“Inside this castle, we found this huge throne o’ black wood. It’s the Phoenix Throne. The forces o’ the curse attacked us again and again. We fought and almost lost our lives in the struggle. ’Twas the last day, and we didnae ken what was afoot when this witch appeared. It’s a laing story, lassie. I cinnae tell ye all, but we fought her. She threw this flaming ball o’ fire, and it struck the Throne. The whole thing went up in smoke, and while it was still burnin’, she hit me brother Angus in the chest. The blow sent him spinnin’ intae the flames, and he burned up wi’ it.”
Grace gasped. “No!”
“We all stood stunned. None o’ us could react. I hate tae think what it did tae Carmen tae watch him die like that, but right in front o’ our eyes, this huge black dragon rose from the ashes. It towered tae the ceiling and screamed tae wake the dead. Then all around us, hundreds of people appeared out o’ nowhere. The whole castle came alive as though it ainly fell asleep yesterday. Weel, that’s how it started. We found out we were dragons—Urlus—and Angus is King.”
Grace blinked at him.
Jamie’s chin sank onto his chest. “That’s the short story.”
She gazed out at the park beyond the forest. What could she say to that? She’d never heard anything so fantastic in her life, but it was all true. She had Jamie standing in front of her as living proof. She saw the giants and the wolves and…well, all of it.
Even Angelo confirmed it. Hazel brought that Urlu husband of hers back here for some reason. All Grace had to do was find the other four women. They would confirm the truth, but she didn’t even have to do that. She believed Jamie. She believed every word he said. What possible reason could he have to lie? He was a dragon, for Chrissake.
“I’m sorry, lassie,” he murmured. “Ye send me back tae Kinlochleven, and I’ll leave ye tae it.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” she replied. “Come on. I’m taking you somewhere warm and comfortable. You’re not sleeping on that stone floor after the beating you just took.”
She took him on her shoulder, and they staggered out of the park. Grace thought fast and took a back street to her house so no one would see them and ask questions. She let herself in and helped Jamie upstairs. She put him down on her own bed. He sank into the soft bedding. He closed his eyes and groaned.
She felt his forehead. “Maybe we should take you to the hospital. You could have fractured something.”
“Just leave me alone,” he growled. “I’ll be awright as soon as I get some sleep.”
She stood back and regarded him. He turned his head away and paid no more attention to her. Whether he passed out, or went into a coma, or fell asleep, or just lay still to focus on the pain, she couldn’t tell.
She slipped out of the room and went down to the kitchen. She cooked him some chicken soup, but when she carried a bowl of it upstairs, she found him fast asleep, his chest rising and falling in an easy tide. He no longer held himself stiff and still the way he did before.
She set the soup on the bedside table. She fetched another bedspread from the spare room and covered him up with it. She spread it over him and tucked it around his neck. Poor guy. He really went all out defeating those giants. Now he needed to recover.
Her friends married these men. What would it be like to touch one of them, to love one of them like that? Grace had never really given her heart to anybody before. She never even tried. Did she love Mike? Did she really love him the way she could have loved him if she’d chosen to?
She married Mike for safety. She married him for stability. Love never really entered into the equation. She never imagined a life of struggle and conflict. She never imagined a life battling supernatural forces. Now she found herself neck deep in it.
That world terrified her. She would give anything to face it with someone like Jamie. He understood it—at least, he understood it better than she did. He’d faced these forces before. He’d faced it with his brothers and their wives. A person couldn’t face this alone.
If she sent him back to Kinlochleven and stayed behind, he would face it alone. The McLeans might come back to help him, but until then, he was on his own. He could have died today fighting those giants with everything he had. If he was right and they came back stronger next time, he might not make it.
She had to help him. She had to face this. She could if she faced it with him. She could do anything with him at her side.
She stood by the bedside with one hand resting on his chest. Her heart ached for…something, something she couldn’t have. She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. Then she let herself out of the room, closed the door, and didn’t go back.
Chapter 12
Jamie woke up. For an instant, he thought he was back in Urlu. Soft blankets surrounded him in blessed comfort. Sun streamed through the window and played among the leaves outside.
A loud ringing outside the room jolted him upright. When he laid eyes on the furnishings around him, he remembered. He was in Grace’s house in her world.
He sank back on the pillows. His head still hurt. Everything hurt, but he was mobile. He survived that fight against the giants—barely.
He had to go back to Kinlochleven right away. He had to make sure the next batch of giants didn’t find the villagers. He had to get to Piper and find out what the wizard knew about the other women.
He swung his feet out of bed and heaved to his feet. He could stand without blacking out. That was a mercy. He wouldn’t fight this curse leaning on some woman’s shoulder. The memory of Grace helping him down the mountain sent a squirreling trail of excitement through him. Underneath her delicate feminine exterior, she was just as tough as her friends.
He opened the bedroom door. It led onto a short landing where a flight of stairs led down. He followed it and searched the house below, but he found no sign of Grace. Where was she? Did she leave him alone? Not likely. She wouldn’t do something like that, not when she brought him here to heal up.
He found the living room, all four walls lined with pictures of Grace and Mike, friends and family, Grace graduating from graduate school, Mike receiving an honor from the governor for services to education—on and on it went.
Jamie strolled around the room and studied one picture after another. What a life she had over here on the other side of the world! He’d never considered she was a complete person, separate from the brief times she crossed his path in the village and in the woods.
Those flashes of experience eclipsed everything else. They took over his mind until her whole other life faded to an afterthought. His whole life faded to an afterthought, too. The years he spent in Kinlochleven before the Camerons left for Urlu, the many battles they waged, and the months of peace—they all vanished. Nothing remained but the time he spent with Grace.
Did his brothers go through this agony of emotion when they met their wives? They must have. Jamie saw them change, one by one. He didn’t really see Robbie and Fergus change. Their transformation happened away from Urlu, but he saw them before and after. They changed before his eyes. They grew bigger, more confident.
Most Highland men he knew wouldn’t give a woman a moment’s consideration. These women demanded it. They occupied enough space in the world to command any man’s attention. Once he got to know them one after another, Jamie trusted them with his life. He trusted Carmen, Elle, Hazel, and Sadie as much as he trusted his brothers.
Grace was no different. Battle had hardened her. Pain and loss scarred her. Devastating circumstances might destroy her, but nothing could defeat her. No force in Heaven or on Earth or in Hell itself could break that heart of hers.
She’d awakened something in him he never knew was there. He never knew it was there because it wasn’t there. She’d made him into something different, something stronger and more vulnerable at the same time. She’d found him a young blade without a care in the world, and she’d turned him into a man as hardened and as loving and as honor-bound as herself.
His brothers would se
e the transformation in him when he came home. They would see it, and they would understand because he would come home with Grace. He knew that now. He couldn’t go back without her.
She completed him as no one else ever could. He would never go anywhere without her again. They’d stood back to back against unbeatable odds, and they would do it again. He would face every battle with her for the rest of his life. He could trust her to defend him so he didn’t have to look over his shoulder at the enemies sneaking up from behind.
He made a complete circuit of the living room and came back to the same spot at the foot of the stairs. He still heard no sound anywhere in the house.
At that moment, someone knocked on the front door. Jamie walked over and opened it. He came face to face with a man standing a few inches shorter than himself. The man’s lanky black hair and mustache hung straight down.
The instant the man laid eyes on Jamie, he gasped out loud. His eyes darted over Jamie’s face and clothes. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
Rapid footsteps clipped up behind Jamie. Grace grabbed the door out of his hand, and she pushed up next to him to see who it was. She took one look at the man, and her shoulders relaxed. “Oh, hello, Angelo. As you can see, I found out who that guy was you met with Hazel.”
Angelo stared at Jamie. He opened his mouth and closed it again several times before he swallowed hard and found his voice. “Oh, okay. Well, I wasn’t expecting that.”
Grace’s voice took on a hard edge. “Why don’t you tell me what you really know about what Hazel and Fergus were up to? I know you know something.”
Angelo looked at Jamie. He spoke to Jamie as if Jamie was the one who’d asked. “I told you the truth. They were looking for a Faery mound, and I told ’em about that one in Finlay Park. I don’t know anything about what they were up to beyond that. I swear it.”
“You recognized him, though, didn’t you?” Grace asked. “You knew he was a… what do you call it? An Urlu.”
“Sure, I knew,” Angelo replied. “Anyone could tell. It was written all over him.”
“Not everyone could tell,” Grace replied. “How could you see it?”
Angelo shot her a quick glance. “Well, you know, I’m Faery, and he isn’t just Urlu, as you call it. He was Faery, too. That’s how I got to know Hazel. She’s another one.”
“Another what?”
“Faery,” Jamie told her. “They both are”
“She showed up in my shop about five years ago,” Angelo went on. “She was going out of her mind trying to figure it all out. She would stick her nose into anything to try to make sense of it all. I couldn’t exactly come right out and tell her point blank, ‘Oh, by the way, honey, you’re Faery and so am I’.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Nothing. I just helped her as best I could. I helped her with that spell. That sort of thing. I told her what she wanted to know, and I didn’t answer questions she didn’t ask.”
“Ne’er ye mind,” Jamie murmured to her. “It doesnae matter now what ’Azel and Fergus were up tae. It’s laing o’er.”
“That’s what I came to tell you,” Angelo told her. “You wanted to know about where she went, and I found out something I thought you might want to know.”
“What is it?” Grace asked.
“There was a woman in town Hazel was looking for,” Angelo replied. “I told you about that, but I didn’t tell you everything. This woman was Faery, too, and she came from over there. She came through the same portal as that spell, only going the other way. She lived in this town for years. Turns out some people saw Fergus with her not far from here. Someone saw them fighting, and then later that woman turned up missing. Some people think she’s dead, although they never found any evidence of that.”
Grace narrowed her eyes at the man. “Don’t tell me you came all the way over here to tell me that when you couldn’t be sure I would find out about Fergus in the first place.”
“Well, not exactly. I was going to tell you a sanitized version of it, just to throw you off the trail.”
Grace snorted. “Great. Now you’ve done it.”
Jamie took a step back. “Thank ye fer stoppin’ by.”
Angelo turned to leave, and Jamie swung the door shut when Grace launched herself at him. She shoved the door back. “Wait a minute, Angelo.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“You taught Hazel that spell, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t teach it to her,” he replied. “She already found out about it, but she got a few things wrong. When she told me she wanted to try it, I corrected her. I warned her against casting it, even though I knew she would go ahead and do it anyway.”
“Do you know anybody else in town who knows the spell?” Grace asked.
“Ye dinnae ken they came from this town,” Jamie reminded her. “They could ha’e come from anywhere.”
“Who?” Angelo asked.
“Some other women went through the doorway to the other side,” Grace told him. “They wound up in the same place, so they must have learned the spell from the same place.”
“The spell can send a person anywhere,” Jamie told her. “Ye just change the name. That’s what ’Azel says. She didnae ken the word Urlu would send her tae Urlu. Now she uses the spell tae send things all o’er the place. She sent the ghouls one place and the vampires another.”
“I can see you know as much about it as I do,” Angelo remarked.
“Not as much,” Jamie replied. “I dinnae ken how tae cast the bloomin’ thing.”
“That only proves these new women must have learned the spell from the same source,” Grace countered. “They wouldn’t have known the spell would send them to Urlu, so whoever they learned it from must not have known, either.”
“I know a few people around that know the spell,” Angelo replied. “There’s this other homeless woman I know. Something weird happened to her. She used to be poor and destitute on the street. Then all of a sudden, she started living in this fancy house around the corner from here.”
“Really?” Grace exclaimed. “That’s odd. We should go talk to her. Maybe she knows something. What’s her address?”
“Number fifteen, Rockwood Terrace,” Angelo replied.
Grace stared at him. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“That’s where she lives now,” Angelo replied. “She used to live on the street, but that’s where she is now. I’m sure you can find her there.”
“You’re lying to me!” Grace snapped. “Fifteen Rockwood Terrace is Carmen’s address.”
Jamie whipped around. “What’re ye talkin’ aboot?”
“The Police questioned this woman,” Angelo went on. “She said a woman gave her the house as a gift. She showed the Police a deed from the previous owner signing the place over to her. It was all legit, except it hadn’t been notarized in front of the right authority. They wanted to throw her out, but she kicked up such a fuss, they had to let her stay there, even if she didn’t have the place in her own name. They couldn’t prove she’d done anything wrong, since they couldn’t find the woman the house belonged to. In the end, they just left her there. They decided to wait until the legal owner showed up and demanded the woman be removed.”
Grace’s hand flew to her forehead. “This is incredible! Carmen must have given her the house, but why?”
“Carmen came back ’ere, too,” Jamie told her. “I forgot aboot that ’til just now. She came back, and she found a woman to help her cast the spell tae send her back tae Angus. It must be the same woman.”
Grace snatched her jacket off the peg. “Come on. We’re going over there. We’ve gotta find out what this woman knows. She must be the one who sent the other women through.”
She barged out of the house. Angelo jumped in his car. “Let me know if I can help you with anything else.” He drove away.
“How’s your head?” Grace asked Jamie. “Can you walk all right?”
“Me head’s just grand,”
he replied, “but I cinnae go wi’ ye tae question this woman. I mun’ return tae Kinlochleven. Ye mun’ send me back afore the giants return.”
She stopped in her tracks. “Do you have to?”
“Aye. Ye ken I do.”
Her face fell. “I…. I don’t want you to leave. What if something happens to you over there?”
“Ye’re helpin’ me as much as anyone can by findin’ out aboot those women,” he told her. “Ye can ainly do that ’ere. Ye ken where tae find me when you learn more aboot it.”
She looked down at the ground. “I guess so.”
He stepped toward her and took her hand. “Dinnae think on it, lassie. We’re still taegether, e’en when ye’re ’ere and I’m o’er there.”
She raised her eyes to his face. A dozen questions struggled in her eyes. “Really?”
“Ye’ll no get rid o’ me so easily,” he replied. “Perhaps one day soon ye’ll wish ye could. Elle says I allus keep comin’ back like a bad smell ye’d like tae get rid on.”
He chuckled at the thought, but Grace didn’t smile. She gazed down at their hands clasped together. “I wish I could go with you.”
He cupped her chin to lift her face. He never wanted to stop looking at her. “Listen, lassie. It’s awready written. Me four brothers are married tae yer four friends. It’s ainly a matter o’ time afore we’re taegether the same way. I realize that now. Ye’ll come back, and when it happens, ye’ll come back tae stay. Ye belaing o’er there. Ye kenned it the first time ye crossed the doorway. Do yer work ’ere, and I’ll do mine there. When this is all o’er, ye’ll come back tae Urlu wi’ me and none’ll stand in our way.”
She swallowed hard. “Do you promise?”
“Aye. Now take me back tae the Park and send me back tae Kinlochleven. I dinnae belaing in this world, and it make’s me anxious tae return.”
She didn’t say another word. She kept hold of his hand and took him back to the Park. The longer they walked side by side holding hands, the more certain Jamie became of the course that lay in front of him. She was his. She always was.
Grace Unchained - Phoenix Throne Book Five Page 9