Page 4 of Fierce Highland Magic

My lock screen returned.

11:48 p.m.

Battery: 84 percent.

No service.

"Fine," I said, though nobody was listening now. "That is fine."

I took one photograph of the pin anyway.

Then, because I was a reasonable adult with no desire to carry unidentified objects from an apparent roadside emergency, I pulled a clean tissue from my coat pocket and reached toward it.

The moment the tissue touched the silver thistle, warmth bloomed through the paper.

It couldn't be the mild warmth of metal left in sunlight. It had been raining for a while.

Palm warmth.

The kind of warmth a thing held after someone had clenched it hard.

I stopped breathing.

The thistle shifted.

It didn’t move much. Only enough for the tiny silver petals to tremble in the rain. Then a thorn pricked through the tissue and into the pad of my thumb.

I flinched.

A bead of blood welled bright against my skin.

The thistle pin lay in my hand. I had not picked it up.

I stared at it.

Rain struck my hood. Somewhere below, the loch—or the flooded field—gave a long, soft sigh against its shore.

Then a woman's voice whispered beside my ear. "Never bargain with the Fair Folk after midnight."

I spun.

I closed my eyes for one second, searching. When I was frightened, truly frightened, I didn’t pray. I remembered my mother.

The last clear sight of her: standing beneath the departure board at Heathrow, one hand wrapped around the handle of her blue suitcase, her dark hair escaping its clip in the damp English air. She had smiled at me as though she were trying to be brave on my behalf.

You know where to find your way home, sweetheart, she had said.

I kept the memory the way other people kept a key: close, hidden, and for emergencies.

I held it until the shaking in my hands eased.

Then I opened my eyes.

The road was empty.

The woman in green stood nowhere. There was no one behind the wall, no silhouette in the rain, no movement beyond the reach of my flashlight.

Only the car.