A moment later there was James’s voice. Quentin told him, “I got Boss and Hayley — yeah. Be there in about twenty minutes.”
Then he ran his hand over his head as he careened us down the road.
I found enough strength tae speak. “What happened?”
“I don’t know, not really. There were storms last night. In the north and the south. James got everyone out to safety while I chased the storms. I didn’t find anything or anyone, either they were testing us, or they—”
“Are here, hidin’.”
Hayley woke up and said, “The future-future guys might be here?”
“Yep, and they’re sending messages to Katie’s phone. They say she’s going to be arrested for murder. They sent a video of her being arrested.”
“Och. Tis true?”
“We’re dealing with the laws of time and physics here. I don’t know if it’s true. It might be bullshit, but I described to Katie what she was wearing in the video and she’s wearing it right now.”
Hayley said, “That shit is freaky — she must be terrified.”
I asked, “How long until we arrive, Quentin?”
I jumped from the truck and raced intae the small building, duckin’ under the low ceiling. The house smelled of burgers, and damp walls. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust on Kaitlyn’s fearful expression.
She flung herself intae my arms.
“Are ye frightened, mo reul-iuil? Daena be scared.” I tried tae soothe her worries, while she clung tae my shoulders.
Twenty-two - Kaitlyn
Finally calmed from a big cry, I noticed Hayley. She looked as distraught as I felt.
“I’m so sorry I’m crying, Hayley, I really am so glad you’re home. I wish it was under different—”
She was frowning a frown so big it was almost cartoonish. She stared at the far wall of the trailer as if she couldn’t see it.
“Hayley, are you okay?”
Her chin trembled.
I asked, “Are you crying? Hayley what happened?”
Tears streamed down her face. “I don’t know. I think — I think I made a big mistake.”
“What do you mean?” I pulled her down to the couch beside me. “Tell me.”
“I can’t, there’s so much going on here. Just — there’s plenty of time for me to tell you my whole sob story another day.”
“True, but how did you have a sob story? It’s only been—”
Magnus said, “Madame Hayley was there for a month afore I came for her.”
“Oh. Oh no. That does sound like a sob story in the making. Are you hungry?” I dug through the closest bag of cold fast food. Zach dug through bags, collecting enough fries for both Magnus and Hayley.
Hayley dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. “I don’t want to talk about it right now. We have this to deal with.” Then she noticed Archie. “And I didn’t want to mention it before but Mags is holding a strange child who looks just like him.”
Archie had been watching Hayley intently, now he dropped from Magnus’s arms, scrambled onto my lap and hid his face in my shirt.
Hayley joked again, “I suppose he’s with you?”
“This is Archie.”
He pulled my shirt from his eyes to peek at her.
Hayley said, “Nice to meet you, Archie. You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve been through an ordeal. Would you happen to have any whisky?”
I groaned. “Hayley, he’s a little boy.”
“He looks old enough to me, plus he’s the son of a Scot, don’t tell me they don’t know where some whisky is...” She laid her head back on the couch. “Fine, I agree, Aunt Hayley is being inappropriate again. I will never learn, right Ben?”
Emma and Ben were returning from the bathroom and Ben ran into Hayley’s arms.
“Hey, little Ben. No I didn’t bring you a present. It was the freaking eighteenth century, and they have nothing, absolutely nothing.” She sighed. “Except they have everything.”
My eyes went wide. “What the hell? I can see you are in a mood, and I do want to hear all about it, we all do. I’ve never seen you cry this much or sigh this deeply.”
She sighed again.
I said, “We do have some big shit to deal with.”
“I see you wore your Team Edward shirt, Twilight is so last decade, honey, plus, you have Magnus.”
“Magnus knows he’s hotter, plus it’s super comfortable.” For the hundredth time that day I regretted my pajama choice.
Quentin stood, which meant he was looming. There were too many giant men in this tiny trailer — Zach bent over, Magnus hunched, James in the doorway blocking the light, Quentin looming. He said, “You weren’t shitting me, that outfit you’re wearing down to the stupid T-shirt about vampires, is the exact one in the video.”
Zach said, “Fuck, that’s not good.” He opened the curtain and glanced outside.
Emma said, “Archie, come down the hall with me and Ben.” She led the boys away to distract them, saying, “See this... isn’t that cool?” about something that wasn’t cool at all.
Magnus said to me, “We must get ye from here at once.”
Quentin looked down at his phone, scrolled, typed, and then winced. “Find My Phone says someone is moving your phone. Shit, I put it in the warehouse, someone broke in and has it.”
Zach asked, “The warehouse in Yulee?”
“Yeah, I thought the lock and the security guard would slow them down at least. Could this be your mother, Magnus?”
“Nae, ye said there were two storms. She does like tae arrive unannounced but she wouldna hunt us like this. Plus, she daena want tae arrest Kaitlyn. She wants me tae be king. She kens arresting the queen would end her hopes. This is Roderick and involves his army.”
Quentin said, “Well, you have to get her out of here.”
Magnus nodded, “Aye, we need to go.”
I asked, “Where, what do you mean? Like a hotel, right? Just like, in Savannah, or Atlanta. We could take Archie to Orlando, see Disney World while we wait.”
Magnus shook his head.
“Why can’t we?”
“They ken too much of us, mo ghradh, our houses, our friends. If we go away we will be hunted and we winna ken when they are comin’.”
“But we have the monitor.”
Quentin said, “They’re already here. The good news, we know they’re here. We’re a step ahead of them. But if you drive out of here you don’t know if they're right at the end of the road.”
I looked up at Magnus from my seat on the couch. “I can’t leave Archie.”
“I ken, we will take him with us.”
“It’s too — no, we can’t jump with him, no.”
“What would ye have me do, Kaitlyn? I have tae get ye tae safety. If they find ye, and they will, they will find him as well.”
“It will hurt him. He might hate me. I can’t. Don’t make me.”
“Last time I was surrounded by an enemy I couldna protect ye, and it took a verra long time tae get home. I barely survived. Dost ye want tae put everyone at risk for it?”
“No, but—”
Magnus said, “Master Quentin, what’s your plan?”
“I will stay here. I’ll find these fuckers and kill them. Then Beaty and I will move to a new house. I’ll add to our security, because this is bullshit and I’m not allowing it anymore. You should go, but don’t tell me where, in case I’m captured.”
I gulped. “You could be captured?”
They ignored me and kept conversing.
Magnus asked, “Mistress Hayley, what will ye do?”
“How long’s it been? I think I have to go to work... my mom doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing.”
“Aye, but daena make any new friends.”
“Very funny.”
“If anythin’ seems off, tell Master Quentin immediately. What of you, Chef Zach?”
“Emma, Ben, and I will head to Austin like we talked about. Visit her aunt. We’ll lay low until yo
u’re back. When will you be back?”
“I will speak tae Lady Mairead, she has knowledge of the tech. More information would be another layer of protection. I will ask her tae advise me on it. Kaitlyn and I will return in six weeks. Quentin dost this sound—”
“Yeah Boss, give me six weeks. That’ll be enough time.”
I said, “Can’t we figure something else out? I promised Archie I wouldn’t hurt him.”
Quentin interrupted, “Find My Phone says your phone is headed this way.”
James said, “Everyone to the trucks. We have to leave the back route, north.” Everyone stood to rush from the trailer.
Panic hit me. It felt a lot like a safe falling from a ten story building crashing onto my head, like in the old cartoons, flattened. “What are we doing? I can’t—” There was no way I could get up from this couch.
Emma crouched down to speak to Archie. “You’re going to go on a trip, and when you come back, Ben and Chef Zach and I will make you a feast of all your favorite foods, and I’ll take you to the park like we were talking about.”
Zach tugged her by the hand to the door. “We’ve gotta go, Em.”
Magnus said, “I need ye tae get up, Kaitlyn. I see ye are scared, but we need ye tae rally.”
He pulled Archie up into his arms.
Archie burst into tears and reached for me but Magnus carried him away, striding from the trailer, sword slung down his back, accentuating the danger — headed outside.
Archie’s cries grew louder and louder — shit. I was going to hurt him. I was going to break my promise to him. I promised him no pain and now, god...
They were after me. They had my arrest on camera. I was wearing this stupid fucking shirt and...
I walked out of the trailer, and down the steps. Blinded by the sun, I shielded my eyes with my arms. The scene was otherworldly, trucks pulled up on the grass. Pine forest surrounding us. One road, in and out. Everyone I loved rushing, yanking open vehicle doors, scrambling inside.
Archie’s screams filled my head.
James’s truck sped from the yard, kicking up a cloud of dust. Quentin dropped the bags of vessels at Magnus’s feet. Magnus twisted one while Archie writhed in his arms trying to get to me.
As Quentin wrenched the door of his truck open he yelled, “Fucking A, Katie, go with Magnus!”
I clutched my chest. “Please don’t.” My panic was a full-blown, completely out of my mind, unable to think, awash in the hormones of fear, attack. I couldn’t do this.
People were hunting me. Hunting. If I just locked this door on this weird little trailer, I would be fine. I was too scared and it was painful and Archie was screaming, and, “Please don’t, we can...”
“Kaitlyn, come here, right now. Ye have tae rally your courage. We canna do this without ye and if ye let them take ye, I winna be able tae—”
Archie was back-bending almost falling from Magnus’s arms, screaming, “Mammy!!!”
I tried to pull in air as my feet moved forward, no no no no no no no, the storm rising above us. The last thing I remembered was clutching around Archie and Magnus, gasping in a last wrenching bit of air, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, again, not enough, not enough of a mom, not enough of a protector, a freaking murderer, wanted for murder — not enough air — for a jump—
Twenty-three - Kaitlyn
It was scalding hot pain in every fiber and then like clawing my way from deep underwater, I grasped for the top, drew in a deep necessary breath, drowning. God I’m drowning.
Magnus’s face swam into focus.
On his knees, reaching, splashing, trying to grasp — he begged, “Kaitlyn! Please, Kaitlyn!”
The pain in my chest was unbearable, the pain that snaked through my every tissue, muscle, bone and sinew. I was slid onto a board and lifted through the air.
Two strange men at either end of me, carrying me up a dock, up a grassy slope, they shoved me into the back of an ambulance. Racing up the slope after us, Magnus, with a wailing Archie in his arms, and beside him a couple that I barely recognized — their faces a blur that was jogging a memory. Familiarity mixed with strangeness. The doors of the ambulance closed.
I woke in a hospital room. Like clawing my way up from a time jump, I came conscious through pure force of will and determination and want and then it was shock and pain and awful, but also calm, dark, quiet, a bed, beside my bed, my grandma, Barb, only younger, much younger.
It was incongruous and I stared at her for a while wondering where and why and when and especially how old was I? Had I died and if so what was this? And why did it hurt?
And where was Magnus?
“Magnus?” His name croaked from my dry unused throat.
The young lady who was wearing my grandma’s unlined face leaned forward. “Magnus is out in the lobby.”
To another person in the room she said, “Jack, do you want to let Magnus know she’s awake?”
I turned my head. A man wearing my grandpa’s hair and build and body left the hospital room.
“Where am I?”
“The hospital. You were on the dock and slipped in. Magnus got you out right away but you weren’t responding, so we brought you here. They thought it was a drowning, but thankfully not.”
The man, my grandpa Jack, younger and no longer passed away, slipped back into the room, and I still wasn’t entirely sure this wasn’t heaven or some other unexplainable thing.
Time travel, sure, but — was I sure? That back there had felt a lot like dying.
A tear slid down my cheek, tickling my skin, convincing me I was alive.
I couldn’t move my hands to wipe my tears though, reminding me I was definitely dead.
I stared at the tile ceiling. “Is Magnus coming?”
My grandma said, “Yes, but here’s the thing. He’s told us an unbelievable story. Before you see him, I want you to tell me your side of it.”
She leveled her eyes on me. Familiar eyes, the eyes of the matriarch, eyes I had been looking into since I was a baby. Her hands folded in her lap, waiting for what I would say.
“You’re my Grandma Barb, and you’re my Grandpa Jack. My parents are John and Paige Sheffield and my name is Katie. I’m a time traveler. Where I’m from it’s the year 2020. Magnus is my husband. Is Archie okay?”
She looked up at Grandpa Jack and they met eyes. “Yes, the boy is okay.”
Grandpa Jack said, “He’s asleep, Magnus has him.”
She said, “Explain the time travel. Is that possible in the year 2020?”
“No, not at all. There’s a year in the far away future-future where it’s been invented.” I smacked my lips. “Is there some water?”
She passed me a cup of room-temperature water. I drank, filling my parched mouth and then dropped my head back on the pillow. “These vessels allow people to jump through time, they are the property of Magnus’s kingdom in the year 2383.”
Their eyes met again.
I continued, “As you can imagine they’re very dangerous and very powerful. Ever since I married Magnus we’ve been trying to keep them under our control.”
Grandpa Jack asked, “How did we meet Magnus?”
“In the beginning, when we were first married, we didn’t know how to work the vessels. One night just before he was going to time travel and I taught him all the names and addresses I could think of, my whole family tree. I taught him your names and your address. He got stuck, ricocheting around in time and ended up here — I don’t know when...”
“About eleven months ago.”
“Oh, yeah, he stayed with you and you helped him figure out how to work the vessels because he was trying to get home to me.”
Grandma Barb’s brow drew down.
I said, “Please don’t hold it against him. I know he lied, but he didn’t have a way to prove the story to you. I don’t have any way to prove it, except—”
“Except you look a great deal like your grandma did at your age,” said Grandpa Jack.
“Well, no, it all sounds like a lot of magical malarkey actually. I need some hard scientific proof or it’s just a leap of faith and I’m not prone to—”
Grandma Barb said, “Your entire thesis was predicated on a leap and you’ve been defending it for years now.”
Grandpa Jack said, “Yes, but it wasn’t time travel: unknowable, unbelievable, unreal.”
Grandma Barb said, “Your granddaughter is in front of you telling you it’s the truth. Name one other explanation.”
“Phfffft, now I’m fifty years old with a grown-ass granddaughter giving me an old age complex.” He added, “I suppose the boy is my great-grandson?”
“Not really, he’s my stepson. You aren’t connected to him by blood.”
Grandma Barb humphed. “You claim to be my granddaughter and you’ve opened your heart to be his mother?”
“So much.”
“Then that’s good enough.” She said to Grandpa Jack, “He is your great-grandson, old man.”
Their eyes met once more.
Grandma Barb said, “Their stories seem to check out.”
Grandpa Jack asked me, “Tell me something only my granddaughter could know.”
“One summer, you and I were canoeing, I was about six years old, and you told me a story about when you were about to get married to Barb. You were both turning in your thesis papers. One of your professors called you into his office and warned you against marrying a woman who was in the same field. He told you Barb wouldn’t be content to take care of your house and your kids and that you were making a mistake. You told them you were looking forward to the intelligent conversation, it would be a lot better than the dumb…” I searched my memory but it was hazy. “I can’t remember what you said, but it was something.”
His brow drew down. “I said, ‘Better to have intelligent conversations with my wife, than fucking idiotic conversations with a sexist doctor of physics.’”
Again My Love (Kaitlyn and the Highlander Book 9) Page 9