That last tenet struck a chord. Trulie turned and glared at Granny. What the hell had the aged prankster done this time?
Granny ignored Trulie, just shook her head at the contented black cat and bent closer to whisper something in its ear. The feline looked over at Trulie, flipped its tail harder, and somehow seemed to snicker.
“Don’t start with me, Kismet.” Trulie hopped out of the truck and landed knee deep in mud and wet leaves. Cold water rushed in over the tops of her rubber boots and soaked into her socks. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from damning everything in sight. “Granny, would you please stop plotting with Kismet and tell me what you know about this? You’ve got that look that always means trouble.”
“Why, Trulie. I can’t believe you would say such a thing.” Granny snorted an insulted huff and straightened in the seat. Her voice echoed with authority as she lowered the much calmer cat onto the seat beside her. “Trust me. You have nothing to worry about. I know those colors. He comes from a fine, upstanding clan. You won’t find a force on earth capable of striking fear into a MacKenna.”
A fine upstanding clan. A MacKenna.That was all the proof Trulie needed. No wonder Granny wasn’t upset. Her grandmother had orchestrated the entire thing. How many times had she begged Granny to stop meddling?
“And that’s another thing—” Trulie cursed under her breath as one rubber boot decided to stay behind in the muck when she took a step forward.
“Watch your mouth.” Granny shook a warning finger as though Trulie were still a child. “I did not raise you to talk like that.”
Trulie gripped the side of the truck, shoved her foot back down into the wet boot, and twisted it free of the sucking mire. The next run to the barn to fetch the cured oils, either Kenna or one of the twins was coming with her. Granny was hereby banned from all visits to the backwoods no matter how much the girls complained. And Kismet could stay home and watch over the girls instead of Karma. She’d had it with that cat. Trulie sloshed forward and bit back another curse word as she whacked her knee on the bent running board of the truck. This night just kept getting better by the minute. “Where do you think I learned those words, Granny?” Trulie doubled over and massaged her throbbing knee.
A louder snort was Granny’s only response.
Trulie hoisted herself up into the bed of the truck and yanked open the back window. She wasn’t going to allow Granny to avoid the real issue here so easily. A sword-wielding man—one scantily clad in a plaid no less—in the backwoods of Kentucky was not an everyday occurrence. “Would you like to tell me what you know about Mr. Deer-in-the-headlights, or am I going to have to get the truth from him?”
If she could find him. The nagging voice in the back of her mind became louder, insisting she acknowledge the truth: the mysterious man was more than likely one of Granny’s better illusions. The old woman had tried for years to teach Trulie how to pluck an individual’s consciousness from the past or the future and stitch it so tightly into the present that it appeared as though they were physically there. Trulie had never been quite able to pull it off. Granny, on the other hand, was quite adept at that particular time-runner gift.
“Stay here, Kismet. Our girl’s being hardheaded again.” Granny pushed open the door and deftly hopped out of the truck. The black cat blinked one glowing eye as though winking in response.
“Granny, please get back in the truck. I don’t want you to fall.” Trulie straightened and rubbed the corners of her tired, gritty eyes. She was in no mood to go through this again. Granny had shifted into plotting overdrive lately to convince Trulie to accompany her back to the past. Trulie wouldn’t mind a brief jaunt back to the thirteenth century, but Granny wanted to pull up stakes and relocate. The stubborn old soul was sick of using the twenty-first century as home. She wanted to return to their roots—permanently. Granny’s determined scowl was a dead giveaway. The Sinclair matriarch, prime source of all the stubbornness in their family’s DNA, had gone one step further in her plan to travel to thirteenth-century Scotland. She had gone to the extreme of pulling some poor unsuspecting Scot’s consciousness out of his own reality and plopped him right in the truck’s path.
Trulie eased down into the jumbled truck bed, gingerly stepping through the mess. Wasn’t this just lovely?Exactly what she had planned on doing tonight. Tiptoe through shattered glass and slide across a truck bed coated in ruined essential oils. The farther she slogged through broken bottles and overturned cardboard boxes, the lower her spirits sank. Eye-burning fumes filled the night air. The back of the pickup reeked with eucalyptus, peppermint, and patchouli concoctions. A month’s work gone in seconds. Just because Granny was determined to permanently relocate them to the past.
A cloud skittered past the swollen moon, bathing the peaceful backwoods in blue-white light and shadow. The thick, dark wood hedging in the river across the way seemed to swallow up the path. Trulie squinted at the sides of the truck, unsure what was shadow and what was new dents.She should’ve brought the flashlight to see if there was any damage.An irritated huff escaped her. She was in no mood to plow back through the ruined inventory, and Granny needed to get back in the cab until Trulie figured out what to do next. “Granny! Please get back in the truck.”
Granny didn’t grace her with a response. Head bowed and focused on her footing, the elder supported herself with a hand on the side of the truck as she picked her way through the ditch.
Trulie resettled her ball cap farther back on her head and looked up and down the deserted stretch of roadway. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the usual muddy path, with a hump of new spring grass greening up between a pair of pothole-riddled ruts. She tilted her head to one side and strained to hear any out-of-the-ordinary sounds.
The singsong chirrup of spring peeperscree-creekedup from the riverbank, echoingthrough the night. A light breeze whispered through the fluttering tops of newly leafed-out trees, and in the distance, an owl hooted the age oldwho-cooks-for-youcall for a mate.
“I told you, you did not hit him, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Granny shook a finger again as she slogged through the water-filled ditch. “One day you will learn to listen to me, gal.” The old woman picked up speed as she cleared the muddy water and made her way up the embankment. After dusting both hands across the seat of her baggy jeans, she fisted them atop her narrow hips. “That man was a shadow, Trulie Elizabeth, and you know the truth of it. Have you forgotten everything I’ve taught you?”
Trulie rubbed the heels of her hands against her temples. She was too tired to be lectured tonight. Granny needed to let up. “No. I have not forgotten a single word you have drilled into me for the past twenty-seven years. But right now, keeping a roof over our heads and food in our bellies is kind of my primary concern.”
Her grandmother shot back a glare of disapproval. “Don’t you dare take that tone with me, little girl. You know better.” Waving toward the spot in the road where the battle-ready man had just been, Granny continued. “It is time we returned to where we began. Listen to me, Trulie Elizabeth Sinclair. We have tarried here long enough, and I am sick to death of arguing with ye about it.”
Great. The full name treatment. And a“ye”thrown in for good measure. Granny had really worked herself into a snit. Trulie hopped off the tailgate. She scrambled up the slippery bank of wet leaves and tangled honeysuckle vines, stomping globs of wet muck off her boots as she stepped into the road. “We have had this conversation more times than I really want to go over right now. You know my answer. Now call Kismet. We’re going to have to walk the rest of the way home. I’ll call William in the morning to pull the truck out of the ditch.”
“I refuse to believe my own granddaughter would deny my dying wish.” Granny’s face puckered into a tighter scowl as she glanced back toward the truck. Kismet immediately wiggled through the sliding back window, nimbly danced along the side of the truck bed, and with two graceful leaps joined them on the road.
Trulie sucked in a deep breath and stared up at the winking stars peeping through the tops of the trees. Her grandmother had to be the most stubborn force on earth. She yanked off her cap and raked her fingers through her tangled hair as she repeated the argument she had chanted to Granny for the past six months. “First: you are not dying.”
Trulie shivered. Her cold, soaked feet squished with every step. “And next: our roots, both mine and the girls, are here in this century.” She spun a finger in an all-encompassing circle. “This is the only place and time any of us really consider home base. I kind of like it here and I think they do too ... most days.” Well ... she liked it here when her feet were dry, her truck wasn’t in a ditch, and her latest batch of inventory was in clean sparkling bottles lined up on a shelf at the shop.
Kismet trotted regally between them, her long, black tail held high, the end crooked into a question mark. The cat glanced up at Trulie and flicked an ear as though dismissing her words as pure nonsense.
From now on, the cat stayed home. Karma didn’t have a judgy bone in his body. Kismet could use some how-to-play-nice lessons from the sweet-natured dog.
Granny strode along with her thin arms swinging. Her brisk pace belied the fact the tiny woman was on the downhill side of her seventies. Maybe. The chronological age of an elder Sinclair time runner was always pretty much a wild guess. If a runner skated between centuries often enough, they could cheat death for quite a while. A curt sideways glance confirmed that Granny agreed with the cat.
The senior huffed out a frustrated growl and quickened her stomping pace. Glancing down at the cat skipping along beside her, she flipped both hands upward. “She just doesn’t get it, does she, Kismet? Our gal is never going to learn all the ways ’cause neither of us will live long enough to teach her.”
The cat aimed another disdainful smirk at Trulie.
