Page 45 of Killing Time

And yes, that was how I thought of the Flagstaff where we currently stood. It might have been my hometown, the streets as familiar to me as the lines on my palm, and yet it wasn’t the same place, not with Jasper Wilcox in charge.

“Also,” Seth said, then paused, as if he didn’t know for sure whether it was a good idea to finish the thought.

“Also what?”

He took my hands in his. “When Adam was talking about Ruby, I caught this glimpse of…something…on his face. I could have been imagining it, but I really got the feeling that he’s a little sweet on theprima-in-waiting. If that’s true, then it makes much more sense why he would want to help us. Not because he thinks he can have her for himself, but because he knows how wrong it is for her to be with Jasper.”

I stared up at Seth, letting this unexpected piece of information sink in for a moment. True, I’d also seen a flicker of some indecipherable emotion in Adam’s expression, but because I didn’t know the man at all, I couldn’t really decide what it might have been.

Why Seth would have been able to see what I hadn’t, I didn’t know, but he was a man and I obviously wasn’t, so I supposed he might be better at picking up certain clues than I would ever be.

“Well, that’s something,” I said, and decided not to tack on,if it’s true.“But yes, even if you try to ignore the whole kidnapping thing and the general ick associated with that — which I’m not sure I can — Jasper has got to be at least twelve or thirteen years older than Ruby. Adam’s older as well, I assume, but it’s still a much smaller gap.”

“At least it gives more of a reason why Adam would be on our side,” Seth said. “And although I hate the idea of just sitting around and doing nothing until he contacts us, he’s right that we should do whatever we can not to attract too much notice.”

I was with Seth on that one — we’d come to Flagstaff for a reason, and playing tourist really hadn’t been in our plans. But since I also didn’t want to do anything that would arouse Jasper’s suspicions…well, anything more than we already had…it was probably better to proceed with caution.

One thing first, though.

“I think the hotel’s fairly safe,” I said. “So you should probably call your brother or Abigail or one of the elders to let them know we’re all right. Nothing too detailed, obviously, in case someone might be listening in, but still, I don’t like the thought of them worrying when we’re both fine.”

So far,I added mentally.

Seth’s brows drew together. “Yes, the operators in Cottonwood used to be very gossipy. I hope things have improved over the past twenty years.”

Operators?I thought. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had this very vague image of women in old-fashioned clothes plugging cords into big boards to connect phone calls, something I might have seen in a black-and-white movie once upon a time, but I supposed my twenty-first-century brain, used as it was to cell phones and instantaneous communication, hadn’t quite put two and two together.

“Right,” I said, trying to look as if I knew what he was talking about. “Just a few vague things. They should get the message.”

“True.” Seth paused there, expression now almost sheepish. “The problem is, I don’t know anyone’s phone number. I didn’t have a phone in 1926, remember?”

Oh, right.

Well, that was one thing the operators should be able to help us with.

“I don’t think it matters too much,” I said. “Just tell the operator that you want to be connected to McAllister Mercantile in Jerome. Your brother should be working right now, shouldn’t he?”

Seth glanced at the watch on his wrist. “It’s only a little past three, and he said the shop was open until four during the week. So he should be there.”

Unless he’d decided it wasn’t worth trying to mind the store while his younger brother was running around in Wilcox territory, doing God knows what.

Then again, I had the feeling that Charles McAllister would still prefer to stand around in that near-empty shop than spend any more time in his wife’s company than he absolutely had to.

“Well, let’s go down to the lobby and give it a try,” I said, doing my best to sound cheerful. “After that — we’ll figure something out. It’s too late to go on an expedition today anyway, so we might as well do more wandering around town until it’s time for dinner.”

Seth looked more resigned than anything else as he listened to my words, telling me he’d come to pretty much the same conclusion. “All right.”

We left the room and took the elevator downstairs. The lobby appeared mostly deserted on that Monday afternoon, which I supposed wasn’t too strange. Anyone who’d come to town for theweekend would have been gone by now, and it was still several weeks too early for people to be visiting family for Thanksgiving.

Luckily, the clerk at the front desk was very helpful and patched the call through for us, giving the handset to Seth once the phone on the other end had begun to ring. He lifted it to his ear, then said, “Charles? It’s Seth. I just wanted to let you know that Deborah and I made it to Flagstaff just fine and that we’re having a good time exploring the town. I think we’re going to try visiting the Grand Canyon either tomorrow or the day after.”

I couldn’t hear what Charles was saying, obviously, but I had to believe he’d taken his cue from Seth and had responded in a similarly innocuous fashion.

“Oh, so far the weather has been good,” Seth went on. “It doesn’t look as if any storms are expected over the next few days, so we’ll have plenty of opportunities for sightseeing. Yes — you, too.”

He hung up then and handed the phone back to the clerk. After we both smiled at the man and thanked him, I followed Seth’s lead and went outside with him, where he began walking toward Wheeler Park, just a block or so away. In my day, one of the neatly painted houses opposite the park housed my cousin Jake’s witch-finding operation, although even he had to admit that the so-called “orphans” he was looking for were pretty few and far between these days.

Probably just as well. Although a lot of those incidents had happened before I was even born, I’d heard that the witches he’d found had brought some trouble with them. Through no fault of their own, usually, but getting involved with the various other clans in the witch world could be problematic, for a variety of reasons.

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