Protector(15)

Worse, she could feel Luz and Alex giving her puzzled glances, as if they were wondering whether she’d screwed up and brought them to the wrong house or something. But she knew that wasn’t the case — this was the right place. See, there was the bowl of limes on the counter, sitting exactly where she remembered seeing it.

Without thinking, she stalked past Luz, almost through the dome’s protective membrane. Behind her, Alex moved quickly, making sure she stayed even with the bubble. He didn’t say anything, didn’t reprimand her for being so careless, but even now, tense and worried as she was, she knew that had been a stupid move.

Not that it really mattered, because when they got to the sun porch, it was empty as well. No circle. No ring of colored candles. And definitely no warlocks or captive witches.

“It was right here,” Caitlin protested. “I saw it. I swear.”

“We’re not saying you didn’t,” Alex said quietly, his tone reassuring. “Mamita, you feeling anything?”

Luz held herself very still, breathing in and out. Then her nose wrinkled, as if she had just smelled something foul.

“Drop the spell for now, Alex,” she told him. “There is no one here, and it is getting in my way.”

At once the dome shivered out of existence. Luz stepped forward so she was standing nearly in the center of the room, almost exactly where the circle had once been, although no trace of it was left. Caitlin didn’t bother to wonder how Luz had managed to do that — she was Maya de la Paz’s daughter, after all, and most likely the next prima. Her talents must be very strong.

“Yes,” she said at last. “It was some kind of summoning spell. Black, and made blacker still by being mixed with blood. What they were summoning, I can’t say for sure. Perhaps the spell was interrupted by your running away, Caitlin. That frightened them, I think, or at least compelled them to leave this place so they would not be caught. I’m not sure if they knew the mercado was owned by witches, but I think perhaps they did. And they knew if you sensed that, then you would soon be bringing help.”

“But I didn’t know,” Caitlin said, wondering why Luz Trujillo would think she’d gone to the store on purpose. “I just went to the first place that looked safe.”

“Ah, that is what you think happened,” Luz replied. “But there was another restaurant and a dentist’s office between that street corner and our store, and yet you headed straight for the mercado. Your witch senses instinctively sent you there because it was the one place you were certain to find help.”

Was that what had happened? It was hard to know for sure. She’d been in so much pain and frightened out of her mind, so Caitlin knew she hadn’t been thinking clearly. And yet she had gone into that one particular store, and straight to the young man she knew would help her.

Alex. He was watching her carefully now, expression sober. Goddess, but he was good-looking. Angela must have been awfully disappointed when it turned out Alex wasn’t her consort. Well, she’d done all right in the end, but at the time….

And that’s a ridiculous thing to be thinking about now. So what if Alex is good-looking…and kind…and powerful? Roslyn and Danica are still missing.

Caitlin pulled in a breath and tore her gaze away from Alex so she could focus on Luz. “So…what now? Can you sense where they’ve gone?”

The older woman didn’t reply at first, only stood there in the center of the room, her hands still spread in that gesture Caitlin was coming to recognize as her “divining” one. Then she shook her head. “Not really. Maybe the faintest trace of some kind of energy pulling toward the south. But nothing beyond that.”

“But what do we do now?” Caitlin asked. She knew she sounded frantic, but she didn’t much care. Her friends were still missing, taken the Goddess only knew where by a trio of warlocks who clearly had no compunction about using them to power their own hideous rituals.

“We don’t panic,” Luz said. Her expression softened, and she came back over to where Caitlin stood next to Alex, then laid a hand on her arm. “We are certainly not going to let the matter go. Valentina promised to contact Maya while we came over here, so she knows of the situation. I think now we should go and speak with her.”

“Go up to Scottsdale?” Wait, what was the point of that? She couldn’t leave Tucson, not if her friends might still be hidden somewhere within the city limits.

Sensing her turmoil, Luz pressed her fingers against Caitlin’s arm for just a second, as if to reassure her, and said, “My dear, Maya will most certainly want to speak with you. We will send out the word here in Tucson, so that all of our clan members in the city will be on the lookout for your friends and the warlocks who have kidnapped them. You will not be abandoning your friends, only leaving for a few hours. You can come back here afterward.”