Page 5 of Wind Called

“Me?” she said, then went on, “I don’t even know you.”

“No, you don’t,” he said calmly. “Look, this is probably going to sound totally strange, but…I had a dream about you. Or at least, I had a dream with a red-haired woman in it, and my grandmother told me there was only one redhead in Jerome who would have been the right age.”

Even to someone who’d grown up in a witch clan and therefore had had to roll with some pretty crazy punches over the years, this all sounded as if it had come right out of left field.

“Who’s your grandmother?” Bellamy asked, figuring it was easier to pose that question than try to pick apart the more problematic elements of Marc Trujillo’s comments.

“Tricia McAllister.”

Okay, that made a little more sense. Tricia had been an elder the entire time Bellamy was alive, but her daughter Caitlin had married a de la Paz warlock and settled in Tucson more than twenty years ago. They visited Jerome every once in a blue moon, but certainly not enough that Bellamy would have even run into Marc.

And Caitlin was a seer.

Did that mean Marc had inherited something of his mother’s talent? If he’d really had some sort of dream where he’d seen Bellamy, then she supposed that might make some sense, even though she’d always heard that men usually weren’t seers.

On the other hand, she had a feeling that he wouldn’t have driven all this way if he didn’t have some kind of talent in that department.

“What was in the dream?” she asked.

Did she even want to know?

But she’d already asked the question, which meant she needed to sit here and listen to the answer.

“I’m not sure,” he said, and his mouth tightened. She had the impression that he wasn’t too thrilled by the position his talent had put him in, knowing that what he said must often sound ridiculous to anyone who hadn’t experienced the same visions he had. “That is, the dream was more about…impressions, I guess. Like something was really wrong, even if I can’t say exactly what.”

Well, this was getting better and better.

“‘Wrong’ how?” she asked, doing her best to sound neutral and not at all judge-y.

“I don’t know,” he replied. Those dark eyes met hers, and even though Bellamy really didn’t like his reason for being here and liked even less that he’d felt the need to drop everything and drive a couple of hundred miles so he could talk to her in person, a small thrill went down her back.

He was soverygood-looking…and utterly unlike any of the McAllister warlocks she’d grown up with.

Before she could say anything, he went on, “I suppose I wanted to come here to make sure you were all right.”

Bellamy found herself smiling again. “You could have called.”

“Maybe,” he allowed, and his lips quirked in response to her smile, as if he knew how odd all this looked on the surface. “But this talent of mine…it likes to experience things in person. I wanted to know if there was anything near you that might explain why I would get such a sensation of foreboding from my dream.”

“And is there?” she asked as she leaned against the back of her chair…and wished she’d grabbed that glass of rosé after all.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Marc replied. He paused there, his gaze moving around the patio. It wasn’t quite dark enough yet for the bistro lights strung overhead to have been switched on, but the sun had dropped sufficiently toward the western horizon that it was no longer reflected in the waterfall and small pond that occupied one corner of the wine bar’s outdoor area. More than half the tables were occupied by laughing, chattering groups despite the heat, and all in all, it should have been a cheerful, welcoming space.

Why, then, did a shiver want to move its way down her back?

Power of suggestion,she told herself. Nothing dark lingered here. It was just a place where people gathered to drink and hang out, nothing more.

“Are your dreams ever wrong?” she asked, and immediately, Marc shook his dark head.

“No,” he said. “Sometimes it takes me a bit to figure out what they’re trying to tell me, but they’ve never given me incorrect information.”

Hmm. Bellamy didn’t much like the sound of that, not when she’d been the focus of one of those dreams.

Or at least, Marc seemed to think she was the person he’d seen, even though he’d admitted that he hadn’t seen her face and therefore the dream-woman could have been some other redhead.

“Maybe it wasn’t me at all,” she said. “I mean, I can see why you might think it was a witch in your dream, but since the woman’s back was to you, how can you know for sure?”

His fingers tapped against the side of his stemless glass. Less than a quarter inch of the rosé remained, so pale that you couldn’t tell what color it had once been.

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