A Kind of Magic

A Cerridwen Press Publication

www.cerridwenpress.com

A Kind of Magic

ISBN #1-4199-0689-5

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

A Kind of Magic Copyright© 2006 Susan Sizemore

Edited by Mary Moran

Cover art by Darrell King.

Electronic book Publication: September 2006

With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing Inc., 1056 Home Avenue, Akron, OH 44310.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

Cerridwen Press is an imprint of Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.®

A KIND OF MAGIC

Susan Sizemore

Trademarks Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: Girl Scouts: Girl Scouts of the United States of America Corporation Prozac: Eli Lilly and Company Corporation

Tolkien: The J.R.R. Tolkien Estate Limited

A Kind of Magic

“Face it, honey, this is your last chance.”

Even though her mother was on a ranch in Montana and Maddie McCullogh was on an island off the coast of Scotland, her mother’s voice came clear as a bell over the phone line. A warning bell. One she’d heard often and was finally considering heeding.

Maddie had spent years ignoring all the advice and criticism and admonitions from her mother, from her sisters, her cousins, aunts and every feminine female in her overextended family. She had had to go her own way. She’d never listened. And where had it gotten her?

“Twenty-eight years old and never had a date,” her mother spoke the answer for her.

“Of course I’ve had dates,” Maddie countered. Not many it was true, and no romance to speak of. “I’m not a complete failure with the opposite sex.”

Her mother’s laughter was mocking. “Honey, I don’t know what’s going to become of you if this last chance with Toby Coltrane doesn’t pan out.”

Toby Coltrane. Maddie’s heart skipped a beat just at the sound of his name. She was shocked at her strong reaction. She attempted to sound cool when she said, “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”

Her mother laughed again. “You’ve had it bad for Toby ever since sixth grade.”

Maddie didn’t deny it. The Toby she remembered was handsome, athletic, sweet, charming. Everybody in town had known how she felt about Toby. Except Toby. He always treated her like his best friend. That was her problem. Every man she’d ever met always treated her like one of the boys. She was beginning to think it was her own fault.

“Where’d I go wrong, Mama?” The question slipped out before she could stop it.

“Well look at the way you live, honey.”

“I like my job.”

“I blame your father for that. Treated you just like a boy and you ended up acting like one. Now, there’s nothing wrong with you being an engineer. Lots of proper young ladies are engineers. You just took it to extremes. Took it to the ends of the Earth, you did.”

Maddie couldn’t argue with that. She did spend her time in remote areas. She had loved the wild places once, loved solitude. She still craved the adventure but she was getting dangerously lonely. So lonely she thought she was going crazy from it. She never thought it would come to her wanting someone to share her life with but it looked as if her emotions were aimed that way. She had to admit that she hungered for someone special more than she wanted to see new places. The desire for a normal life, 5

Susan Sizemore

for a man of her own, a marriage, was eating at her more and more lately. She wished these feelings would just go away, they were impractical and inconvenient. Probably hormonal. Maybe there was something she could take for it.

Her mother interrupted her thoughts. “You have to do something to get Toby to notice you.”

“What?” she asked, instead of protesting that she wasn’t interested.

“Get yourself back to civilization first, honey. No reasonable man is going to want a woman who works on an oil rig in the middle of the ocean and then goes digging in the dirt on remote islands on her vacation.”

She was spending her vacation as a volunteer at an archaeological dig, but her mother’s call, the information that her lifelong love was flying into Glasgow for a business meeting, threatened to change all that. Her mother had promised Toby that Maddie would meet him at the airport and show him around the city. Then she’d called Maddie to tell her to get down to Glasgow.

Maddie should have been annoyed at this interference in her life—this matchmaking. Instead she was unreasonably grateful. She’d spent too much time staring out to sea recently, gone for too many lonely walks, been too restless and dissatisfied. She had to make some kind of major change, take some action. Toby’s visit might be a godsend.

Or it could prove to be the most embarrassing few days of her life. It could go either way. She might indulge in a fantasy of a whirlwind courtship but she was a hardheaded, practical woman well aware that indulging in fantasy was dangerous.

“You put on a dress when you meet Toby at the airport. You hear me, Madalyn?”

“I don’t own any dresses, Mama.”

“Then get yourself one. A nice one. Fix yourself up. You’re such a pretty girl.”

Maddie snorted. “I’ve got frizzy red hair and freckles over eighty percent of my body.”

“You’ve got a nice figure.”

“My boobs are too big.”

“Men like big boobs, honey.”

Her mom was probably right about that. Her mother was right about all sorts of feminine things. Her mother had managed to marry off three other daughters. Maddie was the only holdout, the only McCullogh girl who’d ever resisted the matrimonial urge. An urge she now knew was as strong in her as in any woman in the family.

“Gotta be a pill for that,” she muttered. “Prozac or saltpeter or something.”

“Do you want Toby Coltrane or not?”

Maddie sighed. She gave in. “I want him, Mama.”

Or at least somebody just like him.

6

A Kind of Magic

* * * * *

“Put it on.”

Maddie looked questioningly at her friend Kevin then at the necklace. She didn’t welcome the distraction from the archaeologist seated beside her. Her mind wasn’t on the dig, but on the man she was to meet in Glasgow.

“Go on,” Kevin urged.

“I don’t think so.”

The roaring of the little plane’s engines must have drowned out her words or Kevin simply chose to ignore them. He leaned closer, considering how small the airplane cabin was he didn’t have far to go. When he whispered, “It’s all right,” in her ear, it sent a shiver down her spine.

Somehow, she didn’t think it was all right, but she was tempted. The necklace was beautiful. Far more beautiful than something that had been buried in the ground for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years should be. It was made of two strands of intertwined chains. One was obviously gold, the other looked like copper. The perfect condition of the gold made sense, but the copper should have tarnished or rotted away long ago. Instead, it was bright as a new penny. Which was impossible for an object that had recently been excavated from an archaeological dig. Kevin was taking it to the University of Glasgow to run some metallurgical tests.

In the meantime, he was tempting her. He’d been trying to get someone to try it on ever since they’d taken it out of the ground. He said he had this compulsion to see how it looked on a beautiful woman. This was the first time he’d asked her.

Maddie supposed he must be desperate since he was going to have to turn the artifact over to the university specialists soon. She was his last chance. She sighed. She understood about last chances.

The necklace resting on the unfolded square of chamois tempted her too. She didn’t know why.

“I don’t wear jewelry.”

“Maybe you should.”

It wasn’t that it was incredibly beautiful. Except for its age, it was hardly unique. It was an artifact from a long-gone place and time. That was what was so tempting about the thought of wearing it.

Kevin gave her a boyish smile. “Go on,” he urged. “I won’t tell.”

He was right. Maybe she should wear jewelry—and perfume and short skirts and makeup and all those other things Mama had ordered her to acquire. She had agreed to follow at least some of her mother’s instructions. Might as well start now and get some practice in before she made a shopping trip in Glasgow.

She shrugged and took the necklace from the smiling archaeologist. By all rights the clasp shouldn’t have opened, but it worked just fine. She had the slender, twined chains fastened around her throat within moments.

7

Susan Sizemore

“I don’t think it was meant to be worn with a gray sweatshirt.”

“It looks great,” he told her.

Maddie’s answer was drowned out by a sudden roar from outside the airplane.

Then the plane lurched sideways. For a moment Maddie was afraid an engine had fallen off then she saw the lights outside the windows.

They looked like fireworks. Maybe it was a meteor shower. Noise howled around them, too loud for Maddie to even hear herself scream. The sky went dark but inside the darkness something moved.

Then the bright fireworks explosions filled the darkness.

The plane began to dive.

She knew she was going to die. She’d never have a chance to see Toby Coltrane again. She’d never have a chance to find love.

It just wasn’t fair.

Life isn’t, her practical side reminded her, just before the world went completely dark.

8

A Kind of Magic

Scottish Highlands, 1210 C.E.

Rowan Murray looked up at the pale morning sky, glad that the day had come.

He’d been more than a little worried that it would not. He adjusted his plaid around his shoulders, took in a deep breath of sea-tinted air and silently thanked God that dawn had come after all.

When the great howl like heaven’s own pain had come out of the night, he’d rushed outside with all the rest of his people, his sword in his hand, half awake and terrified.

He’d looked up to see a great fiery glow in the night sky, bright as a thousand full moons, more vivid than a hundred sunsets. Then the noise faded and so did the lights, and his people crowded around him as though he could protect them from whatever creatures waited out in the night. And so he would try, he knew, for he was chieftain and laird of all the Murrays of Cape Wrath.

Though they manned the walls through the rest of the night, nothing supernatural came out of the cold swirling mist to harm them. And no Harboth either, for it was soon whispered that the unearthly noise and light was some trick of the rival clan. Now that day had come, Rowan nodded once to those who watched him, to indicate that he declared the danger over, and turned to climb down off the outer wall.

His brother Aidan put out a hand to stop him. “I think,” the lad said, “you best have a talk with the White Lady about this.”