Page 47 of Killing Time

When we passed the spot where I normally would have jumped onto I-40, though, it started to feel strange and new to me, and I sat up a little straighter in my seat, looking around in interest. Trees crowded us on either side, and even before we were past Flagstaff’s city limits and heading toward the tiny settlement of Winona, the land felt much wider and less developed than what I was used to.

In some areas, Route 66 almost ran parallel to what would one day be the interstate, but in others, it went far afield, probably avoiding some of the steep inclines that were part of the freeway’s topography. Off in the distance, smoky blue mesas rose from the high desert floor, and hawks wheeled overhead, intent on some kind of prey.

Or roadkill, I supposed.

There had been a gas station in Winona, one that displayed a bright red Texaco sign, but since we’d just filled up, we passed it by. All the same, I had to wonder just what kind of gas mileage a beast like the Stylemaster even got. Probably nothing too great, and I guessed we’d probably have to fill up again before we left Winslow.

I was glad I’d been conservative in my estimate as to how long it would take to reach our destination, because almost an hour and ten minutes had elapsed from the time we left the restaurant to the moment when we drove into the parking lot at La Posada. Once we’d gotten to town, I’d navigated from memory, praying the whole time that the small high desert city’s layout hadn’t changed too drastically in the intervening time.

Apparently, it hadn’t, because we got right where we’d been planning to go without even a single wrong turn.

The hotel looked almost exactly the way I remembered it. Possibly, some of the plantings in the garden were a bit differentfrom how they were laid out in the mid-twenty-first century, but still, I didn’t get that same sensation of dissonance I sometimes had when traveling in the past, of knowing in my mind what it looked like in the current day and having to reconcile that with whatever I saw before me in a particular moment.

About ten cars were parked in the lot, telling me this just wasn’t a big travel day, whether you were in Flagstaff or all the way out here.

“So…what now?” Seth asked, glancing up at the warm stone of the building, constructed in a vaguely hacienda style. “It’s too early for lunch.”

Technically, the hour was almost noon, but since we’d eaten breakfast late, we probably wouldn’t be ready for food for a while yet.

“We can walk over to Main Street,” I suggested. In my time, it was a touristy stretch of road with lots of kitschy diners and shops dedicated to Route 66 memorabilia — “Welcome to the Mother Road” — but I had no idea what it was like in the 1940s. “I’m not sure what’s there, but at least it’ll give us a chance to explore the town a little.”

He seemed agreeable to that suggestion, so we wandered a block over to take a look. The stretch of road was still commercial, but the stores and restaurants seemed to cater more to locals, with a barbecue place and a Mexican restaurant, and shops that sold furniture and art. Sure, there were some “trading post” kind of stores that had Navajo jewelry and rugs and pottery, but it was much less of a tourist trap than I remembered.

Back in 1884, I’d bought myself a pair of pretty turquoise earrings, treasures that had gotten left behind after Seth and I had been forced to flee Jeremiah’s attic when Samuel discovered us there — and shot at us. That bullet had obviously gone awry, because neither of us had suffered any injury, and I sure hadn’theard anyone mention that theprimusof the time had been wounded by his brother.

Too bad Samuel hadn’t missed when he was aiming at my father.

Anyway, I thought it might be fun to buy myself a replacement pair of earrings, especially since I knew wearing Navajo jewelry had been kind of a thing in the 1940s, and I didn’t think anyone would look at me too strangely for abandoning my garnet drops — true antiques now — and going with something a little more modern.

The prices seemed dirt cheap to me, although of course I still wasn’t too great at trying to translate 1940s pricing to what it would have been in my time. However, Seth didn’t seem too put off by the prices, either, and even urged me to get a pendant and a ring as well.

“How much money did Charles give you, anyway?” I asked as the clerk went off to ring up my purchases and put them in a box.

Seth grinned. “Enough. I think even he was feeling kind of guilty about all the years he was earning income from the store and I was just…gone. Anyway, it’s plenty to buy you some jewelry — and for us to keep going out to eat whenever we like.”

Well, that was something. While I certainly didn’t want to stay in Flagstaff forever — and that would be pointless after the dark moon, anyway — it was good to know we weren’t going to run out of funds in the near future. We could continue to look like the well-off tourists we were pretending to be, ones who didn’t appear as though they needed to head back to their jobs and their lives any time soon.

Our wanderings took up the greater part of an hour and a half, and by then, Seth and I thought we could probably eat a late lunch. The flow inside La Posada was slightly different from what I remembered — we entered directly into the reception lobby rather than being shunted off into a gift store before wecould go into the main part of the hotel — but soon enough, we got our bearings and headed off to our left where the restaurant was located.

It wasn’t called the Turquoise Room yet, and the women waiting on the tables wore the black-and-white uniforms donned by “Harvey girls” all up and down the rail lines, but again, it wasn’t so different that I wouldn’t have recognized where I was if I’d been dropped into the place without any context. One of the waitresses seated us and handed over some menus, and we eyed the offerings and decided on sandwiches, nothing too heavy, thanks to our big breakfasts.

The food wasn’t nearly as experimental and farm-to-table as it was in my time, but everything tasted fresh and good, and it was just fun to be someplace far away from Flagstaff and all the various complications involved in staying there. Yes, this was still Wilcox territory, but so far, we hadn’t passed a single Wilcox witch or warlock, telling me that they probably didn’t venture here too much, into a place that catered to those traveling the rails or sightseeing along Route 66.

After lunch, Seth said, “Is it okay to wander around the hotel when we’re not guests?”

“I have no idea,” I replied. “When I come from, the hotel has lots of art installations and historical items on display, so you can go pretty much wherever you want unless it’s obviously blocked off.” Setting my napkin aside, I added, “I suppose we can go take a look, and if someone kicks us out, then we’ll know we went in the wrong place.”

He shook his head, but I still saw the smile that tugged at his mouth.

After all, we’d gotten in plenty of trouble during our journeys into the past. Compared with getting shot at or facing down Wilcox warlock kidnappers, I’d say being chased out of a hotelwas probably pretty low on the list of things we needed to worry about.

We passed people with bellhops hauling their luggage down to the rail station, and maids with carts and little kids hurrying after their parents as they went to their rooms. No one who worked for the hotel seemed to pay us any attention, and I guessed they were probably busy with their own jobs and weren’t going to stop us as long as it didn’t seem as if we were up to any mischief.

But just as we were mounting the stairs to go up to a gallery area on the second floor, Seth stopped stock still next to me, his face going pale.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. He’d had a pastrami on rye for lunch, not the sort of thing I thought would have disagreed with him.

His head had turned to the left, where a low set of steps led up to what I guessed was a grouping of guest rooms off a short corridor.

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