Page 8 of Wind Called

“I did,” he replied. “That was why I went to talk to Bellamy, since she seemed to be the only person in the McAllister clan with the right color hair.”

Even as the words left his mouth, he thought how foolish they sounded.

But Tricia didn’t seem to think they were foolish, and instead frowned slightly. He knew from old family photos that her hair had once been the same coppery blonde shade as her daughter’s, but now her sleek bob was pure white. However, like Caitlin, her skin barely bore any lines at all, only a few crow’s feet around her eyes and another line right in the middle of her brows, probably etched there after managing the McAllister clan’s business for the past twenty-plus years.

“Yes, we don’t have a lot of redheads right now,” his grandmother said. “Well, Lisbeth’s daughter, but she’s only seven, so she couldn’t have been the woman in your dream.” She paused there, and added, “You go ahead and take a seat. I’ll have the food out in just a minute.”

“Do you need any help?”

“No, I’m fine,” Tricia assured him. “You just sit tight.”

Feeling a little awkward — even though he knew any more offers of assistance would only be met with additional refusals — Marc sat down at the dining room table, which was covered by a cheerful flowered tablecloth. As far as he’d been able to tell, that table was never bare, since it always had worn a seasonally appropriate cloth the few times his family had come to Jerome for the holidays.

His grandmother came back out with some flatware and a bowl of heavy cream-glazed stoneware, along with a cloth napkin that matched the tablecloth. “There you go,” she said, putting the place setting in front of him. “Would you like a glass of wine, or is water okay?”

“Water is fine,” he replied. That one glass of rosé hadn’t had much of an effect on him, but he still didn’t think it was a good idea to have anything else tonight, not when he still had no idea exactly what had been going on with that damn dream.

His grandmother smiled at him before returning to the kitchen. Soon enough, she had a tureen of soup sitting on the table, along with a loaf of gorgeously crusty bread and some butter.

“I know it’s a little silly to be having soup on such a hot day,” she said as she ladled some into his bowl. “But I just got a craving for green chile corn chowder, and since your grandfather wasn’t here to tease me about it, I made a big pot anyway.”

“It smells amazing,” Marc said. Corn chowder was his favorite soup, so he thought it positively providential that his grandmother had whipped up a batch today.

And no, she wasn’t a seer like her daughter and her grandson, but she was still a powerful witch, and maybe she’d somehow known this was just what the doctor had ordered.

“What did Bellamy have to say?” she asked after they’d helped themselves to soup and bread, and taken a couple of bites.

Marc found his mouth twisting. “Not a whole heck of a lot. She said there hasn’t been anything of real note going on in the clan, and she couldn’t figure out why I would have a dream with her in it.”

His grandmother had just buttered another slice of bread, but she set it down on her plate as he made that comment, her expression now thoughtful.

“Oh, we’ve had a little excitement,” she said. “A witch named Devynn Rowe — she’s a Wilcox, but was working here at the mercantile — traveled in time and came back with a fiancé from 1926, Seth McAllister. Turns out he was one of the family who owned the store back then, so he’s basically running things now.”

Well, that was something. Not many witches had the gift of time travel, but to return to the present day with a significant other in tow?

He wondered why Bellamy hadn’t said anything about that. Maybe she’d thought it wasn’t the sort of thing that would have any bearing on his dreams.

After all, he’d dreamed about her, not this Devynn Rowe person.

“But I assume Seth being here is a good thing for the McAllister clan,” Marc said.

“Oh, it is,” Tricia assured him. “And he and Devynn are very happy. Still, it’s a little out of the ordinary, even if I can’t see how it would have anything to do with that dream you had.”

He couldn’t see it, either.

“Does Bellamy control the wind?” he asked next, thinking he should try to clear up that one small mystery. “When we were talking on the patio at Sedona Vines, this weird breeze came up out of nowhere. She didn’t say anything, but….”

He let the words trail off, even as his grandmother frowned.

“Yes, that’s her talent,” Tricia said. “But I’ve never heard of her losing control of it. In fact, she’s never really used it all that much, except to call in a breeze when some of the clan’s children wanted to fly their kites and the day was too calm. It’s one of those magical talents that exists but doesn’t seem to have a lot of practical use.”

No, he supposed not. Sure, maybe back in the day, witches and warlocks of the past had used such a gift to turn the sails of a windmill to grind their grain or whatever, but it wasn’t the sort of thing anyone would have needed for a long, long time.

Then again, how useful was his own talent? It had sent him signals now and then that allowed him to see something of the future, but they had never been anything remotely earth-shattering. Honestly, if it really wanted to be of some help, then it should have warned him that Simon Escobar was going to steal those grimoires from the various de la Paz clan members who had them stashed in their houses.

But his gift hadn’t told him a damn thing.

“I’m sure there’s a completely rational explanation for what happened,” Tricia went on. “It might not have been Bellamy’s talent at all. Sedona can get some odd winds, probably because of all those red rock canyons. We just don’t know that much about it because the McAllisters have never lived there.” A pause, and her brows drew together. “Even if Bellamy is living in Sedona at the moment.”

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