Protector (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 5) by Christine Pope Read Free Book Online

forming a kind of dome approximately seven or so feet high and around ten feet in diameter. Caitlin could see through it, although the world appeared slightly distorted, as if she were viewing it from inside a soap bubble.
    “What is that?” she breathed.
    “His talent,” Luz said, sounding as proud as if she’d conjured that strange transparent dome herself. “Nothing can get through it.”
    “Nothing?”
    “Well, air, obviously,” Alex replied, and his tone, in direct contrast to his mother’s, was almost embarrassed. “But nothing else. Rain. Sticks. Stones. Spells,” he added significantly.
    “Wow,” Caitlin said, impressed despite the situation. She’d never heard of a talent like that before. No wonder Luz hadn’t been concerned about going back to the evil warlocks’ house with only her son and Caitlin at her side.
    “So lead on, please, Caitlin,” Luz said in that commanding way of hers.
    It wasn’t far. Down this short feeder lane, then left onto a street lined with one-story houses. Nothing appeared to have changed since she’d run past here — maybe a car was now in one driveway, and had left another. Just the typical coming and going you’d see on any weekday.
    And there was the house, looking perfectly ordinary, with its neat walk and carefully arranged succulents in the yard, and one graceful palm as an accent. Even so, looking at it made the blood in Caitlin’s veins go cold all over again, as if she’d just had another sip of Matías’ tainted margaritas.
    “It’s all right,” Alex murmured. “There’s really nothing they can do to get through the shield.”
    “How long can you hold it?”
    “At least an hour.”
    That reassured her a bit. Luz nodded, and Caitlin began moving up the walk, Alex right next to her, his mother shifting so she was a few paces ahead of them. When they got to the front door, it stood slightly ajar. What the…?
    Luz paused there, seeming to breathe in the air and taste it, as if somehow by doing so she could divine who was in the house and what they were doing. At the same time, Caitlin attempted to force that unruly sixth sense of her own to tell her what the warlocks were up to, but she felt nothing. Well, not precisely nothing. Even though she knew Alex’s dome was protecting the three of them, her hands still shook, and cold fear seemed to be eating away at her stomach. But she’d run away once; she wouldn’t do that again.
    At last, Luz reached out and pushed the door open all the way. That was strange, seeing her hand go through the dome to touch the door handle and then come back inside the bubble of Alex’s spell. She sent an inquiring glance in his direction.
    “It’s sort of like one-way glass, I guess,” he told her in a murmur. “We can reach through it and not harm ourselves, and even cast spells through it, but it doesn’t work the other way.”
    “Handy.”
    But then Luz was moving forward, and so Alex had to move with her, Caitlin sticking close to his side. It should have felt strange to be so near someone she’d only just met, but instead his presence felt safe, comforting. He smelled good, too.
    Of all the things to be thinking about right now, she scolded herself, even as she crossed the threshold into the house, halfway expecting some sort of magical attack to begin assaulting the dome that surrounded the three of them.
    Nothing happened, though, and she looked around in some mystification. The house was dead silent, except for the background hum of the central air conditioning system.
    “Where?” Luz whispered.
    “Down the hall is the kitchen, and then off that is the sun porch with the — with the circle.” Caitlin didn’t know how else to describe it. The thing had been some sort of summoning device, some sort of gateway, that much she knew, even if she had no experience with that kind of dark and terrible magic. But “circle” worked well enough to describe what she had seen.
    Luz nodded and moved through the