Page 37 of Killing Time

While downtown wasn’t exactly dotted with stores catering to outdoorsy types, Seth and I did find one place up on Beaver Street that sold hiking boots and jeans and flannel shirts. Happily, something called “Lady Levi’s” was among the offerings, so I was able to get a pair that fit my shape a little better. A lot of my friends swore by 501s, but my waist and hips weren’t fans of the more straight-cut jeans.

After purchasing the necessary pieces, we went back to the hotel to change and get ready for our foray into the woods. I had to admit this was the first time after being sent back into the past that I felt almost like myself again, although obviously, these jeans didn’t have any Lycra in them and were a lot looser in fit than I was used to.

Still, they were denim, and the plain flannel shirt I’d bought was warm and comfy and loose-fitting as well. I pulled my careful curls back with one of the scarves I’d been using, tied on the hiking boots, and thought I was about as ready as I’d ever be.

Similarly attired, Seth also seemed a bit more comfortable than he’d been in the jackets and vests and dress pants he’d been sporting since we arrived in Flagstaff, probably because in his old life, he wouldn’t have worn stuff like that unless he was going to a wedding or a funeral. As he was fastening his boots, I sat down with a pen and piece of paper I found in the desk and made a quick sketch of the clearing that had once held my father’s grave…before my mother traveled back in time to ensure he’d never be buried in that isolated spot.

Seth came over just as I was finishing it up and peered over my shoulder.

“Is that where we’re going?”

A few more quick lines to indicate the rocks scattered across the little clearing, and then I handed the paper over to him.

“Yes. It’s about a ten-minute hike to the cabin from there. I doubt anyone will be anywhere around when we make our appearance, and there are a lot of trees all along the path, so we’ll have plenty of cover right up until the last minute.”

“Good.” He stared down at my sketch for a long moment, as though memorizing every single detail.

Was it accurate enough? Had I put in trees that weren’t there in 1947, or excluded ones that might have been cut down in the meantime?

I had no way of knowing, but I guessed I could drive myself plenty crazy if I didn’t let it alone and allow Seth to work his magic.

“Are you ready?” he asked, then folded up the piece of paper and stuck it in his jeans pocket.

Outwardly, I supposed I was. But despite the comfy clothes and the hiking boots and the rest, I couldn’t help fretting that we were making a huge mistake, that we’d materialize right in the middle of a bunch of Wilcox warlocks. If that happened, all the talent-blocking magic in the world wouldn’t convince them that Seth and I weren’t witch-kind.

Borrowing trouble wasn’t helping, so I shoved those nightmarish images to the far back of my mind and got up from the chair where I’d been sitting.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said in reply.

He sent me an encouraging smile and put his arms around me, holding me close. I really wished we could be doing this somewhere romantic, like dancing in a big ballroom out of an old black-and-white movie, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. We’d had a date to go dancing in 1926, but the bootleggers had interfered with those plans.

Oh, well. What I didn’t know about old ballroom dancing moves could fit in the Smithsonian.

A tightening of his arms told me we were about to jump. At once, the hotel room disappeared, and immediately afterward, we stood in the clearing, with cool, pale late autumn sunlight streaming down from overhead.

My fears that I might have gotten some fundamental details wrong about our surroundings seemed to have been completely unfounded. The little open space in the woods looked much the same as it always had, with the sturdy poles of ponderosa pines making up most of the trees and an oak or sycamore or maple — almost all of them now bare — to break things up a bit.

Directly opposite us was the big sycamore at whose base my father’s grave had supposedly once lain. Nothing there now except a few rocks and some fallen leaves, and I allowed myself an inner sigh of relief. Maybe our being here in 1947 — or back in 1884 — might have changed a few minor details here and there, but it seemed as if my father was still safe and sound in the future.

I hoped.

“Where now?” Seth asked after he took a quick look around the glade.

“Down that path,” I said, pointing toward a faint trail that wandered away southward from the clearing. If I hadn’t known where it was supposed to be, I might have overlooked it altogether, since it was much less defined than it had been in my time.

That had to be a good sign, right? If the trail had almost disappeared, its near absence seemed to signal that no one had come this way in a long while.

Since I knew where we were going, I took the lead, although Seth was close on my heels, moving carefully so no snapped twig or carelessly crushed leaf would give away our position. Allaround, the trees were thick enough that I doubted anyone could easily see us, especially since we’d both been careful to choose plaids in muted mixes of green and brown and tan, not the sort of thing that would signal where we were from a mile off.

Every once in a while, I would pause and hold myself absolutely still so I could listen to the sounds of the forest. No, I wasn’t some kind of uber-Girl Scout, but I’d spent enough time in these woods to know what was normal and what wasn’t, and I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, only the calling of birds and a faint rustle of dead leaves on the forest floor that might have been from a rabbit or even a fox.

The path became a little wider, and I signaled Seth to move to one side so we could hug the trees and do our best to hide ourselves, since I knew we were now getting close to the cabin. Tree by tree, we inched nearer until we got to the section where our cover was going to disappear altogether.

Sitting in the middle of the cleared area was the cabin, looking much the same as it always had. By the 1940s, pretty much all the additions appeared to have been completed, and any other changes would be interior and cosmetic in nature. The small lane leading onto the property was now dirt rather than gravel, and the curtains I could just barely see through the windows seemed to be ticking or some other kind of striped fabric, but otherwise, it didn’t look too different from the cabin I remembered.

No signs of life, either — no vehicles parked anywhere around, no smoke emerging from the stone chimney. All right, it wasn’t quite cold enough today for a fire to be strictly necessary, but sometimes we lit them more for atmosphere than anything else.

When you were a witch, it was a lot easier to do that sort of thing.

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