Protector(24)

“Thank you, Caitlin,” Luz said, sliding out of her seat and taking her glass of lemonade with her. “Alex, would you get Caitlin something to drink? She must be parched after all that talking.”

As Caitlin murmured her thanks, Alex got up from his own chair and said, “Is lemonade all right, or would you rather have some water? I don’t think my grandmother has much of anything else.”

“Lemonade is fine,” Caitlin replied, watching as Luz shot her an encouraging smile before going down the hallway that led to the living room.

Alex poured a glass and inclined his head toward the chair his mother had just vacated. “Want to sit down?”

“Definitely.” She took a seat, then managed a half-smile as Alex handed her the glass of lemonade. After sipping some, she nodded. “That’s better. Although right now I could use a margarita.” She paused. “No, scratch that. After what Matías did, I don’t think I’m going to want a margarita for a long time.”

Frowning, Alex sat down. Even though she’d taken him and his mother to the house where the warlocks had brought the girls, shown them where the circle had been drawn, Caitlin hadn’t been very specific about exactly what had gone down in there. “What did he do?”

She bit her lip and looked away, out through the stained-glass-bordered windows in the nook, the ones that had fascinated Alex when he was younger. One finger drew a line through the condensation on the outside of the glass as she appeared to contemplate the desert-y loveliness of the back garden, with its gravel walks and careful plantings of native flowers and shrubs and cactus. At last she said, “I told you he brought us back to that house for margaritas, right? Well, they were drugged or something. I had just a sip of one, and it made the spell he had cast so much worse. It was so hard to fight it.” Shuddering slightly, she picked up her glass of lemonade and drank deeply, as if by doing so she could erase the taste of the tainted drink Matías had given her earlier that afternoon.

“But you did fight it,” Alex reminded her gently, wishing he’d left it alone. He didn’t like to see her so upset, eyes tragic, her jaw set. In that moment, he realized he’d barely seen her smile so far, and certainly never laugh.

He wanted to hear her laugh.

“I did,” she said. “I still don’t know how, exactly, but….” Looking up from her drink, she faced Alex squarely. In the warm late-afternoon light, her eyes seemed to glow almost green. “I wasn’t telling you the truth earlier.”

Puzzled, he asked, “You weren’t?”

“Not really. I mean, I was trying to dance around the issue. The reason I knew something was off about Matías and his gang, and maybe part of the reason I was able to get away, is that I’m a seer. I felt how awful he was. In fact, I knew something terrible was going to happen even before we left Jerome. I just didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t want to tell anyone, because then they’d know.”

“So…no one in your family knows you’re a seer?”

She shook her head, and he tried not to stare at the waves of coppery hair that seemed to dance with the movement. “I couldn’t tell them. I know it was wrong. But…I didn’t want to be a seer. I still don’t. But I will, because otherwise I don’t know how we’ll ever find Danica and Roslyn.”

Right then he wished with all his soul that he knew Caitlin better. If that were the case, maybe it would be all right to get up from his chair and go to her, take her in his arms and give her the hug he thought she so desperately needed. This whole thing had to be so rough on her, from losing her friends to realizing that the one thing she had wanted to keep secret was the only thing that might save them.

But he was too chickenshit to do that. Or maybe cautious was a better word. Diego probably would have gone to Caitlin and given her a hug, but he and Diego were very different people. Alex had to settle for a completely inadequate, “I’m sorry.”

Even that seemed to floor her. She blinked, then said, “You don’t think I’m a jerk?”

“A jerk? Why would I think that?”

“Because I should’ve told someone I’m a seer! I’ve been hiding it, pretending that I can only do the small, regular things — you know, lighting a candle without a match, unlocking a door without a key, whatever — when all this time I could have been helping my clan.”

It was clear she’d been beating herself up over this for some time, so Alex didn’t see any reason why he should. “Well, I suppose that’s between you and your clan elders,” he said mildly. “And you’re going to use your gift to find your friends, so….” He let the words trail off, mostly because he wasn’t sure what else she expected him to say.