Not sure how exactly she should respond to that remark, Caitlin ventured, “He’s been very nice.”
“Nice?” Maya chuckled, but the laugh turned into a cough, and she had to drink some of the water from the glass on her tray before she could continue. “Well, I suppose we can leave it at that for now. Valentina has related the basics to me, but I want to hear from you what happened.”
Again? Caitlin thought, but she took a breath and then dutifully recounted everything that had occurred after she and Danica and Roslyn walked into that Mexican restaurant. Well, almost everything. If she could get away with not revealing anything of her own strange visions and feelings, she would. None of that was Maya’s business.
When she was done, Caitlin shifted on the couch, her mouth dry. She wished she could have some of the lemonade Alex and his mother were currently off drinking in the kitchen. Why Maya hadn’t offered her some, or at least a glass of water, Caitlin wasn’t sure. Maybe she’d intended the apparent oversight as a subtle show of power. If that were the case, Caitlin knew she wouldn’t allow herself to show any signs of discomfort. At least she was reasonably hydrated, considering the iced tea she’d finished off right before Alex parked his SUV in front of Maya’s house.
“Ah,” Maya said, after a protracted pause. That could have meant anything…or nothing. The old woman lifted the glass of water from her lap tray and drank slowly before setting the glass back down. “Tell me, Caitlin McAllister…do you truly intend to keep hiding your gifts from everyone?”
Her mouth was dry, and Caitlin wondered if she’d been too hasty in thinking she’d be above asking for a glass of water of her own to quench her thirst. Maya’s black eyes were fixed on her, far too penetrating, too keen.
“What gifts?” Caitlin managed.
A pair of sparse salt-and-pepper eyebrows drew together, and Maya responded, “You can lie to your family, and you can lie to yourself, but I will not allow you to lie to me.”
Crap. Since she didn’t have a glass she could fiddle with, or a purse strap or anything else along those lines, Caitlin had to settle for knotting her fingers together and slipping them over one knee. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do.”
The sharpness of Maya’s dark gaze disconcerted Caitlin. It could have been the contrast between their all-too-knowing gleam and her overall decrepit appearance. Once again Caitlin found herself wondering what had happened to Maya to cause such a degeneration. Surely no one in the McAllister or the Wilcox clans seemed to have an inkling of the sea change the de la Paz prima had undergone. Unfortunately, Caitlin knew she could sit here and speculate all she wanted, but in the end it wouldn’t matter — Maya wanted answers, and apparently seemed content to sit here and wait for as long as it took to get them.
“I — ” Caitlin floundered, wishing she had a plausible lie to cover up the very obvious holes in the story she’d told Maya. None of it made sense if you didn’t factor in the seer abilities she’d tried so desperately to hide. And the prima, weak as she might be, was certainly no fool.
“You what?”
Desperation clear in her voice, despite her best attempts to hide it, Caitlin said, “I don’t know what gifts you’re talking about.”
“Of course you do,” Maya replied calmly. Again she drank from her glass of water, although this time the palsy in her hand was far too evident as she set the glass back down on its tray. “No ordinary witch could have sensed the evil in those young men — certainly your friends did not. And no ordinary witch would have had the ability to see past the spell this Matías cast and strike out at him so she could get away.” The elderly witch’s gaze sharpened, and Caitlin wondered if those gleaming black eyes might actually bore holes right through her, so piercing they seemed. “You do not have to tell your family, if that is your wish. But you need to tell me.”
No way out. Oh, she could keep on lying…and Maya would only continue to stare at her, every tightening of her lips and lift of her eyebrows handing those lies right back to her. Caitlin broke the eye contact and looked out the large triptych of windows on the opposite wall, which showed a view of the courtyard. The sun was beginning to drop toward the west, glinting and glittering in the falling water of the fountain outside.
“They started about six years ago,” Caitlin said at last, not looking at Maya, but keeping her gaze focused on the way the water splashed and danced in the fountain, the way it caught glints of gold and copper and bronze from the westering sun. “I’d see things, and they’d come true. Or sometimes they’d be coming true at the same time I saw them. It’s not always consistent. But I do see things. I guess that makes me the McAllister’s next seer. But I don’t want to be that. I don’t want people always asking me for advice and wanting to know what their futures will be. Why would anyone want to know that? The future is scary.”