Page 62 of Killing Time

Goddess, this was excruciating. He wished they were in the future, in the world Devynn had described, where they had phones you could carry in your pocket, guaranteeing that you were never out of touch, not really. If she’d had one of those pocket miracles with her now, she could have called him and said yes, she was on the way, but she’d had to stop for gas in Payson and was running behind. He would have still been impatient, wishing she was home, but his brain wouldn’t have been manufacturing terrible scenario after terrible scenario, even as his thoughts did their best to avoid the worst one of all, the scenario that was the most likely.

The one where she hadn’t gotten away at all and had been captured by Jasper Wilcox before she had a chance to get anywhere close to McAllister territory.

Seth put his cup down so roughly that some of the tea slopped onto the coffee table’s surface, but he barely noticed.

Goddess, would his brain ever shut up?

He rose from the couch and went to look out the window. Darkness all up and down the street, except for a porch lighthere and there, and maybe every once in a while, the faintest hint of illumination seeping out from behind thick curtains pulled nearly shut. He couldn’t say for sure whether all those dark houses really were unoccupied or whether their residents just went to bed early.

Maybe it didn’t matter, except he thought if he had plenty of people nearby, he wouldn’t feel quite so much alone. No close family anymore, not with his parents gone, Charles nearly a stranger, and most of his contemporaries now middle-aged versions of themselves, all the interests and experiences they might have once shared in common erased by the decades he’d been gone as if they’d never existed at all.

The only anchor in a world that now seemed adrift was Devynn, and if she was gone, too….

No, he couldn’t think that. He wouldn’t allow such a notion to take hold in his mind for more than a few traitorous seconds.

On the mantel, the clock continued to tick quietly away into the night.

15

LIAR, LIAR

I openedmy eyes and stared up at the ceiling. It was a nice enough ceiling, I supposed, smooth plaster with dark crown molding circumnavigating the room, but it wasn’t a ceiling I recognized, which meant I was in a lot of trouble.

No clear memories of what had happened after Jasper appeared in the mist, a mist I thought he might have conjured to slow me down a bit. Otherwise, even his magic might not have been enough to prevent me from careening right into the big black Cadillac that had been blocking the road.

Another spell, I supposed. With all the various miracles he was able to manage, knocking out a single woman without any useful powers of her own probably wouldn’t have been much work.

My shoes had been removed, but otherwise, I’d been dumped fully clothed in this bed. The pretty dark blue dress I’d been wearing was now a rumpled mess, and my hose had a few new runs and were threatening to slip of out their garters.

Well, I wasn’t here to enter a fashion show.

I pushed back the covers — the bed had a pretty white-on-white quilt and a white wool blanket underneath — and slid myfeet out so I could set them on the floor. A pause to pull off those annoying hose, and then I padded barefoot across the big oriental rug that covered most of the polished oak floor so I could take a look outside.

Before I’d even gotten out of bed, I was pretty sure that I’d been brought to Jasper’s house, and the landscape outside the window only confirmed my suspicions. Yes, there were the formal gardens we’d seen from his dead wife’s music studio, and there was the studio itself, sitting about twenty or thirty yards from the house, the rosebushes that surrounded it neatly trimmed, the whole scene reflecting absolutely nothing of its owner’s true motives.

Whatever those might be, I thought, my stomach knotting with anxiety even as I tried to reassure myself this wasn’t as bad as it looked.

To be honest, I didn’t know what Jasper thought he was going to achieve by taking me captive. His big prize had flown the coop, and I was pretty much worthless as a bargaining chip. No matter what Seth’s views on the matter might have been, I knew there was no way in hell the McAllister elders would ever exchange me for theirprima-in-waiting — and if they managed to somehow learn I was half Wilcox, then they’d definitely wash their hands of me and say I’d only ended up where I belonged.

A peek inside the closet showed that my clothes, which had been packed in my suitcase and then stowed in the Chevy’s trunk, were now hanging up, so at least I’d have something to change into.

And this room had anen suitebathroom, something I guessed was a rarity in the 1940s, and even more so back around the turn of the century when the house had been built.

That seemed to decide things. I had no idea what Jasper had planned for me, but I knew I’d feel better about it if I was able to face him following a hot shower.

But even after I’d showered and gotten dressed and spent a decent chunk of time doing my hair and makeup, since those supplies had been dropped in the bathroom, no one came to fetch me — and no one, especially not the master of the house, had dropped by to bring me some food.

Did Jasper intend to starve me?

I went to the window over and over again, hoping to see some sign of life on the property, but everything was utterly still. If anyone was in the house or the gardens, they were being damn quiet about it.

As an hour passed, and then another, I found myself fretting about Seth more and more. I didn’t have any reason to believe that he and Ruby hadn’t made it safely to Jerome, but there would have come a point when he would have realized I wasn’t going to arrive.

He must be worried sick.

Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be too much I could do about it except hope he’d listen to reason and not try to come here and rescue me all by himself. His teleportation powers were impressive, but I doubted he’d be able to get past any wards Jasper might have placed on this property.

On the other hand, I wasn’t too thrilled by the prospect of being stuck here indefinitely.

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