Reckoning (Book 4 of Lost Highlander series) (17 page)

“Has it been so many years, then?”

Piper frowned, wondering if all the time jumping had addled Rose’s brain. Well, time did fly for older people, and Rose clearly kept busy helping to run the mill. “I’m twenty-six,” she said. “I just found out that you came back. Like I said, I can do it too, and I wanted to find you. I, uh, need your help.”

“Ye must come inside.” Rose ignored the sack she’d dropped and stalked toward the cottage further down the river from the mill.

Piper hurried to keep up, following her inside the small house. There was a roomy cooking
and eating area, a spinning wheel surrounded by piles of wool, a few mismatched wooden chairs with homey cushions tied to them, a cabinet with a basin, and a narrow bed covered with an intricately designed quilt. Piper wondered if Rose’s needlework skills had improved over the years or if the quilt was a gift. A dozen or more crosses hung on the walls along with wreaths of dried flowers.

Rose took a bottle from the mantel and poured herself a healthy slug into a wooden cup. She waved the bottle at Piper in offering.

“No thank you,” Piper said. This reunion wasn’t playing out at all like she’d imagined.

“This is a shock.” Rose sat down in one of the chairs, pushing the other one toward Piper. “Sit. Tell me why ye’re here. Is your mother well?”

She seemed exactly as her mother always described her, distant. She hadn’t seen her granddaughter or daughter in more than twenty years, and there was nary a tear or a hug, and barely this polite question. Piper thought if she didn’t answer, but got straight to why she was there, Rose would hardly care. She’d been tormented by Daria for much longer, Piper reminded herself. That would change anyone for the worse.

“I found your diary,” Piper started hesitantly. “I know about …” she paused, taking a deep breath. “I know about Daria.”

Rose slammed her cup down on the table and rocked forward as if in pain.

“I’m sorry,” Piper said, wishing she hadn’t brought that up so soon. She tried a different tack. “Then I found the letter you left Fenella. I just put it together that you came back to be with John.” She smiled. “I can’t wait to meet him. Is he at the mill?”

Rose looked past her, out the window. Her lip twitched. “No, dear, he isn’t at the mill.” She turned her steady gaze to Piper, who flinched at the depths of sorrow she saw there. “I did come back for John,” she said. “It was all I could think about from the moment I left. The worst mistake I ever  made, that. I should have stayed and fought. Running only made her angrier.”

“What do you mean?” Piper asked, wishing she had accepted the whiskey after all.

“John is dead,” Rose said. “I was too late. I never got to be with him again”

“I’m sorry,” Piper whispered.

“I tried so many times to make it come out different. Oh, ye dinna know how I kept trying. Sometimes I’d get a glimpse of him before she wrenched me away again to the point when he died. Then I was stuck here, for I was dead in my own time. I thought I might have won, but she got her revenge in the end.”

“Why did she want revenge against you?” Piper asked, grief-stricken for Rose. She wanted to take Rose’s hand, but thought she would be rebuked.

“No real reason that I know. She was mad. She went from one time to another, I think never half knowing where she was or who she was tormenting. She went on and on about her murdered love once, though. Thought I’d killed him. I could never convince her otherwise. She laughed and said I should wait and see what the future held. Just mad.”

Piper’s vision pinpointed and she gripped the edge of the table, trying to keep from falling off the chair. It was her. Piper had started the cycle of suffering for her entire family.

She was the reason Daria’s lover Brian Duncan was dead. Lachlan had cut him down with an axe to keep him from strangling her. She was the reason her grandmother had been whisked back in time to fall in love with someone, then torn away again, only to have her husband killed right when she thought they might be reunited. And Daria had taken her from Lachlan, too. So much suffering. Surely it had to be almost over. Rose had to know what to do to make it all stop.

“Are ye well?” Rose asked, snapping her fingers under her nose.

Piper shook her head. “No,” she gasped. “Please, I’ll take that drink now.”

Rose gave her a cup of whiskey and she gulped it down, trying to let the burn of the alcohol work out the tight knot in her chest. She sat in stunned silence until Rose spoke again.

“She’d check in regularly to make sure I was suffering. I haven’t seen her in some time though. Maybe she’s finally had enough.”

“She’s dead,” Piper told her. At least in body, she left unspoken.

Rose stood up, her hands over her mouth, then sat back down. She didn’t seem to know what to do with herself, she was so excited. “Are ye sure? Ye have proof?”

“I was there.” Piper reached over and placed her fingertips on Rose’s sleeve. Rose looked down at her fingers as if they were tiny adders, but didn’t move her arm. “Listen, she took someone I love, too.”  She had to stop, afraid the floodgates were about to open. “He was the one who killed her.”

“Ye’re certain she’s dead and gone?” Rose asked again.

Piper gulped, slammed with the memory of the meaty thunk when the axe blade hit Daria’s neck. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the image was in her forever. “Dead, yes. I’m certain of that. But I don’t know if she’s gone.”

Rose leaned back in her chair and squinted sideways. “What do ye mean by that?”

Piper wanted another drink but trembled so badly she knew she’d never get the cup to her lips. “Please,” she said. “I came because I need your help. I think Daria had some powers, some strong powers.”

“D’ye think?” Rose asked, and it took Piper a second to recognize the sarcasm in her voice. She looked at Piper with a mix of disdain and pity, like she was a dead mouse the cat had left on the porch.

Piper’s hands began to lose their sensation and she flexed her fingers to get her blood to flow properly, sure she was going to lose the whiskey shot, her stomach was in such upheaval.

“She told me right before she died that death couldn’t stop her. I think she— her spirit maybe, is in me.” She broke down, leaning over and burying her face in her skirts, half wishing her grandmother would bash her skull in.

Instead, a few moments later, she felt Rose stroke the top of her head, pushing her hair away from her face. Piper looked up to see her smiling at her.

“There now, lass,” Rose said. “Let your granny help ye. Why do ye think the witch’s spirit has ye?”

Piper wiped her cheeks on her skirt and sat up shakily. “I felt it. I saw the look in her eye right before she died. I, uh, hear her voice in my mind.” She looked down at her hands, picking at her cuticles until Rose tipped her chin up.

Rose leaned over and peered into her eyes. “Daria’s spirit is in there?” She got so close Piper’s eyes crossed, then leaned back and nodded. “We must destroy it.”

Piper breathed out a sigh of relief. “When I found your diary, and the letter saying the land should go to me, I knew you could help.”

Rose crossed to the stove and put the kettle on, turning her back and rummaging with the tea things. “Aye, dear. I can help. Do ye agree that the most important thing is to vanquish her? Rid the world of her completely?”

“Yes, of course,” Piper said fervently. “It’s all I want.” Grateful tears slid down her cheeks and her grandmother tutted.

“Dinna cry anymore,” she said. “Let grandma Rose take care of ye. A nice cup of tea will fix ye all up.”

When Rose handed her the tea, she gulped it down, eager for its soothing warmth. She tried not to grimace at the bitterness of the strange herbal brew and held the cup between her shaking hands. Rose pulled up a chair next to her and patted her knee, keeping her eyes intently on Piper’s face, as if she might actually morph into Daria at any moment.

“I’m so glad I found you,” she said. Rose’s scrutiny unnerved her at first, but she grew more relaxed as she sat there sipping her tea. She hadn’t felt so tranquil in a long time. “Do you think we can really get rid of her for good?”

Rose pursed her lips and nodded. “Aye, I’m certain of it. Drink up and dinna worry.” She closed her eyes and took a ragged breath. “We shall both be free of her at last.”

***

Piper woke up in a dank cell with a tiny window high up in the wall. By the weak light that emanated through it, she figured it must be late afternoon, but how long she’d been out, she didn’t know. Her mouth was dry and her stomach gurgled unhappily. Her head felt like it had a stake through it. Whatever Rose slipped into her tea, it had been potent.

She thought she should be glad she was still alive, but was too nervous at the moment. Why had Rose drugged her, and why was she locked up now?

Dragging herself to the door of her bleak prison, she pounded on it and called out as best she could with her parched throat. When nobody responded after a half an hour of pounding and pleading, she gave up, exhausted from the effort.

The light grew rapidly dimmer and her unease escalated to fear. While she still had any light at all, she crawled into the corner nearest the window, hoped there would be a full moon to keep her company if she woke up in the middle of the night, and curled into a ball to wait.

The door slammed open, jarring her from her restless sleep. A tall, cadaver-like man filled the doorway, reached down and yanked her up by the arm.

“Come with me,” he said.

He dragged her along a lamp lit corridor and pushed her into a large room that held a desk, a few chairs, and her grandmother. A prematurely balding young man with round spectacles stood in the corner with an old, potbellied priest. Piper’s confidence plummeted when she saw what lay on the desk.

“We’ll do the charges,” the cadaver said, waving at the chairs.

Rose remained standing, but the two men took a seat.

“Grandma Rose, what’s going on?” Piper asked, taking a step forward and being jerked back.

Rose recoiled from her and cast her wide eyed gaze to the three men in turn. “D’ye hear what she calls me? Ye know my daughter died an infant. I have no granddaughter. She must be mad, or a demon.”

Piper blinked several times, unsure of what she’d just heard come out of Rose’s mouth. She tried to reach out to her and once again the cadaver pulled her back, this time roughly squeezing her shoulder.

“Can ye explain to Father Kirk and the constable what ye told me yesterday?” he asked Rose.

She cleared her throat and glanced at them all again, her eyes dewy and afraid. What in tarnation was going on? The cadaver continued to dig his bony fingers into her shoulder as he pressed her into the remaining chair. He gave her a look that warned her to stay put and went around to the other side of the desk.

“This woman appeared in front of my home yesterday, causing a great, cold wind to follow her.”

“Grandma Rose?” Piper asked, shocked beyond comprehension.

“Oh, make her stop,” Rose beseeched, wringing her hands. “Why does she torture me?”

“I’ll ask ye to no’ call her that anymore, aye?” cadaver said in a dead voice to match his waxy face. “In fact, just stay silent until I tell ye otherwise.”

Her throat was still dry from not having anything to drink since the drugged tea, and now she struggled to swallow back bile. She closed her eyes and tried to make herself be back in her own kitchen, with Evie and the baby.

“How do ye mean, she appeared?” the constable asked, leaning forward for a juicy story. God, the villagers never changed from one time to the next, with their gossip mongering.

“I mean, she wasn’t there one moment, and the next she was. With a fierce wind following her.”

Oh no, she didn’t want to forget the fierce wind. Piper gave her the dirtiest look she could muster. Her grandmother was as crazy as Daria, and she’d been fooled by her, which just made her stupid. And now, probably dead.

The priest’s interest was piqued and he motioned for Rose to continue.

“Every step she took, the plants under her feet fell dry and dead. She spewed a mad tale of being from the future, here for vengeance.” Rose wiped her brow as if the retelling wore her out. “I was sore afraid and tried to run into my house and bar the door, but she was fast as lightning. She rushed past me.”

Piper stared at her, aghast, and also a little drawn into the imaginative story. Her mind had gone completely blank, unable to form thoughts or words. Certainly none of this was about her?

“How did ye overcome her?” the priest asked, clutching his crucifix.

“Ah, Father, ‘twas the grace of the good lord,” Rose said. When they looked at her expectantly, the grace of the lord not a satisfying enough ending, she continued. “I prayed out for help and my hand reached for my prayer beads. I tossed them at the creature and she screamed in agony and fell to the ground, unconscious.”

“That is bollocks,” Piper said, unable to stand it anymore. “You drugged me.”

“Check her skin, by her throat,” Rose wailed, cowering from Piper’s scorn.

Piper’s hand flew to her throat. It was slightly sore, but she’d thought it was just from dehydration and sleeping in a cold cell. But no, she felt painful, inflamed marks on her skin and turned to Rose, horrified at the lengths she’d taken. “You burned my skin?” she asked incredulously.