At last he said, “She was with my abuelita when she passed, and the powers came to her without any problem. That’s one thing that’s gone right, at least. Or as well as it could, considering.” For the first time he glanced over at Caitlin, and she saw that the hard set to his jaw had softened slightly. “It’s rough. All of this is just…I don’t get it. None of it makes sense.”
That was the problem. Roslyn was dead, and Maya gone, too, and the “why” of either of those deaths completely eluded Caitlin. All right, she knew that Matías and the other two warlocks had been using Roslyn’s blood as a power source for their dark spells, but what were those dark spells doing? What were they getting out of all this?
She settled back in her seat, thoughts churning. As much as she hated to admit it, Roslyn’s death had served some sort of purpose…for the warlocks, if no one else. But this illness that had struck out of nowhere and then taken Maya long before her time…once again, Caitlin heard that whisper at the corner of her mind, the one saying Matías must have had something to do with it. Yes, she knew that millions of people died every day, often in ways that made no sense. In general, though, a prima didn’t die of an undiagnosed illness. Primas tended to live longer than most people, whether civilian or witch.
For some reason, she heard Olivia’s words echoing in her mind: Matías is one of those people who’s never satisfied with what he has. He always needs something more. And then, in Lucinda’s crisp, no-nonsense tones: He has no limits. He wants what he wants, and that’s it.
The thought growing in Caitlin’s mind was so terrible that she didn’t want to voice it aloud, didn’t want to acknowledge it. That would give it shape, and reality. And then….
Before she could lose her nerve, she asked, “Alex, who will be your mother’s prima-in-waiting?”
Sounding puzzled, he replied, “My cousin Zoe. She lives up in Fountain Hills. Why?”
“And — and has she turned twenty-one yet?”
“Yeah. A few weeks ago. The consort hunt is already under way.” He paused and gave Caitlin a very sharp look before returning his attention to the road. “What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying….” She hesitated, but the truth of what she had been thinking was so strong now that she knew in her bones it was her seer’s ability telling her to speak, to not doubt herself. “I’m saying it was Matías and the other warlocks who killed Maya. They’ve been casting these spells for months, weakening her, disrupting things in your clan just enough that no one would notice they were operating in your territory, right under your noses. For the big push, though, the spell that would kill her, they needed witch blood. So they kidnapped the three of us, and that’s why they murdered Roslyn. I still don’t quite understand why they haven’t hurt Danica yet, but I guess I’ll just have to be grateful for that and worry about it later.”
“Jesus Christ.” Alex looked like she’d just punched him in the gut, and Caitlin hated having to say these things to him, even though she knew it was vitally important for them to use every bit of information they had. “And so they wanted Maya out of the way, because then my mother would be the prima — ”
“And the prima-in-waiting would be formally designated, and the clock ticking down to the time when she would bond with her consort,” Caitlin finished for him.
Beneath the anger and sorrow, a flicker of confusion came and went in Alex’s dark eyes. “Matías can’t possibly think that he’s her consort, can he?”
“I doubt even he’s that full of himself.” She shook her head, adding, “He doesn’t have to be. He just has to be…with her.”
“You’re saying a prima doesn’t have to have a consort? That’s nuts!”
“I would have thought so, too…a few years ago.” What she was about to say next was not common knowledge, but she thought Alex needed to hear it. The Wilcox primus’s kidnapping of the McAllister prima had brought to light a few truths that Angela had thought it better for the girls of her clan to know, even though the vast majority of them were not and never would be prima material. “It’s best for a prima to bond with her consort, of course, just because then she’ll have the full strength of her powers. But it’s not as if she won’t be prima if she’s with someone else. She’ll still inherit the title eventually. She just won’t be as effective. That’s why the prima-in-waiting is guarded so carefully.”