Chapter Three
He was a damned fool, but he couldn’t help himself.
Drummond dismounted and eased toward the sidhe hill as if the moss-covered mound might suddenly rip itself free of the earth and flee from him.
The deep green of its spiraling layers soothed the depths of his worried heart while at the same time stirring nothing but unrest in his mind.
He knew better than to do this. To return to the hill, day after day, in the hope of seeing her again, was not only folly but also dangerous.
But doing this was the only course he could take to get her out of his thoughts. He but needed to see her once more and convince himself he had imagined this mysterious woman who could never be real.
An eerie silence cloaked the place. Even though it was deep in the woods, no scurrying of forest creatures rustled in the dried leaves layered across the woodland floor or around the hill. No birds chittered in the trees. No wind whispered through branches stripped bare by autumn’s chill.
Holding his breath, he carefully ascended the spiral layers of the mound, the edges of its steps rounded and worn by time. His feet sank into the cushiony softness of the thick moss. A sense of panic almost took hold—the panic of being sucked down inside the magical hill’s gullet.
When he reached the summit, he looked up through the weave of leafless branches overhead that sectioned the sky into odd-shaped patches of pale blues and wispy whites.
“Leave me, woman,” he whispered while slowly turning widdershins to break the curse and undo her memory. “Or show me the path to ye. One or the other. I canna bear this uncertainty any longer.”
Laughter, as light and sweet as tiny bells tickled by the wind, shattered the silence. He spun around to see her, but no one was there. Merlin’s beard. She must surely be one of the Fae, a princess, perhaps. ’Twas a dangerous thing indeed to be sought by a magical being.
“Come to me, then,” he said louder, opening his arms wide. “I dinna run from that which seeks me. Show yerself.”
The laughter returned, but fainter this time.
He allowed himself a groan, then found the courage to switch to turning clockwise in search of a blessing from the fairy mound, rather than moving widdershins for the breaking of its curse. “I’ll not run from ye, lass. Come to me.”
A heavy fog, nearly blinding in its suffocating gray whiteness, settled around him like a woolly blanket.
A deafening silence vibrated through him, muffling even the sound of his own heartbeat thudding in his ears.
And then he heard it—a woman’s voice with a strange lilt to her words that he didn’t recognize.
Well, he didn’t so much hear her as feel her stirring his thoughts.
“I’m not good at telling stories,” she said, “but I can chatter away about just about anything. My grandpa used to call me Mockingbird. But I do believe in soul mates, love at first sight, and predestination. All that stuff. If it’s meant to be—it will be. One way or the other.”
“Where are ye, woman? Who are ye?” Her grandsire had called her Mockingbird. Was that her given name? Surely not. What a strange name that would be for such a lovely lass. “Mockingbird?” he called out a little louder, then sheepishly glanced around to see if anyone but himself had heard.
“When she comes to ye, ye must protect her,” whispered a gruff voice from the depths of the mist.
“She is yer one,” said another voice from the grayness, a younger being, a female. “She is the other half of yer soul.”
“When will she come to me?” Drummond staggered to one side, his feet suddenly tangled in tree roots that yanked him down to his knees. They’d not been there before. Where had they come from? “Tell me when she will come so I might be ready.”
“Soon,” the gruff speaker answered.
“Be ready,” the young female said. “She will be here soon.”
“Here?” He tried to push back up to his feet, but the root system forced him down again, keeping him on his knees, threatening to fill him with panic. “Will she appear here at the mound?” He pulled out his dagger and hacked the roots away from his ankles. “Will she be here? Today?”
“Soon. Ye will see,” the mist answered in a chorus of voices.
Ripping free of the woody vines that almost grew faster than he could cut them away, he leapt off the mound and landed just beyond its borders with a thud.
“I will be ready.” He sheathed his dagger and backed away from the hill.
“And I will protect her.” He thumped his fist to his heart. “I swear it.”
*
“This fog is terrible.” Evie rolled down the window of the rental car and squinted at the eerie cloak of gray mist covering the area.
“Shouldn’t we pull over and wait until we can see?
” She swirled her hand through the cold dampness, stirring it like pea soup.
They didn’t need to be driving in this muck.
This stuff laughed at their headlights’ attempts to cut through it.
“’Tis merely the way of Scotland.” Morganna slowed the vehicle to a crawl.
“We’re near the eastern coast, and it does this often.
’Tis easy enough to find our way to Craig Durness.
There are no turnoffs until we arrive. As long as we keep to the road, we’ll be finer than fine.
We canna stop and wait every time the haar comes in, or we’d never get anywhere. ”
Evie pulled her hand back inside, so tense that she popped each of her knuckles.
The only other car wreck she’d ever experienced, she’d miraculously survived.
Her parents and siblings had not, leaving her with her grandparents to raise her.
She didn’t want to revisit anything remotely close to that—not even something as minor as a fender bender.
Heart pounding to the point of breathlessness, she eyed the dangerous mist, easily imagining the worst. “What did you call this weather again?”
“The haar. ’Tis the name of this sort of fog. A heavy mist that rolls in off the sea.”
“Does it do this often?”
“It does it whenever it wishes.” Morganna tapped on the windshield and pointed at the area where the headlights illuminated the roadside just inches in front of them. “See those stones along the edge there? Those let us know we’ve not veered off course. We’ll keep to them and be fine.”
“Well, if you say so.” Evie concentrated on calming her breathing, then glanced down at her watch to check her heart rate and frowned.
A tap of its screen did nothing. “Seriously? My watch stopped. I just charged it last night.” The electronic dial suddenly glowed with renewed brilliance, and the numbers rapidly changed, first increasing as though the time zone had jumped ahead and then decreasing as though they’d jumped back.
Even the year changed, then returned to the correct number.
She tapped on the screen again, and it went black.
“Dang it, I just bought this, and it wasn’t cheap. ”
Morganna nodded. “Aye, that means we’re almost there.
Craig Durness and those kinds of timepieces dinna get along verra well at all.
Callum says it’s something to do with ley lines, magnetic fields, and shifting polarity.
I’ve no idea about all that. All I know is that most watches or clocks—at least, digital ones—dinna work hereabouts. ”
“Well, that’s just freakin’ great. How will I know what time it is?
” Evie wistfully pressed her ear to the timepiece, hoping that the app she’d downloaded to make it tick like an old-fashioned wind-up watch would give her a little reassurance.
The expensive yet now worthless bit of metal and glass remained silent.
She picked up her phone and groaned. “And no signal? I thought you said my phone would work here. The time on it doesn’t look right either. ”
“It will be all right, I promise. We’re not there yet. Once we reach the village, it’s sure to be better.”
A choking sense of helplessness closed icy fingers around Evie’s throat and squeezed, making her swallow hard to keep from gasping. She hated being cut off from the world. It wasn’t natural. Well, maybe it was natural, but she wasn’t exactly a back-to-nature kind of person.
“Mockingbird.”
She jerked and sat straighter. Hands on the dashboard, she stomped her right foot, instinctively pawing for the brake pedal that wasn’t on her side of the vehicle. “Stop the car.”
Morganna did, then turned to her with a bewildered look. “Are ye all right? Do ye need a bit of fresh air?”
“Did you not hear that?” Evie threw open the door and stepped out, hanging on to it as she strained to hear every sound in the murky evening mist. “I distinctly heard a man call out, Mockingbird.”
And then she saw him. Up ahead. Sauntering toward her with the smoldering, slow-motion gait of an epic fantasy hero coming to sweep her up into his arms and carry her away to a happily ever after.
His shoulder-length hair was as dark and sleek as a crow preening in the sunshine.
He possessed the massive, muscular build of an alpha male who would dare anyone to defy him.
The fog swirled around him, loving the opportunity to slide across his impressive body, and she didn’t blame it.
He wasn’t wearing a kilt, which she found odd.
After all, this was Scotland. Not that she was complaining.
His open-throated tunic and dark, formfitting pants tucked into knee-high boots provided a very fine view.
A black woolen jacket and matching cloak perfectly framed his broad shoulders.
The only place she’d ever seen a man like him before was in the movies or on the cover of a romance novel.
And yet there was something eerily familiar about him. His dark eyes. She’d bet her last dollar that she’d looked into those eyes before—many times, in fact. But how?
Bending to look back inside the car, she asked Morganna, “Do you know him?”
Morganna frowned, then leaned forward, peering out the windshield. “Him, who?”