Page 55 of Killing Time

“Simple enough,” she said after a pause. “Or that is, it’ll be simple if you tell me where Ruby’s being held so I can go there and get a feel for the spells that are currently preventing her from escaping. Once I get the lay of the land, it should be easy enough to lift them. You’ll be standing by, of course, and will spirit her away by whatever means necessary. Jasper may sense that something has gone wrong, but he can’t teleport, which means there’s very little he can do. He might think that holding her in Winslow was a good idea, and yet I’m afraid it might backfire on him in the end.”

Which, one would hope, would make him sit down and reexamine his life choices. To be honest, I didn’t know much of what he’d done with himself after his attempt to kidnap Ruby had failed. He’d lived to be in his sixties, I thought, but he certainly hadn’t tried anything like that again.

With any luck, he’d be similarly chastened after we stole Ruby out from under his nose.

And afterward? Well, I hadn’t been allowing myself to think about that too much, not when we were all focused on freeing her first. Without that happy outcome, matters would become so much worse.

But if we were successful, maybe…just maybe… the universe would decide we’d been kicked around enough and that it was time to send us back where we belonged.

Or at least, where I belonged, and where Seth had told me he wanted to make his life as well.

It was something to hold on to.

“We can only hope,” Adam said, and his tone had grown a little grimmer. I noticed that he’d barely touched his drink, as if he hadn’t wanted to blur any edges until we got all this hammered out.

Lana smiled. “Oh, we’ll do much more than hope.”

Her gaze flickered toward me, then back toward her cousin.

“We’ll win.”

In the end — well, after we’d finally ordered our dinners and knew we’d have some time alone before the waiter returned — we came up with a simple enough plan. Although we still had nearly a week until the dark of the moon, it felt much better to bust Ruby out of there sooner rather than later, especially since we were starting to edge toward the weekend, and that meant La Posada would potentially be much busier than it had been today during our visit.

“I’ll need to wait until I’m off work, though,” Adam told us. “If I try to take a day when it’s obvious I’m not ill or have some other reason for not being there, that will rouse too many suspicions.”

“That’s fine,” Seth said, although I couldn’t miss the flicker of worry in his eyes. With Adam getting off at five, the absolute soonest he could be in Winslow would be sometime after six. Night would be falling.

Maybe that would be better. This did seem like the sort of maneuver that should be carried out under cover of darkness. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure whether I much cared for the idea of having to drive Highway 87 all alone in the dark. It cut through big, gloomy pine forests for mile upon mile, and even though I’d gone that route once, I’d been in junior high school and hadn’t been paying all that much attention…and I certainly hadn’t been the person behind the wheel.

But with Seth continuing to imply that he thought it was too risky for him to carry more than one person, we didn’t have much choice. Neither of us had mentioned anything about the amulet, probably because even though we were risking a lot by putting our trust in Lana and Adam, it felt extra dangerous to tell them we had such a powerful artifact at our disposal. No, Seth made it sound as if he’d always had the ability to carry a “passenger,” so to speak, and we left it there.

What our Wilcox accomplices didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

“It’s more than fine,” Lana said briskly. “Because the three of us will get there a little early so I can familiarize myself with the spells that have been set on yourprima-in-waiting’s room. That way, when Adam shows up and we set our plan in motion, there won’t be anything to keep us from carrying it out right away.”

She sounded so no-nonsense about the whole thing, as though the only possible conclusion could be that we succeeded and everyone went on their merry way.

I sure hoped she was right.

And I knew it was silly of me, but I was really hating the lack of cell phones or any other kind of reliable long-distance communication in case something went wrong. I assumed they must have walkie-talkies or some kind of shortwave radio in the 1940s, but walkie-talkies wouldn’t have the kind of range to reach from Flagstaff to Winslow, some sixty miles away, anda shortwave radio wasn’t the kind of thing you could plug into your car’s cigarette lighter.

Then again, none of my co-conspirators had grown up with cell phones, and they didn’t look too worried about not being able to keep in constant communication. Maybe in the past, people had been more self-reliant because they knew they couldn’t pick up their phone and get immediate help.

“We’ll go separately,” Lana continued. “It wouldn’t do for you to be seen coming to my house to fetch me, and likewise, I shouldn’t go anywhere near the Weatherford.”

“We’re having dinner together now,” I pointed out, and her slender shoulders lifted a fraction.

“In a restaurant without any Wilcoxes,” she replied. “Believe me, if I’d seen a single one of my relatives in here, I would have turned around and left. But I know Adam chose this place because very few people in our clan tend to eat here.”

Seth turned a curious look toward the warlock, who nodded.

“It’s more popular with tourists and other out-of-towners,” he explained. “We have our own places we like to frequent. I thought it would be safest to come here.”

Well, that seemed to settle that particular problem.

Driving separate cars, Lana in hers and Seth and me in his father’s two-tone Chevy, we’d set out for Winslow a little after four. That would give us about an hour to reconnoiter, and by the time Adam arrived, Lana would have sussed out the enchantments on Ruby’s room and come up with the best way to circumvent them. Once we had the door open, Seth would hurry inside, grab her, and teleport the two of them back to Jerome, while Adam and Lana would provide cover for me to get to the car and drive off on Highway 87. After they were assured we’d made a clean getaway, they’d head back to Flagstaff and do their best to act as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“Jasper will be furious, of course,” Lana said, then drank the rest of her Manhattan, looking a little annoyed with herself for not ordering a second one. “But at the same time, he’ll do his best to hide his anger from the rest of the clan, since then he would have to admit he’d been bested by the McAllisters.”

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