Page 2 of Christmas Past
“But…?” I said again.
His fingers played with the stem of his wine glass, although he didn’t seem inclined to pick it up. “But I still hate the idea that my parents never knew what happened to me. To everyone in that time, I just vanished into thin air.”
That was definitely the most troubling aspect of our situation. It was true that when we’d left Jerome on that hot June afternoon in 1926, the only person who had even an inkling of what was going on was Seth’s older brother Charles. The two of them had been at odds over Charles’s involvement in a local bootlegging ring, although Charles had made noises about giving it up…mainly because he’d just become the consort of the clan’s prima-in-waiting, Abigail McAllister. Still, Seth had gotten caught up in the whole mess, and the leader of the local bootleggers had managed to shoot me in the stomach.
Not a pleasant moment, although a combination of my erratic time-traveling talent and Seth’s gift for teleportation had taken us away to 1884 Flagstaff, where one of my distant ancestors, the clan’s healer at the time, had managed to patch me up. No harm, no foul.
But although we’d visited Jerome again in the late 1940s — purely by accident, since I was only trying to get us home to the twenty-first century — and therefore Charles knew something of what had happened to us, Seth’s parents had no idea what had become of their younger son, since they’d passed away by then. The newspapers from June 1926 claimed that he’d died in a fall at one of the mines…not so rare an occurrence in the rough-and-tumble mining town the place had been at the time…and although Henry and Molly McAllister had probably known Seth hadn’t perished in that particular fashion, they still could have had no real idea of what had happened to him.
“I know,” I said. “It would have been nice if that Collector jerk had dropped an artifact that allows us to send messages through time, but that sure didn’t happen.”
The Collector…none of us knew his real name, or even what he truly looked like, since the times he’d appeared in Jerome he’d been wearing a magical disguise…seemed hell-bent on gathering as many enchanted artifacts and talismans as he could. Seth and I had found one such object back in 1884 Flagstaff and had brought it forward in time with us. While I still thought we’d done the right thing, since it had been in the hands of a warlock who was using it to enhance his powers in a very public way, I also had to acknowledge that if I’d never brought the amulet here, then the Collector would probably have had no reason to turn his attention toward our tiny town.
Well, done was done, and we’d just have to deal with the aftermath as best we could. At least it seemed as if he’d been banished for the time being, thanks to the combined magic of Angela and Connor, the McAllister prima and the Wilcox primus, and the clan elders…along with a very welcome assist from Brianna McAllister and her significant other, Bill.
But because we certainly didn’t have access to the Collector’s cache of rare, magical objects, there was no way to send a message back in time to Seth’s parents to let them know he was happy and healthy and thriving.
An idea popped into my mind, one so outrageous, I knew I should just push it away and ignore it. We were safe here now, and the last thing I should be doing with our wedding only ten days away was to start stirring the pot.
“What is it?” Seth asked. He was frowning a little, but I thought that was probably because he knew what to expect when I got that kind of look on my face.
The same look that had gotten us into trouble more than once.
“Maybe we should go back and tell them,” I said, and Seth stared at me in consternation.
“Go back to 1926?”
I nodded.
“That’s impossible,” he replied. When his tone turned flat like that, I knew he was getting ready to dig his heels in.
But because I’d been expecting that kind of reaction, I refused to let myself get too discouraged.
“Why not?” I said. “It’s not like we haven’t traveled in time before.”
Seth paused then, his gaze quickly moving around the room, as if to make sure we couldn’t be overheard. But the other two couples in the dining room looked absorbed in their conversations, and it seemed pretty clear that they weren’t paying any attention to us.
“We did,” he replied, pitching his voice low so it couldn’t be overheard. “Without any real control, and with a lot of personal risk. Have you forgotten that the only reason we were able to get back here at all was because of the amulet and Ruby McAllister giving us a magical boost?”
No, I hadn’t forgotten. The amulet had been made by a long-ago warlock and possessed the ability to strengthen the magical gifts of whoever held it. Even with it beefing up my time-travel talent, I still wouldn’t have had the ability to send Seth and me forward nearly a hundred years if it hadn’t been for Ruby joining her strength to ours and catapulting us forward in time.
But I’d been practicing these past few months. Not traveling that far, of course, but sending myself forward and backward a day here, a week there. All those jumps had worked flawlessly, which seemed to be a clear signal that I was starting to finally get some control over a talent I’d once looked upon as not much more than a liability. My other talent, the one I’d inherited from my father and which allowed me to conceal my witch nature, had come in much more handy during Seth’s and my travels in time.
I hadn’t told Seth about my little experiments, mostly because I knew he’d think I was taking unnecessary risks when everything seemed calm and settled, and there was no reason for me to be anywhere except where…and when…I currently was.
Now, though…now it sure seemed as if I had a very good reason to put my recently honed skills to the test.
“No,” I told him. “But I really think I can do this. I’ve been practicing.”
At once, he sat up straighter, and those clear blue eyes might as well have been lasers boring right through me. “You’ve what?”
The last syllable came out louder than he’d probably intended, and he sent a worried look around before seeming to decide that no one else appeared to have noticed the minor outburst.
“I’ve been practicing,” I said quietly. “Nothing big, but it’s been enough to prove to myself that my control over my gift is a lot better than it once was. For all I know, the exposure to the amulet helped permanently strengthen something about it, or maybe it was something about entwining my powers with Ruby’s to get us back to the current day. Anyway, I really think we can go back to 1926 without too much trouble. Wouldn’t you like that? Don’t you want to have another Christmas with your family, one where, even if you don’t want to tell them exactly what happened, you could at least let them know that you’re safe and everything is all right?”
Another long pause, one during which I could see the way Seth swallowed, the way his eyes couldn’t quite meet mine. In that moment, I saw how badly he wanted to go…and how much he wrestled with himself for entertaining the notion…if even for a second or two.
Then he said, his tone flat again, “It’s too big a risk.”
