More thanks bubbled to my lips, but she waved them off.
“It is the least I can do, when your visit has been trespassed upon. Please, finish your shopping.”
I turned back to Rachel and the others. “I was almost done, but — ”
“I think we’re all finished here,” she told me. “But we do appreciate the assistance during the rest of our trip.”
The sparkly earrings I’d chosen for Sydney had been dangling, unnoticed, from my hand this whole time, but when I turned around to retrieve the shopping bag full of the other items I’d selected, it was missing. I knew I’d set it down on the floor while I was going through the rack of earrings. But where had it gone?
I telegraphed my dismay to Aunt Rachel, but although she hunted around on the floor behind the other jewelry racks, she couldn’t find anything, either.
“Do you think the Wilcoxes took it?” I asked.
“I don’t see why they’d have a use for it — and I didn’t see any of them carrying any bags.” Her brow puckered in worry. “What are they up to?”
Goddess only knew, but I decided it wasn’t worth worrying about. Maybe it wasn’t the Wilcoxes at all. It was entirely possible that one of the store’s employees had seen the bag sitting there and thought it had been abandoned, and so picked it up in order to put away the items inside. No, I hadn’t seen anyone actually do that, but then again I’d been a little busy with Damon Wilcox and his goon squad.
Alex Trujillo fell into step beside me after I’d paid for Sydney’s earrings and headed toward the front door. “I see you’re still without a consort.”
“Obviously,” I snapped, “or none of this would have been necessary.”
His eyebrow lifted, and I hurried to apologize.
“Sorry…it’s been kind of tense lately, and that didn’t help.” I jerked the thumb of my free hand back toward the store.
“I understand.” The sun glinted off his dark hair as he shot a sympathetic look at me. “So where to next?”
“The Biltmore shopping center.” I paused and waited for Aunt Rachel to catch up to us. “Were we going to eat or shop first?”
Her expression was still grim. “I don’t feel much like either after that, but…a little shopping first, I suppose.”
“We can do the Apple store first and then decide if we’re ready to eat,” I said, and looked from her to Alex. “Sound like a plan?”
He nodded. “We’ll follow you.” A lift of his chin toward a large black Suburban parked a few spaces away. “That’s ours. Make sure you stick with us, and when you get to the parking garage, wait until we can get two spots next to each other, even if you have to go up a couple of levels.”
“Okay,” I replied, and despite everything, I had to smother a grin. Those tall, capable-looking warlocks in their black Suburban. They reminded me of the de la Paz version of the Secret Service or something. All they needed was some business suits and those little earpieces with the wires running into their collars.
The rest of our group was waiting at the van, just a few feet away. I relayed Alex’s instructions to Phil, and he said “okay” as we all piled in. Then we backed out of our parking space, waited a few seconds for the Suburban to do the same, and headed east toward our destination.
I had to hope the Wilcoxes wouldn’t have that staked out, too.
13
Settling
As we drove, though, instead of being worried or frightened, I found myself getting angry. Aunt Rachel had recognized Damon Wilcox at once, which meant she knew what he looked like. How that was possible, I didn’t know for sure. I’d heard his name, of course, but when I’d tried to do a little surreptitious Googling of him, I couldn’t find anything about him. Which didn’t make much sense, because one time when I was eavesdropping on a conversation between Tobias and my aunt, I overheard that he was a professor of some sort at Northern Pines University. Of what, I hadn’t been able to catch, but still, a professor generally has some sort of public profile. Maybe he’d done a magical scrub of Google to keep his information off it. If that were the case, he’d accomplished a lot more than any computer hacker I’d ever heard of.
While I ruminated on that and watched the sprawling shopping centers with their chain stores and restaurants pass by, I only felt my irritation increase. It wasn’t just that Aunt Rachel had never bothered to describe Damon Wilcox to me so that I could give him a wide berth if I ever met him. No, it was the way she hadn’t told me that marrying a warlock who wasn’t my consort would still be enough to protect me, even if such a union would forever bar me from developing my full powers. Or how she hadn’t bothered to mention the curse of the Wilcox clan and the true reason why I’d had my entire existence bounded by the relative safety of Jerome.