Page 21 of Borrowed Time

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t lumping you in with the rest of them.”

It felt so good to have his fingers wrapped around mine, to reassure myself of how warm and strong and present he was, that I also hesitated for a moment before I found my voice.

“But Iama Wilcox,” I reminded him. “At least, on my mother’s side. And since I was raised among them and never knew any of my father’s family, that’s the only clan identity I really have.”

His grip on my hands tightened for a few seconds, and then he let go. However, he didn’t take a step backward and instead remained where he was, gaze fixed on mine.

“I understand,” he said. “Or at least, I’m trying to. And you’re right — I can already tell that the real Jeremiah Wilcox isn’t much like the evil warlock I heard about in all those McAllister stories.”

Stories that probably involved black magic or boiling babies or God knows what else. Inquiring as to the actual content of those stories didn’t seem like a very good idea, however, so I decided to leave it alone.

I had to ask, though. “So…you’re not still mad at me?”

“No,” Seth replied immediately. “I’m not going to lie and say it’s all fine, though. You had your reasons for what you did, but I still feel deep down that you could have confided in me earlier, once you knew you could trust me.” He stopped there, and his mouth twisted into a lopsided grin. “To be honest, it wasn’t until we were talking with Jeremiah that….”

The words trailed off there, and I tilted my head to get a better look at his face. “It wasn’t until what?”

Now it was Seth’s turn to flush. However, he didn’t glance away or try to avoid meeting my eyes. “I thought I saw him looking at you…you know. And it made me kind of jealous.”

I wanted to chuckle, but I knew that was the last thing I should do, not with him standing there only a foot or so away, his expression both earnest and terribly embarrassed at the same time.

“He was definitelynotlooking at me that way,” I said. “I mean, when my mother came back here, he was attracted to her at first. But he knows he can’t ever be with another woman, not unless he wants her to die a horrible death.”

Seth’s eyes widened. “That’s the curse?”

“You didn’t know about it?”

He reached up to run a hand through his hair, tousling it…and making me wish I’d been the one to touch those heavy, burnished brown waves. “Well, we knew something was wrong with the Wilcoxes, because theprimusesonly ever had one child, always a son, and theprimus’swife never seemed to live very long. But the exact curse?” His shoulders lifted. “Not really.”

“It’s pretty terrible,” I said. “Jeremiah’s wife Nizhoni became very ill with a fever that even Emma couldn’t cure, and Nizhoni died raving that Jeremiah had abandoned her. She cast a curse on him that the Wilcoxprimuseswould only have sons and would have no happiness from their wives. So for almost a hundred and thirty years, that’s exactly what happened. It wasn’t until my mother’s generation that the curse was finally broken, thanks to the McAllisterprimamarrying Connor, the Wilcoxprimus,and the two of them working together to make sure it was ended once and for all.”

Seth blinked. “No wonder the Wilcoxes never seemed too happy with their lot in life, despite their outward prosperity.”

I wasn’t sure how to reply to that comment. True, I’d been born years after the curse was broken, so I’d never known what life was like in the clan before then. However, my grandparents had made stray comments here and there that let me know things had been a whole lot different when Connor Wilcox’s brother Damon was running the show. People generally had been happy in their individual families, but Damon still expected everyone to toe the line…up to and including helping him kidnap Angela McAllister right out of her bedroom on the night of the winter solstice.

In the end, though, that little ploy hadn’t turned out too well for Damon, since his younger brother was the one who was actually Angela’s soul mate.

There probably wasn’t any need to go into all that ancient history with Seth, though. Not for the first time, I wondered uneasily if I’d already told him too much, that the knowledge he now possessed regarding the futures of our two clans was sufficient to throw the timeline entirely out of whack.

Or maybe time wasn’t as malleable as we thought, and in all its interconnectedness and nonlinearity, we were both exactly where we’d always been intended to be.

Not being a theoretical physicist, I couldn’t begin to guess which version of the situation might be correct.

“Oh, they probably did better than you might think,” I said in response to Seth’s comment. “But yeah, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses in the clan, that’s for sure. Anyway, I don’t see any reason to question Jeremiah’s motives in trying to help us out. He’s already experienced what it’s like to have one out-of-time family member wandering around Flagstaff, and that got pretty messy. I’m sure he’d like to send us on our way sooner rather than later.”

My remark earned me an outright grin, as I’d hoped it would. “Yes, I guess I can see how it might be awkward trying to explainus away.” His expression sobered, and he went on, “Do you think his son will mention us to any of the other family members?”

I hadn’t really thought about that angle to the situation. “I’m not sure,” I said slowly. “From what my mother told me, it sounded as if Jacob spends a lot of time with his cousins — which makes sense, since it’s all Wilcoxes next to each other on their side of the street — but I don’t see why he’d have any reason to tell them that his father had some visitors at the house. It’s not the sort of thing that would probably be interesting to a little kid.”

Except even I knew Jacob Wilcox was no ordinary child. Both his parents were extremely powerful witch-folk, and although I’d never heard anything specific about Jacob’s abilities asprimuswhen he took over the clan following his father’s death, I knew my mother had described him as the sort of child who watched everything with careful eyes and pretty much didn’t miss a single detail. It was entirely possible that he might bring up the subject of the unfamiliar couple who’d been visiting his father’s home, if only to see whether word might get back to his aunts and uncles, who then might want to ask Jeremiah a few questions about who he’d been entertaining. After all, it wasn’t as if the Wilcoxes back then had associated with civilians much, unless they were involved in some kind of business deal.

And Jacob wouldn’t have been able to know that Seth and I were witch-folk, since that ability didn’t develop in children until their powers had also begun to appear, and he was way too young for that.

“I’m not sure it really matters,” I added, as much to reassure myself as my companion. “The whole point of pretending to be Eliza’s brother and sister was to explain why a witch and warlock suddenly showed up in Flagstaff, right?”

Seth didn’t appear all that convinced, but at least he didn’t try to argue with me. I could understand why he was feelingunsettled, since I’d experienced that very same reaction several weeks ago when I first landed in 1926. Not that I thought I would ever get used to flitting around in time when I had no idea of where or when I was going, but at least this wasn’t my first rodeo.

My stomach rumbled then, telling me the two tea sandwiches and mini creampuff I’d had at Jeremiah’s house weren’t doing that great a job of keeping it satisfied. Besides, even though my room didn’t have a clock and I hadn’t spied a pocketwatch in any of the belongings my mother had left behind, I could tell by the dusky hues of the day outside the window that it was close enough to dinnertime that we might as well head downstairs.

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