Undead for a Day (17 page)

He smirked at her and walked forward, looking like he was also floating. The room flashed a brilliant white-blue, and a taller, more masculine version of Marica appeared. Above some serious body armor, his dark hair was pulled back in a small queue like a samurai. His eyes were deep-set chocolate brown flecked with gold. His nose was very straight, and his jaw was a rough-hewn rectangle. His gaze rested on Bridget, and something flickered across his face.

“I’m Leo Caracol. In the absence of our parents, Maria del Carmen and I lead our house, Casa del Diablo. Thank you for coming,” he said. “Both of you.”

“Didn’t have a choice,” Bridget bit off, refusing to be charmed.

“Oh?” Leo ticked a glance at Marica.

“I didn’t have time to explain,” she said. “We had to get out of there as fast as we could.”

“What happened to Amaya?” Leo asked, and Marica smiled grimly.

“Dead. Our booby trap worked.”

Leo sighed and dipped his head, a gesture of respect. “He was a great witch. We could have been formidable allies.”

Witch.
The word hung in the air.

“Never happen. We’re bitter enemies, and there will never be peace between us now,” Marica snapped. “And we have
better
allies.” She gestured to Bridget and Colin.

“Hold on,” Bridget said. “
I’m
not your ally. What the hell is going on?”

Marica said to her brother, “There’s no time to lose. Colin and I should make love now. To strengthen the mingling.”

“
Sí
,” Leo concurred.

“Oh, my God, Colin, what the hell?” Bridget said and her brother made an inscrutable face that could mean anything from “don’t ask me” to “
please
don’t ask me.”

“We’re under attack. The Amayas are retaliating. We need to defend ourselves with equally strong magic. And sex magic is one of the strongest forms,” Leo explained. He slid her a glance laced with a bit of mischief. That explained the Amaya orgy.

“To us, pleasure is serious business,” Marica insisted. “Ecstasy is a very potent form of power.” She slid her hand down over Colin’s ass and gave him a lingering kiss. “Come on, baby. We need you. We’ve been sleeping together for weeks. And you’ve loved it, right?”

“Yeah, well,” Colin murmured, avoiding eye contact with Bridget, and Bridget translated: he had realized she was married.

“So you knew about us,” Bridget said. “That he was all Favored or whatever and that he had a twin. You’ve been using him.”

Marica and Leo shared a look. Bridget couldn’t translate it word-for-word but it was obvious they were debating about how much to reveal. She held her tongue, waiting for them to get their story figured out.

“Until this afternoon, your brother and I always went to my penthouse in downtown Miami,” Marica began. “Colin was very private, and he never discussed his family. But I went to his place this afternoon to get ready for your Halloween party. And that was when I realized he had a twin. I told him about our situation. It’s Samhain, when we make our bold moves. I asked him to marry me for the year.”

“But first you had to kill Xavier,” Bridget said sarcastically. “Bold move number one for the merry widow.”

“We were only married for the year. I was released on the first stroke of midnight. Xavier died because he was remarrying,” Marica said. “If he hadn’t jumped into the bonfire with you, he’d be alive now.”

“Yeah, about that bonfire,” she said.

“I didn’t know Colin had written you a note,” Marica said, looking stricken. When he confessed, I altered the curse.” She gave him a pointed look. “You said you
wanted
to get married.”

Both women looked at Colin, and he shrugged apologetically.

“We were at my place. She’s giving me an eye and I’ve got a leg again, then suddenly there’s a fire in the fire ring, you know that one by the palm trees in my back yard? And we jump over the ring and we’re married!  Then we were out of there in the Jag. It happened so fast. I freaked out.”

“You have to understand. What they took from us is irreplaceable,” Marica said.

“The crystal,” Bridget said, and Leo looked uneasy. As if simply talking about it was bad karma.

“The sphere is ours. Our family created it centuries ago,” Leo said. “And we need it. Marica went to them as a year wife to parlay about it.”

“And they refused to return it. So I took it,” Marica said. “It’s with us now. Where it should be.”

And you killed a man to get it.

“Well, they think it’s theirs,” Bridget said. “According to them, you stole it.”

Marica gave her hair a toss, then slid her arms down Colin’s sides. “I don’t care what they think. They can go to hell.”

“So we are in difficult times,” Leo said to Bridget. “We’re doing things we would otherwise never have done.”

“Why send me to Shadow Island with the Amayas? Why not bring me here?” Bridget asked.

“That’s my fault,” Colin said. “I overheard Marica on her cell phone. I thought she said that was where we were going.”

“Then what about the other Amayas who jumped into the fire?”

“They’re fine,” Marica told Bridget. “They’re still on Shadow Island. We couldn’t curse them because we didn’t have their essence. We had Xavier’s because I’d slept with him.”

And Colin’s slept with you too,
Bridget thought fearfully.

“But how could you be sure
he’d
jump into the bonfire?”

Her expression hardened. “I couldn’t, but it was worth a shot. I know the Amayas. They’d do whatever it takes to attack us. A year marriage between witches is very powerful. I figured he’d marry one of his cousins on Samhain to increase his power. If I had thought for one second that he’d get hold of you, I would never have done it.”

“It’s worked out,” Leo said. “You’re here. Safe.”

“How do you figure that?” Bridget asked. “We’ve been kidnapped and now we’re
your
prisoners—”

“We want you to be our allies. Protected and well-treated,” Leo said, bracing his feet on the invisible floor as another explosion rocked the room.

He reached forward and typed in the air and colorful windows of graphics and strange characters appeared. Rainbows of light flashed across his face as the images danced in kaleidoscope patterns: the Virgin Mary, cloudbursts, comets, knights in shining armor, and something that looked like a cave made out of ice. Then a forest and a ring of women in scarlet cloaks and men dressed for a Renaissance fair, all holding wands. Pictures expanded, collapsed, were replaced. Music played, then ran backwards, then dropped to whispers.

Bridget remained steadfastly unimpressed. He was doing nothing she hadn’t seen on a dozen TV shows. Or so she told herself.

“We don’t want to be your allies,” she said. “We want to go home.
Now
.”

“But we’re married.” Marica fluttered her long black lashes at Bridget’s brother.

“Don’t be stupid,” Bridget said. “You’re no more married than Xavier and I were.”

“You and Xavier were.
Very
married,” Marica replied.

Bridget raised her chin. “Then Colin, consider yourself
very
divorced. We’re going.”

She didn’t wait to see if they would try to stop her. As she had done so many times before, she wrapped her hand around Colin’s forearm and led him forward. Not only did it amaze her that he’d gotten mixed up with these people, but that he had apparently done it sober.

Her shoes clomped on the clear floor as she made a purposeful beeline to the door. Colin trotted along beside her.  For years he’d hobbled around in perpetual pain, angry not only that he’d been hurt, but that he seemed unable to achieve a miraculous reentry into life like so many other disabled vets. Would Marica take back his leg and his eye?

“Don’t go,” Leo said to her retreating back. “Not like this. You’re Favored, but you have no House. You have no one to turn to. At least let us give you some training so you can protect yourself. If you walk out that door, the Amayas or someone even worse will scoop you up.”

“
You
can teach us how to protect ourselves? You’re under attack!
We
can take care of ourselves. Just go back to your computer programming or whatever the hell it is you’re doing and we’ll be going,” she bit off.

“I’m casting spells,” Leo replied. “The Amayas are coming at us. Hard.  If you leave, you’ll have no defense against them.”

“And they think you helped us get Xavier,” Marica reminded her.

“We don’t even know where we are,” Colin murmured.

“I don’t trust these people,” she murmured back. “And I think it’s really twisted that sex is involved.”

“I hear you,” he said earnestly. “Once we’re out of this, I’m not ever having sex again.”

She guffawed, and he looked a little hurt. Then he threw her a sheepish grin and moved his shoulders. He sighed.

“I think we have to stick around until we get a plan together,” he said. “Seriously, Bridge. These guys are
witches
. And they have territories—Houses. And everyone who’s got powers is supposed to be a member of one, and we aren’t. We’re, like, rogues. Or illegal aliens. Plus we’ve got the twin mojo.” He lifted his brows. “We’re in demand. We’re, like, prizes. Someone else will come after us.”

“No one bothered us before you started screwing her,” she hissed at him.

“But now the secret’s out,” he said. “All those other witch-people will turn on their twin-dar or whatever. I think we should stay here where we’re safe—relatively—and figure out what the hell we are.”

The bizarreness of their situation kept hitting her; she was beginning to feel like a punching bag. “So, if we do stay, what about the real world? Do we just drop off the face of the planet?”

“No one will miss me. You’re a different story. You actually have a life.” He didn’t sound bitter the way he usually did. He was
excited
. This was a battle, maybe a war. What he once had lived for.

She stopped walking. When she turned around, Marica beamed at Colin and Leo smiled at her. The smug bastards already
knew
.

“Thank you,” Leo said.

“Whatever. I need a phone,” Bridget said. “And some peace and quiet so I can make some
private
calls.”

Damn it.

Magic could actually be pretty awesome.

Leo had added a “push” to her phone calls and everyone she’d talked to—landlords, her employer, and Jack Stone—had accepted her news that she was taking time off without asking even a single question. She hadn’t even had to lie.

Then Leo and Marica had escorted Colin and her to a lower level of their base, and Leo had conjured a balcony overlooking the ocean, beneath a serene night sky filled with stars.  In reality, there was no ocean, just more concrete bunker, but she supposed that for people—
witches
—who could grow back eyes and legs, an ocean was a cinch. At a table for two, the Flynns savored a steak dinner. There was red wine for Bridget and beer for Colin. Marica and Leo were nowhere to be seen, and Bridget could see how relieved Colin was. She did
not
let herself wonder if Leo was married.

While she and Colin had eaten, Leo had cleared out a space to serve as their training facility, which could also double as Bridget’s karate dojo. Then sky and ocean had had to go, because all magic spells took energy, and Leo told her that the Amayas were threatening to declare war. A declaration of war would bring in allies on both sides.

“We anticipated that,” he concluded, then gave her a karate uniform—a
gi
—and a padded dummy to smack around. For someone who was about to go to war, he seemed awfully calm.

Palm strikes, side kicks, jump kicks. Breathing, feeling her energy deep in her abdomen. Becoming a weapon. She tried to still her monkey brain as panic threatened to overtake her. She kept listening for more explosions, for an invasion. This was not her life, her world. What would have happened if she hadn’t gone to Shadow Island?

She tried to work out her anger and her fear. In her mind’s eye, she kept seeing Xavier, and the fire, and the dead things in the cemetery. And she shook.

She worked herself into a state of exhaustion, but she was still unable to shut down. She went into the shower room and tore off her
gi.
She turned the water on very hot, remembering as she stepped in that there had been a bathrobe on the outside of the door, and she had neglected to snag it.

She was too tired to get back out. Eyes closed, she leaned naked against the back of an elegant granite shower enclosure and let the hot water sluice over her. Her mind began to race again, but she tried to push everything away. But the questions finally won and she let them parade through her consciousness. How many people were here in this bunker? Could they all use magic? Were the Amayas really the bad guys?

What would a witch war be like?

Where was Xavier now? There must be an afterlife. She had always wondered if someday she would see her parents again—her mother had died when she and Colin were babies, their father when they were twenty-one. Had they known their children had some kind of magic powers? Had they had them, too?

There was someone in the room. She could feel a presence, and she opened her eyes and slid her glance to the side, peering through the steam and conden-sation on the glass door. She half-expected Leo—or did she hope it would be him?

A pale, ghostly figure seemed to hang in the air. Human-shaped, it hovered about six inches off the ground. Something magical, she tried to tell herself, but her mind screamed
ghost
.

She slid open the door and faced it squarely, fists up. Chills ran down her spine and despite all her years of training, she lost her fighter’s stance as her hands came slowly down.

Dark eyes blinked at her in a bone-white face.

Xavier’s eyes.

He was looking straight at her, but they looked dead, unfocused. He seemed even more lifeless than after he had died in her arms, if that made any sense.