2. A Time to Heal

2

A TIME TO HEAL

Seth Lewis McAllister paused at the entrance to the new shaft they’d sunk only the week before. He already knew they weren’t going to continue exploring in this area, not when the amounts of copper the surveyors had found had proved it wasn’t worth wasting money on this branch of the mine, but he wanted to go inside one more time to take a few additional samples, just in case. Technically, he wasn’t a surveyor or a geologist, just a recently promoted foreman at the United Verde, and yet he thought if he was able to prove that the operation could be expanded here after all, it might mean a decent bonus, or maybe even another promotion.

Jerome was booming, and he wanted to boom right along with it. Maybe then he’d feel as if it was safe to start thinking about settling down.

The day shift had already gone home, which was why he’d taken the detour over here. He’d said goodbye to his men and watched them troop down the hill to their various rented homes and boarding houses, and once he knew he was safely out of eyeshot, had walked back up to the place, hidden by a curve of the hill, where the mine shaft was located.

It stood exposed to the sun and the wind, mostly because everyone working at the United Verde knew it was going to either get boarded up or filled in within the next couple of weeks, whenever they got around to it.

Not if he could prove them wrong, though.

He paused to fish a box of matches out of his pants pocket and lit one of the lanterns sitting on the ground closest to the entrance. The surveyors had already noted that the excavation was free of any flammable gases, so using the lantern wouldn’t be a problem.

As he turned away from the lantern and raised his arm to shine the light around the interior of the shaft, however, he realized he wasn’t alone.

Lying on the floor of the tunnel was the limp form of a woman. She faced away from the entrance, so all he could see was a spill of long brown hair against the dirt and one outflung arm. Even from this distance, he immediately noticed she was dressed oddly, in blue denim pants not too dissimilar from the dungarees many of his fellow miners wore and a light-colored blouse that did nothing to cover her arms.

For all that Jerome was a rough and ready town, with more than its fair share of women who were, as his father liked to obliquely say, “no better than they should be,” Seth couldn’t recall ever seeing a woman who wore those sorts of pants. At fairly regular intervals, tourists came through Jerome from the East Coast or even from Los Angeles to the west, and the women were often decked out in what had been to his eyes some fairly outlandish getups, but even they hadn’t been sporting a tightly fitting pair of trousers like these.

Frowning, he moved toward the strange woman, even as he called out, “Hello?”

No response, not even a twitch.

Worried now, he hurried over to her and knelt on the far side of the spot where she lay so he could get a better look at her and assess whether she’d been hurt in some way. As he set the lantern down on the floor of the mineshaft, its warm glow caught her face.

She was beautiful. Eyes shut, which meant he couldn’t see what color they were, but even when slack, her mouth was full and rosy, her nose straight and delicately molded, her face almost heart-shaped because of its wide cheekbones, but softened by a more rounded chin.

And no real sign that she’d been injured — no bruises, no blood. Nothing to explain why she appeared to be in a deep faint, or how in the world she could have ended up here.

“Hello?” he ventured again.

Not even a flutter of the long lashes against her cheeks. For one awful moment, he wondered if she was dead, but then he saw the rise and fall of her chest under the sleeveless buttoned shirt she wore, and he knew she still walked among the living.

For now, anyway.

Could he risk moving her? Even though she didn’t appear to be hurt, he knew that carrying her could be a problem if she’d suffered some kind of back or neck injury. On the other hand, leaving her here in the tunnel while he went to fetch help didn’t seem like a very good idea, either, not with everyone gone for the day.

And unfortunately, his gift for moving from place to place, one that had emerged on his twelfth birthday, wouldn’t help him now. Over the years, he’d done a lot of work to test its limits, and about the most he could carry with him was forty pounds. That was a decent amount, but definitely not enough for him to take the woman down the hill to safety.

He reached out to lay his fingers against the strange woman’s throat. Her pulse was strong and steady, so whatever had happened to her, it didn’t seem as if it had put her in any immediate danger.

She should be able to hang on until he came back in his car.

With that plan settled, he blinked himself into his bungalow’s kitchen, then went down the back steps to the detached garage he’d had built a little over a year ago, right after he purchased the convertible Dodge that was his pride and joy. He didn’t much like the delay involved in having to open the garage door and back out the car, then hurry over so he could close the door again, but he tried to reassure himself that the woman he’d found had seemed stable enough, and really this whole expedition would only take about ten minutes or so.

The streets were pretty much deserted by that point, with his fellow miners done with their shifts for the day and most of Jerome’s denizens safely tucked inside having their dinners. Seth was glad about that, just because he really didn’t feel like explaining why he was taking his car up to the mine.

When he returned, it didn’t look as though she’d moved at all.

Was that a good sign?

Since there wasn’t anything else he could do, he knelt and slid his arms under the woman, then lifted her from the ground as carefully as he could. During this procedure, she didn’t stir, not even the slightest bit, and his worry deepened.

What had happened to her?

He wasn’t a doctor or a healer, only a man who’d decided to buck tradition and work at the United Verde rather than the store that had been in his family for going on three generations now. But the McAllister healer, his cousin Helen O’Dowd, should be able to determine what had caused the strange woman’s ongoing faint.

She was very light in his arms, not much of a burden for someone who’d done hard physical work from the time he was seventeen. Stepping as gently as he could, he headed back to his car and then laid her down in the back seat. During all this, she’d been as limp and unmoving as a rag doll, and he murmured a prayer to the goddess Brigid under his breath that the woman he found wouldn’t be harmed by the trip down the hill to his bungalow.

A lone car passed him as he drove down into town, but he didn’t recognize it, and guessed the vehicle probably belonged to either a tourist or someone from Prescott who’d been doing business in the Verde Valley but now wanted to get over the mountain before true night fell. His street was similarly deserted, with no one to take any note of him carrying the woman into the house.

The familiar space surrounded him, with its windows open to the evening breeze and the few pieces of furniture he’d been able to acquire carefully set in the space. Chief among them was the sofa, purchased only a few months earlier at a store down in Cottonwood. It was still quite a novelty to have a shop like that nearby at all, rather than having to make the perilous drive up and over Mingus Mountain to Prescott to purchase those items you didn’t want to build for yourself. Several members of his clan were expert woodworkers, and they were the ones who had provided the table and chairs in the dining room and the cabinet which held a few pieces of mismatched china his mother had provided for him, but the couch — that was the item he was most proud of, since he’d paid for it with the money he’d earned in his new position as one of the foremen at the mine.

He laid the woman down on the sofa and then, as carefully as he could, unlaced the sturdy boots she was wearing. The laces felt odd under his fingers, too silky to be cotton, definitely not leather. And the soles were also strange — while he could tell they were some kind of rubber, they felt far springier than any rubber-soled shoes or boots he’d ever seen.

Who was she?

First things first. Although some of the houses in Jerome now had telephones, his wasn’t among them. Seth had decided it was a luxury he couldn’t afford, and besides, the town was small enough that you could get pretty much anywhere you needed to be in ten minutes or less.

And Helen’s home was much closer than that — just a few houses down the street, in fact.

By that time, night was truly beginning to fall, and he had the uneasy feeling he might be interrupting Helen’s supper with her young family. It couldn’t be helped, though — part of being a clan healer was knowing that you might be intruded upon at any time to treat an ailing family member. They did their best to make her cures for their various coughs and colds and bumps and bruises seem as if it was all perfectly natural, nothing more than folk medicine that had been in the family for generations, for while the McAllisters were the dominant group in the town, there were still plenty of strangers living in Jerome as well, people who could never be allowed to learn that there was a little something more to the McAllister clan than met the eye.

Helen’s home was much larger than the bungalow Seth had purchased a few months back, a handsome white four-square house with green shutters and a flourishing oak tree in the front yard. Her husband Calum had come to America only a decade earlier and arrived in Jerome the way so many others had, seeking to make his fortune in the copper mines. He’d done very well for himself, and although Seth had heard that anti-Irish sentiment ran high in other parts of the country, the McAllisters were always happy to welcome nonmagical spouses here and there, as it kept their clan from getting inbred.

Calum was the one who answered the door in response to Seth’s knock, and a certain resignation entered his bright blue eyes as he saw who stood on his front porch.

“An accident at the mine?” he asked. His brogue had softened during his years here in Arizona, but it was still clear to anyone who heard him that he’d been born a long way away from Jerome or the Verde Valley.

“No, nothing like that,” Seth replied. “It’s very strange — I went into the exploratory shaft we opened up last week, and I found a woman lying on the ground inside. She appears to have fainted. I have her resting on the couch at my house, but I need Helen to take a look at her and see if she can find out what’s wrong.”

“Just a moment, then,” Calum said. “Come wait inside — I’ll fetch her.”

Seth did as requested and entered the foyer, which was decorated with a matching pair of small tables with marble tops, tables he knew his cousin Helen had had shipped here all the way from San Francisco. On top of each table was a lush Boston fern. The clan healer took great pride in her houseplants, and tended them nearly as fiercely as she did her three children.

As if his thoughts had summoned her, Helen appeared a minute later. Like many of his fellow McAllisters, she had sandy blonde hair and blue eyes, and had often been referred to as the beauty of the family, with her porcelain-doll features. However, Seth knew those delicate looks hid a woman of great intensity and drive.

“You found someone in the mines?” she asked as she reached for a cardigan that hung from the coat rack in the corner of the foyer. Seth didn’t think the warm June evening merited such a covering, but perhaps she didn’t want to go outside in just her housedress.

“Yes, a woman,” he said. “I’ve never seen her before, so I have no idea who she is.”

Because he knew if he’d seen the woman’s face in the past, he would never have forgotten it.

Helen only said, “Hmm,” and waited for him to open the door so they could head outside. Their street was located a block below the main thoroughfare, but even that distance — and the numerous trees that had been planted to both stabilize the ground and muffle sound — couldn’t quite hide the noise emanating from all the bars on Main Street.

His cousin looked disapproving, but she didn’t say anything as she followed Seth up the steep incline to his bungalow. He hadn’t thought to turn on a light — their little side street had been electrified only the year before — so the house was quite dark as they approached.

What if the strange woman had awoken while he was gone, panicked to find herself in an unfamiliar place, and had fled?

She can’t have gotten very far, he reassured himself. If she’s not there, we’ll have all the McAllisters out looking for her.

But when he and Helen entered the living room and he hurriedly crossed the space to turn on the single electric light on its side table, he saw at once that the strange woman still lay on the sofa. From what he could tell, it didn’t look as though she’d moved at all.

Helen’s finely arched brows drew together, and she went over to the woman and laid a gentle hand on her forehead. Because Seth had seen his cousin do the same thing with many other patients before this, he knew this was her way of reaching out with her gift into a person’s body to sense what was wrong with them and how she might heal whatever ailment they might be suffering.

Now, though, her frown only deepened, as if she wasn’t quite sure of what she had found. A moment passed, one that seemed interminably long, although that might have only been because of the heavy ticking of the clock on the mantel.

At last she said, “It is very strange. I can’t detect anything truly wrong with her, and yet it’s clear she’s in a deep faint of some kind. I think all we can do is wait for her to wake up.”

That was not what Seth had wanted to hear…especially since he couldn’t recall a time when Helen hadn’t been able to immediately pinpoint what was wrong with a person and take steps to correct it.

“There’s nothing you can do?”

His cousin lifted her hand from the strange woman’s forehead and gave him a very direct look. “I could try to force her awake, but I fear that might do more harm than good. It seems better to me that you allow her to regain consciousness naturally. This faint doesn’t seem to have any physical cause — there is no bruising, no swelling, nothing to tell me she suffered a blow to the head or anything like that — so there isn’t anything for me to heal.” Helen paused there, forehead puckering again. “It seems to me that she’s suffered some sort of terrible shock, although I can’t begin to explain what it might have been. Patience is the best remedy here.”

As his father had lectured him on more than one occasion, patience was a virtue Seth often struggled with. “So…we’re just supposed to leave her lying on my sofa?”

Now Helen smiled, although he hoped it wasn’t because she was amused by his predicament. “For now. When she wakes, we can decide what to do next. I’m sure she must have people who are concerned about her. She can tell us where she comes from, and we can figure out from there how to get her home.” A shake of the head, followed by, “Jerome is not the sort of place where a pretty young woman should be wandering around by herself.”

No, it wasn’t. Or rather, while most everyone associated with the various mining camps knew to leave the McAllister women alone — and if they were a newcomer unfamiliar with the town’s unspoken rules, they found out soon enough — those same protections wouldn’t be afforded to a civilian woman, someone unconnected to the clan.

For he knew the stranger he’d found wasn’t a witch. She definitely wasn’t a McAllister, and although he’d had little reason to connect with a witch or warlock outside their clan, isolated as they were here, he still knew that he and everyone else who’d come from a witch family would experience some sort of telltale when they encountered a magical stranger, whether it was a tingle at the back of their neck or a ringing in their ears or even a small flash of light.

He hadn’t felt anything like that when he found the stranger or when he picked her up, which meant she must be a civilian.

“In the meantime,” Helen went on briskly, “you should go see your parents and see if they can get you some clothes from the mercantile so she can put on proper garments when she wakes up. I have no idea who she is or where she came from, but it’s very odd that she allowed herself to be seen in public like that.”

A point Seth had to agree with. Yes, there was some part of him — one he didn’t quite wish to acknowledge — that enjoyed seeing her long, slim legs in the close-fitting trousers and the smooth curve of her bare arms in that lightweight blouse, but he knew it was not the sort of outfit that should be seen in public, especially in a town full of unmarried men who still had physical needs that required attention.

“I’m not sure I should leave her alone again,” he said, knowing how dubious he sounded. “What if she wakes up while I’m away?”

Helen made a waving motion with one hand, dismissing his worries. “I’ll stay here with her,” she replied. “It’s not as if my dinner hasn’t already been interrupted, so a few more minutes won’t be any problem.”

Faced with that declaration, Seth knew there was no point in arguing further. Besides, while he’d walked down to his cousin’s house the ordinary way because the clan had long ago agreed that he couldn’t just blink himself into other people’s homes without so much as a by-your-leave, he knew such strictures didn’t bind him when it came to appearing in the apartment over the mercantile that had been his childhood home. He could be there and back very quickly, even accounting for the time it would take his mother to locate some proper garments for the strange woman.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll be as fast as I can.”

With that, he imagined the sitting room of the apartment, the comfortably worn furniture that contrasted with the big, shiny radio in its cabinet that had been given a place of honor on the wall opposite the fireplace. At this hour, he guessed his mother and father and his older brother Charles would all be sitting down to dinner, so appearing in the sitting room wouldn’t be quite as much of a disruption.

Immediately, he stood in those familiar surroundings, and took a moment to get his bearings. As he’d thought, the clinks of silverware and murmur of voices came clearly to his ears, even over the static-y sound of a jazz orchestra coming through the radio’s speaker.

Steeling himself, Seth made his way to the dining room. As always, his father sat at the head of the table, with his mother to his right and Charles immediately across from her. As soon as he paused at the entrance, his mother caught sight of him and set down her fork.

“Seth!” she exclaimed, and began to rise from her seat. “I didn’t know you were coming to dinner tonight.”

“I wasn’t,” he told her. It was on his lips to add that there was no reason for her to get up from her chair, but then he realized she would have had to leave the table at some point to fetch the necessary clothing from the store downstairs. “I’m sorry for the intrusion, but I need your help.”

“What’s wrong?” his father asked. Like both his sons, he was tall and blue-eyed, although his brown hair had already begun to gray at the temples, and he wasn’t quite as slim as he’d been when he inherited the mercantile from Seth’s grandfather some eight years earlier.

As quickly as he could, Seth explained the situation. Through it all, his father wore an increasing frown, while his mother only appeared concerned.

Before either of them could respond, however, Charles spoke up. Although barely a year separated the two men, he had always taken his responsibilities as the oldest son seriously, and was very concerned with propriety.

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have this woman staying at your house,” he said. “It would appear very improper to anyone looking in from the outside.”

Irritation flared, but Seth did his best to push it aside. Getting into an argument now didn’t seem like a very good idea.

“I’m not having her move in with me permanently,” he responded, knowing there was a snap to his words that he hadn’t been able to fully contain. “Once she’s awake and we can determine who she is and where she came from, then we can all work to get her back to her people. In the meantime, though, Helen thought — and I agree — that the stranger should at least have a change of clothes.”

“She certainly should,” his mother agreed. Like Helen, who was Molly McAllister’s actual first cousin and not the much looser interpretation of the word that witch clans used to refer to anyone in their families, she was blonde and blue-eyed, and slight enough of stature that people often wondered how she’d been able to produce two sons who were both north of six feet tall. “And I will help you find something for her.” She looked over at her husband and other son, adding, “Go ahead and finish your dinner. This shouldn’t take very long.”

Although from the outside it might have seemed as though Henry McAllister ruled the roost, Seth knew his mother was the real person in charge of their household. While both his father and brother appeared a little put out, neither of them said anything as she looped her arm in his and went downstairs with him to the ground floor of the three-story building.

“Is Helen with her now?” she asked, and Seth nodded.

“Yes. We didn’t want to leave the girl alone for too long.”

“It all sounds rather sad to me. There was no way to tell who she is?”

He shook his head as they entered the stockroom at the back of the store. “She wasn’t carrying a bag and didn’t seem to have a wallet of any kind.”

Not that having one in her possession would have made much of a difference. While he’d heard some other states required driver’s licenses and that people used them as a form of identification, things weren’t nearly so formal here in Arizona. And even if the woman he’d found wasn’t from his state, there was a very good chance she didn’t even drive. While women were making greater strides in that area, especially after the Great War when so many men had gone overseas to fight, there were still quite a few among the male half of the population who didn’t think women had any business being behind the wheel of a car.

His mother made a tutting kind of sound. “How very unfortunate,” she said. “But I suppose it’s lucky that we just got a new batch of clothing in from New York. There should be several things that will fit her.” She stopped there, blue eyes keen on his face. “I don’t suppose you have any idea of her size.”

The glaring lightbulb his mother had switched on as they entered the stockroom probably did a very good job of illuminating the embarrassed flush that rose to his cheeks. “I, um….” He stopped for a moment to gather himself, doing his best to remember that he was now a grown man of twenty- four and didn’t need to act like a foolish schoolboy. “I suppose she’s around cousin Daphne’s size,” he said quickly, naming a relative who was slim and rather tall, and his best guess for an approximation of the strange woman’s height and build.

This seemed to be enough information for his mother, who gave a quick nod and then started inspecting the stack of clothing on the big table in the middle of the room, which was the usual dumping ground for new clothing stock that had arrived at the store but hadn’t yet been put on display in the mercantile. She pulled out several dresses and a shirtwaist and skirt, and added to those items a selection of undergarments whose presence again made him want to blink and look away.

To his eyes, it seemed like rather a lot for someone who no doubt would be returned to her family as soon as she regained consciousness, but he didn’t protest. Molly McAllister knew what she wanted and how to make it happen, and Seth had long ago realized it was best to stay silent and simply let her go about her business.

At last, though, it seemed as if the pile of clothing she’d assembled was enough to satisfy her, because she glanced up at her son and said, “And shoes?”

Thank God he’d taken off the stranger’s boots, so at least he had a rough idea of her shoe size. “About like this,” he said, holding up two hands to indicate the length of her feet.

His mother looked almost disapproving. “Big feet, then.”

Were they? Seth had to admit that he didn’t spend a lot of time looking at women’s feet, so he didn’t have much of a point of reference. “Possibly,” he allowed.

Undeterred, Molly went to the shelf where they stored the boxes of shoes that hadn’t yet been put on display and rummaged through them for a moment. “These should do,” she said, coming back to him with a shoebox tucked under one arm. “Honestly, I’m glad to get this pair off my hands, because no one around here seems to wear this size. But if it works for this woman you found, then all the better.”

He took the shoebox, then stood there as his mother piled the rest of the garments she’d collected on top of it. Again, he thought it seemed like an awful lot…and he also couldn’t help being a bit worried as to how he was going to get all this back to his house without spilling something.

What would happen if he dropped an unmentionable during one of his eye-blink journeys? Would it disappear forever, or would it simply flutter down from on high, making whoever found it wonder how it could have possibly gotten there?

Probably best not to speculate.

“Thank you, Mother,” he said, and she went on her tiptoes to press a kiss against his cheek.

“It’s good to help those in need,” she replied. “Now, you get back there — and let us all know when she awakes. This is a mystery we need to get solved.”

“I will,” he promised. Then, because he didn’t trust himself to hold onto that pile of clothing for too much longer without dropping something, he took himself away to his house, purposely making sure he’d appear close to the dining table so he could leave the bounty of clothing there once he appeared.

Once he was done, though, he hurried out to the living room, where his cousin Helen still stood close to the woman on the couch.

“She hasn’t stirred at all,” she said. “But her breathing is fine, and her color is good. As I said before, all we can do is let things run their course.”

“Thank you for watching her,” Seth replied.

“It’s what I do,” Helen said simply. “Time for me to get home, though. You just let me know tomorrow if she still hasn’t woken up.”

He nodded, and his cousin slipped out the front door, presumably heading straight for home so she could finish her now-cold dinner.

Or maybe Calum had put it back on the stovetop to keep warm.

Seth realized he hadn’t eaten anything yet. Luckily, though, he had some leftover stew that his mother had sent home with him the day before waiting in the icebox. He’d just have to do his best to heat it up while trying to keep an eye on the woman lying on his couch.

No real need to worry about that, not when she didn’t seem to have moved even a fraction of an inch in the time he’d been gone. He pulled up a chair and sat next to her, wondering if the scent of the heated food would wake her up.

It didn’t, though, and he finished the entire bowl and set it aside.

Now, as Helen had said, he could only wait.