“Not exactly.” He hummed. “Theo never lost them, but he may need help to accept them for what they are, and that acceptance will go against years of religious conditioning.”
“Great,” she muttered sourly. “Can I ask you something?”
He gave a nod. “If I can answer, I will.”
“Who is he really?” she asked. “If what you’re telling me is true and if I believe you—and that’s a big if—I found records at the museum indicating that Theodore Beckett might have been a Witchfinder. Is that true? Did he really hunt my kind?”
“Yes,” he hedged. “And no.”
“Well, which is it?” she demanded.
“Both and neither,” he answered with an apologetic shrug. “It’s complicated, but I can tell you that you are in no danger from him. He’d never hurt you.”
“And why should I believe you?” she snapped. “I don’t know you. You magically appear in my kitchen, tell me you’ve dragged a man through time as casually as you’d comment on the weather, and you just want me to take your word for it that I’m in no danger from him? Seriously? Call me crazy, but a seventeenth-century Witchfinder and a twenty-first-century witch doesn’t exactly scream match made in heaven.”
“Don’t take my word for it.” He shrugged. “Go and talk to him. Give him a chance. You’ll see for yourself who he really is. Maybe he’ll tell you his story, maybe he won’t, but try and cut the guy some slack. In his time, they hadn’t even hit the Industrial Revolution yet, and all of a sudden, he’s been dropped in the twenty-first century. He’ll probably find the adjustment a little rough and he has no one to talk to. No one who won’t think he’s crazy, at least.”
“I do think he’s crazy.”
“No, you don’t. Just give the guy a chance, and he might surprise you.”
“You’re trying to make me feel guilty,” she grumbled sourly.
“I’m just offering you a solution.”
She shook her head. “I’ve spent years studying the trials and the culture of the New England colonists. They were religious fanatics, and the Witchfinders were the most vicious of all of them, and you expect him to just adjust to life in the present day. What the hell is going to happen when he finds out what I am?”
“He won’t hurt you,” he insisted.
“You can’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”
“Because if it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t have even been born,” he told her.
“What?” She drew back, sucking in a sharp breath.
“Your several times great-grandmother Hester and her twin sister, Bridget, were captured when they were just children. Their mother was killed, and they would have both been tortured and murdered if not for Theo. He risked his life to save them knowing what it would cost him when the others found out what he’d done,” he told her, running his hand through his hair in frustration.
“If you could only see time the way I do, this would be so much easier to explain. Think of time like a river, splitting and forking off into thousands of tiny streams, and each one nothing more than a possibility. I see all possible outcomes. I’ve seen the world in which Hester died and you weren’t born.” He broke off and dragged in a deep breath. “Theo didn’t know it at the time, but he saved the world that night.”
“But how?” Olivia frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“By making sure Hester survived to marry and have a child of her own, which meant that eventually you would be brought into the world.”
“Why me?” She shook her head. “I’m no one special.”
“I wish I could explain it all to you, but I’m bound by rules, rules I can’t break. Like I said, these murders are just the beginning. You’re extremely important, and Theo is here to help you. Please, Olivia, just give him a chance.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked him curiously.
He hesitated for a moment. “I know right now you have no reason to trust me. You don’t know me, but Olivia, I do know you, and I owe both you and Theo more than I can ever repay.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what that is?”
“No.” The corner of his mouth curved and he wandered back to the center island to pick up a document wallet she hadn’t noticed before. “You’re going to need this.” He handed it to her.
