*Lorcan was as nervous as a bloody cat and the usually calm Rohese looked jumpy, too. Ringo had the time portal ready even though Dewey was still in his lab trying to narrow down the era into which the time-traveling cabin might’ve gone. The time machine was humming and Lorcan recognized that sound. They’d be leaving soon.
He and Rohese had donned light-colored tunics and breeches, with plaids across their chests and sporrans. However, they had kilts in their satchels as well. Depending on where they had to go in Scotland it was better to try to fit in with the other Scottish men. He hoped he wouldn’t have to remove his shirt like some Highlander romance heroes. It was cold in them thar hills and he didn’t do well in the cold. Plus there were the scars on his back. Maybe it would seem he was a fierce warrior.
He doubted the elven prince would like to go shirtless either. Although he wouldn’t mind finally seeing if it was true that the elven males only had hair on their heads. Rohese always wore a long-sleeved tunic so he didn’t even know if he had hair on his arms much less anywhere else. Fiona wouldn’t elaborate when he’d jokingly asked her about it.
Minerva and Dalton were standing near the door to the compound talking in low voices. That made Lorcan more uneasy. He wasn’t sure he trusted anyone here. Dalton had always seemed like a solid guy but he suspected Minerva sometimes influenced his decisions.
Everyone’s heads turned when the large main doors opened and Dewey came in. He was accompanied by Joel, Jaycee’s twin, who was head of the armory department.
Minerva held up her hand. “He doesn’t have clearance to be in here!”
Lorcan thought it was strange that Joel could provide weapons for time journeys, knew all about time travel, but wasn’t permitted in the area where the time machine was housed. He supposed there had to be a cap on how many people were allowed in here. Not even all agents were cleared for time-travel assignments.
“I think it’s important you listen to what Joel has to say,” Dewey insisted. “And I have some disturbing news, too.”
Dalton looked at Minerva and waved both young men in. Even in his obviously agitated state, Joel stared wide-mouthed when he saw the time portal. It was a bloody magnificent structure.
It had to be twelve feet high and twenty feet in diameter and it was shiny silver metal…actually made of solid silver, which was supposed to deter certain MBs from following agents through during time journeys. Lorcan could only imagine what the cost of that invention would be.
Minerva scowled. “Go on. What’s so important you had to break protocol and permit someone without clearance into this area?”
“Jaycee is missing,” Joel said nervously.
Lorcan started toward Joel and Dewey. He could see that information had caught Rohese’s attention, too.
“Why would that be important enough to warrant access here?” Minerva snapped.
“I don’t think she’s been taking her meds,” Joel whispered lowering his head.
“Meds?” Lorcan asked. “What kind of meds?”
“That’s confidential,” Minerva defended.
“Still, if it could have something to do with Ms. Maguire’s disappearance,” Dalton said, “then we will forgo the confidence clause.”
“She’s bipolar,” said Joel, looking sheepishly at Rohese, then Lorcan. “I found her full bottle of pills. It should be nearly empty.”
Lorcan shook his head and glowered at Dalton and Minerva. “You let someone with serious mental health problems work here, know about the time portal, and now even train as an agent? What the actual fuck?”
“We also permit the son of a demigod demon who has a drink addiction work here, too,” Minerva snarled.
Lorcan inhaled. He’d rarely struck a female unless it was an out-of-control or dangerous MB, but he wouldn’t mind slugging the she-wolf just now.
“There are several agents on medications, Mr. Wright,” Dalton said. “We take mental and physical health issues seriously, but we don’t discriminate, otherwise I wouldn’t be allowed employment here either.”
Lorcan looked at Dalton’s cane. “Yeah, but you’re not going on assignments and your health challenges won’t place anyone in danger.”
“What did you have to tell us, Dewey?” Dalton asked.
Dewey’s face turned rosy red. “One of the copies of a printout is missing.”
“Which one?” Minerva asked.
“Fiona’s chart of past lives—specifically the sections with lives she lived in Scotland.”
“You didn’t tell us you’d determined that information!” Lorcan accused, wanting to ring the scientist clone’s scrawny neck. He closed his eyes, sure that they were glowing red. If he didn’t calm down he’d be showing them all his demon side.
Dewey stepped back. “I just completed it. It was very complicated and intense to discern.”
“Did Jaycee Orm know of this chart?” Rohese who’d been quiet till then, asked.
Dewey cleared his throat, his face still ruddy.
“Guess that tells all.” Lorcan clenched his fist. “Fuck! Are you sleeping with her, too, Dewey?”
He shook his head. “No…never, I swear.” He coughed. “I’ve never been with anyone.”
“You just let her inside the lab to go over confidential files out of the goodness of your heart?” Minerva sounded alarmed now, too.
“Why would she even need a printout?” Lorcan asked. He didn’t want to defend Jaycee but this didn’t compute. “She has a photographic memory. If Jaycee saw the chart she wouldn’t have to take it.”
“Her gift of memory doesn’t always work as well when she’d not taking her meds,” Joel admitted.
“It was the most complicated past life chart I’ve ever seen,” Dewey said.
“Do you think Jaycee Orm is with Fiona Maguire?” Rohese asked.
“She left me a note telling me she was sorry.” Joel swallowed hard. “And that she didn’t know if she’d be back. I thought maybe she was given a dangerous assignment.”
“She wouldn’t be given a mission that jeopardous yet,” Dalton said.
“I don’t know. Something’s fishy.” Lorcan took a breath. “Jaycee is calculating and manipulative. If she hadn’t been taking her pills, she wouldn’t let you know. She’d flush them, not leave a full bottle. And even if her memory isn’t as powerful as usual, why wouldn’t she take a photo of the chart? She wouldn’t risk stealing it.”
“You sound like you’re defending her?” Minerva said. “I thought you two couldn’t stand each other anymore now that you’re not involved.”
“I’m not defending her; I just want to get to the bottom of this.”
“Now that I think about it, my sister has seemed a little different lately.” Joel sighed. “I thought it was because Rohese broke it off with her and has moved out. She just discovered he used to be with Fiona and Jaycee has always been jealous of her.”
All eyes went to Rohese who tugged on his braid. Lorcan could just imagine how tactful the elven prince had been in breaking up with Jaycee. Not that he had written the book on that himself.
“Do you believe Fiona Maguire is in danger?” Rohese asked Lorcan.
Lorcan blew out his breath. “I believe she didn’t want to involve Darius and Arianna in this mission, but when last we spoke she and I were on good terms. Therefore I don’t think she would have taken off in the cabin without me or of her own volition. I believe Jaycee loathes her. So yeah, Fiona’s likely in danger.”
Lorcan’s heart was beating faster and his mind whirred with possibilities—none that he cared to consider.
“So what do you suggest?” Minerva looked at Dalton who then turned to Dewey.
“There are far too many past lives even in Scotland to pinpoint which one,” Dewey said.
“Can’t you determine the trajectory of the cabin’s route?” Lorcan asked Ringo.
He looked stressed now, too and tugged at the collar of his checked shirt. He went to one of his monitors and touched a few buttons.
“It was traveling at a perilous speed and went to several different places and time periods in Scotland, but wait…there was a stop in historic Massachusetts as well.”
“Do you think she went back to get her grandparents?” Dalton asked no one in particular.
“I think,” Lorcan said, feeling like he just had a brainwave no one else seemed to be considering, “that we should go back to this earlier this afternoon right here in this compound and stop Fiona or Jaycee or the spirit of Angus MacIntire or whoever the bloody hell was in that cabin from ever leaving.”
Dalton and Minerva nodded.
“Seems simple. But that should work,” Ringo agreed.
“How would Jaycee Orm get inside the mysterious cabin?” Rohese asked. “She doesn’t have witch magic and it is doubtful Fiona Maguire would permit her to enter, for they did not appear to have fond feelin’s for one another when they saw each another earlier.”
“So what? You’re saying they had an altercation you didn’t tell us about, Goldilocks?”
“It was not an altercation. They merely looked at one another with deep disdain. Fiona Maguire was attemptin’ to be cordial but when Jaycee Orm tried to hold my hand and wanted me to return to her abode with her, I told her I couldn’t do so again and that I must speak with Fiona Maguire.”
Lorcan shook his head, kind of wanting to throat-punch the elfae prince.
“And did you?”
Rohese cocked his head. Lorcan believed he was an intelligent guy, but he was having trouble following his questions. Maybe he was just worried.
Lorcan threw his hands out, frustrated. “Did you fucking speak to Fiona?”
Rohese placed his hand to his hilt also looking riled. “I told you earlier that I did…and that she wasn’t pleased with me…after we were inside the cabin together.”
Lorcan stared. “I’d bet there’s more to that bloody story, too, but I’d say let the elfae prince and I go back to earlier this afternoon and we’ll try to find Jaycee and stop Fiona from leaving or maybe both of them.”
“I believe that is the best preference available to us at this time,” Rohese agreed.
Lorcan wagged his finger threateningly at Dalton and Minerva. “If you say you need fucking board approval I’ll tell you straight up, I will use mind control on both of you.”
Minerva flared her nostrils, but didn’t threaten him or even reply.
“Ringo, set the time portal for twelve hours earlier.” Dalton pointed to the large metal ring.
“Let’s do it,” Lorcan nearly skipped up the steps to the portal while holding tight to his toolkit.
Rohese didn’t look eager to approach the humming time machine…or maybe he just wasn’t keen on going anywhere with him.
*
Lorcan gave a relieved sigh when he spotted the cabin right where it should be in the compound. Rohese bounded toward it, too, smiling for the first time today.
“Fiona Maguire,” he called briskly. “We must speak with you.”
There was no reply and Fiona didn’t come to the door.
“Fiona?” Lorcan tried to telepathically speak to her.
No response. The two males looked at one another.
“Now what do we do, Demon?”
“We’re going to have to find another witch to open the fucking door, Prince Elfie.”
Then Lorcan heard muffled voices from within the cabin and the door was flung open rather quickly. Rohese’s eyes nearly popped out of his elven skull when he saw himself come out.
Lorcan did a double take, too because the elfae prince’s tunic was half undone, his usually neat golden locks were disheveled and his cheeks were rosy. His chest was impressively buff, and there wasn’t a hair on it. Now Lorcan wondered about his nether regions, admitting it was a little weird to be thinking about that right now.
The earlier Rohese didn’t wear the expression of a satisfied male who’d just gotten laid. Although that might have happened and gone badly.
Rohese cleared his throat—the Rohese standing closest to Lorcan. The one coming from the cabin stopped mid-step and stared, then tied his tunic.
“Don’t say a damn word,” Lorcan said to the earlier version of Rohese. “Just go…”
Shit. Where should he tell him to go? He’d like to tell him to go straight to hell, if he’d had a fight with Fiona when they’d just had sex. Or maybe because they’d had sex. But perhaps it wasn’t even Fiona. Was Jaycee in the cabin?
“Hold that door,” Lorcan hollered instead. “Don’t close it.”
Lorcan rushed toward the door at demon speed and nearly pulled it off the hinges.
“Is Fiona in there?” Lorcan asked.
The earlier Rohese’s face flamed. “She is but why are you here, Demon? And—” He pointed at his half-a-day-later self. “You? How? Why?” he stammered.
“We’re from the not-too-distant future,” Lorcan replied. “We’re trying to stop Fiona from being taken to historic Scotland by a crazy woman or a spirit or something nefarious.”
“What will happen if both of us were to go inside that door?” Rohese asked Lorcan, though he remained gaping at his earlier self.
“Fiona will get the damn shock of her life and judging by your scowl, I’d say she doesn’t want to see even one of you just now.”
“She’s having tea!” the more forlorn of the two Roheses said. “She wrongly believes that simple heated beverage makes all life’s despair better.”
“That is true,” the Rohese with Lorcan said. “That she believes it, not that it is actually so, for she is much mistaken.”
“Despair,” Lorcan snorted. “Your little tryst ended in fucking despair?”
“That is none of your concern, Demon!” both Roheses scolded.
“Fiona?” Lorcan called. “You going to let us in?”
He was never so pleased to see anyone as Fiona when she came to the door, although her cheeks colored, too, when she saw Rohese, then her jaw dropped when she noticed the second Rohese.
“What the actual hell?” she said.
“We come in peace from the future.” Lorcan smirked. “Just trying to stop you from being taken to Scotland by Jaycee.”
“Why would Jaycee…?” Fiona shook her head. “Never mind.” She put her hand up. “I don’t think I want to know.”
Lorcan didn’t miss that she avoided looking at both Roheses and they seemed unnerved by her, too.
“Is that it?” Fiona said. “I can go back inside?”
“You shouldn’t be alone,” Lorcan said.
“Obviously Jaycee isn’t here and I’m not about to let her in.”
She started to close the door, but Lorcan put his hand out to stop her.
“Fiona…I think she might’ve gotten a spell from Mystique and she could have temporary witch magic.”
She stared. “How would you know about that…unless you went back there, too?”
“A guy’s gotta have a few secrets, Boomer. I’m not your husband or lover, so I don’t think I have to explain why I’d pay a visit to Mystique or anyone else.”
Jesus. That sounded like he had something to hide. Which he didn’t…not really because he hadn’t even had a chance to try the spell he’d bought from Mystique so that he wouldn’t be attracted to Fiona.
He’d intended to do it just before he left to come to LAMB’s facility, but then Dalton had called telling him Fiona was gone.
She shrugged. “You’re right, partner. It’s not my business.” She tried to close the door again, but he wouldn’t let her. “Do you mind, Junior?”
“So you and your elfae prince had a little alone time and things didn’t go well?”
With her magic she tore the door from his hands and slammed it shut. He needed to learn when to shut up.
Both Roheses were giving him the evil eye when the cabin behind them disappeared.
“Fuck!” Lorcan hollered.
“You handled that well, Demon!” future Rohese said.
“Hey, it wasn’t me she was looking at like she couldn’t wait to get away from. You can bet if I’d slept with her, she wouldn’t be looking pissed off. In fact, I’d probably still be in there enjoying our time together. I’d be making her toes curl.”
He couldn’t resist waggling his eyebrows.
Both elven princes unsheathed their swords and Lorcan simply went back to the time portal.