Page 18 of Borrowed Time

However, he still inclined his head toward Devynn and said, “You should go first.”

Her mouth curved upward slightly in reply. “Thanks, Seth.”

She went over to the refreshments and prepared a modest amount for herself, just a tea sandwich that looked as though it contained some sort of chicken salad, and a miniature cream puff. It was hard to say whether Jeremiah Wilcox had a cook in addition to the housekeeper, but whoever created the food in his kitchen, they seemed to be very good at what they did.

A theory that was bolstered as soon as Seth took his first bite of his sandwich. The cucumbers were so fresh, they tasted as though they’d been harvested earlier that day, and the cream cheese must have been made right here on the premises.

Devynn seemed to have been thinking the same thing, because she said, “This is delicious. Thank you, Jeremiah.”

No “Mr. Wilcox.” Well, there wasn’t much need to stand on ceremony, not when he was her five or six times removed great-uncle.

“It’s the least I could do,” he replied. “But now that it seems you’ve recovered from your ordeal, I thought we might talk about how it was that you ended up here at all.”

That remark had come right when she was taking a bite of her sandwich, so she had to finish chewing before she could reply.

“I honestly have no idea,” she said, both her tone and her gaze frank. “My talent is really screwy.”

“‘Screwy’?” Jeremiah repeated with a lift of his straight black brows.

She pursed her lips. “Sorry. Sometimes it’s hard for me to know which words became part of popular usage when.”

Was that a twinkle in the older warlock’s night-hued eyes? “I can see how that might be a problem.”

“My gift — if you can even call it that — is supposed to be about manipulating time, just like my mother’s was.” Devynn paused there while Seth studied her expression. She appeared calm enough, but he noted the way the pink of her cheeks had darkened just the slightest bit.

Embarrassment, he guessed. He doubted it would be easy for her to confess her magical lack to a powerful ancestor like Jeremiah Wilcox.

“But I can’t control it,” she went on after taking a small breath, as though to brace herself for the confession she needed to make. “Never could. After a couple of…incidents…my parents and I both decided it was best for me to avoid using it at all. For the past ten years, I’ve pretty much done whatever I could to tamp it down.”

Jeremiah swallowed some of his tea, then said, “And yet it seems it became active during a moment of pure stress, or you would not be here.”

This time, Devynn glanced over at Seth, possibly gauging how much she could say in response to that comment. While he hated to confess that they’d been propelled here after sharing a kiss, he also knew that withholding information might prevent Jeremiah from offering any possible solutions to their predicament.

A very small tilt of his head in her direction, and she answered with an equally subtle nod.

“I think so,” she said. “I’m still trying to figure out what brought all this on. First, I tripped and fell and knocked myself out a few weeks ago, and that was when I landed in 1926 and met Seth. This time, though….”

“This time, you were even more grievously wounded,” Jeremiah replied. He’d kept his attention fixed on Devynn the whole time, but Seth had the feeling that the other man’s mind was churning away at the conundrum, trying to put all the pieces together. “And I suppose your talent for concealing your witch nature is what allowed you to live among the McAllisters for several weeks with no one guessing at your true identity.”

Her blue eyes flared with surprise. “How did you know that?”

“Because some of the magic I’ve felt in you is very similar to what I felt from your father,” Jeremiah said. “And if you were truly living among the McAllisters, it would have been the only way to keep them from knowing who you were.”

A deception that had been necessary, Seth knew, and yet he still hated the way she’d had to lie to him…to everyone. But, alone and afraid, she hadn’t possessed many options.

“Yes,” she said. “Eventually, Seth found out I was a witch, and that was when I told him that I’d come from the future, although I didn’t say anything about being half Wilcox. But thenI realized I couldn’t keep hiding my real identity from him, and I went to tell him the truth.”

That was why she had been so urgent, how she’d gone to the extremity of hiding in the bed of the family pickup truck as he was headed to Prescott to do that damned bootlegging run on his brother’s behalf. She hadn’t wanted a single moment more to pass with such a terrible lie standing between them.

And then Charles had shown up, and Allenby as well, and the whole thing had gone to hell.

“She didn’t have the chance, though,” Seth broke in. “Because the man my brother had illegal dealings with showed up and decided she had seen too much and needed to be taken care of.”

“Ah,” Jeremiah said, clearly comprehending at once. “That’s why she was shot.”

One of Devynn’s hands moved to her waist, as if recalling the pain and horror of that moment, even though Seth guessed that any trace of the wound was now completely gone. “It happened so fast,” she said. “I think Seth was trying to get me to the truck so he could take me down to Jerome and to his cousin, who’s a healer. But there was too much blood, and I — ” She stopped there so she could pull in a breath, and then went on, “I knew there wasn’t enough time. The only thing I knew was that I needed to have him hold me before I was gone, and I…I kissed him. That was when everything went crazy. I mean, I was already half passed out by then, but I felt everything tilt, and there was this sort of swirling darkness before everything went black.”

“And that’s when we appeared here,” Seth added. “By that point, Devynn was unconscious, so I suppose it’s not surprising she doesn’t remember anything after that.”

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