Page 35 of Killing Time

Although they were safe now, Devynn still clung to him for a moment longer, as though needing some reassurance after what they’d seen in Jasper’s cellar. Seth was just fine with continuing to hold her, detecting some faint fragrance in her freshly curled hair that hadn’t been there before. Was it merely a change in shampoo, or had she used something to ensure the sleek curls she’d created earlier that day would hold up against the wind and weather?

Not that he thought it really mattered. What mattered was that they’d gone into the lion’s den and lived to tell the tale — and that they’d been sitting only a few feet away from Jasper Wilcox when he entered the café, and he hadn’t seemed to notice anything unusual about them.

It was an advantage they’d need to use to succeed in rescuing Ruby.

Now they just had to figure out how.

9

CABIN IN THE WOODS

I wishedI could be as cheerful as Seth seemed to be. He wanted to sit down at once and start figuring out possible locations where Ruby was being hidden, while something about the sight of that ritual table and the altar just behind it had chilled me to the bone.

Even though I’d told him about what had happened with Damon and Angela, I wasn’t sure Seth completely understood how truly awful the situation had been. Yes, it had worked out in the end, but only because Connor had turned out to be Angela’s soul mate, and although Damon had been angry and disappointed, he’d clutched some kind of victory from the jaws of defeat, thinking at least Angela would still be bound to the Wilcox clan, even if not exactly in the way he’d planned.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a Connor Wilcox to ride to our rescue this time. No, it was just the two of us, neither of whom possessed the kind of talents that would be much good against a warlock like Jasper.

On the other hand, allowing myself to fall into a doom spiral didn’t seem like a very good use of our resources, either. Like Seth had said, at least we both knew Ruby wasn’t at Jasper’shouse, even though it sure seemed as if he planned to bring her there early on the morning of the twelfth so he could carry out his horrible plan.

If the worst happened…if we weren’t able to stop him…would his scheme even be effective? Could dark magic and sheer force of will make Ruby his consort and break the curse?

I didn’t know. How could I? In my timeline, she’d been saved by a group of other McAllisters who’d answered her call for help, and Jasper had been forced to slink back to Flagstaff with his tail between his legs.

“Are you all right, Devynn?” Seth asked. He’d gone to the window to look down at the street below, possibly to make sure no Wilcoxes had showed up to lurk outside the hotel, but it seemed the coast was clear because he’d turned back toward me, expression now full of concern.

“Sure,” I said, and smiled wanly. “I suppose seeing all that ritual stuff in Jasper’s basement just made me realize this isn’t a game, that he really plans to do whatever he can to make Ruby his consort.”

Seth slipped an arm around my waist and bent to press a soft kiss on my cheek. “I’ll admit it was a little unnerving. But we can do this. Just think of everything we’ve accomplished so far.”

In my eyes, that didn’t seem like so very much. All right, we’d been jumping around in time, which wasn’t the sort of thing even your garden-variety witch or warlock could manage, but still, coming to 1947 had been an utter fluke and definitely not anything I’d planned to do. I’d panicked and gotten us away from 1884, that was all.

Maybe if I’d had more time to keep working with Jeremiah…maybe if he’d been able to guide me toward additional methods that would allow me to keep my time-travel gift more tightly controlled…then I would feel as if I’d actually accomplishedsomething, rather than appear where we weren’t supposed to and screw everything up.

Seth’s clear blue eyes gazed down into mine, worried and warm at the same time, as though he was doing his best to let me know he believed in me and thought far more of my talents than I did. It was possible I was being too hard on myself.

After all, my gift had allowed us to escape detection by Jasper Wilcox, and that was no small thing.

However, it was going to take a lot more than simply flying under the radar to get Ruby out of Jasper Wilcox’s clutches.

“Okay,” I said, and sat down on the foot of the bed. At any other time, I might have done so to send a signal to Seth that I was ready to lose myself in his arms for an hour or two. Right now, though, I knew I was far too worried and keyed up to enjoy myself. “Do you have any ideas?”

Possibly, a flicker of disappointment crossed his face. However, he seemed cheerful enough as he sat down next to me and took my hand in his. Even though he’d been away from the mines for several weeks now, his fingers still had calluses that would probably take months to go away.

If they ever did.

That was all right by me, though. Those rough edges told me he’d worked with his hands, hadn’t been afraid to go out there and earn a living and do the hard things. He wasn’t some sheltered warlock who’d had everything handed to him on a platter.

No wonder I’d been waiting for someone like him to come along.

“I wish I did,” he said in answer to my question. “But I don’t know anything about the Wilcoxes of this era, obviously, other than the few details we’ve picked up since we got here. Maybe you should tell me what you know, and then we can talk it over and see if there’s something we might be able to work with.”

While I’d admit that I probably knew more about my clan than a lot of other Wilcoxes of my generation, it wasn’t as if I’d sat down and written a master’s thesis on them or anything. Most of it was stuff my mother had told me or I’d heard from Marie Begonie and other people who were sort of the old-timers of the family. I certainly hadn’t studied Jasper Wilcox in any great depth, mostly because — other than the kidnapping attempt — there hadn’t been a huge amount to distinguish him from the otherprimusesin the twentieth century. His wife had died young, as they always did, and he had one son, again, as they always did. If you looked at the chronology, then you’d probably see that he hadn’t lived to any great old age, despite having wealth and the best care the clan healers could provide.

No, the Wilcox clan leaders never seemed to want to stick around for very long, as though they knew their sons were just waiting for them to die so another generation could go through the same awful motions.

But I didn’t want to say any of that to Seth, mostly because it all sounded so damn depressing.

“By this point, they’ve been in Flagstaff for a little over seventy years,” I told him. “I honestly don’t know how many of them there are right now, but, based on all those names in the phonebook, I’m guessing it has to be a couple of hundred. Smaller groups of Wilcoxes also lived in Williams and Winslow and had ranches spread out along I-40 — in this time, Route 66, or close enough.”

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