Borrowed Time (The Witches of Mingus Mountain #2)

16. The Stuff of Nightmares

16

THE STUFF OF NIGHTMARES

The morning had been so absolutely perfect that I didn’t even mind when Seth suggested we should go back to the hotel and have a late lunch. By that point, I’d worked up enough of an appetite that I was ready to head into civilization and rustle up some grub.

And if Flagstaff started to weigh on me again, I knew he’d be more than happy to blink us back to Lockett Meadow or any other place I might dream of.

Well, as long as it was still in Wilcox territory.

The one spot I wouldn’t visit was the overlook on Mars Hill. Not just because it felt too close to town for comfort, but because I knew my mother and father had been discovered there by Edmund Wilcox when they’d stolen away to share a few private moments together. Luckily, he’d come along after they were done kissing and hadn’t seen anything too incriminating, but going there with Seth still felt as though it might be tempting fate.

Just as we were heading upstairs to get freshened up after lunch, the front desk clerk called out to me.

“Miss Prewitt? I have a note for you.”

I instinctively stiffened, even as I reminded myself that Jeremiah had said he was going to reach out to me once he knew of a safe time for us all to get together so I could practice time travel. Putting on what I hoped was a pleasant smile, I went over to the desk, Seth a few paces behind me.

“Yes?” I said, and the clerk placed a small envelope in my hand.

“This came for you about an hour ago.”

“Thank you.”

The outside of the envelope only said “Miss Prewitt,” but I recognized Jeremiah’s heavy black handwriting right away. Seth lifted an eyebrow and I nodded, letting him know we could discuss the note once we were both safely upstairs.

By that point, we’d pretty much settled on his hotel room as our base of operations, so we went there directly after making sure there was no one in the upstairs hallway to watch us go in together. Once he’d closed the door, Seth said, “Jeremiah?”

I nodded, even as I ran a fingernail under the flap of the envelope to open it so I could remove the note inside.

Just a few words.

Friday is my nephew Clay’s birthday, and Mrs. Barton will be over at my brother Samuel’s house helping with preparations. Her chocolate cake is Clay’s favorite. Because of this, we should have an uninterrupted several hours before I will be needed to attend the party. Please be at the house at one o’clock that afternoon.

No signature…not that I needed one. And also no request that I should contact him if we couldn’t make it to his house on Friday afternoon. Instead, he’d made this sound pretty much like a command performance.

Which was fine by me. After my conversation with Seth earlier today, I was even more anxious to get back home. I could guilt myself however I wanted over his choice to come to the future with me rather than go back to live in 1926, but he’d made his decision clear, and I wouldn’t argue with it, not when I knew it was the one I’d secretly been hoping for.

Even if I would never have asked him directly to do such a thing for me.

And now that we knew what we needed to do, I just wanted to get my talent properly wrangled so we could go on with our lives.

“One o’clock Friday at Jeremiah’s house,” I told Seth, who’d been hovering nearby but was being polite enough not to look over my shoulder.

“I wish it were tomorrow,” he said, and I lifted my shoulders.

“Me, too, but that’s when Mrs. Barton is going to be out of the house. I guess it’s Samuel’s son’s birthday, and she’s helping with the cake.”

Seth’s mouth twisted a little. “I have to hope the boy takes after his mother and not his father.”

I hoped so, too, although a few of my mother’s comments on the subject of Clay Wilcox had indicated he was definitely a handful. However, she’d also been quick to say he was just a lively kid and not actually bad.

Since she’d worked with him on a daily basis for several weeks while I’d never even laid eyes on the boy, I’d have to take her word for it.

“Whatever he’s like, I assume he’ll be preoccupied on Friday…and that means his parents should be, too,” I said. “It sounds as though Jeremiah will be going to the party right after our session, so I think we’ll be able to get back to the hotel without anyone noticing.”

Seth only nodded. Although he hadn’t come out and said it directly, I could tell he was worried that my time-travel gift might slip again and that I wouldn’t be able to hit the target I was aiming for.

While I admired his discretion, I couldn’t be too upset with him over those fears, not when the same ones were currently plaguing my brain. I knew Jeremiah had picked that time because Mrs. Barton would be out of the house and we would be able to work without interruption — well, at least until Jacob came home a little after three, unless he was also going over to his cousin’s house — but it didn’t feel as if we had much margin for error.

This could be tricky.

Jeremiah had sounded as though he was pretty much telling us when and where to be, so I didn’t much see the point in sending back a reply. It was possible he’d decided it was better to keep the back-and-forth to a minimum, which I couldn’t really argue with.

Since Seth was still watching me, expression worried, I summoned a smile and said, “It’s going to be fine. Honestly, the hardest part will probably be trying to figure out what to do with ourselves while we’re waiting to go to Jeremiah’s on Friday.”

And it was a decent chunk of time — the rest of this afternoon and all day tomorrow, not to mention Friday morning. Not for the first time, I reflected that my mother had had an easier time of it, just because she’d had a real job while she was here in 1884 Flagstaff, and that meant most of her days had been occupied…along with a chunk of her weekends, if her comments about the amount of homework she’d had to grade hadn’t been blown out of proportion.

Well, we’d figure out something. If we had to wander all over downtown and talk to each and every merchant in our pretend quest to get more information about the missing “Eliza,” so be it. Honestly, we probably should have been doing more of that, except after we’d exhausted all the people who’d had any sort of meaningful interactions with my mother, there hadn’t seemed to be much point.

And of course, Seth and I could also steal away to Lockett Meadow as long as the weather held. While we were there, I truly felt as if we’d hidden ourselves in a special sanctuary no one else knew about. At least not yet — my father was very interested in local history, so I thought I remembered that the area hadn’t even been mapped until 1889, years after we’d been standing there. As long as the snow stayed away, we could always go back to the meadow to give ourselves some much-needed privacy. It had been chilly, but my wool cloak helped a lot to keep me from freezing, as did all my various layers of clothing. I had no idea how women had survived in these sorts of dresses before the advent of air conditioning, but in November, my heavy bustle gowns were more of a blessing than a curse.

“We could always talk to more people,” Seth said, his suggestion echoing what had passed through my head just a moment earlier. “We know it’s a waste of time, but at least it’ll keep up appearances.”

“And that’s what this is all about, I suppose,” I replied, and valiantly fought back a sigh. “We might as well do that to use up the afternoon, and we’ll figure out tomorrow, tomorrow.”

He looked much more cheerful than our circumstances warranted, but I knew he was doing whatever he could to keep my spirits up. “That sounds like a good enough plan.”

I went over to him and looped my arms through his. “Then let’s get going. Who knows? We might actually turn up something useful.”

Maybe the slightest twist of his mouth, one which told me he wasn’t so sure about that, but he didn’t contradict me. No, we headed out of the room and down the stairs, and swept out the front door of the hotel as if we had the most important business in the world to conduct.

Fake it ’til you make it, I thought with an inner smile.

I wasn’t feeling nearly as cheerful when we returned a few hours later. Sure, we’d dutifully trooped up and down San Francisco and Leroux Streets, and had also gone to the train depot and asked questions there. Not many people had any encounters with “Eliza” to report, although one of the porters at the station had told us that he’d heard from the night watchman that the ticket taker who was on duty that night swore up and down that he’d seen the young woman and her companion board a train for San Francisco.

Which was exactly the fake story Jeremiah had made sure to circulate throughout the town, so it appeared his ploy had been somewhat effective. Seth and I had appeared appropriately shocked, and made noises about going on to the West Coast after we were done here in Flagstaff, with Seth even mentioning needing to hire Pinkerton detectives since San Francisco was such a large city.

Maybe we’d sounded convincing, and maybe we hadn’t. I supposed the important thing was that we’d made the rounds and been visible, and now pretty much everyone who owned a business downtown had spoken to us personally.

What more could we do than that?

We went to the Bank Hotel’s restaurant for dinner that night, wanting a change of scenery. While we were there, Seth chatted up our waiter, since I could tell he needed some closure on the whole situation with Lawrence Pratt.

“Do you know where that performing troupe went after they were finished with their run in Flagstaff?” he asked as the waiter set down a plate of nicely roasted pheasant in front of him.

“Last Saturday was their final night here, sir,” the waiter said. “I believe they were going on to the West Coast after this.”

“All of them?” Seth inquired.

The waiter had been putting down my own plate — also of pheasant, which I’d had once at a restaurant that specialized in game meats and thought would be interesting to try in this setting — as Seth asked the question, and he straightened before replying.

“No, I overheard the man who did the magic tricks talking to one of his fellow performers at breakfast the next morning, and he said he had urgent family business that would take him back home. Somewhere in Minnesota, I believe.”

Seth’s brows lifted just a fraction upon receiving this news, and I inclined my head toward him even as I reached for my glass of wine. It sure sounded to me as if Mr. Pratt had taken our advice to heart and was returning home to be with his clan. I still couldn’t help feeling guilty about how all that had turned out, even if I knew deep down that it was the best place for him to be, substandard magical abilities or not.

“Oh, that’s interesting,” Seth said. “Too bad — the man was very skilled.”

“Yes, I heard that he could perform quite amazing feats. Perhaps he will be able to rejoin his troupe after his family business is handled. But I see I’m needed at one of my other tables. Excuse me, sir, miss.”

He nodded toward us by way of additional apology, and hurried off in response to the lifted hand of a diner several tables away from the spot where Seth and I sat. I waited until I could tell the man was safely occupied with his other patron, then said, “All’s well, I guess.”

“It sounds that way,” Seth replied. “I just hope we did the right thing.”

Almost of its own volition, my hand went to touch the high neck of the wine-colored gown I wore. The amulet still hung around my throat, safely hidden. All day, I’d felt it there, but I hadn’t once tried to use my powers, not when I still didn’t feel safe doing so unless supervised by Jeremiah Wilcox. What exactly he could do to prevent things from going sideways, I couldn’t even say, but it still made me feel better to have him around whenever I was experimenting with my time-travel magic.

“You know we did.” Even though we were speaking in low enough tones, I still made sure to use neutral phrases, the sort of thing no one could impossibly interpret to mean we were talking about witchcraft. “He would have gotten himself into trouble eventually, so it’s much safer to have him back where he belongs.”

Seth nodded, but his expression still looked dubious, as though he was having a hard time reconciling himself with what we’d done. I had to admit I didn’t like it much, either, but since Lawrence Pratt had been breaking about every witchy rule I could think of by performing in public like that…and we definitely needed that amulet if we were ever going to get the hell out of here…I wasn’t going to examine the situation too closely.

For the next couple of minutes, we were both quiet as we attended to our neglected meals. The pheasant was excellent, accompanied by some kind of currant sauce and wild rice and steamed vegetables, but I doubted either of us was thinking too much about our food. No, my thoughts stayed with Lawrence Pratt for a moment…I didn’t know how fast trains in this day and age traveled, but I guessed he was probably back in Minnesota by now…and then moved to our appointment with Jeremiah on Friday afternoon. Would my wobbly time travel power behave itself, or would I overshoot so badly that he’d have to go on to the birthday party and pray I’d reappear at a time that wouldn’t cause too much of a stir?

No matter what sort of scenario I cooked up, none of them seemed very appetizing.

After an awkward silence, though, Seth commented on our work that afternoon talking to the rest of the shopkeepers downtown, and we were able to go back and forth on that subject long enough that it took up the remainder of our meal. As usual, no one seemed to be paying much attention to us, but if anyone had been eavesdropping, they wouldn’t have learned anything new…and probably have been bored out of their minds.

Eventually, we were done with our meals and walked back to the hotel. The night was just as crisp and clear as the day had been, the stars bright overhead, so huge and so close that it felt as if I could reach out and scoop them up in my hand.

Of course, I couldn’t do anything like that, but it made me feel better to see that the clouds appeared to be staying away for now. Although I wasn’t a weather witch, I prayed with all my might that the skies would remain clear and that Seth and I would be able to return to Lockett Meadow the next day. A few more hours with him there…a couple more stolen kisses, or probably more than just two or three…would be just what the doctor ordered.

Holding that happy thought in my head, I said my usual goodnight to Seth before I headed inside my hotel room. For just a moment, his gaze had held mine, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was — that he wished with all his might that he could go inside with me, and together, we could chase away the chill of this frosty November night.

That wasn’t going to happen, though…well, not if we didn’t want to get run out of town on a rail, whatever that meant…so we’d have to continue to tough it out and see what materialized on Friday.

As with all the other nights I’d stayed here, a maid had already come by to turn down the bed and add some coal to the potbellied stove. Its warmth filled the room, although I was still acutely aware of the cold seeping past the window frame, of how it might well get down into the single digits tonight, with no cloud cover to keep the minimal warmth of the day from evaporating into space.

I worked as fast as I could to climb out of my dress and hang up the individual pieces, and then pull on the flannel nightgown before my teeth could really begin to chatter. The bedwarmer the maid had slipped between the sheets helped a little, although I couldn’t quite banish the image of Seth holding me close and keeping me much more comfortable than any stoneware contraption filled with hot water could do.

My eyelids slipped closed, and I let out a breath. Unlike the night before, sleep came quickly, probably because of all the fresh air I’d gotten earlier in the day, whether up in Lockett Meadow or while traipsing around town with Seth.

But with that sleep came unwelcome dreams.

The same man I’d seen before, movie-star handsome with his jet-hued hair and eyes, his chiseled nose and cheekbones. Not my type — too haughty and sure of himself for that — but still, I know my head would have swiveled in his direction if I’d seen him walking down the street.

And that same black car, only this time moving away from me, accelerating until it went around a curve and disappeared from sight. That was the only detail I could really make out, since the surroundings in my dream were dim and hazy, something seen through a fog with no landmarks to provide any sense of place.

What was it about that car?

I didn’t know. That dream disappeared, and I went on to one where I was walking through pine forests similar to those near Lockett Meadow, only vast and trackless. Here and there, I saw the flame of a maple or the blazing gold of an aspen, but I couldn’t tell whether I was wandering in the forest outside Flagstaff or somewhere utterly different.

Or maybe it was a forest conjured only by my mind. Hard to say when again, I couldn’t see any distinguishing features, nothing to give me a clue as to where I could possibly be.

Low chanting, and figures in hoods. I knew the McAllisters gathered like that at the holidays special to their goddess, like Samhain and Beltane, but since I couldn’t see any of their faces, I had no idea who they might be.

And a black sky unbroken by any sign of a moon, where even the stars seemed subdued, as if they knew something was terribly wrong.

I didn’t see anything more than that, because I sat up in bed then, heart racing, breaths coming in fast pants, and for a second, I couldn’t remember where I was. The room felt just as black as the ominous sky I’d seen in my dream, although as my eyes adjusted, I could make out the comforting glow of the banked-down flames in the stove on the other side of the room.

Right. I was in Flagstaff in 1884, in my room at the Hotel San Francisco. Seth was asleep right next door.

It would have been much better if he’d been next to me in my bed, but at least I knew he was close enough that he’d come running if I so much as called out for help.

Which was silly, right? Yes, I’d had a bad dream, and yet….

When I sat down and really thought about it, I couldn’t even say what had been so frightening about that dream, what had pushed it into the borders of nightmare even though none of its elements had been all that threatening on their own.

A black car…a black-haired man.

People chanting on a moonlit night.

None of those elements seemed to make much sense, whether put together or analyzed separately. But since when had dreams ever had much logic to them? I supposed if I were a seer, I might try to pick it apart further and view my dream more as a vision than a simple nightmare.

But I wasn’t a seer. The McAllister clan had Caitlin Trujillo, but she had been living in Tucson for more than twenty years. And I’d heard that Bree McAllister, the daughter of Levi and Hayley McAllister, sometimes got the odd vision, thanks to her grab bag of magical talents.

I wasn’t like either one of them, though. My two talents had been well established for years, even though I hadn’t used the time travel one much, for obvious reasons. And I hadn’t seen the need to employ my gift for masking my witchy nature, either, not when the cover story Seth and I had been using explained perfectly why I was a witch.

Well, lying here awake wasn’t going to accomplish much. True, Seth and I didn’t have a lot on the docket for Thursday, so it probably wouldn’t have mattered too much if I was tired tomorrow, but I still didn’t want to inflict my cranky self on him two days in a row. He’d claimed he didn’t mind and that he understood why I was out of sorts. Still, he deserved better than that, no matter how much he might say it wasn’t a big deal.

Holding that thought in my mind, I rolled over on my side and took in a deep breath, held it for eight seconds, and then let it out again, again counting to eight. The breathing technique was something my cousin Marie had taught me years ago when I was coming to terms with how dangerous my talent could be, and it had definitely helped me fight my feelings of panic and helplessness.

And it seemed to help now, because after a minute or two, the world faded away…and those troubling dreams faded with it.