Safe by His Side. Linda Conrad

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      Ethan Ryan checked his watch as he kept one hand on the steering wheel of his rental car. He waited with his usual impatience for his sister to answer her cell phone back in Texas while he sat in L.A. rush-hour traffic.

      “Where are you?” His sister Maggie was always in too much of a hurry for the niceties. No “Hello.” No “How was your flight?” Just get right to the point. But that was okay by him. His own limited patience was legendary. It ran in the family.

      “Sitting on the freeway in L.A.,” he said grumpily to the baby sister who was, at least temporarily, his boss. “But I’ve got plenty of time yet. My appointment to meet with our new client isn’t scheduled until seven thirty. I called you to double-check on—”

      “Ethan, you have to get there now.”

      “What’s up, sis?” Ethan approved of his sister’s and brother’s efforts to save their deceased grandfather’s business by turning his run-down private investigators’ office into a security firm that specialized in guarding children. It was poetic justice, if nothing else. That’s why Ethan had agreed to use his expertise to help them out. Well, that and the fact that he’d had to leave the Secret Service.

      “You didn’t move the appointment time up without checking with me, did you?” he blurted, not letting her answer the first question. “We were lucky the plane landed on schedule. This is the big city, Maggie. Not Texas. You just can’t schedule things too tight. As it is, traffic will keep me on the freeway an extra—”

      “I don’t care how you do it, brother. But you have to be at Ashley Nicole Davis’s house right now.”

      “Have you heard something new from her manager? That, um…Grandpa Ryan’s old college friend, what’s his name?”

      “His name is Max Slotsmeyer, as you would know if you’d read the complete info packet I put together for you. And no, he hasn’t contacted me.”

      “Then why should I show up two hours early for a scheduled appointment?” Ethan asked a little too irritably. “I wouldn’t do that even if I could sprout wings and fly over this danged inconvenient line of cars. Which, as it happens, I can’t.”

      “Ethan.” Maggie lowered her voice to a whisper in order to capture his attention and make him listen. “Remember what Abuela Lupe used to say when she’d have a premonition—about feeling someone’s bones walking across her grave?”

      Ethan remembered all too well his maternal grandmother Delgado’s special words and curses. Her witchcraft was part of the Mexican side of his family heritage. Most of the time he was glad about knowing Abuela Lupe’s sayings and spells. But sometimes he wished he’d never learned them. His sister’s tone told him this wasn’t going to be one of the glad times.

      “Yeah, I remember,” he told Maggie. “And the connection is?”

      “I’m feeling that same thing right now. Don’t ask me how I know, but something is terribly wrong at Ashley Davis’s house. They need you there. Please do something. You have to go now.”

      It would do no good to try talking practicalities to his sister. When it came to family witchcraft, spells and curses, they had all learned to accept each other’s feelings and wishes unreservedly.

      “I’ll do what I can,” he said in as soothing a voice as he could manage.

      He hung up and took a breath before reaching for his briefcase on the passenger seat beside him. There hadn’t been a reason to use any spells in a while. Not since the fiasco when none of his curses or magic would’ve worked to save him from an embarrassing and life-changing incident.

      Abuela Lupe had spent most of their formative years teaching him, his older brother and their younger sister the art of being curanderos—Mexican white witches—much to his very American-Texan father’s chagrin. But when they’d entered their teen years, they’d begged Abuela to also teach them a few of the spells and curses of the black witches—the brujos.

      By then the siblings had learned that hexes and blessings could be muttered with the same breath. And as teenagers, they’d wanted some of the fun of knowing black witchcraft. Ethan’s young mind had reeled at the idea of getting any date he wanted with just the right hex, or raising his grade in any class with the proper combination of potions and herbs.

      Their grandmother refused their request. According to her, black magic could not be trusted. They’d tried a few spells on their own and were fairly successful. In the long run, however, their immature white and black witchcraft hadn’t turned out to be strong enough for everything. The brothers’ and sister’s magic had failed to make a difference when it had mattered most.

      But today, Ethan felt sure he still knew enough magic to cause a break in this traffic jam. Enough of a break, that is, to transport him to his destination in a few minutes instead of hours.

      Pulling a finger-size red amulet in the shape of an egg from a secret compartment in his briefcase, Ethan began channeling his powers. He reached into his memory for the right words to use and started an incantation.

      Not sure what lay in store for him, Ethan nevertheless knew to trust his sister’s hunches. If she felt it was imperative for him to be at Ashley Davis’s house now, then his job was to make that happen.