by Cindy Miles
And then, out of the mist, a small figure emerged. A young warrior in Munro plaid, running toward Marynth full force, sword drawn. A young boy, perhaps?
Amelia blinked. A young girl. And she looked exactly like Ethan, Rob, and Gilchrist.
With Devina’s murderer’s name on her lips, the young girl, whom Amelia guessed to be Ethan’s younger sister, plunged her blade into Marynth’s heart, and the tall woman fell in a heap to the ground.
Amelia’s breath came hard and fast, and she looked around but saw absolutely nothing. The mist, thick and consuming, rose to engulf her. The curses and shouts had vanished. All was silent.
And then, just that fast, the mist blinded her, and the weight left Amelia’s body and she drifted, the blanket of white pulling her fast into a dark tunnel, until the white became a tiny speck of light in Amelia’s eye. A pinpoint glimmer.
Then, nothing at all . . .
‘‘Lass?’’
Amelia’s eyes fluttered open. As her head cleared, so did her vision. She blinked several times, pinched her eyes shut tight, then opened them again.
Guthrie stood just at the open door of her room, frowning. ‘‘You writers sure are peculiar folk. Like I said, you’ve free run of the tower, lass, so unpack and help yourself. Watch your step, though. The closest infirmary isn’t so verra close at all. Supper’s every eve at seven. Breakfast is at eight. Lunch, you’re on your own.’’ With that, he disappeared into the shadowy corridor.
Amelia stood, dumbfounded. It took several seconds for things to compute. When it did, her stomach got that funny feeling one got when riding the Tower of Terror at MGM Studios. If one dared to ride that, which she did.
Shaking her head, completely bewildered, she glanced around. On the floor beside her, her big Volkswagon-sized suitcase. Next to that, her duffels and computer bag. Her room sat empty, as though no one had ever stayed in it.
As though she’d never stayed in it.
Impossible.
She turned around, nearly kicked Jack, who’d parked right by the duffels, and ran out the door. ‘‘Guthrie! Wait!’’ She hurried after him, down the corridor and to the steps. He’d already made it halfway down. ‘‘Guthrie!’’
The old curator turned and looked up at her, his bushy brows pinched together into a scowl. ‘‘Aye?’’
Racing down the stairs, she ran straight to him. She panted, out of breath. ‘‘What’s going on? Where’s Ethan and the others?’’
Guthrie shoved a long, gnarled finger under the bill of his cap and scratched. ‘‘What others? I’m the only one here. I dunna know what you mean, lass.’’ He looked at her, shook his head, and then leaned toward her and sniffed. ‘‘Ye been hittin’ the whiskey already, eh?’’ He chuckled.
Amelia wanted to grab the old guy by his plaid shirt and shake him. ‘‘Stop fooling around! What’s happened to Ethan? Have you seen them?’’
Guthrie stared at her and shook his head. ‘‘I dunna know what you’re talkin’ about, lassy, but I do know that I’m late for me date with the widow.’’ He gave her a hard stare. ‘‘First of each month we go to Arthur’s for a bit of dancin’, and June’s special is an open buffet. You were supposed to be here hours ago, you know.’’ He started across the hall. ‘‘Supper’s warmin’ on the stove. I’m off.’’
‘‘Wait—it’s June?’’
He cocked his head. ‘‘Of course it’s June.’’ He narrowed his gaze. ‘‘Dunna ye look at your flight times?’’ He shook his head. ‘‘Daft lass.’’
With that, he left.
Amelia just stood and stared, unbelieving. What had happened? Good God, Guthrie acted like she’d . . . never . . . been . . .
With a knot in her stomach, Amelia took a hard, thorough look around the great hall. The TV and DVD player were gone. A single sofa, a coffee table, and a single chair stood before the hearth. The research table containing her time line and note cards was gone. None of it remained.
June 1. She’d only just arrived.
‘‘It can’t be,’’ Amelia said out loud. ‘‘It just can’t.’’ She took a slow turn around the great hall, glanced at the ancient set of antlers above the hearth, and then the pair that made up the light fixtures overhead. With a deep breath, she took off running. She simply wouldn’t believe it.
‘‘Ethan!’’ she hollered, and ran straight out the massive double doors. ‘‘Ethan! Aiden!’’ Pure adrenaline pumped her body out of shock and she ran around the keep, and then down to the loch. A gentle Highland breeze drifted through the glen, sending up that familiar sweet scent of clover and heather. She turned, staring at everything so familiar, yet nothing was what it’d been before.
‘‘Ethan?’’ she said on a sob.
Only the wind and pine martins answered.
A frown pulled at her face, and anger boiled. No way could it have all been a damn dream. She couldn’t have dreamed up the whole thing. Drawing in a lungful of air, she shouted, ‘‘No!’’ She heard it echo through the hills.
Once she’d used every ounce of air from her lungs, Amelia slumped down at the edge of the loch, and then fell back in the grass. Her body went limp, as if all the life had been drained.
‘‘No,’’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘‘I remember.’’
Tears burned the back of her throat, and Amelia swallowed several times to clear the lump, but it didn’t work. Her eyes welled up, and once the tears overflowed, she let go, and sobs racked her body, and she lay there, shaking in the grass and heather.
She’d lost Ethan. Forever.
As Amelia lay there, staring up at the Highland sky of swirling reds, purples, and grays, she cried. Guthrie’s old car hummed up the road and grew faint as he drove farther away, leaving her alone. Alone with memories of a man she’d fallen madly in love with but would never see again.
How long Amelia stayed in the grass, she didn’t know. The sky grew darker, but not all the way, as was the way of the summer months in Scotland. The gloaming hour came and went, and although she’d been hopeful that, just maybe, during that magical hour where the fading rays of daylight melded with the first twinkling stars of nightfall, Ethan Arimus Munro would show up. Would just walk right up to her, grab her by the back of her head, and kiss her senseless. But he didn’t. No magic happened. She simply lay amidst the clover and heather, listening to the gentle lap of the loch’s water against the pebbled shoreline, and the whispering of leaves as the wind eased through the treetops.
The one sound that rose above all the idyllic Highland noises was the sound of her heart breaking.
Amelia fell asleep, there in the heather beneath the winking stars of a midsummer’s Highland eve. Time passed, how much, she hadn’t a clue, but she awoke to a softness against her nose.
Jack lay beside her head, gently patting her nose with his paw. Amelia reached over and rubbed the soft fur between his ears. He purred like a fine-tuned engine.
With a big sigh, she turned her head in the grass and looked into Jack’s big yellow eyes. ‘‘Let’s go home, boy."
And so she did.
Chapter 30
It’d been three days since Amelia had climbed out of the cab and trudged up the steps into her beachside cottage. She’d pushed her gigantic suitcase into the corner, tossed her duffel bags onto the overstuffed chair, and had laid her laptop bag . . . somewhere. She’d managed to brush her teeth with a spare toothbrush, praying it wasn’t one that she’d scrubbed Jack’s little pointy teeth with, pulled off her clothes—the very same ones she’d had on since falling asleep in the grass in Scotland—taken a long, hot shower, and fallen straight into bed.
With only a fresh can of Cheez Whiz for comfort. She’d not told a soul she was coming home. Not her parents, her brothers, her sisters, or her best friend. Peace was the thing she was after. Peace and solitude. She certainly could have found that in Scotland, but it hurt too much to stay.
ZuZu, though, had a nose like a bloodhound, along with a weird sixth sense. Amelia knew her pal wo
uld sniff her out, and by the fourth morning, ZuZu showed up.
And she was armed.
God, she had a pushy best friend.
The lock rattled as ZuZu pushed and jiggled the key, and then she pushed the door open with a bang. ‘‘Amelia Frances Landry!’’ ZuZu’s heels clicked across the wood flooring and stopped at the head of the sofa, right by Amelia’s head. Her friend squatted down and lifted the ponytail that had fallen over Amelia’s eyes, and frowned. ‘‘What are you doing home?’’ She thumped her on the forehead. ‘‘What’s wrong with you?’’
‘‘Too many questions,’’ Amelia said.
‘‘Excuse me? You’ve been gone only a few days and you say too many questions?’’ ZuZu leaned down and peered into her eyes. ‘‘Can we talk about the book?’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘Amelia!’’ She smacked her on her backside. ‘‘Get up.’’ She pulled. ‘‘Come on.’’
Amelia sat up, stood, and walked over to the fridge. Opening the door, she grabbed the only thing she could find to drink—a two-liter bottle of soda— unscrewed the lid and drank. The carbonation made her throat burn and her eyes water.
‘‘That is gross,’’ ZuZu said.
Amelia glared at her over the top of the plastic bottle. ‘‘I do it at your house, too.’’
ZuZu rolled her eyes, marched over, and took the soda away. ‘‘Come on, Meelie,’’ she said, her tone gentler. ‘‘I can tell when something’s really bothering you. And I can also tell when it’s more than book related.’’ She smiled. ‘‘There’s a reason you fly all the way over to Scotland to stay in a nice, creepy castle, for God’s sake, and then turn around and fly right back home. So give.’’ Walking over to the cupboard, ZuZu found a glass, poured Amelia a drink, and handed it to her.
‘‘Thanks.’’ Amelia slid into one of the kitchen chairs and met ZuZu’s gaze. ‘‘You won’t believe it if I tell you, though.’’
ZuZu sat across from her, rested her chin on her knuckles, and grinned. ‘‘Probably not, but I’ll still love you anyway. So tell me. You’ll feel better after.’’
So, with a big, deep breath and another swig of soda, Amelia started at the beginning and told ZuZu everything, from her long drive from Edinburgh, to Jack doing his back-arching Halloween-cat-on-a-fence impression, to meeting Ethan and his kin, to the ghostly face in the mirror, to the rats, the hailstorm, all the way back to her supposed travels to the fourteenth century. Finally, Amelia ended the long story with the not-so-surprising ending: that it’d never happened. It had all been a long, delicious, frightening dream.
No other explanation added up.
‘‘Wow,’’ ZuZu said, after a long minute’s pause. ‘‘To fall in love with someone from a dream.’’ She smiled and patted Amelia’s hand. ‘‘Must have been some kind of great dream guy.’’
Amelia gave a wistful smile. ‘‘He was.’’
ZuZu stood up, walked around the back of Amelia’s chair, and wrapped her arms around her in a big hug. Then she kissed the top of her head. ‘‘It’s hard to believe it disturbed you, Queen of NonDisturbia, enough to come all the way back home. I’m sorry it didn’t work out at the castle.’’ She sighed. ‘‘Actually, it sounds like a phenomenal story.’’ She gave Amelia’s ponytail a tug. ‘‘So why not make your dream warrior a reality—sort of?’’ She grinned. ‘‘You need to write this, Amelia. Not only would it make a kick-ass romance/mystery/time-travel/ghost story, but’’—she gave her a stern look—‘‘your career is on the line.’’ She grabbed her big handbag and plopped it on the table. ‘‘No pressure, of course.’’
Amelia heaved a big, cleansing sigh. How on earth could she have dreamed everything she’d been through with Ethan? She couldn’t have. It was way too real. She could still feel his hands on her, for God’s sake.
The only other explanation she had, and this from hours of pondering on the subject, was that somehow, when Amelia had been engulfed in that swirling blanket of mist on the knoll, she’d come back to her time, but earlier. It had given her enough comfort to at least get up and shower each night.
‘‘Amelia,’’ ZuZu said, opening her bag, ‘‘this story deserves to be written. It’s too fantastic not to be.’’
A feeling of rightness washed over Amelia, and it refreshed her in a way she hadn’t thought possible. Scottish lore had Ethan tagged as the Bluidy Munro. Amelia knew better. He was a kind, strong, sensual man who loved his kin, and by God, he’d loved her. He’d made her laugh, made her writhe with passion—he’d dirty danced with her, for crying out loud. He didn’t deserve to be labeled the Bluidy Munro, a horrifying, bloodthirsty stealer of young girls’ souls. And while her version may not be accepted as fact in the world of history, to her, it would be. And it’d be in print. A book is a slice of history, no matter that it’s fictional or factual.
By the blood of Christ, she’d do it. She’d write the book.
‘‘What are you smiling at?’’ asked ZuZu.
Amelia stood. ‘‘You’re right,’’ she said. ‘‘This is the story I’m going to write.’’
‘‘Good to hear it.’’ She reached into her bag and pulled out her big giant shears. ‘‘I won’t need these, then?’’
Amelia walked over and threw her arms around her best friend. ‘‘Not this time. Now, come with me to the store. I’ve got to stock up on junk food.’’ She grinned. ‘‘I’ve got a book to write.’’
‘‘Woo-hoo!’’ hollered ZuZu, clapping her hands together. ‘‘That’s my girl!’’
With that, they did a little dance, shook a little booty, did the bump, and somehow, thinking of writing her own love story with Ethan Munro brought a little more life back into her. It made her feel close to him. Not nearly as close as she’d like, but for now, she’d take what she could get.
Even without all the notes and scenes, and that dynamic time line, Amelia knew the entire story by heart. And by God, she couldn’t wait to get started on it.
Ethan sat straight up in bed, body covered in sweat, his heart pounding hard. Bluidy hell, another dream.
How much more could he be tormented?
He’d rather have been slain by Daegus than dream of Amelia each night yet remain without her. And no’ just dream of her, by Christ. ’Twas no’ what woke him up each night with his heart thumpin’ out of his chest.
In his dreams, she was his. His wife. His to love forever. But he’d lost her, that day on the knoll. He hadn’t even known she was there until the verra moment the mist blanketed them, and then he’d seen her. He’d thought ’twas his mind jesting him, taunting him. Still, it could have been so. But every night since, he’d go to bed, and every single bluidy night, he’d dream of her lips against his, of touching her smooth skin, of discovering every place he’d been denied before, and of being inside of her, making her truly his . . .
Of breaking every last bluidy rule of wooing the irritating woman had made.
Wiping his face with both hands, Ethan rubbed the back of his neck, paced to the window, and threw open the shutter. Leaning against the sill, he stared into the night.
To remember seven hundred years of living in an enchanted world, and then to be cast back to his own time had bewildered him. At first, he hadn’t recalled anything—not until the fight had ended, those eerie enchanted words had fallen on his ears, and the mist had covered them.
Not until he’d laid eyes on Amelia.
And then everything had rushed back. Every single century had flooded back to his memory, the last being the one that pained him the most to think on.
His kin had remembered, as well. Like him, they’d all missed their family, their mother and sire, their younger brothers and sister. But they’d all desired Amelia’s time.
Ethan desired Amelia herself.
And his heart ached to think of never seeing her again . . .
All at once, a whisper, soft and barely there, wafted on a breeze and grazed Ethan’s ears. At first he thought it indeed was the wind. He turned
his head, toward the clear Highland sky, and listened.
Come to me . . .
Ethan’s insides froze. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and he glanced around the chamber.
To the yew . . .
He glanced outside, toward the wood, and a shudder crept over his spine. There, just in the meadow, a wisp of fog floated in place.
All of you . . .
As he stared, the waft of mist slipped into the wood.
Alone, Ethan dressed and eased outside, following the misty presence through the wood. At the yew tree, it disappeared. With a heavy sigh, he considered. He knew what was being offered. At least, he hoped he knew. And by Christ’s blood, he wanted to take it.
He had matters to see to first.
Staring at the ancient yew, by the light of the crescent moon he pulled out a dagger, shaved away a section of bark, and started to carve. An hour went by before he was finished. He looked at his handiwork and smiled.
Aye, he had matters to attend, indeed.
A week passed before they were ready. And just like before, the voice pulled Ethan from sleep, almost as if it knew the time was now.
Grabbing his plaid and sword, Ethan quickly dressed, latched his belt, and sheathed his blade. Easing out into the corridor, he went to each of his kinsmen’s chambers and awoke them. They’d all managed their matters, as well. They’d said their good-byes, gathered what few belongings they had.
They all met in the great hall, just by the front doors. The fire from the torches had all but burned out, leaving the hall in a shadowy glow. Ethan gave them all a nod. ‘‘Then let us go.’’
Quietly, they left the keep, crossed the meadow, and entered the wood. Once there, the eerie mist emerged from the pines.
‘‘By the blood of Christ,’’ said Aiden. ‘‘Look there.’’
They followed the mist to the old yew, and as they grew close the cloud of white swirled around the gnarled trunk, through their legs, and then around Ethan.