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The group of tourists hurried out of Sedona Vines so they could climb into their bus and head to their next destination — which sounded as if it was going to be Javelina Leap over in Page Springs — and Bellamy let out a relieved breath. Although she supposed she should be glad for the business, it was always a lot of extra work when one of the tour buses stopped by, since everyone wanted to cram in the maximum amount of wine tasting before they went on to the next stop on their route.

Honestly, she wasn’t sure why they even came to the wine bar at all, since it wasn’t a winery, per se, only a place where vintages from all over the world, not just the Verde Valley, were available. On the other hand, Sedona was pretty short on actual wineries, since they tended to be clustered in Cottonwood and Page Springs and yes, in Jerome.

Before this, she’d worked at Caduceus Cellars just a couple of doors down from McAllister Mercantile, where she’d also picked up some part-time hours, but after she got her enology certificate in June, she’d moved on to bigger and better things. It had been a little hard to accept that she wouldn’t be pulling shifts at the store anymore, but with Seth McAllister now settled down in Jerome following his trips in time with Devynn Rowe, the two of them were pretty much running the shop these days. In 1926, his immediate family had managed the place, and Rachel McAllister, the current owner, had decreed that she was giving the whole thing over to Seth to handle.

At any rate, they didn’t need her to work a few hours here and a few hours there anymore, which was why Bellamy had jumped at the chance to take over the assistant manager job at Sedona Vines when the position became available. While she adored Jerome and would never seriously think about living anywhere except the Verde Valley, she had to admit it was something of a relief to be working in a place where no one knew all that much about her except that she was a McAllister, just like so many other denizens of the area.

And even though her dads weren’t totally thrilled about the whole Sedona thing, she knew they were happy she’d found a job that so neatly dovetailed with her education and her interests. While she was getting her enology certification, she’d taken many classes on making wine, of course, and probably could have gotten work at one of the wineries in the area. However, although she loved learning about the science involved in winemaking, she’d never had much desire to actually create her own vintages.

No, she was much more into talking about wine, suggesting varieties and blends that she thought would tempt a customer’s palate, leaning into the mystique of the whole thing. It was just fine with her if she never again had to be up at the crack of dawn harvesting the grapes so they’d be picked at the peak of perfection…or nervously eyeing the weather when a late frost threatened the delicate buds.

Much better to enjoy the product of those labors rather than having to agonize over every single bump in the road.

A few more customers came in, and she chatted them up, asking them whether they liked white or red, dry or sweet. They had a good crowd this particular Saturday afternoon, just enough to have a nice ebb and flow without things getting too crazy. Of course, as the day bled into evening, they’d get busier, with people coming in to amuse themselves before they headed off for dinner.

Or just stayed here. While Sedona Vines didn’t have a full kitchen, they had snacks and charcuterie boards that were big enough to substitute for a meal, and plenty of people hung around and nibbled and drank rather than going in search of some real food. The space had been set up to invite people to linger, with its mixture of round bar-height tables and chairs and conversation areas with comfy couches, not to mention the welcoming reclaimed-wood bar, so they often had clients who stayed there for hours and hours.

There would be live music later, too. Bree played here sometimes, although not tonight, since the group on the calendar today was a husband and wife duo from Missouri who’d been making the circuit for the past couple of years. They always offered a good time, though, so Bellamy couldn’t let herself miss Brianna too much, especially when she knew her gigs at Enchantment tended to earn her bigger tips.

She hoped her friend was okay, though. Even if Bree was trying to act as though it was no big deal that she’d completely upended her family’s expectations for her, Bellamy knew she was still probably second-guessing herself, trying to decide if she’d made an impulsive decision that would come back to bite her in the ass when she least expected it.

Well, if that happened, Bellamy knew she’d offer a sympathetic ear whenever Bree needed one.

And then the door opened again, and for a moment, a tall figure was silhouetted against the warm light of the setting sun. Bellamy found her eyes narrowing as she looked at the newcomer, whose features slowly resolved themselves once he was well inside and not so backlit.

Hot damn, he was gorgeous. While handsome strangers came to the wine bar on a fairly regular basis, they usually weren’t alone. No, someone who looked like that generally had a date hanging on his arm.

That wasn’t all, though. When he got closer to the bar, a brief ringing in her ears told Bellamy the stranger was just as much witch-kind as she was, and although she was a little startled, it wasn’t as if this sort of thing hadn’t happened before.

In fact, her first thought was that he must be a Wilcox, since he was dark enough, but somehow, she didn’t think so. Although she couldn’t claim to have met every twenty-something guy in the Wilcox family, enough of them came to visit Jerome that a good percentage were immediately recognizable to her.

No, the stranger was probably a member of the de la Paz clan who’d come up to the Verde Valley for a change of scenery. Although they didn’t visit these parts as often as the Wilcoxes did, it wasn’t as though having a de la Paz warlock drop in out of nowhere was completely out of the ordinary, either.

Even if she was pretty sure this guy was the best-looking de la Paz she’d ever seen.

He came straight for her, his stride purposeful, which seemed to indicate that he wasn’t here solely to get a drink or pick up a couple of bottles of wine. No, he stopped on the other side of the bar and gave a quick glance around, as if to make sure no one was paying them any particular attention, before saying, “Bellamy McAllister?”

“Who’s asking?” she returned with a smile. Yes, the guy was gorgeous, but she wasn’t going to give it all away without getting some idea as to his reason for being here.

His expression remained serious. “My name is Marc Trujillo. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about…in private.”

She felt her eyebrows lift, although she wouldn’t allow her smile to waver. No one seemed to have listened to their exchange, but there were still plenty of people clustered near the bar and the tall tables set up close by, so no way in the world could anyone view this as a situation where they had even a modicum of privacy.

“Can it wait?” she asked. “We’re kind of busy right now.”

Marc Trujillo’s dark gaze swept their immediate environs as though to count all the customers gathered inside the wine bar, and he gave a reluctant nod. “I suppose so. When can you take a break?”

Since she was the assistant manager, she could go on a break pretty much anytime she wanted. However, she was new enough here that she didn’t want to take advantage or make the other employees think she was willing to bend the rules as long as doing so benefited her in some way.

“Half an hour,” she replied, since that was when she’d already planned to take her break.

He didn’t look overly thrilled by that reply, but at least he didn’t protest.

“Okay,” he said. “What’ve you got for a dry rosé?”

She recited the options, then poured him a glass of the wine he’d ordered. Apparently resigned to waiting until she was ready, he took the glass out onto the patio. It was blazing hot today, hovering just under a hundred degrees, but she supposed that if he really was a de la Paz and therefore from Phoenix or Tucson or points in between, then he knew a little something about hot weather.

The next half hour was busier than she’d expected, but eventually she was able to murmur to Pierce, the other guy working the bar that afternoon, that she was taking her break and would be back in fifteen. Thoughts of a glass of rosé tempted her, although she did her best to resist them. She was working, and even if she was currently on her break, that didn’t mean she should start drinking.

Marc Trujillo sat at a table over to one side, where the spreading branches of a large cottonwood tree did a decent job of shielding that section of the patio from the hot sun. As soon as she approached, he set down his glass of wine — she was a little surprised that he hadn’t finished it yet, and guessed he’d been nursing the drink to make it last until she came out to meet him — and stood, then pulled out a chair for her.

“Thanks,” she said, settling herself in the seat. Good-looking and polite?

She could definitely deal with that.

“Visiting from down south?” she asked once he’d settled himself in his chair, and he nodded.

“From Tucson.”

He was a long way from home, then. Although the McAllisters headed into Phoenix all the time to go shopping or run other errands, not nearly as many of them made it as far as Tucson, which was more than a three-hour drive from Jerome.

“Come up to see the red rocks?”

She’d essayed another smile as she asked the question, but his expression remained serious.

“No, I came here to see you.”

For a second or two, she could only stare back at him, trying to figure out if he was making some kind of joke. But no, those dark eyes with their fringe of heavy lashes were sober, without even a single glint to tell her he was teasing.

“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 so very good-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.

“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 their prima, 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.

“That’s good,” she said. “I guess enjoy the rest of your time in the Verde Valley.”

“I will.”

She gave him a smile she knew was limp at best, but what else was she supposed to say? It was time for her to get back to work, and, as far as she could tell, this whole thing had been a wild-goose chase and nothing more.

After all, there was certainly nothing interesting going on in her life.

Even if she kind of wished there were.