Redeeming Vows (17 page)

The earth rumbled and the sky darkened. Winds blew from the west, whipping her hair behind her.

Power coursed through her body and slid past her fingers until lightning shot from their tips.

White ghosts of fog billowed toward the keep and the people in its path. Some turned toward the ocean and watched while others ducked into the useless canvas of their dwellings.

“This ought to be fun.”

With hands perched on her hips, Grainna rocked back on her heels and watched.

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****

Lizzy purred alongside him and shifted deeper against his side.

Thunder cracked over the sea.

Fin groaned.

“No,” Liz said when he started to lift himself from the ground. He drew her dress over her frame and wrapped the edge of his kilt beside him. His hand landed on his claymore.

“I don’t want to move yet,” she said.

He chuckled. “Neither do I, love, but the others will worry.”

Lightning lit the sky. The hair on Fin’s arm stood on end. Something about the energy around them felt wrong.

Lizzy’s hand came to rest on his. “This is a mighty big sword, Fin.” But he didn’t think his blade was what she spoke of. “God, I wish we were back in my bed at my apartment. Then we could make love all night and not have to worry about bad weather.”

The earth beneath them heaved. Lizzy’s eyes shot open and dumped her out of her dreamy state.

“Did you do that?”

Lightning and thunder burst above them.

“Nay.”

The ground shook again and everything swam out of focus.

****

He’d asked Simon to call his mother in his head some time before. Only to hear the child squeal and see the boy’s eyes pinch close. He quickly shook his head and appeared sick. “Oh, that’s just gross,” he’d 143

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said. “Are they well?” Lora questioned.

“Oh, they’re fine. I think I’m going to need therapy though.”

Todd burst into laughter.

Tara chuckled. “I guess it’s best you stay out of your mom’s thoughts from now on.”

Simon eyed all the adults in the room before finding a quiet spot in the shelter to hang his head.

Ian wouldn’t put him through the ordeal again.

Secretly, he smiled at the knowledge of Fin and Elizabeth finding each other. Perhaps now some peace could come between them.

Someone screamed beyond the tent. Ian’s head snapped up as his hand reached for his weapon.

Duncan tumbled outside along with him, Todd followed.

A woman’s lifeless body lay in a heap beside a young girl. Tears streamed down her face. She shrieked and waved an accusing finger at the man in front of her. “Ye did this. Ye wanted her dead. How could ye, father. Why?” she sobbed.

Swords clashed beyond the woman as two warriors, one half-clothed, the other with blood streaming from a cut in his arm, fought. Both hell-bent on death. A woman held a bed sheet to her naked frame, screaming for them to stop. “’Tisn’t what ye see,” she cried.

“What the hell is happening?” Todd asked.

Smoke rose from the keep, above the fog that thickened before their eyes.

“Grainna,” Ian whispered.

“Oh, God.”

Ian swiveled toward the tent to see his wife trembling.

“What, love?”

A single tear drifted down her soft cheek. “Don’t ye feel it?”

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He started to shake his head when knowledge flooded his mind. “Fin.”

“Mom.”

“Oh my God.” Tara stepped into her husband’s arms. “They’re gone.” ****

The world ground to a quick halt, jarring Liz so hard her head felt as if it were going to split in two.

Her ass on the other hand felt cushioned as if she’d landed on the softest pillow ever made.

Fin grasped her closer, cutting off her air. “Ease up,” she said before opening her eyes.

She took one look around the room, her room, where pictures of Simon as a baby hung on the wall, a clock ticked away the hour and a worn-out TV sat on a dusty dresser. Liz opened her mouth and screamed.

Fin clamped a hand over her mouth.

Panic swam up her spine.

The door to her room burst open and a strange, shocked-faced woman stared at them. “Oh my God.

It’s true. Son of a—”

Fin recovered first, drawing the sheets over their naked bodies.

The woman’s voice nearly screamed. “You are real, right?”

Liz nodded.

“Where are we?” Fin asked.

“Elizabeth McAllister’s apartment.”

“My apartment.” The stranger and she spoke at the same time.

“You are her?”

Liz released a breath and willed her heart to slow. “How did we get here?”
And how the hell were
they going to get back.

Fin shook his head. “Grainna.”

Of course, it had to be. “But how?”

“Ye wished for this bed, remember?”

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With his words came the realization that her wish had been granted.

“Simon! Oh, God, Fin we need to go back.” She started to shake.

This couldn’t be happening. She wanted to be home, but not without her son.

Not at the expense of their entire family.

“Shhh.” Fin wrapped his arm around her in comfort.

The woman at the door approached. Fin found his sword and quickly raised it toward her.

Her hands shot in the air. “Down, cowboy. I’m not the enemy.”

Liz pushed his hand aside and helped him lower his weapon. “Who are you?”

The woman’s unruly red hair shook when she laughed. “I’m sorry, I’m Selma. Selma Mayfair.”

How did she know that name? Liz knew she’d never spoken to this woman before. Then recognition hit her hard. “The book.”
Seventh Sense
, her bible on Druids that sat back in the sixteenth century, buried in the wall of her room there.

Selma smiled and shifted her gaze to Fin’s naked torso as her cheeks flooded with color. “I guess maybe you two should get dressed.”

The door closed behind her, giving Fin and Liz privacy.

“What are we going to do?”

Fin kissed the top of her head. “I don’t know, lass.”

“I didn’t want this. I mean, I did, the bed, the privacy. But not this way.”

“I know.”

Her heart started to crumble. She reached to Simon with her mind, knowing he couldn’t answer her back. As tears stung the back of her eyes, Liz forced them back. “That witch. I swear if I ever get my hands on her, I’ll rip her neck from her shoulders 146

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with my own hands.” Liz pushed out of the bed, grabbed her gown, and struggled into it.

There had to be a way. Some spell to get them back where they needed to be. Hadn’t Tara forced Grainna back to this time without the stones? If she could do it, so could Liz. She just needed to focus.

Fin stared at her from the bed.

“What are you waiting for? Get dressed! We can’t stay here.”

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Fin ducked his head through the door leading to second room of the apartment, making certain it was safe before allowing Lizzy to follow. He’d seen this apartment before, the one night he’d spent in it well over a year prior. His task then was to drop Lizzy and Simon off in this century and go home. Fin ended up staying and defending his sister’s honor against Todd.

He smirked at the memory of Todd opening the door of his home and meeting Fin’s fist. The man hadn’t seen him coming. In the end, Grainna had kidnapped Simon with the intention of returning to the sixteenth-century and regaining her power. All of them ended up traveling through time, and half the stones that gave them the ability to travel through time were now in Grainna’s possession.

Without them, Fin held no knowledge of how to return home.

Selma paced the main living space of the dwelling but stopped moving once he and Lizzy walked into the room. Her gaze swept over the both of them with a mixture of awe and excitement.

Fin wondered who the lass was, and how she had come about being in Lizzy’s apartment.

Lizzy must have been asking herself the same questions because she wasted little time with petty conversation.

“I don’t want to sound rude, Ms. Mayfair, but what are you doing here?”

The woman shook her head, her green eyes 148

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wide. “Waiting for the two of you.”

Lizzy’s gaze shot to his, her confusion palatable.

“But we don’t know you.”

“I know, crazy huh?” She stood and made her way into the kitchen and opened the icebox. “You guys have got to be hungry.”

“We’ve no time to eat. We need to get…home.”

Selma removed brightly colored containers from the icebox. “You mean sixteenth-century Scotland.”

“How do you know this?”

She blew out a breath with a laugh. “Because you told me.”

“Ms. Mayfair, can you stop what you’re doing and fill us in on what you know?” Lizzy’s raised voice caught the woman’s attention.

“Call me Selma. And I’m getting there. You might as well make yourselves comfortable. You’re not going anywhere. At least not now.”

Fin didn’t like the certainty in the woman’s tone. It was as if she had knowledge of their future they did not.

Selma stepped out of the kitchen and handed him a bright red metal object. The material seemed to hold some type of liquid but he hadn’t a clue as to what.

Liz placed her container on the table and reached for his. She snapped something on the lid and handed it back to him. “It’s a soda. You drink it.” Fin brought the strange glass to his mouth and sipped. His nose fizzled as the icy, sweet concoction slid down his throat. He’d never tasted anything of its kind. When he and Duncan had visited the future before, they only spent time at Grainna’s Renaissance Faires, and the only beverages available to them there were strikingly similar to what his time offered.

Selma crossed to a satchel and removed a large 149

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box. “I think this will explain a lot,” she said.

Lizzy sat and pulled him down to her side.

Selma handed the box to Lizzy.

“What is it?”

“My book.”

Lizzy’s hands carefully removed the lid and set it aside. Inside, the book Fin had witnessed Lizzy reading time and time again at his home sat. Only this book had evidence of age. The edges were tattered and well worn from use and time.

“Oh my God,” Lizzy exclaimed while her hands swept over the cover of the book in a light caress.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought when I found it.”

Lizzy’s brows pinched together. “You need to explain.”

Selma folded her hair behind her ears while she sat. “Okay, first though, you know I’m a witch, right?”

Fin’s back stiffened.

“I think you’re a Druid, Selma, but if you’d prefer to be called a witch, fine by me.”

“Lass!” Fin shot her a warning. They didn’t talk freely of their heritage.

“Oh, give me a break, Fin. She knows more about what’s going on than we do at this point.”

His jaw clenched.

“Anyway,” Selma continued, “I see things others don’t. The cops often seek my advice on missing person’s cases. After you and your son disappeared, along with Blakely, the police called me.”

“Why you? That seems a little too coincidental, don’t you think?”

“Not really. Jake, Blakely’s partner, traced a lot of his activity back the month before you guys dropped of the face of the earth. You bought a bunch of stuff with your credit card that seemed out of character according to some of your co-workers. At least that’s what Jake told me.”

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“Your book was on the list.”

“Yeah. Jake called the police department I worked with occasionally in Ohio, who contacted me on his behalf. He offered to pay my way here so I could poke around, maybe give him a few answers.”

She spread her hands wide indicating the room in which they sat.

“The first time I set foot in this apartment I knew something bigger than an abduction had taken place.” Selma’s face paled.

Fin reached to take Lizzy’s hand in his. Simon’s abduction by Grainna was the last thing that took place in the apartment before they had all been swept back in time.

“What then?”

“I knew someone evil had been here. That you feared for your son.”

Fin felt a kinship with the woman speaking. Her gifts were similar to Amber’s. He agreed with Lizzy, Selma was kin to them. She was a Druid, not a witch.

“I also knew you’d be back.”

That explained why the woman waited for them.

But to determine the precise day didn’t seem possible.

Liz took to her feet and walked around the room.

“Why is everything exactly the way I left it? Why didn’t the landlord take possession and sell my stuff for back rent?”

“I haven’t gotten there yet. A man from an antique shop called me a few days after I arrived and told me he had something for me. That’s when I was given this.” She motioned to the book in Lizzy’s hand.

“Didn’t the dealer question the age of the book?”

“Mr. Harrison handed me a crate with this buried inside a chest. He didn’t know what was inside of it.”

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Fin held up his hand. “Are you saying that our family bequeathed this to you and it’s been safe all these years?”

Selma nodded. “You could say that. I was told that a strong family trust shuffled the crate around the world at specified times until it landed here a few weeks after you disappeared. No one was more surprised than I to find my name in the will.”

Some of the tension fled Fin’s shoulders. “Do you know what this means, lass?” he asked Lizzy.

She sent him a puzzled look.

“We must find our way back in order to set all of this up to happen in the future.”

A slow smile spread over Lizzy’s features. “Of course. I would have left instructions on how we get back.”