Killing Time (The Witches of Mingus Mountain #3)

11. Standing on a Corner

11

STANDING ON A CORNER

It turned out that all Adam had to do to free us was open the front door and let us step outside.

“Jasper set it up so any Wilcox could bypass the spell,” he explained as the three of us paused in front of the cabin. The wind had picked up a little, not enough to signal the arrival of any early-season snow, but it rattled the dry leaves that still hung on the trees and caught at my hair, loosening a few strands from my quickie ponytail. “That way, if the enchantment did catch someone here, he wouldn’t have to drop everything to come to the cabin and take care of things.”

Oof. If only I’d known it was that easy. Being half Wilcox, I should have been able to just walk right out.

“Useful,” Seth remarked. His expression had been pensive for the last couple of minutes, as if he’d thought of something he wanted to discuss with me once we were alone.

Which was fine. I knew I had a whole hell of a lot of things I wanted to talk to him about.

“I think you’ll be all right if you do your best to act circumspect,” Adam told us. “Act like tourists and don’t show any undue interest in Wilcox-owned businesses or properties.”

“What if you own a restaurant we want to visit?” I asked, more to see how he’d respond than because I thought we’d actually do such a thing. While several of my Wilcox cousins owned restaurants or bars, the majority of my family gravitated toward work where they wouldn’t be so much in the public eye…for obvious reasons.

Adam smiled thinly. “We don’t,” he said flatly. “Jasper doesn’t like us to have that much contact with the public. So you’re free to visit any stores or restaurants or bars that you like. I’d advise a day trip to the Grand Canyon or a similar sort of excursion, just to keep up appearances.”

Seth and I had already discussed doing that very thing, mostly to maintain the illusion that we were an ordinary pair of newlyweds exploring the beauties of northern Arizona and nothing more. But a certain light flickered in his eyes, and I realized the Grand Canyon wasn’t the commonplace to him that it was for me. My family had visited there just about every other year throughout most of my childhood, but for him, the national park had been off-limits, situated as it was in Wilcox territory.

Well, I thought I could indulge him in this. As Adam had pointed out, we needed to do something to pass the time while we were waiting to see if he could discover where Ruby had been taken.

“And maybe Williams and Winslow as well?” Seth suggested.

“Not as much to see in those places,” Adam said with a grin. “But sure, depending on how long it takes me to dig up any useful information.” He paused there, smile fading a little as he looked around and seemed to realize the only vehicle in evidence was his big green Buick. “Did you walk all the way here?”

“No,” Seth replied, now looking much more relaxed than he had a few minutes earlier. “My gift can take care of that.”

“Translocation,” Adam said with a nod. “My great-grandfather could do that, too. It’s a useful gift.”

So our hunch was correct. Samuel Wilcox really had been Adam’s great-grandfather.

Luckily, his descendant was much nicer than the original man had ever been.

“It is,” Seth said. “So, you’ll leave a note at the hotel for us if you find anything?”

“I will. Give me a couple of days.”

He lifted his hand in a half-hearted wave before heading over to his car. Seth and I waited as he started up the engine and began to back down the long driveway leading to the private lane that would take him out to the highway.

Once Adam’s car had disappeared from view, Seth came closer and put his arms around my waist. I leaned my head against his chest, even though I didn’t need to do that for us to travel via his gift.

No, I just wanted to hear his heartbeat, to try to reassure myself that I’d done the right thing and hadn’t just given away any hope of rescuing Ruby by mistakenly confiding in Adam Wilcox.

If Seth had any thoughts on the subject, it seemed he wanted to hang onto them until we were safely back in our hotel room. A blink, and we were standing by the window where we’d left the curtains parted only a few inches, enough to allow some light into the room but definitely not enough for anyone to see what was going on inside.

Well, at least there wasn’t a horde of Wilcoxes standing outside the hotel with torches and pitchforks, so I supposed that was something.

Not that they’d ever do something so obvious.

A brief brush of his lips against my hair, and then Seth let go so he could gaze down at me.

“Did I screw up?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away. His lips pressed together, and after a moment, he shook his head.

“I don’t think so. It’s not as if I have Adam Wilcox’s gift for knowing whether people are speaking the truth, but it didn’t feel as if he was lying to us or setting a trap or anything like that.”

From your lips to God’s ears, I thought. True, that was the impression I’d gotten as well, but part of me couldn’t quite stop itself from wondering if I had believed Adam’s motives were pure because I thought Seth and I desperately needed an ally here in enemy territory.

And yes, that was how I thought of the Flagstaff where we currently stood. It might have been my hometown, the streets as familiar to me as the lines on my palm, and yet it wasn’t the same place, not with Jasper Wilcox in charge.

“Also,” Seth said, then paused, as if he didn’t know for sure whether it was a good idea to finish the thought.

“Also what?”

He took my hands in his. “When Adam was talking about Ruby, I caught this glimpse of…something…on his face. I could have been imagining it, but I really got the feeling that he’s a little sweet on the prima -in-waiting. If that’s true, then it makes much more sense why he would want to help us. Not because he thinks he can have her for himself, but because he knows how wrong it is for her to be with Jasper.”

I stared up at Seth, letting this unexpected piece of information sink in for a moment. True, I’d also seen a flicker of some indecipherable emotion in Adam’s expression, but because I didn’t know the man at all, I couldn’t really decide what it might have been.

Why Seth would have been able to see what I hadn’t, I didn’t know, but he was a man and I obviously wasn’t, so I supposed he might be better at picking up certain clues than I would ever be.

“Well, that’s something,” I said, and decided not to tack on, if it’s true. “But yes, even if you try to ignore the whole kidnapping thing and the general ick associated with that — which I’m not sure I can — Jasper has got to be at least twelve or thirteen years older than Ruby. Adam’s older as well, I assume, but it’s still a much smaller gap.”

“At least it gives more of a reason why Adam would be on our side,” Seth said. “And although I hate the idea of just sitting around and doing nothing until he contacts us, he’s right that we should do whatever we can not to attract too much notice.”

I was with Seth on that one — we’d come to Flagstaff for a reason, and playing tourist really hadn’t been in our plans. But since I also didn’t want to do anything that would arouse Jasper’s suspicions…well, anything more than we already had…it was probably better to proceed with caution.

One thing first, though.

“I think the hotel’s fairly safe,” I said. “So you should probably call your brother or Abigail or one of the elders to let them know we’re all right. Nothing too detailed, obviously, in case someone might be listening in, but still, I don’t like the thought of them worrying when we’re both fine.”

So far, I added mentally.

Seth’s brows drew together. “Yes, the operators in Cottonwood used to be very gossipy. I hope things have improved over the past twenty years.”

Operators? I thought. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had this very vague image of women in old-fashioned clothes plugging cords into big boards to connect phone calls, something I might have seen in a black-and-white movie once upon a time, but I supposed my twenty-first-century brain, used as it was to cell phones and instantaneous communication, hadn’t quite put two and two together.

“Right,” I said, trying to look as if I knew what he was talking about. “Just a few vague things. They should get the message.”

“True.” Seth paused there, expression now almost sheepish. “The problem is, I don’t know anyone’s phone number. I didn’t have a phone in 1926, remember?”

Oh, right.

Well, that was one thing the operators should be able to help us with.

“I don’t think it matters too much,” I said. “Just tell the operator that you want to be connected to McAllister Mercantile in Jerome. Your brother should be working right now, shouldn’t he?”

Seth glanced at the watch on his wrist. “It’s only a little past three, and he said the shop was open until four during the week. So he should be there.”

Unless he’d decided it wasn’t worth trying to mind the store while his younger brother was running around in Wilcox territory, doing God knows what.

Then again, I had the feeling that Charles McAllister would still prefer to stand around in that near-empty shop than spend any more time in his wife’s company than he absolutely had to.

“Well, let’s go down to the lobby and give it a try,” I said, doing my best to sound cheerful. “After that — we’ll figure something out. It’s too late to go on an expedition today anyway, so we might as well do more wandering around town until it’s time for dinner.”

Seth looked more resigned than anything else as he listened to my words, telling me he’d come to pretty much the same conclusion. “All right.”

We left the room and took the elevator downstairs. The lobby appeared mostly deserted on that Monday afternoon, which I supposed wasn’t too strange. Anyone who’d come to town for the weekend would have been gone by now, and it was still several weeks too early for people to be visiting family for Thanksgiving.

Luckily, the clerk at the front desk was very helpful and patched the call through for us, giving the handset to Seth once the phone on the other end had begun to ring. He lifted it to his ear, then said, “Charles? It’s Seth. I just wanted to let you know that Deborah and I made it to Flagstaff just fine and that we’re having a good time exploring the town. I think we’re going to try visiting the Grand Canyon either tomorrow or the day after.”

I couldn’t hear what Charles was saying, obviously, but I had to believe he’d taken his cue from Seth and had responded in a similarly innocuous fashion.

“Oh, so far the weather has been good,” Seth went on. “It doesn’t look as if any storms are expected over the next few days, so we’ll have plenty of opportunities for sightseeing. Yes — you, too.”

He hung up then and handed the phone back to the clerk. After we both smiled at the man and thanked him, I followed Seth’s lead and went outside with him, where he began walking toward Wheeler Park, just a block or so away. In my day, one of the neatly painted houses opposite the park housed my cousin Jake’s witch-finding operation, although even he had to admit that the so-called “orphans” he was looking for were pretty few and far between these days.

Probably just as well. Although a lot of those incidents had happened before I was even born, I’d heard that the witches he’d found had brought some trouble with them. Through no fault of their own, usually, but getting involved with the various other clans in the witch world could be problematic, for a variety of reasons.

Far off, I heard the sound of a school bell ringing and guessed we wouldn’t be alone in the park for too much longer. “What did Charles say?” I asked, and Seth’s mouth twitched a little.

“Not much,” he replied. “It seemed obvious to me that he was also worried about the various operators along the line listening to our conversation, so he only said he was glad we’d gotten here safely and that it sounded as if we were having a good time. He did ask about the weather, probably because he knows the deeper we get into November, the greater the chance that we might have to contend with some storms.”

And wouldn’t that be fun, somehow managing to rescue Ruby and then white-knuckle our way down the switchbacks at Oak Creek Canyon in a snowstorm, driving a car that didn’t have modern traction control and an adjustable suspension and all the thousand and one things the engineers had come up with to ensure driving in bad weather was as safe as possible.

At least it’s not a Conestoga wagon, I told myself. Could be worse.

True. Although I would have preferred to have landed in the twenty-first century, 1947 was still far better than the 1800s.

Except for the part where I’d much rather be dealing with Jeremiah Wilcox than his great-grandson Jasper any day of the week.

“Think good thoughts,” I said brightly. “At least now Charles knows we’re okay, and he can send word to the elders and Abigail.”

Word that I assumed would spread from there to the rest of the McAllister clan. I wouldn’t pretend that they cared much about me individually, but Seth had barely returned before he vanished again, and obviously, everyone would be worried about Ruby. If theirs had been a bigger clan, they might have decided to go up against the Wilcoxes anyway, even if such a venture would be doomed from the start, but there was no way in the world a clan of only a few hundred people could succeed against a witch family that outnumbered them at least four to one.

“Which means we’re free to do what we like for now,” Seth said, and I looped my arm in his.

“Then let’s get a drink,” I replied with a grin. “No Prohibition, remember?”

His blue eyes laughed down into mine. “I’ll definitely drink to that.”

The rest of the afternoon was decidedly relaxed, as if we’d both realized we had to trust Adam Wilcox to ferret out the information we needed, and therefore we couldn’t do much except be the tourists we’d already been pretending to be. We wandered the streets of downtown, visited several galleries and a small art museum, and had an early dinner in one of the restaurants there, a place that appeared extremely unpretentious from the outside but served local game meats and had a marvelous wine list.

And afterward we went to our room and fell into one another’s arms, seeking the connection we knew we both needed to reassure ourselves that we were safe and everything was going as well as it could, given the circumstances. Just like the first time we made love, we fell asleep snuggled together, glad that at least we had this sanctuary…and one another.

The next morning, though, we ran into a little hiccup when we talked to the front desk clerk about driving up to the Grand Canyon.

“Oh, the roads are already closed to tourist traffic for the season,” he informed us. “Now the only way to go in is with a guide, and our people here are already booked for today and tomorrow. I could put you down for something on Thursday if you like.”

I wasn’t terribly thrilled by that idea, mostly because I knew I’d been hoping we’d get all this wrapped up before then and be safely back in Jerome. However, there was no real way to know when — or if — Adam would find a clue that would lead us to Ruby, and that meant in the meantime, we needed to keep acting like tourists.

“That would be fine,” Seth said, stepping in while I was hesitating. “What time does the guide leave?”

“Nine-thirty on weekdays, ten on Saturdays,” the clerk replied as he picked up his pen, pulled a ledger notebook toward him, and made a small notation. “I have you and Mrs. Richards down for nine-thirty on Thursday. It’s best to be in the lobby about ten minutes early, though, just so everyone has time to gather.”

More and more, this was sounding like a shore excursion on a cruise, where you had to stay with your guide and couldn’t do as much exploring on your own as you would have liked. Or rather, it lined up with some of the things I’d read about cruises, since obviously, I’d never been on a cruise in my life, land-bound within the territories shared by the Arizona clans as I was.

But I smiled and told the clerk that was fine, and with our business handled, Seth and I headed outside. The clouds that had hovered over Flagstaff the day before had disappeared, and the sky was the same sharp, sapphire blue it often tended to be in the autumn before the real storms of winter began to close in.

“Now what?” I asked.

Seth didn’t appear too worried. “We’ll explore somewhere else. We have a car, after all…and we talked about visiting either Winslow or Williams. Which one sounds better to you?”

We’d visited Williams back in 1884, so I didn’t see as much point in going there. True, it had probably changed a good deal over the decades we’d jumped, but still, Winslow seemed like a better idea.

Besides, we could visit the La Posada Hotel. It was a gorgeous historic compound that had been built as one of the “Harvey” hotels in the early twentieth century, and my family had driven out there numerous times for lunch, just for a change of scenery. In my time, it had been beautifully restored, and I figured this would be a perfect chance to visit it in its heyday, when it was still serving the passengers who rode the Santa Fe rail line or traveled along Route 66.

I suggested this to Seth, and he brightened up right away. “Yes, that would work. How long a drive do you think it is?”

Honestly, I had no real idea. When we could zip along at seventy-five miles an hour, the trip used to take my family a little more than thirty minutes. Now, driving on what I assumed was a much slower Route 66, we’d probably better budget more time.

“Maybe an hour?” I said, ending my reply with an upward inflection so Seth would know I wasn’t entirely sure. “Since we don’t have any kind of real schedule, I don’t think it matters too much.”

“Probably not,” he agreed. “All the same, I’ll make sure we gas up before we leave Flagstaff. I don’t want to get stranded in the middle of nowhere.”

A very real concern. Yes, there were small settlements between Flagstaff and Winslow, but I had no idea whether they even existed in 1947, and if they did, whether they had gas stations. There certainly wouldn’t be anything like the big rest stops of my time, which once dispensed fuel but now were filled with bank after bank of rapid-charge stations so people could pull in, top up their vehicles, and be on their way.

Because we figured it would be simpler, we had breakfast at the same place where we’d eaten before, then strolled back to the hotel, climbed into the big blue Chevy, and got on Route 66 heading east. Some of the first parts of the trip didn’t feel too different to me, even if the buildings that lined the roadway might not be the same, since I’d driven this route plenty of times before.

When we passed the spot where I normally would have jumped onto I-40, though, it started to feel strange and new to me, and I sat up a little straighter in my seat, looking around in interest. Trees crowded us on either side, and even before we were past Flagstaff’s city limits and heading toward the tiny settlement of Winona, the land felt much wider and less developed than what I was used to.

In some areas, Route 66 almost ran parallel to what would one day be the interstate, but in others, it went far afield, probably avoiding some of the steep inclines that were part of the freeway’s topography. Off in the distance, smoky blue mesas rose from the high desert floor, and hawks wheeled overhead, intent on some kind of prey.

Or roadkill, I supposed.

There had been a gas station in Winona, one that displayed a bright red Texaco sign, but since we’d just filled up, we passed it by. All the same, I had to wonder just what kind of gas mileage a beast like the Stylemaster even got. Probably nothing too great, and I guessed we’d probably have to fill up again before we left Winslow.

I was glad I’d been conservative in my estimate as to how long it would take to reach our destination, because almost an hour and ten minutes had elapsed from the time we left the restaurant to the moment when we drove into the parking lot at La Posada. Once we’d gotten to town, I’d navigated from memory, praying the whole time that the small high desert city’s layout hadn’t changed too drastically in the intervening time.

Apparently, it hadn’t, because we got right where we’d been planning to go without even a single wrong turn.

The hotel looked almost exactly the way I remembered it. Possibly, some of the plantings in the garden were a bit different from how they were laid out in the mid-twenty-first century, but still, I didn’t get that same sensation of dissonance I sometimes had when traveling in the past, of knowing in my mind what it looked like in the current day and having to reconcile that with whatever I saw before me in a particular moment.

About ten cars were parked in the lot, telling me this just wasn’t a big travel day, whether you were in Flagstaff or all the way out here.

“So…what now?” Seth asked, glancing up at the warm stone of the building, constructed in a vaguely hacienda style. “It’s too early for lunch.”

Technically, the hour was almost noon, but since we’d eaten breakfast late, we probably wouldn’t be ready for food for a while yet.

“We can walk over to Main Street,” I suggested. In my time, it was a touristy stretch of road with lots of kitschy diners and shops dedicated to Route 66 memorabilia — “Welcome to the Mother Road” — but I had no idea what it was like in the 1940s. “I’m not sure what’s there, but at least it’ll give us a chance to explore the town a little.”

He seemed agreeable to that suggestion, so we wandered a block over to take a look. The stretch of road was still commercial, but the stores and restaurants seemed to cater more to locals, with a barbecue place and a Mexican restaurant, and shops that sold furniture and art. Sure, there were some “trading post” kind of stores that had Navajo jewelry and rugs and pottery, but it was much less of a tourist trap than I remembered.

Back in 1884, I’d bought myself a pair of pretty turquoise earrings, treasures that had gotten left behind after Seth and I had been forced to flee Jeremiah’s attic when Samuel discovered us there — and shot at us. That bullet had obviously gone awry, because neither of us had suffered any injury, and I sure hadn’t heard anyone mention that the primus of the time had been wounded by his brother.

Too bad Samuel hadn’t missed when he was aiming at my father.

Anyway, I thought it might be fun to buy myself a replacement pair of earrings, especially since I knew wearing Navajo jewelry had been kind of a thing in the 1940s, and I didn’t think anyone would look at me too strangely for abandoning my garnet drops — true antiques now — and going with something a little more modern.

The prices seemed dirt cheap to me, although of course I still wasn’t too great at trying to translate 1940s pricing to what it would have been in my time. However, Seth didn’t seem too put off by the prices, either, and even urged me to get a pendant and a ring as well.

“How much money did Charles give you, anyway?” I asked as the clerk went off to ring up my purchases and put them in a box.

Seth grinned. “Enough. I think even he was feeling kind of guilty about all the years he was earning income from the store and I was just…gone. Anyway, it’s plenty to buy you some jewelry — and for us to keep going out to eat whenever we like.”

Well, that was something. While I certainly didn’t want to stay in Flagstaff forever — and that would be pointless after the dark moon, anyway — it was good to know we weren’t going to run out of funds in the near future. We could continue to look like the well-off tourists we were pretending to be, ones who didn’t appear as though they needed to head back to their jobs and their lives any time soon.

Our wanderings took up the greater part of an hour and a half, and by then, Seth and I thought we could probably eat a late lunch. The flow inside La Posada was slightly different from what I remembered — we entered directly into the reception lobby rather than being shunted off into a gift store before we could go into the main part of the hotel — but soon enough, we got our bearings and headed off to our left where the restaurant was located.

It wasn’t called the Turquoise Room yet, and the women waiting on the tables wore the black-and-white uniforms donned by “Harvey girls” all up and down the rail lines, but again, it wasn’t so different that I wouldn’t have recognized where I was if I’d been dropped into the place without any context. One of the waitresses seated us and handed over some menus, and we eyed the offerings and decided on sandwiches, nothing too heavy, thanks to our big breakfasts.

The food wasn’t nearly as experimental and farm-to-table as it was in my time, but everything tasted fresh and good, and it was just fun to be someplace far away from Flagstaff and all the various complications involved in staying there. Yes, this was still Wilcox territory, but so far, we hadn’t passed a single Wilcox witch or warlock, telling me that they probably didn’t venture here too much, into a place that catered to those traveling the rails or sightseeing along Route 66.

After lunch, Seth said, “Is it okay to wander around the hotel when we’re not guests?”

“I have no idea,” I replied. “When I come from, the hotel has lots of art installations and historical items on display, so you can go pretty much wherever you want unless it’s obviously blocked off.” Setting my napkin aside, I added, “I suppose we can go take a look, and if someone kicks us out, then we’ll know we went in the wrong place.”

He shook his head, but I still saw the smile that tugged at his mouth.

After all, we’d gotten in plenty of trouble during our journeys into the past. Compared with getting shot at or facing down Wilcox warlock kidnappers, I’d say being chased out of a hotel was probably pretty low on the list of things we needed to worry about.

We passed people with bellhops hauling their luggage down to the rail station, and maids with carts and little kids hurrying after their parents as they went to their rooms. No one who worked for the hotel seemed to pay us any attention, and I guessed they were probably busy with their own jobs and weren’t going to stop us as long as it didn’t seem as if we were up to any mischief.

But just as we were mounting the stairs to go up to a gallery area on the second floor, Seth stopped stock still next to me, his face going pale.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. He’d had a pastrami on rye for lunch, not the sort of thing I thought would have disagreed with him.

His head had turned to the left, where a low set of steps led up to what I guessed was a grouping of guest rooms off a short corridor.

“It’s Ruby,” he breathed.

“She’s here.”