Page 19 of Christmas Past
Horribly, I knew he was right. Henry and Molly McAllister, who’d been so happy at Christmas just nine years earlier, would have watched their town slowly die around them. They would have seen friends and neighbors leave, businesses close, and the very foundations of their community crumble away. And they would have done it while still grieving their lost son.
“The mercantile,” Seth said, his expression even more strained…if that was possible. “It would still be here, wouldn’t it?”
I understood his concern, but I guessed that was one thing he didn’t have to worry about. McAllister Mercantile had survived two World Wars, the Depression, and the closure of the United Verde. The clan wouldn’t give up such a visible sign of its presence in Jerome, even though a lot of McAllisters had relocated down the hill to Cottonwood or to even more far-flung places like Payson and Prescott.
Before I could respond and give Seth the reassurance he so obviously needed, the world lurched again, and I reached out to grab his hands, knowing if I didn’t do so, we’d be forever separated. My gift had apparently decided one jump wasn’t enough, and without any conscious effort on my part, we were torn away from 1935 and flung forward through time once more.
This time, the sensation was different, possibly less violent but even more disorienting. We were being pulled through a tunnel made of mirrors, each reflection showing a different moment in time. I caught glimpses of Jerome changing around us — scaffolding surrounding structures being restored, streets being paved and repaved, the slow transformation from mining town to tourist destination playing out in fast-forward.
This landing was gentler, but when I looked around, I could tell we’d moved farther into the future. The bungalow looked different – the kitchen had been updated with avocado green appliances that screamed 1960s, and a beaded curtain covered the entrance to the home’s one short hallway. Music drifted through the open windows, along with voices and laughter.
“What now?” Seth asked, frustration mixing with fascination in his tone.
I made my way to the window and peered out, my legs still shaky from the uncontrolled jump. The streets were full of people — people who seemed to be in their twenties mostly, with long hair and colorful clothes that would have scandalized the residents of 1926 Jerome. A guy around Seth’s age, his long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, stood on the corner and played a guitar, and the scent of something that definitely wasn’t tobacco drifted up from the street below. Bright painted signs advertised art galleries and craft shops, and I could see people carrying canvases and pottery.
“Maybe the late 1960s?” I said, making an educated guess based on the clothes the people were wearing and the song the guy had been playing on his guitar, which sounded like a stripped-down version of “White Rabbit.” “The hippie era,” I added, since Seth still looked blank. Yes, he’d studied the history of the town, but he probably hadn’t spent much time on the ’60s. “Jerome became some kind of artists’ colony back then.”
“Artists’ colony?” Seth repeated as he came to stand beside me. He shook his head. “This is so different from what I remember.”
“Different” was an understatement. The Jerome of the late ’60s had been transformed into something that bore little resemblance to the mining town Seth had known. The buildings were the same — you could still see the bones of the old structures beneath the colorful paint and hand-lettered signs — but everything else was utterly changed.
“The McAllisters are still here, though,” I said, hoping I sounded at least a little encouraging. “Obviously, all this happened way before I was born, but from what I’ve read, it sounds as if some of them hung on and then made friends with the civilians who came here in the 1960s. That’s part of the reason why the nonmagical residents of Jerome know who we are. The trust goes way back.”
And was unique among all the witch clans, at least as far as I’d been able to tell.
But then, Jerome always had been a law unto itself.
Before I could say anything else, my wayward gift kicked in again, and once again, I grabbed Seth’s hands. At the same time, I tried to fight the magic, to regain some measure of control over our temporal journey. I hammered my will against the chaotic force that had taken over my abilities, trying to wrestle it back under my command. But I was too weak, too exhausted, and the effort only seemed to make the jump more violent.
The world spun around us in a nauseating whirl of color and sensation. Seth’s grip on my hands tightened as we were pulled through another temporal tunnel, this one lined with what looked like television screens showing rapid-fire images of Jerome’s continued evolution. I saw the 1970s and early 1980s flash by in a blur of change and development, the town’s slow transformation from hippie haven to legitimate tourist destination.
We landed hard in what looked like the late 1980s, judging by the cars parked on the street and the clothes worn by the tourists — and there were definitely tourists now, people with cameras and guidebooks, wandering through Jerome and pointing and gawking as if it were some kind of historical Disneyland. The bungalow around us had been updated again, although the ghastly white trim remained. Now everything had been done in Southwest colors of peach and teal, a combination I thought clashed in a particularly hideous way with the Craftsman architecture of the home.
Well, no one had consulted me on the decor.
“Tourism boom,” I managed. My knees might as well have been made of rubber, and I struggled to stay on my feet. My vision had started to blur around the edges, and a constant ringing in my ears made it hard to concentrate.
“Devynn, you need to stop this,” Seth said, even as he continued to grip my hands, his desperate grasp a reminder that we had to stay connected no matter what else happened. “You’re going to kill yourself.”
“I can’t stop it,” I told him. The words came out in a hoarse whisper, and I coughed. “It’s not under my control anymore.”
That truth terrified me. My gift had always been unpredictable, but it had never completely taken over like this. The power that had once been a part of me now seemed alien and hostile, as if it were trying to tear itself free from my body entirely.
“Then we need to find a way to ride it out,” Seth said, his voice grim. “Can you tell where it’s taking us next?”
I closed my eyes and tried to get some sense of what the time-travel magic wanted, but any true connection I’d once had with it seemed to have vanished. All I could sense was movement, the dizzying sensation of being pulled through time toward some unknown destination. The inside of my head might as well have been static on an old television, all white noise and chaotic interference.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Somewhere farther in the future than 1926, but I can’t tell how far.”
The world blurred around us again, and this time when we landed, I collapsed completely. My knees hit the hardwood floor of the bungalow, and for a moment, all I could do was try to breathe through the waves of nausea and exhaustion that washed over me. My whole body was wrung out, as if someone had taken all my energy and twisted it like a wet towel.
“Devynn!” Seth was beside me immediately, his hands gentle as he helped me sit up. “Stay with me. Don’t pass out.”
I forced my eyes open and looked around, even though my vision swam with exhaustion. The bungalow was different again, and I recognized the furnishings at once — that annoyingly busy blue and green flowered couch, the angular coffee table that sat in front of it. Matching curtains at the windows, and all the lovely mahogany woodwork covered up with off-white paint.
“I think we’re in the ’40s again,” I said, glad that I sounded reasonably normal despite feeling as if I could go to sleep and not wake up for a hundred years.
Maybe that would be the simplest solution to our problem.
