For the first few minutes as we drove away from Damon’s house, Connor was silent. It was still light out, but the sun had begun to slip behind the hills to the west. It would be dusk by the time we got back to the apartment.
Finally he let out a sigh and said, “He wasn’t always like this, you know.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to try to defend his behavior.”
“No.” His gloved fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “I’m not going to do that. But you don’t know what he’s been through.”
“What, besides losing his mother at thirteen and his father twelve years later? You went through the same stuff, and it didn’t turn you into a raging asshole.”
He almost smiled. Almost. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Okay, that’s true, I suppose. But have you ever wondered why he kidnapped you, wanted to make you his consort?”
Of course I had. It was one of the roughly ten thousand questions I’d wanted to ask Connor but hadn’t quite dared to. I knew it had something to do with my being prima, but I’d never been able to figure out why he thought that was so important, other than the obvious benefit of adding a McAllister prima’s stock to the Wilcox gene pool. “You mean it wasn’t my outstanding beauty and charm?”
This time he really did grin. “Besides that.”
“All right, yes, I did wonder. That is, I figured it was partly to try to do what Jasper hadn’t succeeded in doing with my Great-Aunt Ruby. And that all of it was to increase the powers of the Wilcoxes by bonding a primus with a prima.”
“That might have been Jasper’s reasoning, but it wasn’t Damon’s…at least, not the primary reason. No, he thought that by joining with a prima he would finally have the power to break the curse.”
A better reason than creating a race of über-warlocks, I supposed. “So that’s supposed to make me forgive him?”
“Of course not.” Connor tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, then slowed to a stop as we came to a four-way intersection. There wasn’t anyone around for miles, or so it seemed, so after the barest of pauses, he pulled out onto the two-lane road that would lead us back to town. “It wasn’t his first attempt at breaking it. I think after what happened with our mother….” He let the words die away and hang in the air for a moment. “Anyway, he knew that would be his fate as primus if he didn’t make some attempt to change it. So when he got married — ”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “You mean he was married once?”
“Yes.”
I digested that for a moment. No point in asking what had happened to her, either. Fate wasn’t kind to the wives of Jeremiah’s line.
“They met in grad school,” Connor went on. I noticed that he’d flicked on his headlights, even though there was still plenty of light to drive by. “She was a civilian.”
That did shock me. “Seriously? I can’t imagine a Wilcox primus stooping to marry a civilian. I mean,” I went on hurriedly, since I could see Connor beginning to frown, “I know a lot of the people in your family marry civilians. Actually, the McAllisters do, too, and probably for a lot of the same reasons. But never the prima. I just figured you had sort of the same…traditions…in your clan.”
“Normally, we do. But Damon got it in his head that maybe having a civilian wife would change things, render the curse ineffective.”
“So he just picked some poor civilian girl to be his guinea pig?”
“She wasn’t a guinea pig.” Connor’s tone was faintly reproving. “She was smart and beautiful, and he loved her. He did. Not that he came out and told me that, because, well, we didn’t have those sorts of conversations. I was in high school when they got married. Felicia. She was getting her master’s in psychology, and she worshipped him.”
I had a hard time imagining anyone worshipping Damon Wilcox. Then again, if he and this Felicia had gotten married when Connor was still in high school, all this had happened some time ago. “Did she know about the whole…magic thing?”
“He told her. That’s a pretty big secret to keep from your wife, and he knew she wouldn’t be able to have much contact with the clan if he didn’t tell her. But she seemed to take it in stride. I don’t think he told her everything about the curse, though…just that there had been some tragedies in our family. But you could probably say that about most families.”
I thought that was pretty hard on Felicia, and not precisely fair. She deserved the truth, deserved to know what lay in store for her. I didn’t say anything, though, because I wanted to know what had happened to her. Well, the details. Since she wasn’t around now, it was pretty clear that the curse had hit her, just as it had every other wife of a Wilcox primus.
“Everything seemed fine for a few years. She was getting a practice going as a family counselor, and Damon got the associate professorship position here at Northern Pines. I was off at school in Tempe by then, so I wasn’t around to see them much except for a weekend here and there, but they seemed happy. Then Felicia got pregnant.”
Uh-oh. That did seem to be the death knell for the Wilcox wives.
Connor stared straight ahead as he spoke. I didn’t know if he was avoiding my gaze so he couldn’t see my own worry, or whether what was coming next was so painful that the only way he could tell it was without looking at me.
“It was January. I’d just gone back to ASU after winter break. I got a phone call one evening. I think it was a Thursday.” A shake of his head. “Like it matters what day of the week it was. There’d been a car accident. The roads were icy. She was driving home from her office when some tourist lost control at an intersection and T-boned her car. Just slammed right into the driver-side door. They got her to the hospital, but there wasn’t much they could do. She was gone, and the baby.”
My fingers tightened around the purse I held on my lap. A wave of pity rolled over me. Feel sorry for Damon Wilcox? In that moment I did.
“He changed after that. Sold the house they’d been living in, bought this place, and moved way out here. And he started obsessing over how he could end the curse forever.”
I reached over and squeezed Connor’s arm. Briefly, not enough to distract him from his driving, but merely to let him know I was there.
For just a second or two the tight set to his mouth softened a bit. But then I could see his jaw tense again as he said, “That was when he started obsessing about you. The first time he brought it up — it was over the summer, about five years ago now — I told him he was crazy, that he needed to let it go. I mean, bad enough that he should contemplate such a thing at all, considering you were only sixteen at the time and he was past thirty.”
“Definitely disgusting,” I agreed. It actually made my flesh crawl to realize Damon Wilcox had been thinking of me that way even when I was underage.
“Pretty much what I said. And he told me that modern scruples shouldn’t be coming into it, and besides, of course he wouldn’t touch you until you were twenty-one and your prima powers had begun to awaken. Then he sort of dropped it for a while, and since I was busy with school, I let it go as well.” At last he looked over at me. Quickly, so he wouldn’t endanger us while driving or anything, but enough so I could see the warmth in his eyes. “Besides, soon after that I began dreaming of you, and I realized that eventually Damon’s plans were going to come crashing down around him anyway.”
“So you knew all along who I was?” I demanded. “That’s not fair. I never got to see your face in my dreams. Not that I would’ve known who you were, even if I’d been able to get a good look at you.”
“Well, I did know what you looked like, since Damon had people surveilling you for some time.”
Now, that was creepy. “You’re kind of freaking me out, Connor.”
“I thought you should know the truth.”
Just another way he was so very different from his brother. Damon seemed to have only a casual acquaintance with the truth, as far as I could tell. “So, um…surveilling me how, exactly?”
“No family members. Your elders would have sniffed out a Wilcox the second he or she crossed the wards you have set up. But being a college professor does give you access to a bunch of civilians, students who go on day trips all over the place, including Jerome. It didn’t have to sound sinister or anything — he could do something as simple as mention he was thinking of vacationing there, and could they take some photos so he could make a decision that wasn’t based on a B&B’s website marketing copy? You were out in plain view, working at your aunt’s store on the weekends. It was easy to get a picture.”
I thought of the groups of kids around my age who’d come in and out of the store, who’d joked and messed up our stacks of T-shirts and taken loopy Instagram pictures with the javelina figurines in the background. How many of them had been Damon’s unwitting spies?
“That’s messed up, Connor.”
“You think I don’t know that?” The area around us was becoming more populated as we headed south, and he had to slow abruptly as a Dodge truck pulled out almost in front of us. I felt the tires slip a little on the icy road before they caught again. “Asshole,” he muttered under his breath.
My fingers had unconsciously tightened on the edge of the seat. Driving in these kinds of road conditions was not something I enjoyed, even though Connor clearly knew what he was doing. Something he’d said nagged at my mind, though. “So if our wards should have alerted us to your presence, how did Damon and his little band of commandos get past them?”
“You’d have to ask him that. I told you he’s been experimenting with spells, changing them, making them stronger, altering them. I don’t know the details.” He lifted his shoulders, and a frown creased his brow. “I do know he’s frustrated because, although he’s done some amazing work with spellcraft, he hasn’t made any headway with the curse. He made a comment not too long ago about investigating alternative magic, but when I tried to get him to tell me more, he said he was only in the preliminary stages of his research, and there wasn’t much to tell.”
That didn’t sound very reassuring. Damon using his physics knowledge to somehow twist spells into something different, something new, was bad enough. But if even that wasn’t enough for him, what could this “alternative magic” possibly be?
I shivered, and Connor must have misinterpreted my reaction, because he added, “Anyway, I didn’t even go with him to Jerome…I was waiting back at Lucas’s house with the others.”
So it was Lucas whose house had the basement rec room, the one where they’d turned the pool table into an altar. I wondered why they’d done it there, and not out at Damon’s house, which seemed secluded enough. Maybe they wanted someplace that was easier to get to.
And for some reason, I was irrationally relieved that Connor hadn’t gone on the Jerome raid. Yes, some people would say he was complicit just by waiting at Lucas’s house, but I didn’t see it quite that way. He’d known we were meant to be together, that Damon’s plan would ultimately fail, but it was still important for him to be there at the moment of truth, so Damon would turn to Connor to make the binding.
Plots and plans, twisting around one another. This latest ploy of Damon’s hadn’t worked, either, but I couldn’t help wondering how long it would be before he came up with something else.
“Are we almost home?” I asked.
Connor’s eyebrow lifted at the word “home,” but he replied with hesitation. “About five minutes.”
“Good,” I said. “Because I want you to do everything you can to scrub the last few hours from my brain.”
And he did, more or less — when we got in, he scooped me up in his arms, took me upstairs, then laid me on the bed, slowly removing every article of clothing until I was naked, while he looked down at me, still fully dressed.
“You’re the best Christmas present I’ve ever unwrapped,” he whispered, voice husky.
“Well, get down here so I can unwrap mine, too,” I replied, warmth surging over me at the gleam I saw in his eyes. I should have been cold, since we’d turned down the heat before we left, but all I needed was the raging fire of our bond flooding through every vein, a glow that could defeat even the iciest winter.
He’d already discarded his coat. The rest of his clothing went quickly enough, and soon he was naked as well, bare flesh pressed up against my body. There was no real foreplay this time, save his mouth on my breast, and my hand drifting down his shaft, until he shifted his weight and pushed inside me. I was ready for him, had been from the second his gaze met mine. There was something frenzied in the way our bodies joined, as if he needed to bond with me all over again, just as I wanted him to claim me, to put his mark on me once more so Damon Wilcox could never, ever attempt to make me his.
Afterward, we dozed off in one another’s arms, sleeping for an hour or so, then waking up to full darkness. Still, it was early, not much past six o’clock. Despite the various tidbits I’d snacked on at the potluck, I was hungry.
As I stirred, I heard Connor’s stomach rumble and couldn’t help laughing. “Glad I’m not the only one,” I said, sitting up and reaching for my discarded underwear.
“No, I was expecting to eat more, but something about my brother tends to kill my appetite. Please tell me you kept some of those tamales back and didn’t send all the leftovers for the potluck.”
“Of course I did.” I reached over and brushed a lock of heavy black hair off his forehead. Having a mind of their own, the offending strands fell forward once again. “You know what we should do?”
He reached for his own underwear. “I thought we just did that.”
I gave him an eye roll, and he laughed. “No,” I said severely. “I don’t mean that. I think we should go downstairs in our jammies and eat leftovers and watch that cable station that plays A Christmas Story over and over again in a continuous loop. You know, something normal people would do on Christmas.”
“Deal.” He paused, then added, “Well, as long as we can sneak a viewing of Scrooged in there somewhere.”
I happened to love Scrooged, so that was no hardship. “Deal,” I agreed.
And that’s exactly what we did. Ate, and laughed, and leaned against each other, basking in the warmth of the other person and the glow from the fireplace. No more talk of Damon Wilcox and his plots, no tragedies, no spells or hexes or curses from beyond the grave. Only Connor and me, and the comfort of one another’s company. I didn’t know what was coming next, but at least I would have these few golden hours with him.
The next morning after we’d gotten up and showered — another long, slow, delicious shower, where we took turns scrubbing one another down and which ended with me up against the wall once more as Connor drove into me with hard, deliberate strokes until I cried out in ecstasy — he came downstairs holding his laptop open, an amused expression on his face.
“I think you’re being paged,” he said. “I was catching up on my email, and the Facetime app kept going off. Your friend Sydney, I think.”
Oops. “Sorry about that,” I said, taking the computer from him. “You’d think she’d have the sense to wait until I got back to her.”
“Judging by how many times she pinged me, I have a feeling patience isn’t her strong suit.”
I couldn’t help chuckling. “Well, that’s true.”
He wandered off to the kitchen to pour himself another cup of coffee. “Want some?” he asked, lifting the pot in my direction.
“Yes, please,” I replied. I’d had fun with my Keurig coffeemaker back in Jerome, but Connor was hardcore about his coffee — used a French press and everything. That stuff was amazing.
After setting a mug down in front of me on the coffee table, he said, “I’m going over to my studio. Just come across the hall when you’re done.”
I’d been itching to see inside that place ever since he’d mentioned it, so I was feeling a little impatient when I clicked on the Facetime icon and launched the app. With any luck, this wouldn’t take too long.
Sydney picked up right away. “Holy crap, I’ve been trying to get you for ages!”
“Well, this isn’t exactly my computer, you know.”
“Oh, right.” She paused, then seemed to bring her phone closer to her face so she could get a better look at me. “Wow. You look like a girl who’s been well and truly fucked.”
“Sydney!”
“It’s true, though, isn’t it?”
My hand went up to the marks Connor had left on my throat. Since it was now safely after Christmas, I was going to make him take me to the mall or the drugstore or something so I could invest in some spackle. This was getting ridiculous.
“Well…yes.”
“I knew it! So you took my advice.”
“I — ” There was a lot more to it than just that, but I figured I’d make her happy. “Yes. And it’s — it’s great. So thanks for that.”
She couldn’t exactly clap her hands together, since she was holding her phone in one of them, but she did bounce a little. Behind her I could see pale blue walls, so I knew she was in her bedroom. “So when do I get to meet him?”
“You’ve already met him, remember?”
A lift of her shoulders. “That doesn’t count. We said, like, two sentences to each other. I mean, really meet him. Get together and go out.”
As fun as that sounded…hypothetically…I wasn’t sure how we could possibly make it work. “Well….”
“I wasn’t saying come down here,” she said. “Obviously. Will Connor get zapped on sight if he shows up in Jerome?”
Good question. “I don’t know. Not that it’s really an option. I don’t see us leaving Flagstaff anytime soon.” As I said this, though, I felt a wave of homesickness pass over me. Yes, I loved being with Connor. Being with him in Jerome would be even better, though. How exactly I would make that work, I had no idea.
You should be able to make it work, I thought. I mean, what good is being the prima if you can’t get your own way from time to time?
Hmm….
Sydney said, “We could come up there. It’s not like Flag’s off-limits to me, you know. And Anthony’s truck has four-wheel drive, so even if the weather gets crappy, it’s no big deal.” She added, her tone almost plaintive, “It would be fun to get out. I had to work such shit hours going up to Christmas, you have no idea.”
Actually, I did, because she’d complained about it enough. However, I only said, “Well, let me talk to Connor. I don’t know if we have anything going on or not.” Ha, that was a lie. I had a feeling that, now the Wilcox holiday potluck was safely past, our social calendar was pretty empty. Not that I would know for sure. We hadn’t talked about much that was in the future except our next meal.
“Okay. Check with him and then call me, okay? Or at least email, if that’s all you’ve got.”
“Probably email, because I don’t have a phone.” Or a wallet, or my I.D., or…anything. All that had been left behind when the Wilcoxes stole me away. The purse I’d carried to the party the day before had held a tube of lip gloss and a wad of Kleenex, and nothing else.
“God, how do you live?” Then she waved the hand that wasn’t holding her phone. “Anyway, let me know. I’ll bet he knows all the good places to go up there.”
“I will,” I promised. “Let me go talk to him, and then I’ll get back to you.”
“Sounds like a plan. Later, chica.” The screen went dark.
I closed down the app, then paused, realizing I hadn’t had any opportunity to check my email to see if Aunt Rachel had actually replied to the message I’d sent her the day before. As much as I wanted to hurry across the hall and see what Connor had been hiding in his studio, it was silly not to take this opportunity to check my email. So I went to Gmail and logged in. I didn’t get much email, but there were still the usual after-Christmas sale ads from a few places where I’d made online purchases. Buried amongst the spam, though, was a reply from my Aunt Rachel.
For some silly reason, my heartbeat began to speed up. Was it mere anticipation of her disapproval, knowing that she would be less than thrilled — to put it mildly — once she found out the true nature of my relationship with Connor?
Maybe. But I couldn’t worry about that now. I was an adult now. She would have to figure out how to handle the situation.
I clicked on the link, and the message window opened up.
Angela,
Of course we’re all relieved to know that you’re all right. The elders have been discussing the situation and are trying to see what can be done. Be strong, my dear. Just hold out, no matter what, and we’ll do everything we can to bring you back home.
Love, Rachel
Ah, the guilt. “Hold out”? My resolve had crumpled like wadded-up tissue paper after Connor kissed me that second time. Maybe I could have tried to resist, attempted to ignore the heat of our bond, although I’d never heard of any prima doing such a thing. That connection wasn’t meant to be resisted, but given into, embraced with every fiber of a prima’s being. And the truth was, I hadn’t wanted to resist. Not any longer. Not once I’d come to know Connor as Connor, and not a Wilcox. And my family needed to know that, too. I didn’t give a damn about traditions and custom and what had happened in the past. Connor was part of my future now, and they’d just have to deal with that.
It seemed clear what I would have to do. The problem was, I had no idea how Connor would react. Only one way to find out, I supposed.
I logged out of Gmail and closed the browser window, then shut the laptop. Of course the front door was no longer barred to me, so I opened it and crossed the landing to the apartment opposite ours. That door was unlocked as well. I twisted the knob and let myself in.
The layout was almost the same, as were the wood floors and the exposed brick of the exterior walls. Here, though, the kitchen was obviously not updated, the counters a chipped tile, an empty space where the refrigerator was supposed to go. The windows were uncovered, letting in the pale winter sunlight.
And everywhere were canvases — finished pieces hung on the walls, and paintings in various stages of completion were propped up below them. All landscapes like the ones I’d seen in Connor’s apartment, all with those same strong, sure brush strokes, the same interplay of light and shadow and color. Seeing them all grouped together like this once again reminded me of how talented he really was…and what an ass Damon Wilcox was for trying to squelch his brother’s gift.
Connor stood in the middle of the living room, although there was no furniture except a large table littered with paints and brushes, and the large easel where he was standing. His gaze was abstracted as he stared at the half-finished painting on the easel. An absent hand ran through his hair, mussing it, although he turned around at once when the floorboards creaked beneath my feet.
“Did you talk to Sydney?”
“Yes,” I replied, stepping forward so I could pause next to him. It was colder in here, and I moved close so I could put my arms around him. At once he reached out to hold me, his body heat mingling with mine. “She wants to come up to Flagstaff to meet you.”
“She has met me.”
“I told her that. She said it wasn’t the same thing. But….”
He must have sensed the diffidence in my tone, because he loosened his embrace, drawing back slightly so he could look down into my face. “What are you thinking, Angela?”
“I — ” There wasn’t any easy way to make the suggestion, so I just plunged ahead before I lost my nerve. “I want you to come to Jerome with me.”
Eyes widening, he shot me an incredulous look. “Just like that. Do you know what you’re asking?”
I pulled out of his arms and planted my hands on my hips. “Of course I do. I don’t see much difference between you asking me to go to Damon’s house and me asking you to come to Jerome. I’ve braved your family, so why can’t you return the favor?”
“I — shit.” Again that nervous gesture, his hand running through his hair. “Because they’ll blast me with every spell in their arsenal the second I set foot there?”
“They didn’t when you came to the Halloween dance,” I retorted, then paused, my brows crinkling in a frown. “How did you manage that, anyway?”
“Damon,” he said briefly. “But I wouldn’t have that protection this time.”
“No, but you’d have me.” His expression was dubious, to say the least, so I went on, “I’m their prima — they have to do what I say, even if they don’t like it. Anyway, McAllister magic isn’t like that. We don’t go around blasting things.”
“Maybe not, but I saw that one warlock at the Halloween dance, the one in the Grim Reaper costume. He looked like he could break me over his knee.”
I smothered a smile. “Tobias? He’s a big teddy bear. He won’t hurt you, and neither will anyone else. But don’t you see, Connor? How can we make anything right, move forward from this and try to mend the rift between our clans, if we don’t start here and now?”
That made sense to him, I could tell. He reached up and rubbed his chin; he hadn’t bothered to shave that morning, and the stubble had him looking distractingly scruffy. Then he shook his head. “Damon will never allow it.”
“How’s he going to know? Does he have your apartment bugged? Did he plant a witchy tracking device on me so he’d know my whereabouts at all times?”
A grimace. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“Well, then.” My gaze flickered to the painting on the easel; it was obviously somewhere just outside Flagstaff, since a snow-capped Humphreys Peak towered in the background behind an autumn hill of yellow grasses and blazing golden aspens. Not all the aspens had been filled in, or the deep blue sky, but it was still powerful, half-finished as it was. “And once they find out what an amazing artist you are, they’ll love you just as much as I do.”
“I sincerely doubt that,” he said wryly. “But okay. You’re right. It’s not exactly fair of me to subject you to Damon and the rest of the clan without me having to suffer your relatives in return.”
“My relatives are awesome,” I replied. “You’ll see.”
He paused. I wasn’t psychic, so I had no idea exactly what was going through his mind, but I could guess. It’s never easy, walking into the lion’s den. “How long?” he asked.
“I don’t know. A couple of days.” I thought of the gallery then and asked, “We can wait until the weekend, if you need to work.”
“No, that’s okay. The gallery isn’t going to reopen until Saturday anyway, so this is a good time. It’s slow after Christmas for us — Joelle can probably handle the place on her own if it turns out we’re going to be away longer than that.”
I reflected how much he had changed in just the past few days. When we first met, he’d said he didn’t trust Joelle to have the keys to the gallery. Now it seemed he didn’t have a problem handing everything over to her.
This was happening fast, but I supposed that was a good thing. That way he wouldn’t have much opportunity to back out. “So we can go today.”
“Sure, why not?” His tone was resigned. He glanced over at the painting. “Good thing you caught me when you did. I was about to start mixing a fresh batch of oils — everything had dried out. So yeah, let’s get out of Dodge before anyone knows what we’re up to.”
A warm rush of happiness went over me, and I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him, felt his mouth open to mine, tasted him. The need returned, just as it always did, but this time I could control it better. Besides, we’d already made love here in Flagstaff multiple times. The next time I was with him, I wanted it to be in that big king-size bed of mine back in Jerome. About time that thing got some breaking-in.
“It’ll be fine,” I said. “I love you, and I know they’ll love you, too.”
Something in his expression told me he sort of doubted that, but at least he didn’t argue. “Well, start getting your stuff together, and we can head out after lunch. I’ll just close up things here.”
Fairly dancing, I kissed him again, this time on the cheek, and hurried back to the apartment to pack a few things. It was hard to believe, but true.
In a few hours, I’d be going home.