Page 1 of Killing Time

1

NIGHTMARE COME TRUE

Seth McAllister stared at me,his face a study in consternation and confusion. I supposed a good part of that could be attributed to the way our combined powers of teleportation and time travel had rocketed us away from 1884 Flagstaff just a few seconds before the villainous Samuel Wilcox pumped a few bullets into us, but I guessed my companion also wasn’t exactly happy to learn that theprimusof the 1940s, Jasper Wilcox, had just made off with the woman who was supposed to be the McAllister clan’s nextprima.

Voice rough with worry, Seth said, “What do you mean, Jasper Wilcox kidnapped my cousin Ruby? Why would he even do such a thing, Devynn?” His clear blue eyes felt as if they were boring into my face, demanding an answer.

I made myself take a breath. My whole body was shaky, off-balance, but I couldn’t know for sure whether that was because of the enormous jump in time we’d just made…or because I understood the ramifications of Ruby’s kidnapping far more than Seth did.

Probably the latter.

The breath I’d taken didn’t seem to have steadied me as much as I would have liked, but I knew I needed to answer his question.

“Jasper Wilcox got it in his head that the only way to break the Wilcox curse was to bind himself to theprimaof another clan,” I said. “In my timeline, he made an attempt, but Ruby called out to her clan members — just as she did a moment ago — and the McAllisters chased him and his accomplices away. Now, though….”

The words trailed off as I made myself acknowledge the enormity of what had just happened.

And Seth, perceptive as always, finished the sentence for me.

“But this time, everyone was distracted by our return, and they were way up at Abigail and Charles’s house so they couldn’t get to Ruby quickly enough to stop the kidnapping.”

I nodded. “Yes, I think that’s exactly what went wrong.” A pause to gulp in another much-needed breath, and then I said, “It’s all our fault.”

At once, Seth came close and wrapped his arms around me. It felt so good to lean my head against his chest, to listen to the reassuring beat of his heart and know how strong he was, his muscles hardened from years of working at the United Verde mine.

A mine that should be closing in the next couple of years, according to what his older brother Charles had told us only a short time earlier. I’d read a little about the history of the mine, and his story corroborated my own research.

By 1952, the last large-scale opportunity for employment in the little town would be gone, and it would continue its slide for more than a decade before the remaining McAllisters and some dedicated civilians began the slow process of bringing Jerome back to life.

I couldn’t worry about the little town’s future now, though. Far more important was getting Ruby back. Without her here to protect the McAllister clan when it was at its most vulnerable, the family — at least in the form I and everyone else knew — would be gone.

As best I could, I shoved that terrible thought to the back of my brain. The situation was bad enough without me borrowing enough trouble for the next fifty years.

Seth’s cousin Helen came around the curve of the Flatiron building, which sat at the confluence of Main Street and Hull Street, low-heeled pumps pounding the asphalt at a dead run, while the two other elders — who I guessed must be at least several decades older than she — jogged along behind, with Charles keeping pace. Helen was the only one of the three I recognized, since when I’d first landed in 1926, she’d been the one to examine me for any head injuries and make the initial diagnosis of amnesia. Of course, I hadn’t had amnesia at all, had only been doing my best to hide who I was and where I’d come from, but I still remembered her as a powerful witch…and a kind and friendly one as well. It made sense that the McAllisters would have appointed her as one of their elders.

I didn’t know the other two elders at all. In 1926, I’d had no reason to interact with them. Charles, on the other hand, I knew a bit more than I probably would have liked, but considering how it seemed his marriage to Abigail, the clan’s currentprima,hadn’t been a happy one and he’d suffered through quite a lot during our twenty-year absence, I thought I should try to cut him a little slack.

Helen came to a stop a few feet away from Seth and me. Her golden blonde hair was mussed and she was panting from the exertion of running all the way down from Paradise Lane at breakneck speed, but that didn’t stop her from demanding, “What happened?”

By that point, Seth had already released me from our embrace. He shot me a sideways glance, and I nodded.

We couldn’t hide what had happened. No, we had to face it squarely and figure out what in the world we were going to do next.

“Jasper Wilcox and a couple of his goons just kidnapped Ruby,” I said, my tone flat.

Helen stared at me for a moment, her face blank. But then she paled, despite her recent exertion, and said, “How do you know it was Jasper Wilcox?”

“Who else would be bold enough to capture aprima-in-waiting in bold daylight?” I countered, and Seth nodded.

“The man had black hair and drove off in a black car,” he said. “And he was powerful. I could feel it.”

I didn’t know whether that was merely an educated guess or something a bit more. Jasper hadn’t been close enough for me to sense anything about his magic, but every witch and warlock had a slightly different zone where they could detect another magical person’s power. It was possible that Seth had a more refined gift for such things.

Or maybe he’d made it up because he didn’t want Helen — or the elders, or his brother Charles — to figure out how he was so sure the kidnapper was the head of the Wilcox clan.

“To what end, though?” one of the elders asked, a man with a thick shock of white hair and piercing gray eyes.

To my relief, Helen answered, her tone crisp. “I should think that would be obvious, Josiah,” she said. “We all know that aprima-in-waiting in her twenty-first year is especially vulnerable. It’s clear to me that Jasper Wilcox must have decided he would be that much more powerful if he was consort-bonded to Ruby.”

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