Page 25 of Borrowed Time

7

GIFTED INDIVIDUALS

Eventually,of course, Devynn had returned to her own room, and Seth had done his best to go to sleep.

Good thing his curtains had been tightly drawn. It wouldn’t have helped their story much to have a passerby on the street look up and see one of the town’s new arrivals passionately embracing his “sister.”

But it had taken a good long while after he’d lain down in bed to get his racing thoughts to slow, for his body to realize that those kisses were all it was going to get.

For now, anyway. He would never do anything to compromise Devynn’s honor…but it would be a lot easier to be pure of thought if biology didn’t keep getting in the way.

But they hadn’t traveled. They’d kissed the first time, and then again and again, and the hotel room had remained steady around them. On the surface, that was a good thing, as at least it meant he could take Devynn in his arms — when they were alone and unobserved, of course — and not have to worry about her unpredictable gift sending them to a time it might be even more difficult to come back from. Here, they had Jeremiah Wilcoxpromising to help. In other times and places, they might not have any assistance at all.

And when Seth woke up the next morning, it was to find a note slipped under his door.

Please come to the house at twelve-thirty,it said.We will have a light lunch, and then do what we can to determine a way to send you where you need to go.

No signature, but the heavy black hand seemed exactly like the sort of writing Jeremiah Wilcox would have. Seth guessed that the note had been purposely oblique because the Wilcox warlock hadn’t wanted to write anything incriminating in case someone else might peek at the contents of the note.

He had to admit he was somewhat relieved by the prospect of eating at Jeremiah’s house. At least there, he and Devynn wouldn’t have to worry about Samuel approaching them in a public place.

If he even intended to do so again. He’d delivered his warning — because Seth couldn’t construe those words about “wrapping things up quickly” as anything other than an admonishment to get out of town as fast as possible — and probably wouldn’t want to stir up any trouble with his brother over his interference, not when he most likely knew that Jeremiah was trying to help them to the best of his ability.

The shared bath was a necessary evil, but he got ready as fast as he could, figuring Devynn would knock if she needed his assistance again with getting her corset laced.

However, the time ticked by, and right as he was about to head over to her room to see how she was faring, someone knocked at his door.

He hurried over to answer it and was surprised to see her standing outside, fully dressed, this time in a handsome wine-colored gown that made him think of the claret they’d drunk at dinner the evening before.

“Good morning, brother,” she said, her tone arch, and he opened the door a little wider so he could let her inside.

Once he’d closed it again and he knew no one could overhear them, he asked, “How in the world were you able to get dressed on your own?”

Now Devynn’s expression was positively triumphant. “I pulled off the laces on my corset and fiddled with them until I figured out how to re-lace it the way my mother had talked about, with those loops in the middle so I could tighten it myself. And once I got that taken care of, the rest of it was easy. Buttons up the front of all her dresses, remember?”

And Devynn pointed at the row of glittering jet buttons that closed the front of her bodice.

“Very resourceful,” he observed.

She grinned. “I got a note from Jeremiah,” she said as she fished an identical piece of paper to the one he’d received out of her reticule. “Lunch at twelve-thirty.”

“Which isn’t so far off,” Seth replied. “Do you want to skip breakfast?”

At once, Devynn shook her head. “No, I need some caffeine to get me going. But maybe I’ll just have toast or something light instead of going big like I did yesterday.”

In fact, that was exactly what they did — had coffee and tea, and some toast and preserves to go along with it. It was just enough to get the day started but not so much that he thought it would interfere with their meeting with Jeremiah in a few hours.

A meeting, Seth was forced to admit, that made him feel just the slightest bit anxious. Not because he was worried that the older man had any designs on Devynn — she’d put that particular fear to bed the day before — but because he wasn’t quite sure what Jeremiah intended in terms of helping them with their magic. The magic of witch-kind in the real world wasn’t like magic he’d read about in books — whichwas something almost always performed by means of spells or potions or other enchantments — but rather gifts that had been born within them.

How in the world could they train something that seemed so inherently untrainable?

But Jeremiah knew far more about magic than he or Devynn did, so Seth supposed he should withhold judgment until he had a better idea of exactly what the Wilcoxprimushad in mind.

The weather that day was cooler, with clouds obscuring more than half the sky. Seth sent a wary eye upward as he and Devynn left the Hotel San Francisco before looking over at her.

Correctly interpreting that glance, she said, “It doesn’t feel like snow. Or at least, the mountains might get some flurries, but I don’t think we need to worry about the weather down here.”

She didn’t add, “yet,” but he knew the approach of winter was on both their minds. Jerome sat about a thousand feet higher than Clarkdale or Cottonwood, so it snowed there more often than it did on the valley floor. However, the weather he’d experienced in his hometown was still far milder than winters in Flagstaff, which had a much higher elevation.

---