Page 12 of Wind Called

Marc had to take a moment to absorb that statement. It was the cardinal rule amongst all the witch clans that they never, ever performed feats of magic in public, since they all knew their continuing survival depended on the general population not realizing that witches and warlocks were real. Things were a little different here in Jerome, since the civilians who lived in the former mining town were let in on the secret once they’d been carefully vetted, but still, the idea of a random warlock in the past using his magic to pretend to be some sort of conjurer seemed reckless at best.

As for the amulet’s existence in the first place…well, he’d never even heard of such a thing. Witches and warlocks were born with their magic and generally didn’t use outward foci to work with it. They had no need to, not when their talents came to them as easily as breathing.

But then he thought of the grimoires the de la Paz clan had collected over the centuries, books filled with spells and enchantments that allowed them to concentrate their magic and make it even stronger. Was this amulet Devynn Rowe and Seth McAllister had found really all that different?

“So…it makes someone’s magic more powerful?” he asked, and his grandmother nodded.

“Yes. When they were in the past, Seth used it to be able to teleport both himself and Devynn — that’s his talent, although on its own, it’s only strong enough for him to teleport himself — and Devynn, who has the ability to mask her witch nature, used it to shield the two of them when they were working in Wilcox territory.”

A very useful item, obviously. It sounded as though Devynn and Seth had been pretty busy in the past.

But none of that probably had too much bearing on what was happening now, not when they were safely back in the twenty-first century.

“So…the amulet is locked up in a safe?”

“Yes,” Tricia said. “Angela and Connor said they thought the thing could be a tempting target, so it’s been kept in a biometric safe pretty much ever since Devynn and Seth returned to our time. In fact, the safe is locked up in Connor and Angela’s house here, rather than at Seth and Devynn’s bungalow. Both Angela and Connor — and we elders agreed — thought it was probably better to be hidden someplace where no one could interfere with it.”

A good idea. Marc didn’t pretend to know what kind of wards and other spells of protection had been placed on theprima’shouse, but he had to believe they were far stronger than anything Seth and Devynn would have in the home where they were currently living.

Also, Paradise Lane was a locals-only kind of street. It sat far above the touristy parts of Jerome, and if you didn’t live there or weren’t visiting someone who did, there was no reason in the world to drive all the way up to the secluded neighborhood.

Still….

“Who keeps an eye on the safe when Angela and Connor aren’t here?” he asked, since even he knew theprimaandprimusdivided their time between Jerome and Flagstaff.

“The elders, of course,” his grandmother replied, now looking a little more sure of herself. “Levi is the one who usually refreshes the wards, just because he’s the most skilled at that kind of magic.”

And probably just about any other kind of magic he needed to utilize. He looked like a man, but he wasn’t…not exactly. Not for the first time, Marc had to wonder how things might have shaken out if Levi had become his cousin Zoe’s consort, rather than Ethan McAllister. Zoe had created Levi out of nothing because she’d despaired at finding her soul match, but it turned out that the man who’d come to fix the mess she’d made was the one who was truly meant to be with her.

Ethan and Zoe’s daughter Rosa was about to turn twenty-one and would soon begin her own consort search. Marc could only hope the process would be a lot less fraught this time.

“Does Bellamy know about the safe and the amulet?” he asked abruptly, and his grandmother frowned again.

“Yes, she does. She’s very good friends with Devynn Rowe, and Devynn wouldn’t have seen any reason to hide something like that from her.”

Which meant that Bellamy hadn’t been completely truthful when she’d told him nothing unusual had been happening in the clan lately. Marc thought that having the McAllisters come into possession of a rare and powerful magical artifact probably fell into the “unusual” category.

Then again, he supposed he couldn’t be too annoyed with her for holding back that piece of information. She’d only just met him, and even though she knew he was as much a McAllister as he was a de la Paz, it wasn’t as if she knew anything about him other than he had the gift of true seeing, just like his mother. Witches and warlocks understood that keeping secrets was part of their nature, and she wouldn’t have been in a position to start blabbing about the amulet Devynn and Seth had brought back from the past, not when she hadn’t been given permission to do so.

“If you dreamed of the safe,” his grandmother went on, “then it seems the amulet must have even more significance than we thought. What, though? We’re keeping it as protected as we possibly can.”

It sure sounded that way. However, Marc recalled the sense of low-level foreboding that had suffused this latest dream, and couldn’t help wondering if the McAllisters were doing enough to keep the thing out of unfriendly hands.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Something about the dream felt ominous, even though I didn’t see anything in particular to give that impression. And why would the amulet even be connected to Bellamy? She’s not the one who found it, and she’s certainly not the person who’s keeping it safe.”

His grandmother reached for her glass of iced tea — not, Marc thought, because she was particularly thirsty, but because she wanted to take a sip as a way of giving herself some time to think.

“No, Bellamy doesn’t have any real connection to the amulet, except for being friends with the witch who found it. And in the great scheme of things, Bellamy’s power really isn’t that significant. Even if she wanted to use such an artifact to magnify her magic, what could it do other than summon some gale-force winds?”

And that didn’t seem very useful, unless you were trying to hold a champion kite-flying competition in Jerome or whatever.

None of this appeared to make much sense.

Marc released a breath and drank some of his iced tea, his throat suddenly dry. The thought occurred to him that his dream might not have meant anything at all, and he was grasping at straws here because he desperately wanted it all to make sense.

But no, that didn’t feel right, either. If his dream had been completely random, then he wouldn’t have dreamed of something that had real significance to the McAllisters.

Instead, he should have dreamed of something silly, like a purple kangaroo or a volcano that spewed hot fudge.

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