18. Witchy Woman

18

WITCHY WOMAN

Seth had imagined their first kiss in so many ways. Maybe it would have been stolen as they walked along a secluded street in Jerome, or possibly he would have leaned over to touch his lips to hers as they got into his car after an evening of dancing or laughing. Perhaps that first embrace would have happened in the very spot where they now stood, with the dark pine forest crowding them on all sides.

What he never, ever could have imagined was the unmistakable tingle he got at the back of his neck whenever he met a strange witch or warlock — to be fair, always an unknown cousin from Payson or Wickenburg, since no other magical folk would have any reason to set foot in Jerome — only this time amplified a thousand-fold, so strong that it almost felt as though he’d stuck his finger in a light socket.

He staggered backward, reeling. “You’re a witch!”

Deborah was absolutely white-faced, although she stood her ground as she stared back at him, her expression equally shocked. “I — ”

“Don’t try to deny it,” he said, knowing he needed to cut in before she could offer any excuses. There was nothing she could say to justify the way she’d misled him — and the rest of the McAllister clan — for the past two weeks. “I felt my telltale. There’s no way you could be anything other than a witch.”

She swallowed. The cloche hat she’d been wearing looked as if it had been knocked askew, and she impatiently pulled it off, revealing a mess of tangled waves that might have been endearing if he hadn’t been so angry with her.

How in the world could she have concealed such a thing from him? It was well known that everyone in the witch world had some kind of tell that would signal they were in the presence of an unknown witch or warlock, whether it was a ringing in the ears or a tingle at the back of their neck, or sometimes a quick flash of light or an odd blurriness in their vision. Not once had anyone ever told him it might be possible for a witch or warlock to hide their true nature.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, knowing even as he asked the question how angry, how rough he sounded.

Deborah didn’t flinch, though. No, she continued to stand there and stare back at him, and then her chin went up and her lips pressed together, as if she knew she couldn’t avoid answering the question but still didn’t much look forward to it.

“You’re not going to believe me,” she said.

He wanted to respond that no, he probably wouldn’t, not when she’d been misleading him and everyone else for the past two weeks. But he also realized saying such a thing to her wouldn’t exactly invite her to share the truth.

“Tell me anyway,” he said.

Her chest rose and fell as she released a breath. “My name isn’t Deborah,” she told him. “It’s Devynn.”

Bewildered, he could only stare back at her. “I’ve never heard a name like that before.”

“No, you wouldn’t have.” Another of those long, heavy pauses. “And that’s because I’m from the future.”

His first impulse was to laugh, to tell her of all the lies she could have come up with, that one was surely the most ridiculous.

But then he noted that even though she looked much paler than she had a few minutes earlier, she didn’t try to look away…and didn’t try to instantly defend herself the way a woman who was trying to convince someone else that her lie was true might have.

No, she only stood there and waited to see what he intended to say.

“Is that your gift?” he asked. “Time travel?”

“Sort of,” she replied. “That is, it allows me to move in time, but I can’t control it at all. I don’t have any idea why I ended up in 1926 when I fell and hit my head in the mine shaft.”

“That’s what happened?” In a way, it felt better to seize on the mechanics of how she’d gotten here rather than dwell on exactly where she’d come from.

A small nod. “I was knocked unconscious, so I don’t know why my supposed gift decided to kick in right then. I just know what when I woke up the next day, I realized I was in 1926.”

And then she’d decided to present herself as someone with amnesia as a way of hiding her ignorance of the current year from those around her.

Now some of those small bobbles and inconsistencies began to make a great deal more sense. While he couldn’t quite prevent himself from being angry with her for the way she’d hidden the truth from him, he also couldn’t pretend to guess how he might have felt if he’d ended up decades or more from where he’d started, all without any way of knowing how he’d ever get home.

“But…you were here in Jerome when it happened,” he said, and Deborah — Devynn, he reminded himself — nodded at once.

“My gift only allows me to travel in time, not space.”

“Is Rowe your real last name?”

“Yes,” she said promptly — so promptly he could tell she wasn’t lying this time.

“Are you a member of the McAllister clan?” he asked then. After all, even though that last name was the one which dominated the clan, there were plenty of other surnames in use as well, thanks to the numerous nonmagical folk who’d joined the family over the years.

Finally, her gaze strayed away from his, but only for a second or two, as though she’d wanted to look down the hill toward the town before she responded.

“No,” she replied. “I was just staying in town for a while. In my time, the people in Jerome are a lot more relaxed about letting witches who aren’t members of the clan hang out for a bit.”

Seth wasn’t sure what “hanging out” meant, but he guessed it must simply mean to be present in a place for a time.

“Then what clan are you from?”

Possibly the barest hesitation. When she spoke, though, she sounded forthright enough. “My clan is the Winfield clan from Massachusetts.”

Well, at least she wasn’t a Wilcox. Not that she looked like one — from what Seth had heard, the Wilcoxes tended to be quite dark, thanks to the Navajo blood that had been mixed into the clan over the years — but since they were the nearest clan geographically to the McAllisters, that would have been the most logical explanation.

But…Massachusetts?

“What in the world are you doing all the way out here in Jerome?”

She twisted the hat she held, creasing the delicate straw, and for a moment, she didn’t look up at him, as though she was trying to decide how best to respond.

“Visiting, like I told you,” she said. “In my time, it’s no big deal to cross the continent. I wanted a change of scenery.”

Seth could only gaze back at her, feeling as if there was a great deal she must be leaving out and wondering if she would ever tell him everything. But there was one fundamental question that needed an answer.

“When exactly are you from?”

A dark shadow moved over them, and she sucked in a gasp of air before she seemed to realize it was only an owl, rousing itself to go hunt in the gloaming.

“More than a hundred years from now,” she said, her voice a little firmer than it had been a moment earlier. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to tell you much more than that. There’s always the risk that if I say too much about the future, it’ll change history, and that’s the last thing you want happening.”

Seth had to admit he’d never had to think about the ramifications of time travel, even if he had spent one glorious Saturday afternoon a few years ago lost in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. It was certainly one thing to read about such matters in a book and quite another to have them facing him down in the form of the woman he loved.

“Have you…?” He hated to ask the question, but some part of him needed to know whether she viewed their relationship as seriously as he did, or whether she’d only been amusing herself while trying to figure out a way back home. “Have you tried to travel to your own time?”

Once again, her lips pressed together. “In the beginning, yes. It never worked — like I said, I can’t really control this ‘gift’ of mine. But after a while….”

The words trailed off, and he thought he understood why she’d stopped herself from completing the sentence. Doing so would have meant admitting that, after a while, she began to realize she had feelings for him…and wasn’t quite as eager to return to her own time as she might once have been.

“How did you do it, though?” he asked. “How could you hide your witch nature from everybody? How could you hide it from me?”

Now her head went back up, although he didn’t think it was out of pride. More…relief that she wouldn’t have to conceal the truth anymore.

“It’s my other gift, one I inherited from my father,” she said. “I can hide who I am from other witches and warlocks. I suppose it’s some sort of survival trait that came about as a way to protect a witch from enemy clans, but it doesn’t seem as if it has ever occurred in any other family but the Rowes. At least, none that I’ve heard of.”

No, Seth had never heard of such a thing, either. Possibly he could go to Mabel and ask her opinion on the matter, since she took great pride in studying witch history and most likely knew far more about all their various magical talents than he did.

Some inner impulse told him that wasn’t a very good idea. He couldn’t exactly say why, but even though he knew he was still upset with Devynn for the way she’d hidden the truth from him, he also thought it might be better if her secret remained between just the two of them for now.

“No one in my clan has a talent like that,” he said. “And I don’t remember ever hearing about it, so I don’t know if it exists anywhere except among your people. I suppose it was helpful in your particular situation.”

He knew he sounded cold, but he couldn’t quite stop himself. Devynn had been lying to him for the past two weeks, and even though some people might have said she had ample reason for such concealment, he couldn’t help thinking that if she liked him enough to want to kiss him, then she should have damn well been able to trust him with the truth, as implausible as it might have sounded.

“Yes, it was,” she replied. Her tone had cooled as well, as though she’d had time to gauge his reaction and had decided she had better match him reaction for reaction. “I don’t expect you to understand why I didn’t confide in you.”

“I do understand,” he said. “Or at least, I can see why you needed some time to be sure of me before you revealed something so outrageous. And if you’d told me the truth, I would have done my best to help you, no matter how crazy your story might have sounded. Now….”

The words drifted away. Was there any point in finishing that sentence?

“Nothing’s changed,” she told him, her tone now emphatic. “I wouldn’t have come here today if I hadn’t wanted to spend the time with you. I wouldn’t have kissed you if that hadn’t been exactly what I wanted. You cared about me when you thought I was a civilian, so what does it matter that I’m a witch?”

“‘What does it matter?’” he repeated, knowing how incredulous he sounded. “Being a witch or a warlock is the very basis for who we are! How can you possibly say that it doesn’t matter?”

“In my case, it doesn’t,” Devynn said, her voice now very firm, very sure of itself. “Yes, I may be a witch, but I’m also a thousand other things. It doesn’t define me. I won’t allow it to, especially when one of my talents is so unpredictable — so dangerous — that I would much rather have never had it at all.”

Underneath his anger, pity stirred. His own gift had always been so strong, so predictable and there for him whenever he needed it, that he had no idea what it would have felt like if it was as capricious as Devynn’s. Would he have been so proud to be a McAllister warlock if his magical talent might have sent him to London one time and to the North Pole the next, all without any conscious direction from him?

That would be no way to live.

“I like you, Seth,” Devynn said then. Neither her face nor her tone were pleading as she uttered those words. No, it was more that she wanted to make sure he understood how she felt, and he could do with that information as he willed. “I like you a lot. The whole time, I’ve been trying to think of a way to let you know who I really was and where — when — I came from. But I suppose I was a coward.”

Her voice faltered just the slightest bit on that last word, and Seth found himself wavering. It was all very well and good to feel righteous about the way she’d concealed her identity and her past from him…but he wasn’t a woman. He had no idea what it would feel like to be thousands of miles and more than a hundred years away from everyone she knew, from anyone who might have stepped in to protect her.

No wonder she’d thought she needed to hide her witch nature — and everything else about her identity — until she was absolutely sure of him.

“It’s all right,” he said…even as he wondered if it actually was. He needed some time to think about what had just happened, what he’d learned. “But I should probably take you home now.”

The moon had risen enough that its cool light had begun to filter through the trees. Deborah looked paler than ever as she gazed at him, expression especially troubled. “Are you going to tell them?”

Some people might have said that he needed to let the entire clan know about the witch from the future who’d been hiding in their midst. But Seth understood how precarious Deborah’s position was here. The last thing he would ever do was jeopardize the shelter Ruth and Timothy had provided for her. Maybe that was being dishonest, but he knew they enjoyed having her there, now that their youngest child had married and moved on to make a life of her own.

Eventually, sure, Deborah would have to decide what to do next, since she obviously couldn’t live on the McAllisters’ charity forever. For now, though….

“No,” he said clearly. “I’m not going to tell them.”

Yet, he added mentally.