Page 6 of Wind Called

“I suppose I can’t,” he replied, his tone frank. “But my dreams have always been about my clan and the people in it. I don’t seem to have visions about civilians, for whatever reason.”

Well, there was something. Bellamy supposed it would have been kind of disruptive to continually be interrupted by images of plane crashes and house fires and what-have-you. The de la Paz clan was very large — maybe even bigger than the Wilcox clan, although she wasn’t sure whether anyone had ever done a census comparing the two — so she guessed there was plenty going on among that particular witch family to keep Marc’s seer gift hopping.

She almost pointed out that she wasn’t a member of his clan but realized that sort of comment would be disingenuous at best. Yes, he’d been raised among the de la Pazes, but he was still a McAllister on his mother’s side, and that meant he had plenty of connection to Jerome and the people who lived there, even if he’d grown up hundreds of miles away.

Which also meant she should probably be taking this seriously…although she really didn’t want to.

“Well,” she said, doing her best to keep her tone cheerful, “I suppose you can consider me warned. But my life’s pretty boring. I don’t think there’s much chance of me getting into any kind of trouble.”

Marc’s dark eyes had taken on an amused glint when she uttered the word “boring” — it wasn’t the sort of adjective one would generally use when describing the life of a witch or warlock — but he didn’t try to contradict her.

“Maybe it’s nothing,” he said. “On the other hand, I don’t usually have a dream like this when there’s no there, there, if you know what I mean. Has anything unusual been happening among the McAllisters lately?”

Bellamy wanted to say there hadn’t, but again, she didn’t know for sure whether such a statement would be completely accurate. After all, it wasn’t every day when you had someone from more than a hundred years in the past take up residence in your hometown.

However, she found it hard to believe that this had anything to do with Seth McAllister and Devynn Rowe. Ever since they’d gotten back to the mid-twenty-first century, they’d been living quietly in the bungalow that had originally been his — Margot Wilcox, who owned the place, had given it to them, saying that Seth had owned it first and therefore he should get it back — and had taken over running McAllister Mercantile so Rachel could finally enjoy the retirement she’d been pondering for at least the past ten years.

Absolutely nothing there to send a dark, foreboding dream to Marc Trujillo, something powerful enough that he’d been compelled to drive hundreds of miles so he could talk to her in person.

Except….

No, she really didn’t want to talk about the magical object Seth and Devynn had brought back from the past. Bellamy knew about it because Devynn had shown the bronze amulet with its cabochon garnet to her before locking it back up in its safe, the kind with a biometric lock so no one except Devynn and Seth could open it, but she’d said the elders wanted to keep the thing on the down-low. Honestly, most people in the clan didn’t know the artifact even existed.

Which meant it probably wasn’t a good idea to mention the amulet now. It sounded immensely powerful — it seemed to have the intrinsic ability to strengthen a witch or warlock’s gifts, similar to Bree’s mother’s talent but even stronger — and since the elders wanted to keep the object a secret, blabbing about it to a de la Paz warlock who’d just appeared in their territory was something Bellamy knew she shouldn’t do.

“Everything’s been pretty chill,” she said, wishing more than ever that she’d brought a glass of wine out here with her. She didn’t like lying, but she also knew some matters needed to stay within the clan…no matter how handsome and appealing her visitor might be.

As soon as the words left her lips, though, an odd, sharp wind swept across the patio, catching at her loose hair and causing several napkins and other odds and ends at the other tables to swirl into the air. The patrons jumped up from their chairs to grab the flotsam and jetsam, and a moment later, the wind subsided as if it had never been.

Marc’s eyes had narrowed as soon as the wind blew over the space, but Bellamy held her tongue. Yes, her gift was controlling the wind — or at least, calling a breeze here and there — and yet she knew she hadn’t summoned the mischievous little wind that had caused such minor havoc just a moment earlier.

Or at least, she didn’t think she had. Her talent was a small one at best, but she’d never had it get away from her before.

His lips parted, and she wondered what she would say if he asked her point-blank whether she’d had anything to do with that strange gust of wind.

To her relief, though, he only said, “Well, I suppose that’s a good thing. God knows we’ve had enough excitement to last our clans for decades.”

That was for sure. True, a lot of what had gone down lately had happened over in New Mexico and not here in Arizona, but Bellamy had a feeling the de la Pazes were still smarting over the way a bunch of their grimoires had been stolen by the dark warlock Simon Escobar and used in his quest for domination over all the witch clans of the Southwest. Luckily, the grimoires were now back in their proper owners’ hands — well, in the hands of theirprima,anyway, who’d built an addition to her house to contain them, an addition protected by probably every shielding spell they could think of — and yet the whole incident had put everyone on edge, even though Simon was now safely dead and buried.

“True,” she agreed, and glanced down at her watch. She’d been out here for fifteen minutes, so technically, her break was over and she needed to get back to work.

Marc must have guessed why she was checking the time, because he said, “I won’t keep you. Maybe this was all a bunch of nothing.”

“Are your visions usually a ‘bunch of nothing’?” Bellamy asked, genuinely curious.

His mouth tightened. “No. But that doesn’t mean I don’t make a mistake from time to time.”

He sounded casual enough as he said those words, telling her he wasn’t worried about admitting he wasn’t infallible. After some of the guys she’d dated, men who felt like they needed to be right about every single thing all the time, she had to admit it was a refreshing change.

Not that she was dating Marc Trujillo, of course. No, best as she could tell, they seemed to be two ships passing in the night and nothing more.

“Well,” she said as she got up from her seat, “I guess you can let me know if you have any more weird dreams. Are you staying here in Sedona?”

“No,” he replied at once. “I got a hotel room in Cottonwood. Everything was pretty booked up, but they had a last-minute cancellation.”

Lucky for him, she knew, since a lot of people were trying to squeeze in one last family trip before their kids had to go back to school. Briefly, she wondered why he hadn’t stayed with Tricia; the elder’s house was a big Victorian up on Paradise Lane, only slightly smaller than the home Angela and Connor shared, so Bellamy knew there was plenty of room.

Most likely, he hadn’t wanted to impose. She didn’t know anything about the guy, but even their brief acquaintance seemed to signal that he was someone who didn’t like to make much of a fuss.

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