Well, of course no one had expected her to do anything, since no one knew she was capable of seeing the future.
In the end, that had all worked out better than anyone could have imagined, so Caitlin tried to reassure herself that if she’d interfered, she could have kept Angela McAllister from being with Connor Wilcox, and that would have spelled trouble for both the clans. Even she was forced to admit that was a rather self-serving argument, but “all’s well that ends well” seemed a good enough excuse to Caitlin for keeping her mouth shut. Besides, now that the clans had been more or less mingling for the past two years, the McAllisters could always call on Marie Begonie, the Wilcox seer, for all their soothsaying needs.
The visions never went away, but they did seem to become somewhat less urgent…although that could simply have been because life had been remarkably placid up here on Cleopatra Hill for some time. Not to say that there weren’t squabbles in the clan, or marriages falling apart or bad business decisions or the sorts of things that seemed to affect everyone at some time or another, witch-born or no. However, there was nothing catastrophic, nothing to tax her abilities or bring on one of those sudden, piercing headaches.
Until now, some six years after the first vision had visited her, letting her know that her life would never be the same again.
The bad feeling was back, that sensation of something dark looming on the horizon, but even when Caitlin tried to will it into revealing itself, into giving her more detail, she saw nothing. Maybe the visions were something that couldn’t really be forced. She didn’t know, because she still hadn’t told anyone her secret, was still living the lie that she hadn’t inherited any special abilities, despite her mother being such a strong weather-worker that she’d been called to take over as elder for Margot Emory when the other witch wanted to step down so she could marry Lucas Wilcox.
And there was no reason for feeling as if the mountainside was about to crumble, or a plague of locusts was going to descend on Jerome. Everything had been sailing along just fine. It was a beautiful spring morning, and Caitlin was packing to go to Tucson for a few days with her friends Roslyn and Danica. Their own mini spring break, so to speak. All right, so Roslyn wasn’t even in college, since she’d gotten her AA a year ago and decided that was enough, that she’d rather hang out in Jerome and wait tables at Grapes in between singing gigs at a variety of local bars and clubs and wine-tasting rooms. Her mother was less than thrilled with her, but since Roslyn actually was earning a living, there wasn’t much else her mom could do.
Danica was a Wilcox, and she and Caitlin had become friendly when Roslyn’s brother Adam began dating Danica’s sister Mason. In fact, they’d become so close that last summer Danica and Caitlin had decided they were done with dorm life and had gotten an apartment off-campus.
Anyway, even if Roslyn might not deserve a spring break, strictly speaking, Caitlin knew that she and Danica had definitely earned one. It had been strange to transfer to Northern Pines, to be someplace where she wasn’t surrounded on all sides by people who’d known her all her life…but it was also liberating. No one knew anything about the secret she was hiding. And since most of Flagstaff was made up of civilians — non-witches — most of them probably wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about the way she’d hidden her powers from her clan members. School was challenging, the coursework much more difficult than the classes she’d taken at the local community college, but she enjoyed it. She enjoyed feeling normal, even though she knew she wasn’t. Not really.
“Almost ready?” Danica called out, and Caitlin hopped on her suitcase to smash it closed tightly enough that the locks would engage. It weighed a ton, but she only had to get it down the apartment’s stairs and into Danica’s Land Rover. Danica’s parents had bought it for her used, but Caitlin still felt a twinge of jealousy every time she looked at her roommate’s SUV. She drove a hand-me-down Honda her mother had given her, and knew she should be glad she even had that much. No McAllister witch was poor, but neither were they conspicuously wealthy like the Wilcoxes.
Caitlin rolled out her suitcase, and carried the small weekender bag with her leftover odds and ends in her free hand. Traveling light was a skill she hadn’t quite mastered. “Ready!”
Danica was waiting in the living room, a leather jacket slung over the lightweight cotton top she wore underneath — a concession to the thirty-degree temperature difference between Tucson and Flagstaff. At her feet were her own suitcases, a lot newer and less shabby-looking than Caitlin’s own. “Roslyn just texted me. She’s all packed and ready, too, so we need to get moving.”