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.But you could probably say that about most families.”I thought that was pretty hard on Felicia, and not precisely fair.She deserved the truth, deserved to know what lay in store for her.I didn’t say anything, though, because I wanted to know what had happened to her.Well, the details.Since she wasn’t around now, it was pretty clear that the curse had hit her, just as it had every other wife of a Wilcox primus.“Everything seemed fine for a few years.She was getting a practice going as a family counselor, and Damon got the associate professorship position here at Northern Pines.I was off at school in Tempe by then, so I wasn’t around to see them much except for a weekend here and there, but they seemed happy.Then Felicia got pregnant.”Uh-oh.That did seem to be the death knell for the Wilcox wives.Connor stared straight ahead as he spoke.I didn’t know if he was avoiding my gaze so he couldn’t see my own worry, or whether what was coming next was so painful that the only way he could tell it was without looking at me.“It was January.I’d just gone back to ASU after winter break.I got a phone call one evening.I think it was a Thursday.” A shake of his head.“Like it matters what day of the week it was.There’d been a car accident.The roads were icy.She was driving home from her office when some tourist lost control at an intersection and T-boned her car.Just slammed right into the driver-side door.They got her to the hospital, but there wasn’t much they could do.She was gone, and the baby.”My fingers tightened around the purse I held on my lap.A wave of pity rolled over me.Feel sorry for Damon Wilcox? In that moment I did.“He changed after that.Sold the house they’d been living in, bought this place, and moved way out here.And he started obsessing over how he could end the curse forever.”I reached over and squeezed Connor’s arm.Briefly, not enough to distract him from his driving, but merely to let him know I was there.For just a second or two the tight set to his mouth softened a bit.But then I could see his jaw tense again as he said, “That was when he started obsessing about you.The first time he brought it up — it was over the summer, about five years ago now — I told him he was crazy, that he needed to let it go.I mean, bad enough that he should contemplate such a thing at all, considering you were only sixteen at the time and he was past thirty.”“Definitely disgusting,” I agreed.It actually made my flesh crawl to realize Damon Wilcox had been thinking of me that way even when I was underage.“Pretty much what I said.And he told me that modern scruples shouldn’t be coming into it, and besides, of course he wouldn’t touch you until you were twenty-one and your prima powers had begun to awaken.Then he sort of dropped it for a while, and since I was busy with school, I let it go as well.” At last he looked over at me.Quickly, so he wouldn’t endanger us while driving or anything, but enough so I could see the warmth in his eyes.“Besides, soon after that I began dreaming of you, and I realized that eventually Damon’s plans were going to come crashing down around him anyway.”“So you knew all along who I was?” I demanded.“That’s not fair.I never got to see your face in my dreams.Not that I would’ve known who you were, even if I’d been able to get a good look at you.”“Well, I did know what you looked like, since Damon had people surveilling you for some time.”Now, that was creepy.“You’re kind of freaking me out, Connor.”“I thought you should know the truth.”Just another way he was so very different from his brother.Damon seemed to have only a casual acquaintance with the truth, as far as I could tell.“So, um…surveilling me how, exactly?”“No family members.Your elders would have sniffed out a Wilcox the second he or she crossed the wards you have set up.But being a college professor does give you access to a bunch of civilians, students who go on day trips all over the place, including Jerome.It didn’t have to sound sinister or anything — he could do something as simple as mention he was thinking of vacationing there, and could they take some photos so he could make a decision that wasn’t based on a B&B’s website marketing copy? You were out in plain view, working at your aunt’s store on the weekends.It was easy to get a picture.”I thought of the groups of kids around my age who’d come in and out of the store, who’d joked and messed up our stacks of T-shirts and taken loopy Instagram pictures with the javelina figurines in the background.How many of them had been Damon’s unwitting spies?“That’s messed up, Connor.”“You think I don’t know that?” The area around us was becoming more populated as we headed south, and he had to slow abruptly as a Dodge truck pulled out almost in front of us.I felt the tires slip a little on the icy road before they caught again.“Asshole,” he muttered under his breath.My fingers had unconsciously tightened on the edge of the seat.Driving in these kinds of road conditions was not something I enjoyed, even though Connor clearly knew what he was doing.Something he’d said nagged at my mind, though.“So if our wards should have alerted us to your presence, how did Damon and his little band of commandos get past them?”“You’d have to ask him that.I told you he’s been experimenting with spells, changing them, making them stronger, altering them.I don’t know the details.” He lifted his shoulders, and a frown creased his brow.“I do know he’s frustrated because, although he’s done some amazing work with spellcraft, he hasn’t made any headway with the curse.He made a comment not too long ago about investigating alternative magic, but when I tried to get him to tell me more, he said he was only in the preliminary stages of his research, and there wasn’t much to tell.”That didn’t sound very reassuring.Damon using his physics knowledge to somehow twist spells into something different, something new, was bad enough.But if even that wasn’t enough for him, what could this “alternative magic” possibly be?I shivered, and Connor must have misinterpreted my reaction, because he added, “Anyway, I didn’t even go with him to Jerome…I was waiting back at Lucas’s house with the others.”So it was Lucas whose house had the basement rec room, the one where they’d turned the pool table into an altar.I wondered why they’d done it there, and not out at Damon’s house, which seemed secluded enough.Maybe they wanted someplace that was easier to get to.And for some reason, I was irrationally relieved that Connor hadn’t gone on the Jerome raid.Yes, some people would say he was complicit just by waiting at Lucas’s house, but I didn’t see it quite that way.He’d known we were meant to be together, that Damon’s plan would ultimately fail, but it was still important for him to be there at the moment of truth, so Damon would turn to Connor to make the binding.Plots and plans, twisting around one another.This latest ploy of Damon’s hadn’t worked, either, but I couldn’t help wondering how long it would be before he came up with something else.“Are we almost home?” I asked.Connor’s eyebrow lifted at the word “home,” but he replied with hesitation.“About five minutes.”“Good,” I said.“Because I want you to do everything you can to scrub the last few hours from my brain.”* * *And he did, more or less — when we got in, he scooped me up in his arms, took me upstairs, then laid me on the bed, slowly removing every article of clothing until I was naked, while he looked down at me, still fully dressed
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