how to live with it.”

That option didn’t sound very appealing. It wasn’t as if Matías had given her an incurable disease. He’d messed with her head, messed with her body, but she was still alive, wasn’t she? There had to be some way to get past what he’d done.

Her expression must have been dubious, because Caitlin shook her head. “I’m not saying it’s something that’s going to happen instantly. It hasn’t even been six months yet.”

“Six months is a long time. Look at how much your life has changed in the past few months.”

Somewhat to Danica’s surprise, Caitlin didn’t smile at that comment. Her expression remained serious as she regarded her friend. “Yes, it’s changed. And yours can, too. You just have to give yourself permission to change. Don’t give Matías the power to permanently mess up your life.”

When Caitlin made that suggestion, she made it sound so easy.

“Well, I’m trying not to,” Danica replied, “but it’s not going so great right now.”

Caitlin opened her mouth to answer, but then she paused, her blue-green eyes going glassy. A casual observer might have thought that she’d simply had too much to drink, but Danica knew her friend better than that. She wasn’t drunk.

She was having a vision.

“What are you seeing, Cate?”

A blink, and then Caitlin swiveled her head toward Danica. Her gaze was still a little unfocused, but she sounded normal enough as she said, “You need to go back to Flagstaff.”

“Well, yeah, I was heading back on Sunday.”

“No. You need to go back tomorrow.”

“What about the shoes?”

“Okay, we’ll go to the bridal store first thing in the morning. Then you need to go home.”

“Do you want to tell me why?”

Another blink. “I can’t say exactly for sure. I just get this feeling that you need to be there. I saw pine trees…quiet. It wasn’t a neighborhood like where your parents’ house is, though. Someplace near town, but not really in it. I did see part of one building…it looked like it might have been a log cabin.”

“‘A log cabin’?” Danica repeated. What the…. Then, as understanding seemed to roll over her, “Our log cabin?”

“You have a log cabin?”

“Well, I don’t,” Danica replied. “It belongs to the clan. I guess it was the cabin that my great-great-whatever grand-uncle Jeremiah built when he brought all the Wilcoxes out to the Arizona Territory in the late 1870s.”

“That cabin,” Caitlin said firmly. “So it’s seriously a for-real log cabin?”

“Kind of. I mean, we’ve updated it, because we all sort of share it for weekend getaways in the summer or whatever. But it still looks like a log cabin on the outside.”

The dreamy look returned to Caitlin’s eyes. “Getaways. That’s exactly it, Danica. You need to get away.”

“To the cabin?”

Caitlin nodded.

“By myself?”

Another emphatic nod.

Great, Danica thought. My parents are just going to love this….