Page 5 of Stolen Time

Helen’s home was much larger than the bungalow Seth had purchased a few months back, a handsome white four-square house with green shutters and a flourishing oak tree in the front yard. Her husband Calum had come to America only a decade earlier and arrived in Jerome the way so many others had, seeking to make his fortune in the copper mines. He’d done very well for himself, and although Seth had heard that anti-Irish sentiment ran high in other parts of the country, the McAllisters were always happy to welcome nonmagical spouses here and there, as it kept their clan from getting inbred.

Calum was the one who answered the door in response to Seth’s knock, and a certain resignation entered his bright blue eyes as he saw who stood on his front porch.

“An accident at the mine?” he asked. His brogue had softened during his years here in Arizona, but it was still clear to anyone who heard him that he’d been born a long way away from Jerome or the Verde Valley.

“No, nothing like that,” Seth replied. “It’s very strange — I went into the exploratory shaft we opened up last week, and I found a woman lying on the ground inside. She appears to have fainted. I have her resting on the couch at my house, but I need Helen to take a look at her and see if she can find out what’s wrong.”

“Just a moment, then,” Calum said. “Come wait inside — I’ll fetch her.”

Seth did as requested and entered the foyer, which was decorated with a matching pair of small tables with marble tops, tables he knew his cousin Helen had had shipped here all the way from San Francisco. On top of each table was a lush Boston fern. The clan healer took great pride in her houseplants, and tended them nearly as fiercely as she did her three children.

As if his thoughts had summoned her, Helen appeared a minute later. Like many of his fellow McAllisters, she had sandy blonde hair and blue eyes, and had often been referred to as the beauty of the family, with her porcelain-doll features. However, Seth knew those delicate looks hid a woman of great intensity and drive.

“You found someone in the mines?” she asked as she reached for a cardigan that hung from the coat rack in the corner of the foyer. Seth didn’t think the warm June evening merited such a covering, but perhaps she didn’t want to go outside in just her housedress.

“Yes, a woman,” he said. “I’ve never seen her before, so I have no idea who she is.”

Because he knew if he’d seen the woman’s face in the past, he would never have forgotten it.

Helen only said, “Hmm,” and waited for him to open the door so they could head outside. Their street was located a block below the main thoroughfare, but even that distance — and the numerous trees that had been planted to both stabilize the ground and muffle sound — couldn’t quite hide the noise emanating from all the bars on Main Street.

His cousin looked disapproving, but she didn’t say anything as she followed Seth up the steep incline to his bungalow. He hadn’t thought to turn on a light — their little side street had been electrified only the year before — so the house was quite dark as they approached.

What if the strange woman had awoken while he was gone, panicked to find herself in an unfamiliar place, and had fled?

She can’t have gotten very far,he reassured himself.If she’s not there, we’ll have all the McAllisters out looking for her.

But when he and Helen entered the living room and he hurriedly crossed the space to turn on the single electric light on its side table, he saw at once that the strange woman still lay on the sofa. From what he could tell, it didn’t look as though she’d moved at all.

Helen’s finely arched brows drew together, and she went over to the woman and laid a gentle hand on her forehead. Because Seth had seen his cousin do the same thing with many other patients before this, he knew this was her way of reaching out with her gift into a person’s body to sense what was wrong with them and how she might heal whatever ailment they might be suffering.

Now, though, her frown only deepened, as if she wasn’t quite sure of what she had found. A moment passed, one that seemed interminably long, although that might have only been because of the heavy ticking of the clock on the mantel.

At last she said, “It is very strange. I can’t detect anything truly wrong with her, and yet it’s clear she’s in a deep faint of some kind. I think all we can do is wait for her to wake up.”

That was not what Seth had wanted to hear…especially since he couldn’t recall a time when Helen hadn’t been able to immediately pinpoint what was wrong with a person and take steps to correct it.

“There’s nothing you can do?”

His cousin lifted her hand from the strange woman’s forehead and gave him a very direct look. “I could try to force her awake, but I fear that might do more harm than good. It seems better to me that you allow her to regain consciousness naturally. This faint doesn’t seem to have any physical cause — there is no bruising, no swelling, nothing to tell me she suffered a blow to the head or anything like that — so there isn’t anything for me to heal.” Helen paused there, forehead puckering again. “It seems to me that she’s suffered some sort of terrible shock, although I can’t begin to explain what it might have been. Patience is the best remedy here.”

As his father had lectured him on more than one occasion, patience was a virtue Seth often struggled with. “So…we’re just supposed to leave her lying on my sofa?”

Now Helen smiled, although he hoped it wasn’t because she was amused by his predicament. “For now. When she wakes, we can decide what to do next. I’m sure she must have people who are concerned about her. She can tell us where she comes from, and we can figure out from there how to get her home.” A shake of the head, followed by, “Jerome is not the sort of place where a pretty young woman should be wandering around by herself.”

No, it wasn’t. Or rather, while most everyone associated with the various mining camps knew to leave the McAllister women alone — and if they were a newcomer unfamiliar with the town’s unspoken rules, they found out soon enough — those sameprotections wouldn’t be afforded to a civilian woman, someone unconnected to the clan.

For he knew the stranger he’d found wasn’t a witch. She definitely wasn’t a McAllister, and although he’d had little reason to connect with a witch or warlock outside their clan, isolated as they were here, he still knew that he and everyone else who’d come from a witch family would experience some sort of telltale when they encountered a magical stranger, whether it was a tingle at the back of their neck or a ringing in their ears or even a small flash of light.

He hadn’t felt anything like that when he found the stranger or when he picked her up, which meant she must be a civilian.

“In the meantime,” Helen went on briskly, “you should go see your parents and see if they can get you some clothes from the mercantile so she can put on proper garments when she wakes up. I have no idea who she is or where she came from, but it’s very odd that she allowed herself to be seen in public like that.”

A point Seth had to agree with. Yes, there was some part of him — one he didn’t quite wish to acknowledge — that enjoyed seeing her long, slim legs in the close-fitting trousers and the smooth curve of her bare arms in that lightweight blouse, but he knew it was not the sort of outfit that should be seen in public, especially in a town full of unmarried men who still had physical needs that required attention.

“I’m not sure I should leave her alone again,” he said, knowing how dubious he sounded. “What if she wakes up while I’m away?”

Helen made a waving motion with one hand, dismissing his worries. “I’ll stay here with her,” she replied. “It’s not as if my dinner hasn’t already been interrupted, so a few more minutes won’t be any problem.”

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