The man shouts again. The pub goes silent, and it’s more menacing than the sound of chaos.
Callum curses under his breath. He looks back and catches my eye. I can tell he’s not sure what to do. That makes two of us.
I open my mouth to say something, but he touches his finger to my lips, eyes intent on mine. I freeze, utterly disoriented.
His touch is featherlight, but it might as well be an iron brand. The moment hangs between us, so intimate I can’t look away.
“It’s the Campbell.” He speaks in the barest whisper, looking like he’s struggling with a decision. I don’t have time to ask more before Callum’s body tenses, lurching into action. He grabs me by the hand, and I let it happen. “We must hide. This way.”
His fingers close around mine, warm and firm. A fresh wave of panic surges, but I don’t yank away. Why am Iletting him do this? Who is this person whose hand is curled around mine? It’s large, his grip steady and sure, almost possessive, yet I don’t let go.
Clocks start tolling—the same disturbing, funereal moan of the grandfather clock, followed by the same eerie chimes, in the same dank hallway.
It’s all the same. But utterly, impossibly, not. I’m completely unmoored, no longer able to do anything but move where Callum leads me.
The door slams behind us in a small pantry, sealing us in damp, suffocating darkness. That wakes me up, and I cry out as I crash back to reality.
Too small. Too tight. No way out.
He puts his hand over my mouth to silence me. “Enough. ’Tis too risky.”
Enoughwith the hand on the mouth. I bite down hard.
He gasps and lets go, and it’s deeply satisfying.
“And sitting alone with you in a closet isn’t a risk?” I whisper, furious. I don’t know if it’s something about hiding here in the dark, or because I trust him more than I want to accept, but I keep my voice down.
“Aye. You’ve my word.”
“Your word that you’re taking me back to your demented lady friend, you mean.”
“No, nae back to her.” He sighs. “Donag’s suffered much, and it’s made her cruel. I thought I could protect you, but we must get you away from here. This place is a danger to you. ’Twill take time, but I’ll find a way. I’ll get you out.”
I really am back in time. I bite back a manic giggle. “Where will you take me? 1776?”
I feel him hesitate in the darkness. There’s rustling as heshifts, moving carefully not to alarm me. Slowly he reaches out, and a cautious hand ghosts over my sleeve.
“I know,” he says inexplicably, even though he can’t possibly know anything. “I’m afraid too.”
He gently slides an arm around me and guides me to the floor where we sit scrunched together in the dark. I should shove him away. But his presence is solid. A strange anchor in the chaos.
There’s a soothing quality to his silence. His every muscle is tensed but he’s warm along my side. Not invasive. Just there. True to his word, he hasn’t tried anything.
I let myself relax against him and draw in a shuddering breath. “So, okay. You say it’s 1622. But I saw you in my time. How is that possible? Are all times happening all at once? Because you’re not a ghost. I don’t understand.”
“Nor I.” He sounds muted, thoughtful. Not at all the person who’d threatened a man with a knife just a few minutes ago. “Barely a month has passed since your mother disappeared. And yet here you are—her daughter—a woman full-grown.”
A woman full-grown.
Something about the way he says it sends a ripple through me. Like he sees something in me I haven’t yet noticed myself.
I clear my throat and try to focus my thoughts back to what he’s just said. “You’re telling me my mother left Scotland just weeks ago?”
“Indeed.” His arm settles onto my shoulders as he begins to relax. “Donag claims time is not our prison. That she can summon people back or send them forth again.” There’s awe in his voice as he adds, “I didnae know she could do it. Until you appeared, I suspected she was mad. Ithought perhaps she’d killed your mother. I imagined Janet lying dead somewhere, beneath a cairn of rubble.”
The idea of my mother gone. Buried. I don’t respond. Can’t.
Sitting in this pitch-black closet warps everything, turning it unreal. All I can do is stare into the darkness and keep breathing…in, out.
