Still . . . this wasn’t that kind of chill.
Margo sat frozen on her stool. She wanted to call out to Patience or even to Marta, but her tongue felt glued to the roof of her mouth. She felt her palms and her brow dampening.
And her ill ease only increased when the door jangled again and she caught the backs of Patience and Marta as they dashed out into the rain. The door swung shut behind them, leaving her alone.
She’d forgotten it was Marta’s half day.
And Patience had told her that morning that she’d be leaving early to join friends for high tea at the Cabbage Rose Gift Emporium and Tea Room. Margo had agreed to close the shop on her own.
It was an unavoidable situation, but she regretted it all the same.
Especially when—
oh, no!
—she saw the shadow by the bookshelves.
Tall, blacker than black, and definitely sinister, the darkness hovered near where Patience had stood earlier. And—Margo sensed as she stared, her stomach clenching—whatever it was, it oozed an ancient malevolence.
It wasn’t a ghost.
This was more a portent of doom.
Then there was a loud rumbling noise outside and, as a quick glance at the windows revealed, a large cement mixer that had been stopped in front of the shop lumbered noisily down the road, allowing the gray afternoon light to pour back into the shop.
The shadow vanished at once.
And Margo had never felt more foolish.
She wiped the back of her hand across her brow and took a few deep, calming breaths. She shouldn’t have allowed Dina Greed and her upcoming trip to get to her so much that she mistook a shadow cast by a construction truck for a gloom-bearing hell demon.
She didn’t even believe in demons. Ghosts, you bet. She’d even seen a few of them and had no doubts whatsoever.
But demons belonged in the same pot as vampires and werewolves. They just weren’t her cuppa. And she was very happy to keep it that way.
She was also in dire need of tea.
Knowing that a good steaming cup of Earl Grey Cream would soothe her nerves, she pushed to her feet and started for Marta’s tarot-reading room, a corner of which served as the shop’s makeshift kitchen.
She was almost there when she heard a
thump
near the bookshelves.
“Oh, God!” She jerked to a halt, her hand still reaching for the back room door. The floor tilted crazily, and she was sure she could feel a thousand hidden eyes glaring at her from behind the bundles of dried herbs and glass witch balls that hung from the ceiling.
Very slowly, she turned. She half expected to see the shadow again.
There was nothing.
But a book had fallen, and it lay open and facedown on the polished hardwood floor. Margo went to retrieve it, glad to know the source of the noise and intending to return the book to its shelf. It was from Patience’s new shipment, and the title jumped out at her.
Myths and Legends of the Viking Age.
For some inexplicable reason, just seeing the words—red and gold lettering on a brownish background—sent a jolt through her. It was so strong and forbidding that she almost walked away and left the book where it was on the floor.
Stubbornness made her snatch it up; the painful shock that sped through her fingers and up her arm as soon as she touched the book underscored why she should have heeded her instincts.
But she’d had enough—enough of everything—and wasn’t going to let a book get the better of her. So she ignored the burning tingles racing along her skin and peered down. She immediately wished she hadn’t, for it’d opened to a two-page color illustration of a Viking warship off the coast of Scotland.
She could have groaned.
She didn’t care about the fierce- looking Norse dragon ship.
But the oh-so-romantic landscape was a kick to the shins.
Beautiful as a master painting, the illustration showed a rocky shoreline with steep, jagged cliffs soaring up around a crescent-shaped cove. The sky above boiled with dark clouds and looked as wild and turbulent as the churning sea. Margo’s heart responded, beating hard and slow. It was such places that called to her soul. In fact, she often dreamt of just such a Highland coast.
She brought the book nearer to her face and strained her eyes to see because the light in the shop seemed to be fading again.
Now, looking more closely, she saw a man on the golden-sanded strand. He stood at the water’s edge, his long dark hair tossed by the wind. Clearly a Highland warrior, he could’ve been ripped from her hottest fantasies. Big, strapping, and with a plaid slung boldly over one shoulder, he’d been depicted to raise a sword high over his head and yell. He was staring out to sea, glaring at the departing Vikings, and his outrage was so well drawn and palpable that she could almost hear his shouts.
Margo shivered, feeling chilled again.
She glanced at the windows, but this time there weren’t any big trucks blocking the afternoon light.
Everything was at it should have been.
Except when she looked back at the illustration, the man had moved and was now actually in the water, with the foamy surf splashing about his legs.
“What?” Her eyes rounded. Waves of disbelief shot through her entire body. Worse, she could hear the rush of the wind and the crash of the sea. She also felt the scorching heat of flames all around her; the air even smelled of burnt ash and terrible things.
Somehow, in the space of an eyeblink, the illustration had come alive.
