Darker Paths

2. Tracks-1

2

Tracks

Rafe Castillo

Cat left after about an hour, and Rafe sat on the couch in the living room and stared at the bottle of Avíon Silver tequila on the coffee table, wondering if he dared have another shot. He wanted to — more than anything, he wanted to blot out the pain and confusion he was feeling. Something had been taken from him, and he didn’t even know how.

Or why.

After an interminable moment, he reached out and grasped the bottle and shot glass, then rose from the couch and went into the kitchen. He put the bottle of tequila back in the cupboard and set the glass on the counter next to the sink. His stomach rumbled grumpily, and he knew he’d have to eat something soon to soak up the alcohol, even though the thought of consuming solid food made him feel sick.

Miranda was gone. They should have been at the reception by now, surrounded by family giving them champagne toasts. Everything had happened so quickly, Rafe didn’t even know what had been on the menu, but since the event was being held at one of the family restaurants, he assumed that whatever that dinner was supposed to be, it would have been good. There would have been a first dance, cake, more dancing, more champagne. Not too much, though — he and Miranda were supposed to have hit the road for Taos as the reception was winding down. Anyway, another bottle of champagne would have been waiting for them in their suite at the resort.

Shit…had anyone called to cancel the reservation?

His head hurt. He didn’t quite know what he was supposed to be doing with himself, but he guessed it wasn’t standing here in his empty house and getting drunk.

There were things he could be doing. He could be calling Cat to have her notify the staff at El Monte Sagrado resort in Taos that no one would be using their fancy thousand-dollar-per-night honeymoon casita. He could be wandering the streets, looking for Miranda. Hell, he should be calling her parents to let them know she’d disappeared again, even though Genoveva had emphatically stated that she wanted Angela McAllister and Connor Wilcox left out of the loop, at least for now. Rafe knew his mother was hoping they’d locate Miranda soon, and all this nastiness could just get swept under the rug. Nothing to see here — we’re all fine, thank you.

Only it wasn’t fine at all. He had the overwhelming sensation that he was missing something vitally important about the whole mess, but he couldn’t for the life of him think what that might be. His brain still felt fuzzy and not quite there, and he knew that sensation wasn’t entirely due to the tequila. According to his sister Louisa, someone had gone in his head and messed around. Some kind of a spell, although no one in his family could say who would have a reason to cast such a spell.

Because now he had to circle back to the question he’d asked Cat only a short while earlier. Who would do such a thing…and why? Who would profit from wrecking an alliance between the Castillos and the northern Arizona witch clans?

No one, as far as he could tell. Miranda’s mother might have agreed to the bargain that sent her unborn daughter to the Castillos because she was up against the wall dealing with the dark warlock Joaquin Escobar and had no other choice, but circumstances now were very different. Everyone in the witch clans of the Southwest had been at peace for his entire life. Yes, the Castillos tended to keep to themselves, and yet that certainly wasn’t any cause for enmity from the other witch families. As a rule, they tended to stay isolated, and one could say that the chumminess of the three clans in Arizona was the exception rather than the rule.

But someone had come along and stirred up trouble, for whatever reason. Rafe had wondered earlier whether the culprit was some previously unknown admirer of Miranda’s, butting in because he didn’t want to see the woman he loved marrying someone else. That sort of motivation was something Rafe could understand. She was beautiful and smart…and tougher than she appeared on the surface.

An image flashed in his head of the way she’d looked when he’d kissed her for the first time. Wary, and almost as if she’d wanted to bolt, but standing there in front of him with her cheeks flushed and her full mouth parted, her green eyes glowing. Absolutely beautiful, and so very desirable.

He wished he could remember how she had looked when she stood in front of him at the altar, but everything about that portion of his day was blurry, indistinct. Part of the spell? Maybe. He remembered driving to the church, and nothing after that until he’d come to himself in one of the meeting rooms at the cathedral, his immediate family clustered around him, demanding what the hell was wrong with him.

Well, now he knew. And he supposed he could say none of this was his fault, although he hated to face the reality that he was so weak, he couldn’t even fend off a magical attack. Then again, he hadn’t exactly been expecting one.

Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to send Cat away. At the time, he’d thought it better for his sister to head over to the restaurant where the reception was supposed to be held and check in with his parents, but now he wasn’t so sure. She was good to have around, his little sister. The two of them had always presented a united front, since they were so much younger than their two older sisters, both of whom were married and settled and had families of their own. But he and Cat had always looked out for one another, and she’d always been a good sounding board. In fact, he’d joked on more than one occasion that if he ever were forced to kill someone, it was Cat he’d call to help him hide the body.

It couldn’t be helped, though. She probably was performing a better service by going to the reception and doing what she could to smooth things over with the rest of the family than she would by staying with him and holding his hand.

However, Rafe knew if he remained here a moment longer, he would go crazy. He liked his house and had lived here alone for several years, but now it only seemed to mock him, to tell him he’d never bring Miranda here as his bride. Maybe that was only the truth, but he didn’t want to face it now. He couldn’t quite acknowledge that this all might be hopeless.

Damn it.

He went and got his jacket from the hall closet, then headed toward the garage. Thank God that Cat had driven him home from the cathedral in his own vehicle, rather than leaving it behind to be retrieved later. Yes, he could’ve called a Ryde and had one of the self-driving cars take him anywhere in town he wanted to go, but right now he wanted to drive himself. He needed to feel as though he was in control of something in his life.

Besides, he had this nagging sensation that he needed to go downtown, although he had absolutely no idea why. Not to drink — he knew he didn’t dare have anything else if he wanted to stay safe behind the wheel. To get some food? Maybe, although he had a feeling it wouldn’t be a very good idea to dine alone on this, of all nights. But he could always get some takeout from one of the restaurants there and bring it home.

Giving a mental shrug, he pulled out of the garage and pointed his Jeep west on Paseo de Peralta, then jogged over on Lincoln Avenue, which would bring him closer to the Plaza downtown. At least it was a Sunday night and therefore not as crowded as it would have been the evening before. Still, no one would have recommended Santa Fe’s downtown as a place for pleasure driving, not with its narrow roads and one-way streets.

That strange feeling of being herded didn’t lessen as he drove along, dusk now faded all the way into night. When he reached the parking structure on San Francisco Street, it was almost as if someone had poked him in the arm and said, Here.

So he pulled into the structure and parked on the second level, then sat there for a few moments, trying to figure out what the hell he was doing here. Yes, a little ways up the street was one of his favorite restaurants, Tia Maria, but it wouldn’t be open now. Tia Maria was strictly a breakfast/lunch kind of place. And yet something had made him come here.

Frowning, he got out of the Jeep and headed over to the stairwell. However, he didn’t descend to the street level, but instead walked up to the roof. Since nothing was going on at the Lensic Theater across the street, there wasn’t much demand for parking; this level of the structure was almost empty. He raised his chin and breathed the chilly night air.

No, he really didn’t breathe it in — he sniffed it, trying to detect something strange on the wind. This wasn’t as effective as when he shifted into coyote or wolf form, but some of the traits he took on when he used his singular talent to become an animal of the wild seemed to stay with him, to be used when he needed them.

And he definitely sensed something off.

What it was, he couldn’t even say. Something foul on the fresh currents of air, something that shouldn’t be there. Eyes narrowing, he headed back to the stairs, walked down to ground level and then let himself out on the street. There was some traffic, not much, so he didn’t have to wait long for an opening to cross San Francisco Street.

Once on the sidewalk opposite the parking structure, he paused again and inhaled deeply. Down here, there was a more muddled combination of scents — car exhaust, and cooking oil from a restaurant, a whiff of wood smoke. But there it was again, almost sickly sweet, like the smell of rotting flesh.

He walked slowly, hands in his pockets. Yes, it was definitely here — to be precise, somewhere near the wine tasting room just past the burger joint on the corner of Burro Alley.

At this hour on a Sunday, the shop was closed, its windows dark. Dark, too, were the windows of the apartment directly above it. Even so, Rafe found himself lingering here, watching the building for a long moment. Something about it tickled his memory, as though an important event had occurred here, but he couldn’t remember what it might be. A little more than a year earlier, he’d come here with Tony and a few other Castillo cousins to sample the wares at the newly opened wine shop. He hadn’t returned, though; the wine was good, but they hadn’t offered any food at the time, and in general he didn’t like to drink wine on its own.

The memory of the day he’d gone to the wine tasting room with Tony was very sharp and clear — it had been a mild day in early October, the trees just beginning to turn. They’d had two flights of wine, bought a few bottles, then headed down the street to the upscale pizza place there to get some real food. All this Rafe remembered without any trouble, and yet he seemed to sense something else far more important had gone on in this building in the recent past, even if he couldn’t remember what the hell it might be.

Frowning, he moved a bit farther down the block, then cut down the alley so he might approach the building from the rear. How this would help, he wasn’t sure, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to try.

All was quiet back here. A pickup truck almost as old as his Wrangler was parked in one of the residents-only spaces, but the other ones remained empty. Well, the apartment over the tasting room had appeared empty; maybe it wasn’t currently rented out.

Still….

Rafe walked over to the rear entrance of the building. The door was locked, but of course that didn’t matter to a warlock. He touched his fingers to the handle, and it swung inward. After giving a quick look around and reassuring himself that he was alone, he went inside.

The odor was stronger here, as if it had concentrated itself in this dingy little stairwell. Breathing through his mouth, Rafe ascended the stairs and came to a small landing, the door to the apartment he’d noted now directly in front of him.