Chapter 7

 

 

Grace slumped onto the couch in her living room. Night fell while she’d been out, and now darkness blocked out the windows. The house rang with a dreadful, awful silence. Mike was gone, and he wasn’t coming back. He was dead, and she’d left him behind in that terrible world.

Her heart ached with a thousand bursting emotions. The fight had exhausted her so she couldn’t think straight. She’d almost lost her life, and when she thought of Mike lying at the base of a tree somewhere a million miles away, she wished she had.

She stared at the empty house all around her. Mike would never come back. He would never walk through that door, kiss her on the cheek, and ask what was for dinner. He would never take her out to the movies again. He would never curl up next to her in bed.

What were those strange people in the village doing with him right now? Would Jamie really bury him, or would the villagers dump Mike’s body in the forest and forget he ever existed? Heaven knew they had bigger problems to worry about than some stranger from the other side of the world.

She swallowed down her tears. She couldn’t cry for Mike. She couldn’t break down. She had to think. She had to figure out what to do, but one thing was certain. She would never return to the village. She would never take the chance of getting in that situation again.

She trusted Jamie to deal with Mike. He said he would bury Mike, and he would. She never questioned that. Most of what Jamie said went right over her head, but one thing couldn’t be more clear. He knew a lot more about this situation than he let on.

He knew those wolf people. He knew them well and he knew them by name. She shuddered when she thought about it. The memory of the giants and the wolves ravaging them in ferocious rage sent burning tendrils of adrenaline through her.

What kind of hellhole did she wind up in? She thought the village was something close to nirvana, and the whole thing blew up in her face. She’d wanted to stay there forever. Then she found out it was really something out of her worst nightmares.

She pushed the whole thing out of her mind. She pushed Jamie out of her mind, too. He’d never touched her. He’d never talked to her. He’d never tried to protect her from those giants. He didn’t exist. Nothing on the other side of the doorway existed. She must have hallucinated the whole thing.

She didn’t hallucinate Mike dying, though. He wasn’t here. He would never be here. Whatever existed on the other side of the doorway was real enough to kill him. She couldn’t even bring him home to see him decently buried.

Jamie’s words came back to her in all their horror. Carson’s dead fer savin’ ye. Somewhere far away, Lachlan McLean and his family grieved the loss of their brother and son. They grieved over him the way she grieved over Mike. The only difference was that they had his body. She had nothing.

Carson gave his life so she could live. All those wolf people risked their lives to stop the giants devastating the land. Lachlan said he felt responsible for the giants, but Jamie disagreed.

None of this made sense, but she still had to come up with a way to cope with this situation. She had to concoct a plausible reason why Mike disappeared and never returned. She certainly couldn’t tell her office manager, or the Police, or Mike’s parents, or anybody else, that she took him through a time portal to ancient Scotland, where he got killed by giants. That would be too ridiculous even to say out loud.

She rifled through all the possible avenues to deal with this. In the end, she decided to do nothing. She would wait until morning. Then she would call the Police and report Mike missing. They would investigate. They would never find his body. They might take months to declare him presumed dead.

She didn’t care what they did. She didn’t care if she never received his life insurance pay-out. She didn’t care if she never got access to his retirement account. She didn’t care about any of it, just so long as no one ever found out the truth. She would live her whole life knowing what really happened.

She regretted not being able to explain to his parents and his siblings and their families. They would suffer from not knowing what happened to him, but that was better than telling them the truth. Telling them the truth could only cause them more pain. It would make them question Grace’s sanity, and she couldn’t stand that.

She forced herself off the couch and walked through the silent house. She looked in on every room. She surveyed all the evidence of her tame little life with Mike. He’d left his stamp on every room of this house. She would never change anything. She would keep it exactly the same.

She would pretend Mike was coming home any second. She would behave like the expectant wife who didn’t really know what had happened to her husband. She would play the game. She would present a tough exterior to the world. She would never show anyone how she really felt. If she did, they might suspect she knew the truth all along.

She returned to her bedroom. She sat down on the bed, but she refused to change her clothes. She couldn’t get into that bed without him. She couldn’t bear the sensation of the sheets against her skin without him in bed next to her. She kicked off her shoes and stretched out on top of the bedspread, fully clothed.

She laid her head on her pillow and closed her eyes. In a split second, the whole fight scene exploded into her mind. She saw the giants slamming their clubs into the ground. She saw trees uprooted and tossed aside. She saw Mike smashing into that tree. She saw the giant crack Carson’s helpless body in half and toss it on the ground like trash.

She saw Mike lying on the ground. She saw Jamie’s face in front of her eyes. His breath blew in her face, and a wild look of haunted horror flickered across his face when he said those awful words. Believe me when I tell ye, fer I ha’e seen the devil face tae face, and so ha’e those wolves. They came all this way from the Isle o’ Mull tae save ye, so dinnae throw their sacrifice back in their faces.

What had he seen and done, that made him look like that? No one could doubt the truth of what he’d said. He had seen pure evil, and his heart shone clear and pure through his eyes.

He knew Lachlan McLean, too, and he trusted him. They must have faced that evil together, and now they were facing it together again.

Who was he? He was nothing like the other people she saw in the village. He was young and handsome and strong, but something deep and terrible lurked beneath the surface. Where he had been and what he’d experienced to get that, she couldn’t imagine.

She didn’t want to imagine it, but curiosity burned her up inside. She wanted to know everything about him. She wanted to learn as much as she could about what made him the way he was.

She wouldn’t get to sleep this way, though. At all cost, she had to keep those nightmare images out of her head or she would go insane. She got off the bed and went back to the living room. She sat down in the recliner in front of the TV. She kicked back the seat and extended the footrest.

She closed her eyes. Ah, that was better. No giants, no wolves, no bones crunching, no bodies broken in half. She let herself relax into the soft leather, and she fell asleep.

She snapped awake to sunshine streaming through the windows. It hit her in the face and blinded her. She struggled out of the recliner. Her back hurt from lying in the wrong position all night. She kicked the footrest down and staggered into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and cringed. Her hair stuck out at the wrong angles, and her clothes rumpled from sleeping in them. She ought to take a shower and change into something more presentable for the office, but she didn’t bother.

She wore these clothes as a badge of honor…for what? The truth was these clothes protected her from what happened. As long as she kept them on, she didn’t have to accept that Mike was gone.

She picked up her hair brush, but when she started to brush her hair, she had a brilliant idea. Hazel Green started all this. Hazel’s spell sent Grace to that village in the first place. Maybe Hazel could help her now.

Help her do what? Grace didn’t know. She couldn’t think that far in advance. Maybe Hazel could explain how Grace managed to travel back and forth so many times. Maybe Hazel could tell her why those giants attacked and why that particular giant made such a project out of chasing Grace down.

Grace grabbed an apple out of the kitchen and set off walking down the street. She munched the apple on her way to Hazel’s house. She let herself through the gate to the cottage out back.

Grace knew this place well enough. She was here just the other night when Hazel first cast that spell. Wouldn’t Hazel be surprised when Grace told her it actually worked!

She knocked on the cottage door. She waited and waited, but no one came to answer her knock. Grace peered through the windows, but she didn’t see anything. She shifted from one foot to the other. She waited some more. Nothing happened.

She knocked again. She got ready to give up and leave, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to face the empty world and the empty possibilities and her empty job and her empty house and her empty life.

She couldn’t hang around here all day, though. Why wasn’t Hazel home? While Grace stood there not sure what to think, the gate latch squeaked again. A medium-set man with flopping black hair and a black mustache entered the garden. He walked right over to Hazel’s porch and knocked on the door.

“How are ya?” he asked. “Nobody home?”

“I knocked before,” Grace told him. “There’s no answer. That’s not like her.”

The man stuck out his hand. “I’m Angelo. I don’t think we’ve met.”

She shook his hand. “I’m Grace. I’ve been Hazel’s friend since college. How do you know her?”

“Me? I run a crystal shop downtown. She’s always in and out. Matter of fact, she was in there just the other day with some guy. She was asking about…. well, she was asking about something she was interested in. I got some information for her, so I figured I’d come around and tell her myself.”

Grace’s eyes popped. “Hazel—with a guy?”

“Yeah, I know it’s weird, but he was no ordinary guy. He was a….” The man stopped. He cocked his head and scrutinized her. “What are you looking for her for?”

Grace waved that question aside. “You run the crystal shop? Then maybe you know about some of her more…shall we say, unusual interests.”

He laughed out loud. “I know all about it. She’s always coming into my place talking my ear off about something she’s got on the boil. Last week it was some magic spell she planned to cook up. She wouldn’t believe me when I told her it wouldn’t work.”

Grace’s heart thumped. This was it. This was the spell Hazel used to send Grace to the village in the first place. “When was that?”

“Must have been a few weeks ago now,” Angelo replied. “Then her and this dude come in wanting to know all about Faery mounds. You coulda knocked me over with a feather. Faery mounds! They were on some kind of scavenger hunt, I’d say.”

“What can you tell me about the guy?” she asked. “What did he look like?”

Angelo looked up at the sky. “He was young, black hair and dark eyes, really good looking, but weird, you know? He had this strange sort of something just below the surface, like he could break out and explode into something massive at any second. Aw, heck! Don’t listen to a word I’m saying. I’m just shooting BS out of my ear.”

“That’s okay. Tell me more. What else can you tell me?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I thought he must have been some kind of fruit cake. I worry about Hazel sometimes, you know, the stuff she gets into, but this guy! You never saw anything like him. He was wearing a full kilt with a plaid over his shoulder. He had the full get-up with the purse around his waist and a sword and everything. You wouldn’t believe it if you didn’t see it yourself.”

Grace narrowed her eyes at the man. “Did he happen to say what his name was or what they were going to do with this Faery mound when they found it?”

“Naw,” Angelo replied. “I didn’t ask questions.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them some crazy people consider that hill behind the Rose Garden in Finlay Park a Faery mound. They thanked me, and they left. That’s the last I’ve seen o’ old Hazel.”

Grace’s pulse pounded. “When did she come into your shop, then?”

“About a week ago,” he replied. “That’s what I’m here about. They were looking for a woman, a homeless woman in town who supposedly knows about Faery mounds and stuff like that. I just found out she turned up missing. She had an appointment with Social Welfare, and she didn’t turn up. When her case worker went to look for her, they couldn’t find her in any of her usual haunts. The Police are looking for her, but they’re already saying she must be dead somewhere.”

Grace nodded and turned away. “Thanks. I’ll see you later.”

Angelo tagged her to the street. “I guess Hazel’s not here. If you see her, tell her I’m looking for her.”

“Sure.”

Grace walked away, but she couldn’t get her mind to function. Angelo’s words set her thoughts spinning. According to Angelo, Hazel cast that spell weeks ago, but Grace only went to the village for the first time two days ago. He said Hazel showed up with that guy at his shop a week ago. This wasn’t possible.

Why wasn’t it possible? Hadn’t Grace gone through some kind of time warp? Maybe she went through another one when she came back. Maybe several weeks had passed since Mike died. Maybe Grace fell asleep in that recliner and woke up a week later. Anything was possible.

Then there was Angelo’s description of the guy. Angelo said he had dark hair and eyes. Other than that, he could have been describing Jamie or just about any other man from the village.

Grace couldn’t ignore his description of the hidden mysterious power lurking below the surface, though. No one in the village had that, but Jamie sure did. Whoever the guy was, he must be connected with Jamie somehow. Hazel must have brought him over from the other side.

Who was he? Where were they now? Those questions sparked an irresistible urge in Grace. She had to see Jamie again. He would know who this dark-haired guy was if anybody did. Maybe Jamie could tell her where Hazel was, too.

Grace went back to her own house, and this time, the spirit of purpose infected her all over. She took a shower, washed her hair, and changed into clean clothes. She put on another pair of jeans and her jacket and tennis shoes. She didn’t need hiking boots. She needed mobility. She needed to be ready for anything she encountered out there.