Page 19 of Stolen Time

Possibly, that impression was wishful thinking and nothing more. If she came from nearby, maybe Sedona or Cottonwood, or even over the mountain in Prescott, then she wouldn’t have to travel very far to get home.

If that was the case, he might still be able to see her again after she was restored to her family.

The uncomfortable thought emerged that she might have come from Flagstaff, in which case she might as well be from Timbuktu. No McAllister ventured anywhere near there, even though the bustling mountain town had plenty of residents who weren’t Wilcoxes.

It just wasn’t safe, not populated as it was by a witch clan that used magic to further their own ends and viewed the McAllisters as their bitter enemies. Theprimuseswho ruled that clan didn’t seem to care whether they slipped over to the dark side…as long as the end result was greater wealth and power.

Through all this, the subject of their conversation had remained silent, as if she was listening to their various arguments and trying to decide whether any of them had merit. She reached for her glass of tea — wine had been banished from dinner tables for six years now — and sipped from it before saying, “I suppose anything is possible.”

Maybe it was. Since she didn’t seem to want to pursue that subject any longer, he thought it best to steer the conversation in another direction, bringing up the possibility he’d heard bandied around a few days earlier that Jerome might be getting a movie theater in the next year or so.

Ruth openly scoffed at that suggestion, saying that the Liberty Theatre on Main Street provided all the entertainment anyone could want, and that it was much better to see a live production rather than flickering images on a screen made by people all the way off in Los Angeles. Timothy countered that it was getting more and more expensive to have real theater and some folks just couldn’t afford to go, whereas they might have been able to manage the 25¢ that a movie cost.

Back and forth they went, while Seth and Deborah exchanged amused glances but mostly stayed out of the fray. He could see why she wanted to remain silent on the subject, as she was a newcomer here and knew very little about the town. And while Seth had of course been born in Jerome, he’d long ago realized it was better not to engage with his aunt unless it was strictly necessary.

Eventually, though, the meal came to its conclusion, and at once he said, “Aunt Ruth, would you mind if I stole Deborah for a few minutes? I thought we might take a short stroll down the block.”

This was something of a gamble, because he had a feeling his aunt would rather have enlisted Deborah’s help in cleaning up. But then she sent him a shrewd glance, almost measuring, and said with a smile, “No, of course I don’t mind. Timothy can help me clear the table. You two enjoy the evening.”

During this exchange, Deborah had looked almost puzzled, but she didn’t make any protests and seemed amenable enough to heading outside — after asking Ruth if she was sure she didn’t need any extra help cleaning up. Of course Ruth told her brisklythat she and Timothy could manage just fine, so a few minutes later, Seth and Deborah made their way down the front steps and onto the sidewalk.

It was a fine night, the air mild and gentle after the heat of the day. Off to the east, a gibbous moon had just begun to rise behind the Mogollon Rim, and a panoply of stars glittered overhead. A soft breeze rustled in the leaves of the oaks and cottonwoods and sycamores, but it wasn’t quite loud enough to drown out the lively notes of a piano played with more enthusiasm than skill in the bar at the Connor Hotel, or the rough laughter of those who didn’t seem to have a problem being so raucous on a Sunday night when they all had to be at work early the next morning.

He knew that most of the bars up and down Main Street served alcohol, even though doing so was enough to get them closed down and slapped with a hefty fine. Jerome was just far enough off the beaten track that most people paid little attention to what might be going on there, and therefore the owners of those establishments tended to operate with an impunity that wouldn’t have been allowed in larger towns like Prescott or Flagstaff or Phoenix.

“How are you settling in?” he asked Deborah, who’d walked alongside him in silence after leaving the house.

She smiled, although he thought something about her expression seemed a little forced. “Oh, very well,” she said. “I can’t say how much I appreciate the way Ruth has given me a place to land. Otherwise, I’m not sure what would have happened.”

You could have stayed with me,he thought, even though he knew that had never been a real possibility. If it had turned out that Ruth was unwilling or unable to give Deborah refuge, Seth knew someone else in the clan would have stepped up. Since hewas the one who had found her, they would have believed the McAllisters had a responsibility to keep her safe.

“We would have worked out something,” he told her. “But I’m glad that Ruth was happy to help.”

Deborah nodded, and for another moment, they walked quietly while he did his best not to stare at how her skin seemed even smoother and milkier in the moonlight, or how she walked with a self-assured grace that made him think of a queen in exile.

Or at least a princess. She wasn’t really old enough to be a queen.

“I wish I could think of how to jog my memory,” she said as they approached the terminus of the street where it dead-ended against a spur of the mountain. “It seems so strange to me that I can recall things like the monsoon, or know that the rug in your aunt’s dining room is Persian, and still not be able to remember anything about myself.”

“Maybe that’s just how amnesia works,” Seth replied. “It sure seemed in the books I’ve read where someone had some kind of memory loss, they could remember a lot about the world, just not their place in it.”

Deborah paused and looked up at him, her full mouth curving in a smile. “Do you read a lot of novels?”

Heat touched his cheeks, and he hoped the moonlight wasn’t strong enough to show the way he’d flushed like a stupid schoolboy called to task by the teacher.

“I used to,” he said. “When I was in school, I always finished my work before anyone else, so I hid books in my desk and tried to sneak reading a page here and there when the teacher wasn’t looking at me. It felt like a good way to escape.”

He stopped there, wondering if he should have told her about his illicit reading habits. After all, it didn’t seem much like a show of strength to admit that he’d been bored with his life in Jerome and wished he could go somewhere else, to aplace where he could raft down the Nile or experience a safari on Africa’s great savannahs, or travel to the dark jungles of Borneo…or even to the center of the Earth, as described in the wonderful novel by Jules Verne.

Anywhere except this dusty mining town in northern Arizona.

Deborah, however, didn’t appear disapproving, but rather thoughtful. “I can see that,” she said. “Reading is the perfect way to allow you to be someone other than yourself, isn’t it?”

She understood. She wasn’t going to trot out the reproofs he’d heard through most of his youth, that reading was a waste of time and that he needed to focus on the here and now, and not the doings of people in far-off places or the distant future. The McAllisters might have been witches and warlocks, but they also tended to be extremely down-to-earth.

“I always thought so,” he said. “Not that I have much time for that sort of thing these days.”

“Because of your work at the mine?” she asked, and he nodded.

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