Chapter 12
It had been almost a week since that night and things had been blessedly quiet. Brody Walker had still not been found, but the Mercy Police Department seemed content to leave Olivia in peace, for now at least. She’d managed to eat properly and get some sleep, and she’d also got some work done.
The full moon had passed two days ago, and so she’d been able to perform a ritual for drawing down the moon. It was a simple spell, but one that cleansed her spirit and filled her with the energy and power of the goddess. Since then, she’d felt good, well rested, and centered once more.
There was just one problem.
Theodore Beckett.
Her thoughts once again drifted back to the man at the hospital and she sighed.
Why did all the good-looking ones have to be so complicated?
And he was good-looking, with that dark hair and those brooding eyes framed by long, sooty lashes.
Damn it, there she went again. Why couldn’t she keep her mind off him for more than ten minutes at a time?
He had to be delusional—people didn’t just go around claiming to be three hundred and fifty something years old And the idea of time travel was ludicrous. There could be no other explanation than that the guy was nuts.
So why, did she feel so unsettled? Why couldn’t she stop thinking about him, and what was the strange feeling deep in the pit of her stomach that she had trouble naming?
She shook her head. There was no point in thinking about him.
There wasn’t anything she could do. Okay, so maybe she’d called Louisa a couple of times to check how he was recovering, and according to her oldest friend, he was fine now.
Sort of. Physically, he’d recovered from his injuries, but they couldn’t substantiate his real identity.
He was not forthcoming with any other information that would help in finding any friends or relatives.
One of the senior doctors had diagnosed him as suffering with a form of amnesia, and they’d summarily transferred him to the Riverside Psychiatric Facility on the outskirts of town to recover.
Maybe she should go and visit him.
“To do what?” she wondered aloud. “Take him a muffin basket and spend a couple of hours discussing the finer points of seventeenth century history?”
“You know, you might consider that he’s telling you the truth.”
The unexpected voice startled her out of her silent reverie so violently that she spilled her coffee, and only narrowly avoided burning her hand.
Her gaze landed on a handsome stranger leaning comfortably on the center island in her kitchen. He was tall with jet black hair that fell almost to his collar and startling blue eyes.
“Who the hell are you and how did you get in my house?” she demanded.
“I’m the guy who pulled Theo through time,” he replied with a cocky grin.
Good lord, the guy had dimples, and her insides flipped as he threw that lethal smile at her. It took almost sixty seconds of staring at him for his words to make it to her brain.
She blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I am the one who pulled Theodore Beckett three hundred years into the future.”
Great, she thought, another good-looking lunatic, this time with a penchant for breaking and entering.
“Okaay.” She edged away from him, all the while reaching for her phone. “I’m just going to call my friend Jake.”
“Don’t bother.” He shrugged. “I’ll be gone long before he gets here. Besides, you and I need to have a conversation and believe me, it’s best done in private.”
He disappeared from his place at the counter, only to reappear seconds later directly in front of her. She stumbled back, her phone falling from her fingers clattering to the floor.
“What the…” she murmured. “That’s not possible.”
“Really, Olivia? With all the things you can do with your power, you think there aren’t other things in this world that defy conventional logic?
We walk apart from this world, you and I.
There is so much more for you to discover.
All I ask is that you listen to what I have to say with an open mind. ”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“A friend,” he replied softly.
“I don’t know you.” She frowned. “How can I trust anything you say?”
“I’m not asking for your trust. All I’m asking for is your attention. Trust will come with time.”
“Fine,” she conceded, still wary but she sank onto a nearby stool regardless.
“Thank you. As I said, Theo is telling you the truth. I pulled him out of time and brought him here.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to need him,” he answered, his tone grave. “These murders are just the beginning.”
“You know about the murders?” Her head tilted as she studied him.
“Yes, and they are just a small piece in a much larger puzzle. Something big is coming, something that will shake the foundations of this world, and you and your family are caught right in the middle of it.”
“What the hell? What’s coming? And how is this guy supposed to help?”
The stranger winced. “I know it’s frustrating, but I can’t give you all the answers. Some things you will have to figure out for yourself. I have limitations, you know. I can’t risk polluting the timeline any more than I already have. Haven’t you heard of the butterfly effect?”
“But you’ve already polluted it by pulling him through time,” she replied wondering who the hell this guy is. “I’d say that’s a pretty big damn butterfly.”
He smiled.
“Stop throwing those dimples at me,” she snapped irritably. “I’m having enough trouble concentrating as it is.”
“Olivia,” his tone gentled. “I pulled Theodore out of a burning barn at the exact moment the beams gave way and it collapsed. As far as history is concerned, Theodore Beckett died in that fire. That timeline is now closed. It’s not perfect, but it’s as close as I could get it.
Theodore Beckett is meant to be here, he’s meant to help you.
Do you remember when he said he dreamed of you? ”
“Do you make a habit of listening in on other people’s conversations?” She scowled.
“Only when it’s important.” He chuckled.
“Theo has been having dreams about you since he was a child. He has been looking through a window into your world for the last thirty years. He just didn’t realize at the time how important those dreams were.
He was taught that anything out of the ordinary was witchcraft. ”
“You’re saying that he has some sort of preternatural gift?” she mused. “Like precognition?”
“Yes, but he has denied it for so long, denied his true nature, that he has no control over it. He doesn’t know it yet, but he needs you as much as you need him.”
“Seriously?” Her tone was deadpan. “I’m supposed to teach him how to switch on his visions?”
“Not exactly.” He hummed. “Theo never lost them, but he may need help to accept them for what they are, and that acceptance will go against years of religious conditioning.”
“Great,” she muttered sourly. “Can I ask you something?”
He gave a nod. “If I can answer, I will.”
“Who is he really?” she asked. “If what you’re telling me is true and if I believe you—and that’s a big if—I found records at the museum indicating that Theodore Beckett might have been a Witchfinder. Is that true? Did he really hunt my kind?”
“Yes,” he hedged. “And no.”
“Well, which is it?” she demanded.
“Both and neither,” he answered with an apologetic shrug. “It’s complicated, but I can tell you that you are in no danger from him. He’d never hurt you.”
“And why should I believe you?” she snapped.
“I don’t know you. You magically appear in my kitchen, tell me you’ve dragged a man through time as casually as you’d comment on the weather, and you just want me to take your word for it that I’m in no danger from him?
Seriously? Call me crazy, but a seventeenth-century Witchfinder and a twenty-first-century witch doesn’t exactly scream match made in heaven. ”
“Don’t take my word for it.” He shrugged.
“Go and talk to him. Give him a chance. You’ll see for yourself who he really is.
Maybe he’ll tell you his story, maybe he won’t, but try and cut the guy some slack.
In his time, they hadn’t even hit the Industrial Revolution yet, and all of a sudden, he’s been dropped in the twenty-first century.
He’ll probably find the adjustment a little rough and he has no one to talk to.
No one who won’t think he’s crazy, at least.”
“I do think he’s crazy.”
“No, you don’t. Just give the guy a chance, and he might surprise you.”
“You’re trying to make me feel guilty,” she grumbled sourly.
“I’m just offering you a solution.”
She shook her head. “I’ve spent years studying the trials and the culture of the New England colonists.
They were religious fanatics, and the Witchfinders were the most vicious of all of them, and you expect him to just adjust to life in the present day.
What the hell is going to happen when he finds out what I am? ”
“He won’t hurt you,” he insisted.
“You can’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”
“Because if it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t have even been born,” he told her.
“What?” She drew back, sucking in a sharp breath.
“Your several times great-grandmother Hester and her twin sister, Bridget, were captured when they were just children. Their mother was killed, and they would have both been tortured and murdered if not for Theo. He risked his life to save them knowing what it would cost him when the others found out what he’d done,” he told her, running his hand through his hair in frustration.
“If you could only see time the way I do, this would be so much easier to explain. Think of time like a river, splitting and forking off into thousands of tiny streams, and each one nothing more than a possibility. I see all possible outcomes. I’ve seen the world in which Hester died and you weren’t born.
” He broke off and dragged in a deep breath.
“Theo didn’t know it at the time, but he saved the world that night. ”