Killing Time (The Witches of Mingus Mountain #3)

4. Dueling Plans

4

DUELING PLANS

The first order of business was to put away their purchases, but after that, Seth thought they needed to set everything else aside so they could talk to the elders…and to Abigail, of course, although he couldn’t help thinking that she wasn’t the one who made most of the decisions around here.

“Just call them,” Devynn suggested, but he knew it wasn’t that simple. Sure, there was a new, fancy, modern phone in the house, but since he hadn’t turned up anything like a book with important numbers written down in it, he didn’t think the thing was going to do him much good.

“I don’t know anyone’s number,” he pointed out, and she looked instantly abashed.

“Oh, right. I’m so used to being able to call someone from my contacts list or to look things up on the internet, I forgot it didn’t use to be so easy.”

He didn’t know what a “contacts” list was — and he supposed it didn’t matter too much, not when the rotary phone in the living room obviously hadn’t come equipped with that sort of convenience.

“It’s all right,” he said. “My cousin Helen still lives in the same house, so we can walk down there and see if she can call the rest of the elders and Abigail and set up a meeting.”

Devynn looked immediately cheered by that plan. “Oh, I’d forgotten about that. Do you think she’ll be home?”

Seth couldn’t imagine where else his cousin might be. True, she was the clan’s healer and could be out on a call, but if worst came to worst, they could always leave a message with Calum, Helen’s husband.

And really, considering the diminished state of Jerome’s population and the way it had been many years since the healer had had children at home to take care of, Seth guessed she didn’t have nearly as much to occupy her time as she used to.

“I’m pretty sure she’ll be there,” he said. “Let’s go find out.”

Devynn seemed agreeable to this, and went to fetch the little clutch pocketbook she’d obtained when she put together the rest of her new wardrobe. The day was sunny and cool, just perfect for the first of November, but it wasn’t cold enough that she seemed to think she needed any kind of sweater, let alone a coat.

No, they headed out the door without pausing to put on an extra layer, and Seth let his hand steal into hers as he thought how alive she seemed, how she was more real than any other woman he’d ever known.

How she’d made him realize what he’d been missing all these years.

Even so, he was fiercely glad that he’d waited to be with her. The intimacies they’d shared the night before would only have been cheapened if he’d done such things with one of the women who sold themselves from the bar at the Connor Hotel or any of a number of the saloons that had once flourished on Main Street, whereas now he could be proud to say that Devynn Rowe, the woman he loved more than anyone else in the world, had been his first.

Although he’d been fairly certain that Helen would be home, he couldn’t ignore the rush of relief that went through him when she answered the door following his knock.

“Seth?” she said, looking a little startled. “Is something the matter?”

“No, nothing’s wrong,” he replied as he stepped inside the foyer, followed closely by Devynn. “It’s just that Devynn and I have come up with a plan, and we need to talk to the prima and the elders. Can you call them and make the arrangements? I have a phone at my place, but I don’t know anyone’s number, and — ”

Helen held up a hand, her expression amused. Maybe they’d been close in age back in 1926, with only around five or six years between them, but now she was very much his elder in every way possible, and it showed in her actions.

“Of course, I’ll call them,” she said. “Let’s go into the living room, and I’ll phone them from there. Do you need a snack or something to drink?”

“No, we’re fine,” Seth said after getting a corroborating nod. “We just had a late breakfast at Shorty’s.”

“Then you’ll probably be full until dinner,” Helen replied with a smile.

She led him and Devynn into the living room, which had also changed a great deal over the last twenty-one years, with the cheerful flowered couch and painted wood furniture traded out for an angular sofa and matching love seat covered in a tweed-looking fabric in a shade of grayish blue, and equally angular coffee and side tables rounding out the space. Seth had to admit the style was much more modern, but he couldn’t say for sure whether he liked it.

Not that the decor in his cousin’s living room mattered all that much. He and Devynn sat on the couch while Helen went over to the table where the telephone rested and picked up the handset. A brief pause, and then she said, “Hello, Charles. I’ve got Seth and Devynn over here, and it sounds as if they’ve come up with a plan they want to discuss with Abigail and the elders. Are you two free?”

No reason why they shouldn’t be, when Charles had already said that the store was closed on Saturdays. And both Gilbert McAllister and Josiah Miller were of an age where they would be retired, so Seth had to think neither of them had too many claims on their time, either.

Well, except whatever their position as clan elders might require.

Helen was silent for a moment as she listened to Charles’s reply. Then she said, “That sounds good. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

She hung up then and turned back to her guests. “He’s going to call Josiah and Gilbert, and then we’ll all meet at the house at a quarter to twelve.” A pause, and her gaze sharpened a little. “Do you want to tell me what you two have up your sleeve?”

Devynn sent Seth a sideways look, seeming to signal that she’d rather not elaborate until they had a quorum.

“Let’s just wait until we have everyone gathered together,” he said, trying to sound utterly unconcerned. “I think it would be easier than having to explain ourselves twice.”

Luckily, Helen didn’t seem too bothered by the demurral. “That makes sense,” she replied. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a glass of water or iced tea or something?”

Since he’d already had tea and coffee that morning, he thought it would probably be smart to avoid any more caffeine for a while. “Water would be fine,” he said, and Devynn nodded.

“Same for me.”

“Be back in a jif.”

Helen left the room, presumably heading for the kitchen, and Seth looked over at Devynn.

“Maybe we should have said something to her, just to see what she thinks of our plan.”

“No,” Devynn said at once, her tone emphatic. “It’s better if we talk to everyone at the same time. I don’t really want to have to defend our plan over and over again.”

His eyebrow lifted. “Do you really think they’re going to poke that many holes in it?”

“Of course they are,” she replied without missing a beat. “Isn’t that what elders tend to do? I mean, we don’t have any elders in my clan, but that’s the impression I’ve gotten from my McAllister friends.”

Interesting. Seth had to admit he hadn’t seen anything like the clan structure he was used to when they’d interacted with the Wilcoxes in 1884, where instead there was only Jeremiah ruling the roost and his family pretty much doing as they were told. He’d wondered if that dynamic might have changed over the years, but apparently not.

They couldn’t discuss the matter further, since Helen reappeared right then, a glass of water in either hand. Seth took one from her, more grateful than he’d thought he would be. True, he’d had that coffee with breakfast, but they’d gone shopping afterward and had generally chased around, and right now, he was glad of something that would wet his whistle ahead of their meeting with Abigail and the elders.

Devynn reacted similarly, murmuring a thank-you to Helen before she took several large swallows of the water she’d been given. Afterward, she set the glass down on one of the cork coasters on the coffee table, and Seth followed suit.

“That was great,” he said. “Thank you, Helen.”

Her blue eyes were cheerful. “I thought you might need something to help you get ready for the meeting with Abigail and Josiah and Gilbert. Charles mentioned she wasn’t having a good day, so I hope everything goes all right.”

That was exactly the kind of news Seth hadn’t wanted to hear. He remembered how his cousin had been sick over and over again when she was younger, and how Helen had treated her on all those occasions despite only being in high school when Abigail was suffering through those childhood illnesses. Then again, it wasn’t as if Helen had had much choice; their clan’s previous healer had passed away when she was only a little girl, and as soon as her powers had begun to manifest, she was called upon to step into her role as the McAllister family’s one bulwark against disease and injury.

“What’s a bad day for Abigail?” he asked, and next to him, Devynn looked curiously relieved, as though she’d also wanted to find out what they might be facing but thought it might be too intrusive for an outsider like her to ask the question.

Helen had sat down on the loveseat across from the couch while they were drinking their water, and now she crossed her legs and folded her hands on top of her knees, apparently settling in to give a lengthy response.

“She’s never been strong,” she said frankly. “But after all those miscarriages and then finally carrying her son to term, it seems as if the ordeal took away what little strength she possessed. For the past fifteen years, she’s mostly been an invalid. She hardly ever goes outside the house, and in fact, rarely leaves the parlor where you met her. But her mind is still sharp enough, and since we’ve had very few trials to deal with these past twenty years or so, she’s managed to be a fairly effective prima. ”

Probably because she’d relied on the elders to do the real heavy lifting. Seth reflected that it was a good thing the clan had such continuity with its elders, only replacing one of them in all that time, but still, both Josiah and Gilbert were at the point where they probably would have stepped down if they hadn’t been so worried about what would happen if Abigail had to work with people she wasn’t as familiar with. Sure, they would also be fellow McAllisters, but if Abigail had really become the recluse Helen claimed she had, then he doubted she’d be on a first-name basis with most of the younger generation.

What a rough time of it Charles must have had during those years, though. Maybe the more judgmental members of the population would claim it was his just desserts for the illegal activities he’d been involved in, but Seth knew his clan didn’t believe in a vengeful god and would claim his wife’s frailty had been simple bad luck and nothing more.

“Do you know what happened to Mary Towne?” he asked, naming the former fiancée his brother had still been enamored of even after she broke things off…and was also the reason why Charles had resorted to bootlegging in the first place.

Helen looked a little surprised by the question, but she answered evenly enough, “Oh, she married a wealthy rancher over in Prescott Valley. They have a big family — five children, I believe — and he ended up serving as mayor of Prescott for several terms. From what I’ve heard, she’s had a very happy life.”

It sure sounded like it. Certainly, she’d been much luckier in her choice of spouses than Charles had been.

What would have happened if his brother had never been Abigail’s consort, and she’d ended up with the much more bookish — and compatible — Freddie instead?

A question that would never have an answer. Seth couldn’t help wondering what all this traveling in time had done to the past, but even if he and Devynn had inadvertently ended up changing a few things, it seemed that marriage to Abigail was a fate his brother hadn’t been able to escape.

“But I think it’s time we went up to Charles and Abigail’s house,” Helen went on after a glance at the slim gold watch strapped to her wrist. “We wouldn’t want to be late, not when we’re the ones who called this meeting in the first place.”

Yes, that would probably be a bad look. Seth sipped from his glass of water one last time before rising from the couch, and Devynn also allowed herself a swallow and then followed suit.

The three of them left the house and headed up the hill. Although the air felt a little cooler than it had the day before, the weather was still pleasant, and while the streets were far emptier than Seth would have liked, the bright foliage on the trees helped to cheer him a little. The ebb and flow in his hometown hadn’t affected those oaks and sycamores and elms at all, and he knew he should take comfort in the way Devynn had told him that Jerome had bounced back some twenty or so years from now, and was positively thriving in her time.

Now all he had to do was make this work so he could see the town’s success for himself.

They paused on the front porch so Helen could knock, signaling to Seth that even the elders weren’t allowed to come and go freely from the prima’s house. But Charles answered the door soon enough, and looked out at them as unsmiling as ever.

“Come inside. We’re all gathered in the back parlor.”

As the three of them followed him to the rear of the house, Seth couldn’t help wondering if they even used most of the other rooms in the place. According to what Helen had told them, probably not.

Which was a shame. A big, beautiful home like this should have had lots of happy people living there. Come to think of it, he still hadn’t met his nephew Arthur, and wondered if this might finally be his opportunity to do so.

No sign of the boy at all as they moved through the house, making Seth wonder if Charles and Abigail’s son had been sent off to play with some of his cousins so there wasn’t any chance of him hanging around and listening to what they said. While Seth had no reason to believe that Arthur would be the same kind of eavesdropper that Jeremiah’s son Jacob had been, that didn’t mean a bored kid still might not want to hang around and listen to what the adults were saying.

Abigail sat in the same armchair that appeared to be her permanent perch, with Josiah and Gilbert standing nearby. Although the room had a sofa and several more chairs placed artfully in the space, the prima didn’t seem inclined to ask anyone to sit.

“Now that we’re all here,” she said, sounding fretful and tired, and somewhat annoyed that Seth and Devynn had asked for this meeting at all, “you can tell us what this is about. You must know that the elders and I have already been working on a plan to free Ruby from the clutches of the Wilcoxes.”

Maybe they were. Still, Seth guessed that whatever they’d come up with wouldn’t be nearly as solid as the scheme he and Devynn had put together.

“Of course you have,” he said politely. “But Devynn and I realized there might be a way to get one of her gifts to work for us.”

“Time travel?” Charles said, his tone bordering on scornful. “It doesn’t seem as if that’s worked out too well for you so far.”

Seth bristled, but Devynn didn’t look too annoyed by his brother’s remark. “No, not that one. I also have a gift that seems to exist only in my father’s clan. It allows me to hide my witch nature from other witches and warlocks, which means I’ll be able to slip into Wilcox territory with no one the wiser.”

The elders exchanged glances, but Seth could tell they didn’t look overly impressed by this piece of information.

“That may well be,” Gilbert said. “But surely you don’t think that you, as a woman alone, can go into Wilcox territory and possibly hope to be successful.”

Devynn’s eyes narrowed slightly, and Seth had a feeling she wasn’t too happy with Gilbert and his condescending views of her ability to succeed without some kind of male help. When she spoke, though, her tone was even enough.

“That wasn’t our plan,” she replied. “Seth will be going with me. When we were in the past, we came across an amulet that helps us boost our abilities, and I know it can help me extend my gift to him so neither of us will be detectable by the Wilcoxes as anything except a couple of regular tourists.”

“What amulet?” Charles asked, his voice and expression now openly suspicious.

Devynn reached into the pocket of the green dress she was wearing and pulled out the amulet they’d taken from “Lorenzo the Magnificent” — aka, Lawrence Pratt from Duluth, Minnesota — and let the lozenge-shaped piece of bronze dangle from her fingers.

The light from the fire caught the garnet embedded in the metal, making it glow like a baleful, bloody eye.

Abigail sucked in a breath. “That thing is an abomination!”

Seth stared back at her, startled by the vehemence in her tone. “What do you mean? It’s worked perfectly for us.”

All right, not perfectly, or they’d be in the twenty-first century exploring local wineries or doing something equally amusing rather than standing here and arguing with his sickly cousin, but still.

Gilbert took a step forward, saying, “The kind of magic used to make that thing has been banned for centuries. In those dark times, a witch or warlock would pour some of their life energy into those amulets to power them, to allow them to grant that power to whoever held the talisman. The practice was banned after a number of magical folk lost their lives because they drew too much life force from themselves, causing them to waste away and die.”

Definitely not a pretty story. He glanced over at Devynn, who looked a little paler than she had a moment earlier but whose chin was still lifted, telling him she had no intention of giving up the one item that might provide them with something of an edge.

“That’s terrible to hear,” she said, her voice calm. “But those past tragedies don’t have anything to do with us. We didn’t ask those people to give up their lives. Here and now, though, the amulet gives us an advantage we desperately need.” She paused there, and her clear, blue-gray eyes took on a glitter that Seth knew signaled trouble for anyone who might try to get in her way. “But Seth and I are happy to step aside if you tell us what your plan is, and how it would work better than the two of us using the amulet to investigate undetected in Wilcox territory.”

The three elders looked at one another, and then at Abigail, who seemed distinctly uncomfortable to be made the center of attention.

She cleared her throat. “Well, you see — ”

“What she’s trying to say,” Charles cut in, “is that we’re only in the beginning stages of our plan. We’d thought that we might reach out to several of the nonmagical folk in Jerome who know what we are and then see if they would be willing to go into Flagstaff and do some reconnoitering for us.”

Seth could only stare at his brother. “You mean you’ve told the civilians that the McAllister clan are all witches and warlocks? That’s insane!”

Abigail made a sputtering noise, but Helen stepped in, saying smoothly, “As the population here dwindled, it became something of a necessity. But these are all people we trust with our very lives, and we know they would never betray us.”

“It’s the same way in my time,” Devynn murmured in Seth’s ear. “Jerome is about fifty-fifty witches and civilians. They carefully vet everyone who comes to Jerome to live, whether buying or renting, so they know they’re people who can be trusted.”

Fine, so maybe that kind of arrangement worked out all right in the future…and maybe it was holding for now, even in the 1940s. But….

“Just because you trust these people doesn’t mean you’re not risking their lives by sending them into Wilcox territory,” Seth said out loud. He was doing his best to keep his tone as calm and even as Devynn’s had been, but he knew the words had come out angry and rough anyway.

“How can they be risking their lives when they’ll appear to be regular people to the Wilcoxes?” Gilbert returned. “The Wilcox clan will have no idea who they are.”

Devynn regarded the elder thoughtfully and then directed her next words to Helen, as though she somehow knew the other woman’s opinion held slightly more weight…if for no other reason than she’d been the one to keep the clan’s prima alive all these years.

“I know you want to believe that,” she said. “And maybe you’re right. But none of us can ignore how the Wilcoxes got past your wards and cruised into town with no one to stop them. For all you know, they’ve come and gone several times to collect information and figure out where the best place would be to grab Ruby. With the magic they supposedly command, I’m sure at least a couple of them are also good at illusions and wouldn’t have looked anything like Wilcoxes.”

An uneasy silence fell after Devynn made that statement. Once again, the elders glanced at one another, and then at Abigail and Charles, as though they weren’t sure whether it might be better to let the prima and her consort weigh in. Many times, a prima’s husband had very little say in the way his wife ran their clan, but in this case, with Abigail so weak and Seth’s older brother one of those people who always thought his way was the right way, it didn’t surprise him too much that Charles’s opinion was given as much weight as those who were actual elders in the clan.

“It’s not anything we probably want to acknowledge,” he said, his tone harsh. “But Miss Rowe has a point. We can’t know if the Wilcoxes have been here before, and therefore we also have no way of knowing whether they would recognize one of our civilian friends if we were to send them on this errand. As much as you might believe the amulet they carry is an abomination, it still gives her and my brother an advantage we shouldn’t ignore.”

Both Josiah and Gilbert frowned, and Helen’s expression turned thoughtful, as though she was inwardly trying to weigh the pros and cons of their separate plans and decide which one of them had the most merit.

Abigail, on the other hand, only looked tired. Maybe she’d used up her very small store of energy with that single outburst.

“We could take the amulet from you, you know,” she said, words that didn’t sound too threatening when uttered in such a limp tone.

However, Devynn only tucked the thing back in her pocket and stared straight back at the prima, her jaw firm.

“You could try,” she said, and shifted so she was closer to Seth and able to loop her arm around his. “But I don’t think you’d be able to get hold of it before Seth blinked the two of us right out of here. You see, it amplifies his powers, too, and now he can easily teleport while holding another person.”

The elders looked at Charles, and he shook his head ever so slightly. No point in speaking aloud, not when it was clear he’d just told them not to bother trying.

Well, it seemed as if his brother had gained just a little wisdom along the way.

Abigail shifted in her chair, and when she spoke, her tone bordered on petulant. “I suppose there’s no way we can stop you from going,” she said. “But when the Wilcoxes catch you, I and the elders will disavow all knowledge of your presence there. If you go to Flagstaff, you will do so under your own free will and using your own resources. We will have nothing to do with you using that abomination to further your own ends.”

That pronouncement seemed a little rich, considering that it would benefit the present-day McAllisters more than anyone if he and Devynn somehow managed to find Ruby and bring her safely home to the Verde Valley.

But he wouldn’t bother to argue, not when it sounded as if the prima had just given them a free pass.

“We understand,” he said, and while he could feel Devynn tense, he knew she wouldn’t interrupt, not when this was really between him and his prima .

Who also happened to be his sister-in-law, although Seth was still having a hard time thinking of Abigail that way. Maybe if he’d been able to meet his nephew and see him interact with his parents, he might have felt differently about the situation, but because he hadn’t seen a single moment pass between his brother and his wife that seemed even slightly affectionate, it felt as if they were still hardly more than acquaintances even after all those years spent together.

Helen spoke then, probably feeling that she needed to interject something resembling rational conversation into their discussion.

“When will you go?”

Seth looked down at Devynn, and her shoulders lifted ever so slightly.

It seemed she wasn’t sure of their next step.

Well, neither was he, but even though her dreams and the information the elders had provided the day before about the power of magic on the dark of the moon indicated that they had some time to work with, he still didn’t see the need to drag his feet on this.

No, they needed to get going as quickly as possible.

“Tomorrow morning,” Seth said. “That’ll give us some time to make our final plans and get ready. Also, since it’s a Sunday, there will probably be a lot of people from out of town up there to see the last of the fall foliage.”

At least he hoped the trees would still be hanging on to a bit of color at that elevation. Most of them had been bare when he and Devynn had been there in November of 1884, but that had been a week later than now, and he knew how fast the leaves would fall when they were getting toward the end of their run.

But Devynn didn’t offer any protest, although he wasn’t sure if that was because she knew from personal experience that there would still be some fall color in her hometown…or because she didn’t dare admit to knowing Flagstaff well when she was standing in front of people who knew nothing about her Wilcox heritage.

“May the Goddess grant you good fortune,” Helen said after a bit of pause. It seemed clear to Seth that she’d been expecting Abigail to offer some sort of blessing and had stepped in when she realized the prima had no intention of being so gracious.

“Thank you,” he said simply. “We’ll let you get back to your Saturday.”

With Devynn’s arm still looped through his, he made his way along the ground floor of the big house. However, he had no intention of walking all the way back to his bungalow.

“Hold on,” he told her, and she nodded at once, obviously understanding what he was about to do.

The blink that took them back to his house was no more than that, a bare split-second which hardly registered. Once they were standing in the middle of the living room — a space he still hadn’t gotten used to, with the angular furniture that had nothing of graceful curves in it and that stupid white paint covering all the warm wood trim — he released his arm from Devynn’s, but only so he could take her hands in his.

“That could have gone better,” he said, and she looked up at him, a lopsided smile tugging at her full lips.

“I suppose so,” she replied. “I have to admit the information they gave us about the amulet wasn’t much fun. I wonder why Jeremiah never mentioned anything to us about the history of those sorts of charms. He must have known something, right?”

Seth had been pondering the same question. However….

“Oh, I’m sure he knew,” he said. “Jeremiah Wilcox probably knew more about magic than everyone else in his generation combined. But I have a feeling he wouldn’t worry too much about where something like that had come from or how it had been made. What mattered to him was whether it worked or not.”

“Well, it definitely works.” She paused there and went up on her tiptoes so she could press her lips against his mouth — not too forcefully, so she could avoid leaving lipstick on him again, but just enough to show him she was there. “And that means we really need to sit down and get this thing figured out so we can get on the road tomorrow morning.”

His body had stirred when she kissed him, but he pushed the urge away as best he could. Time enough for that later.

Right now, they needed to plan.