Darker Paths

1. Hideaways-2

I reflected that so much of what he’d told me over the past few days had to be lies — going to school at UNM down in Albuquerque, the car that needed repair…the family that had only come to settle in Santa Fe about a hundred years earlier. As he’d hinted, he needed some kind of cover story to give me until he could be sure that my powers really were something he could work with. I didn’t like that he’d stacked falsehood on top of falsehood, but at least I could understand why he’d done it. And he was telling me the truth now, wasn’t trying to hide the fact that he’d lied to me.

“What about this apartment?” I asked. “The job at the wine shop?”

“The apartment is an Airbnb,” he said calmly, still meeting my gaze, expression open and frank. Maybe he’d told some lies to cover his tracks, but he obviously wanted me to know he wasn’t withholding any information now. “And I was covering for someone at the wine shop, a guy who had to go back to Chicago for a few days for some family business. That’s all.”

That’s all. Well, it was a pretty elaborate charade, as far as I could tell, but again, it hadn’t been anything intended to hurt me. Exactly the opposite, really. He’d needed to look as though he had a job and an apartment here in Santa Fe, or the rest of his story wouldn’t have made sense, and we wouldn’t have gotten close enough for him to feel comfortable revealing the truth about himself.

“All right,” I said wearily. Right then I just wanted to get the hell out of town. Although it seemed that Simon had his own ways of making sure we wouldn’t be followed, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the Castillos would track me down here if we lingered for too much longer. “Since your car is okay after all, let’s get going. No point in hanging around here, right?”

“No point at all,” he agreed. “Let me take one of your bags.”

I wasn’t about to protest. Right then I was just so damn tired that I thought I’d be lucky if I could make it down the stairs without stumbling. I nodded and handed one of the bags to him, then followed him as he walked through the short hallway to the front door. He paused to lock the door behind us, and afterward we headed down to the parking lot. Waiting there was a sleek newer-model compact BMW SUV. I looked at it with a raised eyebrow but didn’t bother to comment. After all, it was pretty obvious that his starving student act had been only that — an act, with very little truth behind it. The de la Paz clan had a lot of money; it wasn’t so strange that Simon would drive an expensive car.

He put the bags he was carrying in the back, then took my remaining weekender bag from me and stowed it alongside the others. In silence, I went up to the passenger door and let myself in. The vehicle was so new, I could still smell the leather upholstery. Had he bought it before he left Arizona? I’d noticed that it had New Mexico plates, but he could’ve acquired those sometime during the past couple of days.

“What about your family?” I asked as we pulled out of the alley and headed west on San Francisco Street. “Your real family, I mean.”

For a second, Simon didn’t reply. Yes, he was in the middle of setting the self-driving controls, but I didn’t think that was the real reason for the delay.

Then he said, “Back in Tucson, you mean?”

“Yeah. It’s not like witches and warlocks generally leave their home territory for extended periods. Where did you tell them you were going?”

He shrugged. “I’ve been taking photography classes at the local community college. There was a workshop coming up within the right time frame, so I said I was going to take it. Since it’s all about shooting in the desert, especially nighttime images, it meant I was going to be gone for ten days in places without a lot of cell service. It seemed the simplest excuse, and one they would have a hard time checking on. I already have a stockpile of images I can show them to prove that I took the workshop, so they won’t be able to get suspicious about that, either.”

That made some sense, I guessed. He couldn’t have told his family the truth about where he was going, because there was no way they would have allowed him to come to another witch clan’s territory and interfere with their business — especially when that business was something as important as the marriage of their prima’s only son to the daughter of the two northern Arizona clan leaders.

Not that what Simon had done could really be categorized as “interfering.” It was more like he’d sat back and waited to see what would happen. For all I knew, he had some of the abilities of a seer, might have known that Rafe’s and my cobbled-together romance would implode before it even got started. If that were really true, it might have been nice if he could have warned me…but then, would I have even believed him?

“What happens if this takes longer than ten days?”

He turned his head toward me and smiled slightly. “It won’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I can already sense the power building in you. It wants to come out.”

I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that; the picture that formed in my mind was one of a dam breaking, water flowing out and leaving destruction in its wake. I hadn’t embarked on this escape with Simon because I wanted to hurt anyone or destroy anything. All I wanted was to have real powers like every other witch and warlock I knew. I was tired of feeling like a freak.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to see,” I remarked.

The car turned right on a street whose name I didn’t catch. We passed restaurants and breweries and then came out into a more modern commercial area, with a big shopping center on one side. Across the street, though, was a cemetery, and I had to repress a shiver. I hoped its presence on our way out of town wasn’t a sign of things to come.

Right next to the regular, old-fashioned graveyard was a national cemetery, the rows of identical white tombstones shimmering in my peripheral vision as we drove past. After that, we were on the highway, the houses of Santa Fe giving way to open country not so different from northern Arizona — juniper and piñon trees, scrubby dry grass spread over rolling hills. Only a few minutes passed before the car began to descend into a river valley, a line of cottonwood trees blazing like golden fire in the setting sun as they followed the water through the lowlands.

The car pulled off the highway at an exit for a place called Tesuque. I’d never heard of it, but that didn’t mean much. Other than checking the climate and making sure I’d bring appropriate clothing, I hadn’t done a lot of research on Santa Fe and its environs. I’d thought I would be able to discover these things in person, with my new husband at my side.

Well, there was a joke.

Although I’d resolved to put him out of my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder what Rafe was up to right now. Was he worried at all about what had happened to me, or was he glad that I’d disappeared into thin air, that I wasn’t his problem any longer? Even if that were the case, Genoveva had to be furious, just because at some point she’d have to provide some explanation to my parents as to why I’d disappeared.

My parents….

“I need to call home,” I said.

“Of course you do,” Simon replied, his tone unruffled. “You can use my phone when we get to the house. The signal isn’t very good around here, so you’ll need to use the wi-fi.”

Just the fact that he hadn’t argued or come up with excuses as to why I shouldn’t call home made me relax a good deal. If — as I couldn’t help worrying about, even though he’d given no indication that his intentions were nefarious — he really was up to no good, then the last thing he’d want was for me to let my parents know where I was. I knew they’d probably do their best to talk me into coming back to Arizona, but I would have to stand firm. I needed to give this a try. I had to see if Simon really could help me.

This area was nearly rural, the road now one lane in either direction, overhung by tall trees, their leaves a riot of autumn gold. We came to a crossroads with a funky-looking restaurant on one side, then turned past it and headed up toward the hills as the valley gradually sank into shadow.

“What was that place?” I asked.

Simon’s gaze traveled toward the restaurant, then back to the vehicle’s controls. As I watched, he disengaged the self-driving mechanism and took control of the car himself. “Oh, that’s the Tesuque Village Market.”

“It looked like a restaurant.”

“It’s a restaurant and a market. They sell local stuff. The food’s good, though. We’ll have to go there to eat soon.”

I shot him a curious glance. “You’re not worried about a Castillo seeing us? It doesn’t seem like we’re that far from Santa Fe.”

“We’re not, but they don’t come here much. Besides, how many of them even know what you look like? And I can mask our witchy natures, so we’ll just look like a couple of civilians to them.”

This response sounded plausible enough. True, a large chunk of the clan had been present at the wedding, but I really doubted they’d be able to recognize me once I was back to my normal lip gloss and mascara and everyday clothes, rather than my elaborate wedding gown and hair and makeup. It was kind of a relief to think that Simon didn’t intend to keep me locked up in a compound somewhere, that we’d be able to go out and eat at a restaurant like regular people.

He turned off onto a small dirt road, then paused after we’d gone about a hundred yards so he could roll down the window and enter the key code for the large iron gate that blocked our way. Maybe we really were going to a compound after all.

That seemed to be the case, because after we passed through the gates, we traveled along a small private road with carefully fenced-in grounds to either side. At this time of year, the grass appeared mostly yellow and dry, but it must have been lush and green in the late spring and summer. Tall trees, their leaves also golden yellow, were planted at regular intervals.

We came to a cluster of buildings, one of which was a detached three-car garage. Everything except the garage was built in what I’d learned was the New Mexico territorial style — steeply peaked roofs, wide porches. The place looked quiet, serene in the late afternoon light, and I felt myself relax at the sight.

Simon touched the controls on the steering column, and the door to the center bay began to open. As far as I could tell, the garage was empty except for a few trashcans lined up against one wall. We got out and retrieved our baggage from the rear of the BMW.

“This way,” Simon said.

I followed him through a door on the same wall where the trashcans were located, and then along a path that wound through a carefully tended garden, where a few hollyhocks and hydrangea bushes still bloomed, despite the time of year. Because we were approaching from the garage rather than the front walk, we came into the house via a pair of French doors that opened on the patio. I assumed Simon must have a key, but he didn’t use one, only touched his fingers to the doorknob and used his inborn magic to let us in.