Protector(11)

That didn’t seem terribly strange. Even pale and drawn as she was now, he could see that Caitlin was extremely pretty. And that head of gorgeous red hair was sure to attract attention pretty much anywhere she went. He opened his mouth to reply in the affirmative, but she kept talking.

“Only…I knew there was something wrong about them. I knew, and yet I let Danica and Roslyn go with them anyway.”

“‘Knew’?” Valentina repeated. “How is it that you knew?”

Caitlin’s face seemed to crumple as fresh tears sprang to her eyes. Her fingers clutched the blanket, knuckles showing white against her already fair skin. “I could tell they were warlocks, you know, the way we can always tell when we’re around witch-kind. But it wasn’t just that. They felt off. Bad. Wrong. Whichever word you want to choose.” Her gaze fastened on Alex, and there seemed to be something both pleading and ashamed in those blue-green eyes of hers, too bright now because of the tears that still shimmered in them. “And I’m sorry about the way I reacted to you. It’s just that they were about your age, and also — ” She broke off, staring down at her fingers where they were knotted in the blanket.

He had a pretty good idea of what she’d been about to say. “Mexican?” he suggested.

A nod. “Well, I was going to say Hispanic, but yeah. Yes. I didn’t know if you were one of them, too.”

“Can you describe them?” Valentina asked, her tone troubled.

“There were three of them.” Caitlin drew in a hitching little breath, as if even attempting to recall the faces of the young men who had assaulted her was physically painful. “The leader, his name was Matías, and the other two were Jorge and Tomas. They said they were brothers, but I don’t know if that was true or not.”

“But you’re certain they were warlocks,” Alex cut in. None of this made sense. He didn’t know anyone in Tucson, or in his extended family in Phoenix, named Matías. Jorge and Tomas were more common names, but again, among his cousins, he didn’t have any brothers who shared those names. He might have said one or two of his wilder cousins were capable of messing with some gringa witches who’d come down to Tucson to party, just to show them whose territory they were in…but certainly not to the extent of physically assaulting them.

“Yes, they were definitely warlocks,” Caitlin replied, her voice barely above a whisper. She drank some more of her water. It seemed to revive her, because she sounded stronger as she continued, “They took us to their house, which is in that residential area just past the traffic light, the one where there’s the closed-down gas station on the corner. You know, that way?”

She made a vague gesture toward the wall with the window in it, which was in completely the opposite direction from the neighborhood he thought she was talking about. But that was all right; Alex knew which one she meant. And he also knew that none of the de la Paz witches or their extended families lived there. So who the hell were these strange young men she was talking about?

Caitlin continued, “Matías was the tallest. He was probably about your height.” Then she hesitated and seemed to study Alex a bit more closely. “Well, maybe a little shorter. He was good-looking, I guess. Black hair and brown eyes. He had a snake tattooed around his neck.”

“There’s no one in our clan with a tattoo like that,” Valentina said, her tone troubled. She shot a significant glance in Alex’s direction, one that he knew most likely meant she wanted to call his mother now, before this went any further. He supposed it made sense, since his mother was Maya’s daughter and the prima-in-waiting, and Maya was in Scottsdale, more than an hour away.

Without taking his focus from Caitlin, he nodded slightly at Valentina. Murmuring that she needed to make a call, she headed out the back door, no doubt so she could get her cell phone out of her purse and make that necessary call.

After she’d gone, Alex said, “What about the others?”

“Jorge and Tomas? I guess you could say they were good-looking, too. Not as tall as Matías. They had tats, too — a bunch of symbols I’d never seen before. And Tomas had what looked like a ring of roses and barbed wire around one of his biceps.” For some reason, the recollection seemed to upset her; Alex saw her hand begin to shake again as she lifted the bottle of water to her lips.

All good details — and he was sort of surprised she’d been able to remember that much, considering how shaken up she was, how much blood she’d lost. Even so, he could tell there was something else she didn’t want to talk about. Yes, she’d recognized that the young men who’d approached her and her friends were also witch-folk, but that didn’t explain how she’d sensed they were bad…and it sure didn’t explain the knife wound in her side.