“I love ye!”
Then darkness crushed in all around her until she couldn’t breathe.
ChapterFourteen
Lexi opened her eyes with a hard gasp and a jerk that shook her. Heart pounding, soaked in a cold sweat, and barely able to breathe, it took her a long moment to realize where she was. “No…No, I can’t be….” The quiet bedroom became increasingly lighter with the golden pink blush of the rising sun as it peeked through the cottage’s windows. “I can’t be here.”
She pushed herself upright in the bed, the bed she hadn’t slept in since leaving the cottage and somehow arriving at Sevenrest. She thumped her chest, clutching the front of her oversized cotton sleep shirt, struggling to catch her breath between hysterical sobs. She hadn’t worn this shirt since the night before that fateful day she’d driven north to find Mairwen’s friend, Mr. Seventhson. Her panicked glance landed on her lucky red boots beside a wooden ladder-back chair. Her jeans were tossed across its seat, and her denim Mammaw embroidered jacket hung on its back. “Those were packed away. Rill packed them away, so I’d have them with me. They can’t be…I can’t be here!”
“Pprrrpt.” The orange kitten tangled in the bedclothes yawned and stretched, obviously disgruntled at being disturbed.
“Aylryd—what happened? We cannot be back in this cottage, back at Seven Cairns—back in my…my world.”
The feline blinked sleepily, staring at her with its great, golden eyes and flipping the tip of its tail. It stretched once again, then arched its back and wriggled before sitting up with its head slightly tipped to one side.
“This is crazy. Bad crazy!” She fumbled her way out of bed and stumbled around the room, frantically touching everything she’d brought to Scotland from Kentucky.
“I cannot possibly be here,” she sobbed, hiccuping dangerously close to hyperventilating. “Jeros was not a dream.” She spotted her phone, attached to its charger, on the nightstand. “The date. What is the date?” She grabbed it up, tapped the screen, and almost choked. It was only three days after her original arrival date in Seven Cairns. Three days. How could it only be three freaking days? She and Jeros had shared days and days. Weeks, even. If she thought long and hard about it, they’d shared over a month together, closer to two. Hot tears burned down her cheeks, blinding her to the notifications on the screen about texts and emails that had as yet gone unanswered.
Ever so slowly, she dropped into a forlorn pile in the middle of the bedroom floor. “It can’t be,” she sobbed. “I did not dream up life in the Seventh Realm.” Jeros’s last words came back to her.Never forget that I love ye.When she’d asked him to repeat it because she didn’t understand why he would say that in the middle of an attack, he had said it again—and then everything went dark. “He sent me away,” she said with a softly keening cry, hugging herself while rocking in place. “He sent me back here to keep me safe.”
“Pprrrpt.” The ginger kitten rubbed against her as if rewarding her for being smart enough to puzzle it out.
“He had no right!” she told the feline. Pure, unadulterated anger replaced her hysteria. “He had no right to send me back here.”
She had to get dressed and find Mairwen. Mairwen would know how to get her back there, since she suspected that Mairwen had been the one to send her there in the first place. She pushed herself up from the floor, yanked on her jeans, then found everything else she needed to get ready for the day. The sad thing was, everything was exactly where she had left it when she unpacked. Nothing had been touched or moved the slightest bit.
“I hate mind games,” she muttered while drying her face with a tissue. She stepped into her boots, shoved her phone into her back pocket, and grabbed her purse. Just as she charged out of the bedroom, she halted. The cat. Aylryd. Was his food and water still good? Had that remained as if she had just replenished it last night before going to bed? She already knew the answer even before she looked. Everything was perfect. Even the litter box had been cleaned. Someone was trying to convince her she had never left Seven Cairns.
She turned and almost stepped on him. “We’re going back, Aylryd. One way or another, I’m finding a way back.”
He flipped his tail, then climbed the leg of her jeans, and leapt onto her shoulder, perching there like some sort of battle cat. His squeaky meow didn’t quite fit his intentions.
She disengaged his claws from her jacket and set him on the floor. “Follow on foot, please. It hurts when you dig in to hang on.” Stepping out the door, she came up short and halted on the small concrete stoop. Her rental car, the same one that had stalled out that night during the storm and forced her to walk, was parked in front of the cottage. Whoever was responsible was playing this mind game well. Rather than drive, she decided to walk to the village.
Aylryd trotted along beside her, having no trouble at all with her long-legged stride. The main street of the small Highland town was strangely quiet and deserted. A glance at the sky reminded her it was just after dawn. Very few would stir at this hour. When she reached the ancient meeting hall, the door was locked and the windows shuttered.
“Someone has to be up,” she told the cat. He looked up at her, as if waiting to see what they would do next. “The pub looks open.” Lights were on, and she remembered that the owner, Lilias, had bragged that The Fearless Scottie served the best coffee this side of Inverness. “Come on, Aylryd. Let’s see if Lilias serves Fae tigers in disguise.”
The little catmeowedand stayed right beside her as she walked up the street and tried the pub door. It swung open with a cheery ring of the bell attached to the frame and unleashed the mouthwatering fragrance of freshly brewed coffee, warm, yeasty rolls, and cinnamon buns just out of the oven.
“There’s my favorite American and her cat,” Lilias sang out from behind the bar. “Have a seat, hen, and I’ll fetch ye yer usual.”
Her usual? Lexi had only been in the pub once before on the day she had arrived at Seven Cairns. And she had not brought Aylryd that time. She’d popped in for a drink and a supper of Irish stew even though she was in the Highlands of Scotland.
She seated herself at a table in the corner that put her back to the wall and her front facing the entrance. Paranoia had set in and set in hard. Aylryd jumped into the seat beside her and gazed out the window.
Lilias showed up with a steaming cup of coffee and an enormous cinnamon bun with sugary white icing puddled on top and dripping down its sides. “Here ye go, hen, and what adventures are ye planning on this fine day? Ye are out early enough to start them, I grant ye that. My first customer of the day. That means breakfast is on the house.”
“Where is Mairwen? I need to get back to Sevenrest.” Lexi wasn’t in the mood to dilly-dally around and pretend all was well because it wasn’t. After learning from Jeros that Seven Cairns existed in every realm and every reality, she knew Lilias would understand. “I know it wasn’t a dream, Lilias. Drop the act.”
The petite blonde blew out a heavy sigh. “I knew it wouldn’t work, but they asked me to try.”
“They?”
Lilias pulled out a chair and took a seat. “The Council, hen. The Master Weavers. I’m but one of the minor Tranquility Weavers.”
Lexi pulled out her phone and tapped on the screen. “What date is it, really? I know I was in Sevenrest for almost two months.” She wouldn’t add that she knew this because she’d had to deal with the unpleasantness of two of her monthlies with no modern-day hygiene products. When she returned to Sevenrest, she was taking a supply of tampons with her.
