Clouds had begun to gather while we drove north, and as we pulled into the parking space behind Connor’s building, a few fat white flakes started to fall. Good. I loved being in his apartment with the fire going and the weather closing in outside. It could be just the two of us in our own little bubble of warmth and solitude.
Nice illusion. It wasn’t really true, though.
We’d been in the place maybe ten minutes before a harsh knocking came at the door. I’d heard that pounding before.
I looked over at Connor. He was standing by the fireplace, ready to set it alight, while I’d just come down from returning some things to the upstairs bathroom.
“I suppose it’s no good to ignore him, is it?” I asked. “I mean, he’ll just blast the door open.”
“Probably,” he agreed. His expression showed more resignation than anything else. “I’ll get it, though.”
No arguments here. I nodded and stepped out of the way, back toward the living room, as Connor opened the door.
“Hey, Damon,” he said, as Damon brushed past him and stood glowering in the tiny entryway.
“‘Hey, Damon’ my ass,” was his reply as he scowled first at Connor, then at me.
In that moment, I was very glad I’d removed myself to a safe distance. Although I didn’t think Damon would really do anything to either one of us, he was still pretty fearsome when he was in a mood — which seemed to be most of the time.
He continued, “What, did you think I wouldn’t notice your little jaunt to Jerome?”
“No,” Connor replied wearily. “I figured you’d be spying on us one way or another. But we’re back now, so what difference does it make?”
“Yes, you’re back.” That black-eyed stare transferred itself to me. “Back fairly quickly, too, I might add. What, did you not get the open-armed welcome you were expecting?”
Although I willed myself not to react, I must have flinched.
A cruel smile touched his mouth. “Ah, so they did reject you and your consort. What did you expect?”
I found my voice. “I didn’t expect anything,” I lied. “I only wanted them to know I was okay. Now they know, so I didn’t see the point hanging around when there was so much more here in Flagstaff that I wanted to have Connor to show me.”
That sounded plausible, although I wasn’t sure Damon would buy it. But Connor added, “Yeah, I want to take her up to the Snow Bowl, and maybe out to Winslow to the Turquoise Room. And some of her friends are coming up here for New Year’s. She’s been cooped up in Jerome for most of her life, so it makes more sense for us to be here.”
Throughout this little speech, Damon listened with one eyebrow cocked in an expression eerily similar to one I’d seen on his brother’s face several times. When Connor was finished, Damon said, “You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?”
Connor shrugged. “It’s the truth. I was just about to call Joseph to get Angela’s friends set up at the Weatherford. Do you want to wait and listen while I do that?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He shifted his attention from Connor to me. “You might as well admit that your clan has rejected you. Your place is here now, with us. It’s time for you to really join your powers to the Wilcox clan.”
This was what I’d been fearing all along, that sooner or later Damon would try to force the issue. After all, it was one of the main reasons he’d wanted to take me for his own. Yes, as a possible way of breaking the curse, but having the strength of a prima in addition to a primus would make the Wilcoxes stronger than any clan in the region.
Since I knew I was valuable to him, even as his brother’s consort and not his own, I realized he couldn’t do anything to hurt me. That realization gave me the courage to reply, “My powers are my own, Damon. I’ll use them as I see fit, and not just because you think they’re your due because I’ve bonded to a Wilcox.”
His mouth thinned to a tight line. Then he seemed to force in a breath. “That’s…very short-sighted of you.”
“Is it?” I turned away from him, went to the fire. Just a touch, just a little push from those newly kindled powers of mine, and the logs blazed up and began to crackle. “You know, Damon, you should really stop trying to rule the world. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack.”
Connor didn’t gasp — he was too in control of himself to do that — but somehow the room felt as if it had lost some of its oxygen. Damon’s face darkened with fury.
“You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?” he said. “I’m afraid your confidence may be misplaced.” Without bothering to say another word, he stalked to the door and went out, slamming it behind him.
For a moment neither Connor nor I said anything. Then I remarked, “You know, he really needs to take some anger-management classes. He slams doors more than anyone I’ve ever seen. Good thing you don’t have anyone living below you, or they’d probably be calling the cops.”
“Angela — ” Connor began, his tone a warning. Then he stopped himself. “He’s really not someone you want pissed off at you.”
“Maybe not, but since he seems perpetually pissed off, I can’t take all the credit.”
Instead of answering, Connor crossed the room and pulled me into his arms, held me close. I was fine with that; this was exactly where I’d wanted to be, here in front of the fire, with my consort as the snow fell outside. Everything else could wait.
It turned out that he really had meant what he’d told Damon — Connor took me up to the Snow Bowl, the recreation area outside Flagstaff, where we tromped around in the snow, got caught in the crossfire of a massive snowball fight between several groups of kids who looked to be in fifth or sixth grade, and slid around in saucers until we were exhausted and laughing and wet. He tried to convince me to try skiing, but as I wasn’t really in the mood to break any bones, I demurred.
And another day we roamed around downtown Flagstaff, eating and drinking at his favorite places, window shopping and doing some real shopping, too, since my wardrobe was in serious need of a boost. We did drive out to Winslow, which didn’t have too much going on, except a fabulous meal at the Turquoise Room in the historic hotel there. Then it was back to Flagstaff, with a promised return trip to see the Meteor Crater sometime after New Year’s.
It was fun playing tourist for once, rather than being the person who had to wait on tourists all the time. Certainly there was a lot more to do and see than I’d expected. I did notice that Connor didn’t seem to make any contact with members of his family, and wondered if he was trying to keep me away from them. Certainly Damon appeared to have decamped for the time being, and I would be lying if I didn’t say I was relieved.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering in the back of my mind whether he really had given up on me, or whether he was just off concocting some new plot, maybe one involving the “alternative magic” he’d mentioned to Connor. About all I could do was hope that he’d abandon any plans he might be formulating once he didn’t have so much time on his hands; classes started back up at Northern Pines in less than a week.
I hadn’t seen anything of Mary Mullen since we’d gotten back, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. One thing I’d learned from dealing with Maisie — and the other ghosts in Jerome — was that they came and went according to their own timetables. Unless I called to them specifically, many times weeks and sometimes months would go by without hearing from them. Time just wasn’t the same for a ghost as it was for us mortals, even if we did happen to be witches.
The morning of New Year’s Eve, I rolled over in bed and stared up at the ceiling, thinking. Connor had been able to secure the hotel room for Sydney and Anthony without any problem, and they were going to come up late in the afternoon and get settled in. Then we planned to go out for a late-ish dinner and start making the rounds downtown.
This all seemed perfectly innocuous, but I couldn’t help wondering if Damon had been biding his time, waiting so he could swoop down at the worst possible moment. I tried to tell myself that was silly, that he wouldn’t do anything on a night when the town was swarming with revelers. Even so, unease still nagged at me.
“You’re frowning a lot for a girl with a big party day in front of her,” Connor remarked, turning on his side to watch me.
“Sorry. I’m just — I don’t know. I can’t stop thinking about your brother.”
“Should I be jealous?” Connor inquired, and I reached over and smacked him on the shoulder.
“Don’t even joke about that. Just…no.” I pushed myself up to a sitting position, holding the sheets against me. I’d fallen asleep right after the previous night’s lovemaking session, and my clothes were still scattered all over the floor. “It just seems as if he backed off way too quickly. He’s not really going to give up that easily, is he?”
Connor’s expression, which had been relaxed and still a little drowsy, darkened. He sat up as well. “I don’t know. The thing is, he knows he can’t force you to do anything. And how much can you do, anyway?” I raised an eyebrow, and he hastened to add, “No insult, Ange, but besides talking to ghosts, I haven’t seen you actually do all that much.”
I didn’t bother to tell him that was how I’d been raised, that flashy shows of power were the quickest way to invite unwanted attention. “And what about you, mister? I’ve seen you light a fire or two, and I know you were able to change your eye color, but somehow I have a feeling there’s a little bit more to it than that.”
“You really want to know?”
“Yeah, I do.”
He drew in a deep breath. “Okay.” And suddenly it wasn’t Connor looking at me, but his cousin Lucas.
Even though I knew it had to be only magic, I couldn’t help giving out a little squeak and clutching the sheets to me even more closely, making sure my breasts were completely covered. It sure looked like Lucas, dark eyes and the Wilcox high cheekbones and long, strong nose. I noticed there were the beginnings of some iron gray at his temples.
“That’s, um…impressive,” I managed.
The illusion disappeared, and Connor was staring back at me. “Thanks.”
“So can you look like anybody?”
“No, they have to be my approximate height and weight. I couldn’t take on your appearance, for example. But Lucas, or my brother, or any man around my size, yeah.”
That seemed a lot more useful to me than talking to ghosts. “I’m surprised you don’t use it more.”
“I don’t like it. Feels like lying to me.” He shook his head, then pushed back the covers and got out of bed so he could retrieve his underwear.
I had to admit I’d rather be looking at his backside than Lucas’s…or Damon’s. Shudder.
“And it takes a lot of effort,” he added, pulling on some jeans over the boxer-briefs. “Holding a full-body illusion like that? I can do it for maybe an hour, max.”
“But just the eye color?” I asked, recalling how convincing those brown eyes had been when I first met him. “That’s easier?”
“Much easier. I can do that all day without breaking a sweat.” He reached for the sweatshirt he’d tossed over a chair the night before, then added, “Okay, I’ve shown you mine. You show me yours.”
“Very funny.”
“I mean it.”
To stall him, I bent over the side of the bed and grabbed my own discarded underwear, then slipped it on. Since we were probably just going to scrounge breakfast downstairs after this, I didn’t worry about my bra, but instead pulled on my long-sleeved T-shirt from the day before. “It’s not that simple.”
“How so?”
Ever since Connor and I had been together, I’d felt the prima’s energy surging through my veins, bright and strong, but I didn’t know exactly what I was supposed to do with it. Maybe nothing more than my little display earlier, when I’d lit the logs in the fireplace. Maybe the real power, the true power, was waiting until I needed it, whenever that might be.
“It’s nothing obvious,” I replied, trying to figure out the best way to describe it. “That’s not how it works with a prima. I mean, I’m not going to go around blasting doors and invading people’s dreams and all the fancy stuff your brother does. It’s more like” — I scrunched up my nose, searching for the words — “I guess it’s something like ground water, deep under the desert floor. It’s there, but until you drill down and hit it, it’s not obvious. That’s a prima’s power, Connor. It’s there against the time when it’s needed.”
He’d been listening to me, his head tilted slightly to one side as he considered my words. After a pause, he asked, “And talking to ghosts?”
“That’s different. That’s just my gift — me, Angela McAllister. It doesn’t really have anything to do with being prima. At least, none that I can tell, beyond the talent being strong enough that it made me good prima material.”
“It’s interesting,” he said. “I mean, it’s very different from how the power goes from primus to primus. That’s always been father to son, at least in our clan.”
“Are there any other clans with a primus? Margot Emory said — I mean, I was told that the Wilcoxes are the only ones.”
“Not that I know of. There must have been once, but it seems as if we Wilcoxes are the only ones clinging to the bad old days.”
He frowned, and I went around the bed so I could give him a quick hug. “You’re not all clinging to it. You seem like you’re trying to change things.”
“I do?” he replied, surprise clear in his features.
“Well, you’re not doing every little thing Damon tells you to, and you seemed willing enough to make peace with my clan, even if they’re not meeting you halfway. So I definitely don’t think you’re stuck in your family’s past.”
A hand lifted to brush back my hair and push it behind my ear. “You have a generous soul, Angela.”
It was such an out-of-character thing for him to say that I couldn’t help raising my eyebrows.
“You do. I wish things were different, that there wasn’t this cloud hanging over us. You deserve better than that.”
There was such a note of melancholy in his tone that I felt my breath seize in my chest. No, we really didn’t deserve this. I’d always thought all that “sins of the fathers” crap was just that — crap — and never more so than now. Connor certainly shouldn’t have to suffer just because his great-great-great-whatever-grandfather had been a first-class son of a bitch. Damon I wasn’t so sure about. As far as I could tell, he’d pretty much earned whatever he got.
“Well,” I said, attempting to sound casual, “I guess the best we can hope for is that Damon will hook up with some fourth or fifth cousin who’s willing to be queen for a day.” Again I thought of the young woman I’d seen with Damon at the potluck, and wondered if that was exactly what he had planned. “If he has a son, then you’re safely out of it.”
“Not exactly. I’m still of Jeremiah’s line.”
Crap. Trying to untangle all this was like trying to unwind all the fine chains at the bottom of my jewelry box — no matter what you did, you found another knot to slow you down. “But it would get him off your back a little, wouldn’t it? At least if he had an heir, he wouldn’t care so much whether you did or not.”
“Probably. But it’s sort of awful to wish for someone else to suffer that kind of fate, isn’t it?”
I knew that, of course. Even so, I replied, “I did say ‘willing,’ you know.”
“Yeah, you did. I just don’t want to think about it right now.” He kissed the top of my head, then let go of me and stepped away. “For now I just want to think about getting some food inside me. And coffee. That must be why my brain still feels so fuzzy.”
A good excuse, but I guessed his real reason was that he didn’t want to discuss the subject anymore. I couldn’t blame him; it was almost New Year’s. A fresh start, and not the sort of day that we needed to drag a bunch of baggage into. Whatever the true solution to the situation might turn out to be, I didn’t think we were going to discover it today.
So I followed him downstairs, and hoped I could push everything aside and just enjoy my time with him and my friends. At least we’d already made plans that would fill it up pretty well — a movie after lunch, then come home to change and have Syd and Anthony meet us after that. We’d probably share a bottle of wine here first, have some cheese, that sort of thing, and go out to eat afterward. Things should be busy enough that I wouldn’t have any time to worry about Damon Wilcox or the curse that hung over his family like the proverbial sword of Damocles.
That was the plan, anyway.
Sydney and Anthony were late coming over — “it took us more time than we thought to get settled,” she told me breathlessly over the phone, which I thought was probably Syd-speak for we decided to test out the hotel bed first. No matter, since Connor had made our dinner reservations for eight-thirty. When my friends did finally appear, she looked more or less calm and composed, but I caught a faint pinkish blotch on her neck that I guessed was her attempt to cover up a fresh hickey. I tried not to smile; I’d resorted to the same subterfuge on numerous occasions over the past week.
“Awesome belt,” she said, nodding as she gave my outfit the once-over.
Flagstaff was just as casual as Jerome, so something sparkly for New Year’s wasn’t really appropriate. I wore a black long-sleeved wrap T-shirt and some new skinny jeans tucked into my riding boots, along with the concho belt Connor had given me and some turquoise pieces I’d owned since high school. The ensemble had met his approval as well — he said my butt looked very “grabbable” — but I wasn’t going to repeat that particular comment to Sydney.
“Thanks,” I replied. “Connor gave it to me for my birthday.”
Her eyes widened. Sydney had a pretty good idea of the market value of things, and I could practically see her adding up the numbers in her head as she gave the belt another once-over while Anthony went with Connor into the kitchen. Another approving nod, and she mouthed keeper at me even as the guys came into the living room with the wine and some glasses.
Anthony had brought a bottle from the tasting room where he worked, and so the conversation just sort of naturally drifted to wine and winemaking and all the opportunities opening up in the Verde Valley. Things were booming, according to him, and he was hoping to hit the ground running once he was done with getting his viticulture certification in June.
“Well,” Connor said easily, swirling the wine in his glass in a contemplative way, “if you hear about any good opportunities for investment — land opening up, someone with some vines who wants to sell their property — let me know. Maybe we could work something out. I don’t know much about wine growing, but I always thought it would be an interesting business to be in. And if I had an expert running things….”
Anthony didn’t need any more of an opening than that. “I’ll definitely keep my eyes open. More property changes hands than you might think. People dream about owning a vineyard but don’t realize how much work it actually takes. But if you’re serious — ”
“I am,” Connor said.
I raised an eyebrow at him, and he just gave me a half-smile. This was the first I’d heard of any ambitions in that direction. Then again, Connor did like and appreciate wine, and knew a good deal about it. And Goddess knows that he didn’t seem to be lacking for cash. Maybe he thought that now the Verde Valley wasn’t completely off-limits to him, he could pursue something he hadn’t had a chance to before. I certainly wasn’t going to protest. Owning a winery sounded like a pretty great idea to me.
Besides, any indication of long-range planning for the future meant there was hope, that maybe we’d find a way through our current mess and have an actual life together.
Sydney had been uncharacteristically quiet during most of this conversation, but after we were done with the wine and were bundling up to head out to dinner, she whispered, “What, is Connor rich, too?”
I nodded, winding a scarf around my throat.
“Some people have all the luck,” she muttered, and finished buttoning up her coat.
If you only knew, I thought. Not that I didn’t love being with Connor. I did — I loved both him and being with him, which was not always easy to pull off, no matter what the books and movies might have to say on the subject. But I wouldn’t wish our particular baggage on anyone, let alone my best friend. I’d rather Connor were poor and curse-free than rolling in cash. From what I could tell, their wealth hadn’t made the Wilcoxes particularly happy.
I pushed those thoughts out of my mind, though, as we headed outside and over to the next street where the restaurant was located. The sidewalks were already crowded with people, making the icy night feel warmer than it really should. It had warmed up for a day or two, just enough to melt a lot of the snow down in the city proper, but temperatures still dropped into the single digits overnight.
The restaurant was packed, but since we had reservations, we only had to wait about five minutes for a table to be ready. I looked around as we were seated, but I didn’t see anyone I recognized from the Wilcox holiday potluck. Not that that meant much; about the only two I could probably pick out of a lineup were Lucas and Marie, and while Lucas had seemed like the cheery sort who might brave downtown Flagstaff on New Year’s, I couldn’t say the same thing for Marie. Maybe the Wilcoxes had a New Year’s get-together of their own. If they did, I wasn’t sorry to be missing it.
After that, though, I tried not to think about Connor’s family, or what they might be doing at this particular moment. It was enough to peruse the menu, to discuss the options — the restaurant offered Spanish food, but with some southwestern touches — and talk about places we’d eaten and the sort of things we liked. Sedona was actually common ground for all four of us, since we’d all been there at various times, and we made a pact to meet there in the near future and brave the lines at Elote.
Dinner took a while because the restaurant was so crowded. It was almost ten by the time we headed back out, and it seemed as if even more people were flocking to the downtown area.
“They do realize we have almost two hours to go until midnight, right?” I inquired plaintively after someone almost ran over my foot with a stroller. Who the heck brings a stroller to a New Year’s Eve celebration anyway?
Connor looked as if he was trying hard not to laugh. “Actually, they do two pinecone drops — one at ten to match up with the ball drop in New York, and then another one at midnight our time. A lot of people with kids come to the ten o’clock one.”
“Then let’s get our asses into a bar,” Sydney remarked. “Because I don’t care about New York, but I do care about getting run over by soccer moms.”
He grinned and led us a couple of streets over to a dark little bar that definitely was twenty-one and over, and not a stroller in sight. Neither were any empty seats in evidence, but we squeezed in at one end of the bar and ordered another bottle of wine. It wasn’t exactly a wine sort of place, but they scrounged up some merlot for us.
“Don’t say it,” Anthony warned Sydney as her eyes started to dance.
“Say what?” she said innocently.
“‘I’m not drinking any fucking merlot!’” he and I announced in unison, and Connor burst out laughing.
“They obviously know you too well.”
She looked like she wanted to pout, but as she was already a little tipsy, she couldn’t quite muster the energy to make it look convincing. Instead, she shook her head and said, “Fine. At this point, it probably doesn’t matter all that much.”
Which it didn’t. We drank and talked and laughed, and eventually it was getting close enough to midnight that we decided we’d better close out our tab and head over to the Weatherford. It seemed as if just about everyone else in downtown Flagstaff had the same idea, so we had to sort of push our way through the crowd to get close enough to see what was going on. Luckily, both Connor and Anthony were tall, so they walked ahead of Sydney and me until they reached a good spot. Then we settled in ahead of them, letting them provide a kind of barrier behind us.
The pinecone was lit up, glittering as it hung from a crossbar beneath the hotel’s roof. Although the night was very clear, it almost looked as if a sort of mist had settled over the intersection with all the breath puffing upward from everyone into the frigid air.
“Five minutes to go,” Connor whispered in my ear.
For some reason, I shivered. Not from the cold — I’d bundled up pretty well — but because I couldn’t ignore the importance of this night, this moment. Being together on New Year’s meant we were looking forward to the coming months, that we were making a commitment to some sort of future together, even if right now we didn’t know exactly what that future might be.
Beside me, Sydney looked flushed and happy, and I wondered if she were having thoughts along the same lines. Sure, she’d spent New Year’s with guys she was dating, since she was not the type to sit home alone on the biggest party night of the year, but being here with Anthony had to mean something different. She’d never dated anyone this long before, and certainly wasn’t showing any signs of wanting to end things.
“One minute!” someone called out using a megaphone.
The crowd stilled somewhat, everyone preparing for the big moment.
“Thirty seconds!”
I felt Connor’s gloved hand take mine, fingers entwining. Warmth went through me at his touch, and suddenly I wasn’t cold at all.
“Ten, nine, eight…”
Now everyone was chanting the numbers, counting down.
“Three, two, one,” I said aloud with everyone else.
“Happy New Year!” we all cried, and Connor was turning me around and kissing me, and I caught a glimpse of Syd and Anthony hugging and kissing each other as well. Then people began singing “Auld Lang Syne,” Connor, too, and I was surprised to hear what a nice baritone he had.
Tears stung my eyes, but they weren’t sad tears. No, I was just happy to be here, happy to be with him, no matter what might happen next. My Aunt Rachel used to shake her head over the fuss about New Year’s, saying it was the solstice and Yule that were truly important, that New Year’s was just an arbitrary date, but I had to disagree with her on that. It did mean something. It was a new beginning of its own, a way to mark a transition from one period in your life to another.
I knew I was shifting from the Angela I had been, the one who did everything that was expected of her, to someone more in control of her destiny. Not to say that control was complete, far from it, but I was still making my own decisions instead of allowing them to be made for me.
Goddess willing, I would make the right ones.