What? How—?
The wind whistled through the empty expanse, carrying with it a sense of eerie foreboding. Enough. Whatever the old woman had wanted, it wasn’t his problem. Let his commanders worry about dealing with the Fae.
Grimly, he climbed into the saddle, pulled his horse around, and sent him trotting towards Abbotsfield.
Chapter 3
It felt as though she was falling from a great height, even though her feet never left the ground. The closest Lily could come to describing the sensation was when she’d been on a rollercoaster at an amusement park and had experienced a sense of weightlessness for a fraction of a second.
She staggered, her ankle twisted, and she suddenly found herself on her backside on Bettie’s garden path.
Except it wasn’t a garden path.
Instead of smooth concrete slabs beneath her, she found herself sitting on damp, muddy grass. The cold of it was already beginning to seep through her leggings. She sprang to her feet, wiping off the worst of the dirt.
Damn. These would have to go into the washing machine the moment she got home. Hoisting her bag over her shoulder, she turned to set off—and froze.
She was not where she expected.
The street that should have stretched ahead of her wasn’t there. Instead, all she could see was open moorland, brown and stark under a leaden gray sky, with a cold wind whistling through grass and heather. A couple of stunted trees stood beside her, their twisted branches forming an arch above her head. She stared for a second, then screwed her eyes closed, counted to three, and opened them again. Nothing had changed. The moorland was still there.
Okay. Just what, exactly, was going on?Don’t panic, she told herself.Just go back to Bettie’s and sit down for a minute. Everything will be fine.
She turned back towards Bettie’s little house only to find that where the house should have been was only more empty countryside, stretching into the distance. She didn’t recognize any of it.
Fear fluttered in her stomach. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t where she was supposed to be. What was happening?
She pressed a hand against her chest to try to still the sudden thumping of her heart and sucked great deep breaths through her nostrils, letting it out slowly as she’d been taught to do.
It’s all right,she told herself.Just figure this out.
Everything had been fine until she’d stepped into that swirly-air thing under Bettie’s pergola. Then she’d slipped and fallen—
Ah, that must be it. She’d hit her head, obviously. She’d had some kind of blackout. And during that blackout, she’d somehow traveled here—wherever here was. She’d had these kinds of episodes before, especially after...what happened. The doctors had said they would fade in time and they’d been right. She’d not had an episode for over a year now and she’d dared to hope they were done with. Seemed she’d been wrong.
Okay. She had to get home. Time to get a cab.
She unslung her bag from over her shoulder and began rooting around inside for her phone. In fact, it was probably best if she got the cab to take her straight to her doctor. He would want to know about this latest attack. She took out her phone and peered at it. Her stomach sank as she saw the screen. No signal. Damn. Just what she didn’t need.
She dropped the phone back into her bag just as a noise caught her attention. She looked up. A little to her left was a wide farm track, criss-crossed with footprints that showed it was well used, and in the distance on this track, she saw a figure onhorseback approaching quickly, the horse’s hooves making that distinctive clip-clop noise on the loose stones.
Relief shot through her. So at least she hadn’t wandered into the middle of nowhere this time. At least there were still people about that she could ask for help. She stepped out onto the track and waved her arm.
“Hey! Over here!”
