“Ah, I see you’ve found it. Or, rather, it found you.”
Moira was at her side, which made Chloe jump. She hadn’t heard the woman approach.
“Found what?” Her voice was a rough whisper.
Smiling, Moira opened the case and picked up the strange little stone. She held it out to her. Chloe stared at it, her hands clenching into tight fists. The impulsive side of her wanted to take it. The logical side of her told her not to.
“You’ll be wanting this, lass,” the woman said.
“What is it?”
“Your future and your past.”
Chloe’s head snapped up and she met the woman’s starry-eyed gaze. That didn’t make sense to her at all.
“I don’t understand.”
“It calls to you, doesn’t it?” Moira asked, a pleasant expression on her face.
Chloe managed to nod, her hands loosening at her sides. Her fingers twitched with the sudden need to take the stone from the woman’s palm.
“How does it…why does it do that?”
“It senses you and knows who you are.”
Finally, Chloe reached for the stone, plucking it from the woman’s palm and holding it in her own. The lines were faded to almost nothing but she was able to discern that they were once engraved. There was an arch with another line going through it.
Chloe was familiar enough with the Celtic symbols to imagine what it was—part of a triquetra with a circle going through. An ancient symbol of the trinity knot that meant different things. Such as the three stages of life—youth, adulthood, old age. Perhaps that’s what Moira meant when she had said it was her future and her past.
But the symbol also had ties to the Maiden, Mother, Crone, symbolizing generations. Her gaze flickered back up to the woman. When she had said her future and her past, was she referring to Evie? Or something else?
“It looks like it’s part of something bigger,” Chloe said.
Moira merely nodded. “It is. And it’s yours.”
“Oh, I—”
“I must insist.” She waved for her to follow toward the back of the shop.
Chloe stood there for a long moment, watching her walk away, dumbfounded and unsure if she should follow. She stared at her back, the way her long silvery hair fell in soft waves. She closed her hand around the stone and headed for the shopkeeper.
Moira stood behind the cash register waiting for her. As Chloe approached, she noticed a picture of a castle on the wall behind her. She gave it a quick glance, then looked back up at it. It sat on a craggy hill. Its high towers were shrouded in mist. Behind it, a placid loch under an overcast sky. A sense of familiarity flickered through her as she looked at it, as though she had been there before. In her short time in Scotland, she hadn’t had time to explore castles.
“That castle…”
“Dundale,” the woman replied. “You’ll see it soon enough.”
Chloe blinked in confusion as she looked at the woman. “Isn’t Dundale on the Isle of Skye?”
“Aye, it is. Once the seat of Clan MacLeod,” she agreed and held her hand out to her. “Let me package that for you.”
The eerie feeling did not leave her as she dropped the stone into the woman’s hand. She rustled about under the counter.
“How much?” Chloe asked.
“Free of charge.”
When Moira handed her back the stone, it was inside a blue velvet bag.
