"There were a couple of firms like that in Baltimore," Elena said, nodding. "Good people, most of them. Helped us catch more than a few murderers when their cases went sour."
"Yeah, we do our best. I was looking into this case — this woman who'd hired us a dozen times or so, her husband had been cheating on her basically since they got married. I'd gotten complacent about it, I guess. I had this feeling she was just doing it to get him to give her presents, you know? He'd cheat, we'd catch him, she'd threaten to leave, he'd buy her a big present to say sorry, the whole cycle would start again." It felt strange, talking about Gina like this. Usually, she wouldn't discuss her clients with anyone she didn't work with — they had confidentiality clauses for a reason. But she had a suspicion that telling a bunch of women from the sixteenth century wasn't going to get back to her client or anyone who knew her any time soon… and that thought made her feel dizzy again.
"Right," Elena prompted her gently. "So, you were investigating this cheating husband."
"Textbook stuff," she said, shaking her head. "I was camped outside the hotel room of the women we thought he was seeing. He turned up, they started canoodling, I got my photos and was getting ready to leave when the wife turned up. She barged into the room, started shouting at the woman while the husband hid in the bathroom — and then she pulled a gun."
Elena's breath hissed between her teeth. "You didn't —"
"She's a friend," Melanie said, shaking her head. "Or she felt like one. I didn't even think, I just — went. I thought if I could talk to her, I could get her to put the gun down, defuse the situation."
"Should've called the cops."
"Yeah, I know that now, thanks," Melanie snapped, a little annoyed by the remoteness of Elena's tone, her aloof demeanor. "Obviously, I didn't do what I should have done, or I wouldn't be here."
There was a silence at the table. Nancy reached out and squeezed her hand, and she took a deep, steadying breath, annoyed with herself for snapping. Elena's face was impassive. "Then what happened?"
"What do you think happened?" she said quietly, not wanting her memory to stray back to that awful moment. "The gun went off, I got hit, I woke up underwater."
"We've all been through something similar," Anna said softly, her expression warm and sympathetic. "You're not alone in this, Melanie. I promise. And look at it this way — you're alive. You got a second chance. Not everyone is so lucky."
"I just want to go home," she said, shaking her head. "I want all of this to be a dream." To her surprise, she realized there were tears welling up in her eyes. She felt exhausted, and drained, and sleep deprived, running on the burnout of adrenalin and stress hormones, and suddenly all of the strange things surrounding her were just making it worse. "Sorry. I just —"
"I understand," Anna said softly. "When I got here… it was just me. I had no idea what was happening to me… whether I'd gone crazy and was hallucinating, or dying in a hospital somewhere, or what."
"The rest of us had someone to talk to about it," Nancy put in, nodding. "I was confused when I got here, but Anna was here to help me through it. And when Elena arrived, she had us both. So, in a way… you're lucky. You've got seven sisters here already."
"Seven," Melanie breathed, eyes widening. "Seven women from the future have turned up here? When's it going to stop?"
"No idea," Elena said, shaking her head. "It's the Sidhe. Do you know about them yet?"
"I've heard a few stories," Melanie said, shaking her head. She wasn't exactly a fan of these glowing shapes… though she had to admit, she was glad she wasn't dead. She'd give them that much, at least. "But it's not like I met them."
"None of us did, not exactly," Elena said softly. "But they're allies, we know that much. They have an unerring sense of … well, who needs them, and why."
"I'd be dead without them," Anna agreed firmly. "I had this crazy ex-boyfriend. He kept stalking me, texting me from different numbers whenever I blocked him. I thought I could handle myself, thought he'd eventually get bored and go away if I didn't give him what he wanted… but then one night, he came to my house with a gun. I was asleep, he broke in… then I woke up here. It took me a long time to piece together what had happened," she said, shaking her head. "But with Maggie's help, I figured it out. The Sidhe saved my life. And without them I would never have met Donal," she added with a soft smile, glancing up the table where the handsome blond Laird was laughing at something Aelfred had said.
"Mine was an accident," Nancy said. "I was cave diving in North Carolina, a few hours out of Raleigh. This amazing underwater system that had been recently uncovered — anyway, the caves weren't as stable as we'd thought, and there was a cave-in. I thought I was finding my way through, swimming deeper into the cave with my gear… but then I realized I was swimming through open water, and I surfaced in the Loch. The Sidhe grabbed me out of the cave before I could drown," she said softly. "Without them, my body would be rotting in that cave, still."
Melanie felt a shiver run down her spine. It was horrible to imagine being entombed like that, underwater and underground all at once… she'd never been particularly claustrophobic, but she could feel it creeping down her spine now. "That's awful."
Nancy shrugged. "It was. But now, I have a home I love, and a husband I adore, and even a family." She grinned. "So, in the end, I was glad I nearly died in a cave. Not that you have to be glad your client shot you," she added firmly. "But… I mean, some good might come of it, that's all I'm saying."
Did Nancy mean she was going to meet a husband here, too? It seemed two of the women, at least, had settled into marriage and family — three, if you included Elena, whose eyes were shadowed. "I was investigating a murder," she said simply. "Tried to walk down some steps into a basement, and the steps gave way. I suppose the fall would have killed me, if the Sidhe hadn't seen to it that I landed in the Loch instead of the basement."
"And then you met Brendan and fell in love and lived happily ever after," Nancy prompted her with an elbow to the ribs.
Elena rolled her eyes. "I suppose so. Happily-ever-after so far," she corrected her, the faintest shimmer of a smile in her eyes indicating that she was teasing the younger girl. "Better than being dead in a basement just outside of Baltimore, at any rate, so I'm grateful."
"We'll introduce you to the others, too," Anna promised. "They'll tell you their stories, help you adjust to life here."
"That's nice," Melanie said hesitantly. "Thanks." There was a question she wanted to ask… but now that it came time to ask it, she was afraid of what the answer might be. Elena was looking at her face intently, and she sighed at something she saw there, sitting back in her chair.
"You can't go back."
"What?"
"That's what you wanted to ask, right? Whether you could go back to your home, pretend this never happened? The Burgh being a doorway from the future to the past means it could work the other way, right?"
She hesitated, torn between annoyance that Elena had seen through her so well… and trepidation at the potential answer to her question. "Yeah. I mean, I guess so. It's nice here, an everything, and I'm grateful to still be alive, but — my father needs me," she said softly, shaking her head. "He'd be heartbroken if he lost me, too."
"I'm sorry, Melanie," Elena said softly. "Really, I am. But there's no road back."
She sighed. "Maggie said something along those lines, but I didn't want to believe her," she said, shaking her head.
"I bet she loved that," Nancy said under her breath. "I think you might owe Maggie a batch of shortbread and a bottle of mead, if you gave her that much trouble —"
"I didn't mean to," Melanie objected. "I just — I'd just crawled out of a lake with a stranger, okay? I had a lot to think about."
"Wait, what?" Anna leaned forward, her eyes alight with curiosity all of a sudden. "There was someone else with you? Where is she?"
"She? No," she said blankly. "Aelfred, up there. He was in the Loch too. We swam to shore to
gether."
That seemed to have caught the attention of the three of them well and truly, and she couldn't help but feel a little attacked as they all leaned in. Nancy and Anna seemed fascinated, but there was a harsh edge of worry on Elena's face that made Melanie look at her closely as she elaborated.
"When I got to the surface, he was nearby, so we helped each other get to shore. He told me his name, told me he'd come back from the Faerie world, or whatever. It all sounded insane, but… well, the more time that passes the more I realize that my whole life is insane now, though, so —"
"He came from the Fae?" Elena said sharply, her keen gray eyes flying to Aelfred. "Who is he? What is he?"
"He's — Aelfred," she said blankly. "He's a Grant, apparently."
Anna and Nancy exchanged a meaningful look that made Melanie extremely curious — but Elena was demanding her full attention. "What do you mean, he's a Grant? He's Fae, isn't he?"
"He was born here," she protested. "That's what he said. He was born here, and when he was a child the faeries took him away, and now he's come back."
"A Changeling," Elena breathed, her eyes flying back to Aelfred, who was shooting curious glances along the table, clearly having realized they were talking about him. "Fascinating. And he's just returned? Having left when he was a child?"
"He's going to have a hell of a time adjusting," Anna said, shaking her head. "We should get him to talk to Maeve as soon as possible. It explains the eyes, though," she added with a grin. "I've only ever seen eyes like that on Changelings."
But Nancy was looking directly at Melanie, for all the world as though she had something direly important to ask her — but she was affecting coyness, trying to seem casual. "So, you and him — you got on okay?"
"What do you mean?" she said blankly. "I mean, we helped each other not drown. It was nice to have someone else who had no idea where the hell they were."
"Interesting," Nancy said, her tone wheedling — and Melanie didn't miss the way Anna elbowed her in the ribs. "Ouch!"
"What's going on?" Melanie asked, a little annoyed by the secrecy. "What are you getting at?"
"It's just — part of the pattern," Anna explained, shaking her head at Nancy. "The women who are brought here from the future… well, we also seem to have something else in common, other than our deaths. We… well —"
"We have similar taste in men," Nancy choked out, her eyes shining as she fought to stop herself from giggling.
Melanie blinked, nonplussed. "What?"
"Every woman who's come through the Burgh has ended up marrying a Grant, that's all," Anna said, grinning a little. "So — well, you see why we're interested to hear that you came through the Burgh with a Grant at your side already…"
"You think the Sidhe were playing matchmaker?"
"Maybe," Nancy said brightly.
"No," Anna said firmly. "But — well, they do work in strange ways."
Melanie couldn't bring herself to look down the table at Aelfred… though she had to admit, part of her was very intrigued by the notion that they might be the victims of some kind of interdimensional matchmakers. After all, she was believing in all kinds of unbelievable things today… what was wrong with believing that a man that gorgeous just might be meant for her?
Chapter 10
They finished their lunch still deep in conversation about the castle, the experience of traveling here, and in particular, how long it had taken the other three women to get used to the place. Anna in particular was very keen to introduce Melanie to all of the other women who'd come to the castle before her — there were four more of them, it seemed, and with Melanie there were eight. She was surprised to learn that all seven of the women who'd come from the future to the castle seemed to have taken a Grant man as a husband.
"You get that that makes this seem kind of like a cult, right?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
That drew a giggle from Nancy, who glanced up the table at her husband Malcolm, who smiled back at her with such a surprisingly soft expression on his face that it unexpectedly warmed Melanie's heart. Maybe she'd been spending too much time around unhappy couples, she thought, shaking her head. Not a lot of positive romantic role models in her life — her father had adored her mother, of course, but she didn't have any memories of the two of them actually interacting, just stories of their courtship and the early years of their marriage.
"It's got cult vibes for sure," Elena said matter-of-factly. "But it beats the hell out of being dead, so — here we are."
Melanie couldn't help but like the terse ex-detective. Elena was a little standoffish, it was true, but she was also honest, and Melanie always gravitated to honest people after years of working in a field that was all about wheedling the truth out of liars.
"When can I meet the others?"
"Dinner," Anna said firmly. "I'll make sure they all head in for dinner tonight — I'll send word to the village, too. One of the women is the local doctor," she said with a smile.
Melanie raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't cause time paradox problems?" she asked, tilting her head. "Not that I'm an expert, but… well, I've seen Back to the Future. What if she cures someone who shouldn't have been cured?"
"You can ask her tonight," Anna said with a grin. "For now, though… what do you say to a bath and a warm bed? We can get a room organized for you and you can spend the afternoon resting."
"I'm okay," she protested… but even as she spoke, she could feel an enormous yawn coming on. "I guess I could do a nap," she added, grinning a little ruefully at the timing. "It was a long night."
"The travel takes more out of you than you'd think," Elena warned her. "You might fall sick. A lot of us did. Combination of the travel stress and the different bacteria and diseases that are around in this era."
She hadn't thought of that. She wrinkled her nose. "I hate getting sick."
"You might not." Nancy shrugged. "But if you do, just take it easy. And if it gets really bad, we'll send for Maggie."
"Oh, yeah?" She blinked. Was the old woman some kind of healer, as well? She supposed that would explain the hundreds of little jars and mysterious bundles of herbs on every available surface in her house… but she wasn't especially keen to see the cranky old woman again too soon. After all, she had a suspicion she'd been rather rude to her in the disorientation and delirium of figuring out where she was and what was happening to her. She'd make an apology later, she decided. Nancy had said something about the woman having a soft spot for mead… she'd get hold of some, somehow.
But that only reminded her of another problem that had been worrying at the back of her mind, and she bit her lip, looking up and down the table ruefully. "That reminds me. I don't have any money. My wallet doesn't seem to have made the trip with me."
"It's okay," Anna said firmly. "Really. Even if it had, American money's not exactly in circulation here."
She blushed. Of course, it wasn't. What a dumb thought. Besides, she didn't carry much cash… she had a suspicion that a credit card would be even more useless than the cash. "Shoot. Uh —"
"You don't have to pay for room and board here," Anna told her, shaking her head. "You're family, okay? This thing that happened to you — the Sidhe bringing you here — well, there's a lot more to tell you about this castle, but basically, Clan Grant are guardians of the Burgh. They're liaisons, I suppose, between the Fae world and the human one. And it's their responsibility — our responsibility — to take in strays like you and your friend up there who are delivered to us by the Sidhe."
"It's always worked out well for us in the past," Elena said with a shrug. "The skills the travelers bring with them always seem to be just what we need. Karen arrived just before the outbreak of a plague, for example."
A shiver ran down her spine. "Plague?"
"All taken care of," Elena reassured her. "It was only cowpox, too. With a supernatural component… but I'll let her tell that story tonight. In the meantime," she said, glancing over her shoulder. Sure enough,
a servant was bustling up to the table, her blue eyes bright under the bonnet she was wearing to keep back her hair.
"Hello, ma'am! Your room is ready," she said brightly to Melanie, who blinked, realizing that they'd been organizing all of this while lunch was on. "Are you ready to follow me?"
"Get some rest," Anna told her softly. "We'll talk more at dinner, okay?"
"Thanks," she said to the three women, feeling more than a little helpless as she gestured toward the castle in general. "For welcoming me. For — explaining stuff. I feel a lot better," she said with a smile. Then she turned and followed the servant through the hall, sparing one last glance over her shoulder for Aelfred, who gave her a smile and a little wave before turning back to the men.
The truth was, she didn't feel much better at all. She felt overwhelmed, and scared, and full of feelings — especially about the revelation that there seemed to be no way to go back to her own time. Was that absolutely true? Were these women experts on magic, or something? Surely there was some way… she bit her lip as she followed the servant, wondering whether she was just in denial of the realities of the situation she'd found herself in. Surely not. She'd come here, right? Surely, she could leave again.
They headed up the spiral staircases she'd spotted at the far end of the hall, narrow and a little ominous, though the servant assailed them with the kind of grace and dexterity that came from long practice. She was puffing a little when they emerged in a hallway, and the servant flashed her a reassuring little smile.
Trusted By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance Page 8