Revenge (Book 3 of Lost Highlander series) (7 page)

Now, while they’d been gone, the sheep had been picked off one by one, each one gutted in the same disgusting manner. A cow had gone missing as well, and though the stable lads all thought she had wandered off into the mountains and died, Piper wasn’t so sure. All signs pointed to Daria. The witch was back.

Piper hadn’t understood why Evie hadn’t told her about the vandalism and the sheep, but Lachlan thought it was the same reason they were keeping their suspicions to themselves. Evie just didn’t want to worry her so soon after she got back.

It made Piper’s teeth clench and her blood boil, thinking about Daria flitting in and out of her life, so close but still so unreachable. She was startled to find she’d snapped the pencil she was holding. She had to calm down and concentrate.

Ugh. She took another pencil and nudged open the book. If she was going to vanquish the witch, she was going to have to be on her level. Piper shuddered with anticipation and flipped it open to a random page, scared to touch it and see what would happen. Scared, but also excited.

She stared down at the page which had a drawing of what looked like a dandelion on it. This book had the power to consume her, she knew. She didn’t know if she could come back completely from wherever it took her.

Just concentrate on Lachlan, she told herself. Lachlan would be her anchor, her lifeline back. With a deep breath, she reached out and placed her finger on the page.

A blaze of gold light made her squeeze her eyes shut. She heard the sound of metal being hammered and a familiar symbol entered her mind. A few moments later she saw the engraved pendant that Lachlan wore to counteract the terrible effects the spell had on him. She peeled open her eyes and squinted at the page, her vision a disturbing jumble with what she was actually looking at.

“Interesting,” she mumbled to herself, glancing around to make sure she was truly alone.

She got such strange notions when she was studying the diary, it was almost as if a goldsmith was in the room with her, hammering away at the pendant. If these really were the instructions for making a protection amulet, that information could come in handy one day. Taking a sticky note from her desk drawer, she carefully marked the page, then put down her thoughts in the notebook.

While that was good stuff to know, she didn’t feel satisfied with what she’d learned, yet was loath to try another page. The crackled old parchment pages seemed to ooze malevolence.

Shaking off her fear, she set her shoulders and flipped through a few more pages with the tip of her pencil, hoping one would call out to her so she didn’t use up her valuable alone time. A circle caught her eye and she paused, studying the page. It looked like Daria had traced the circle again and again with her quill, with great pressure. The page was deeply indented where the ink was and there were splotches of splattered ink around the outline. With a shrug, she touched the center of the circle.

Darkness descended like a blanket being thrown over her head, but she didn’t feel suffocated. A cool breeze wafted around her, rippling her hair around her face. She reached up to push it behind her ears, but found she couldn’t move her arms. Panic should have taken over, but instead she just waited to see what happened next, as if it were happening to someone else.

She knew someone was about to arrive. Someone or something. There was a rustling in the distance behind her, like beating wings. The air was getting warmer and whipping around her more forcefully. The presence was growing stronger, getting closer. She wanted to turn around and see what it was but could only sit and wait for it. It was so close now.

“Piper? Where are you?”

Evie’s voice reached her from a great distance. Actually, she was just in the hallway, and about to find her submerged in the diary. Piper tore her hand off the page and slapped a ledger on top of it, shaking from head to toe and trying to get a grip on what was real.

She stood up and took a step toward the door just as Evie burst through it, with Magnus in a baby carrier strapped to her chest. They looked heart wrenchingly sweet and normal and the last bit of whatever had swept over her while she was immersed in the book thankfully fell away.

Evie stopped and looked at her curiously and Piper self consciously smoothed her hair and tucked her blouse into her plaid pencil skirt, hoping she didn’t look windswept.

“You look different,” Evie said, cocking her head to the side.

“I do?” Piper asked.

She pulled Magnus out of his carrier. To be sure she was completely recovered from her hallucination, she sat down on an armchair and propped him up against her knees. “How?”

Lachlan had said the same thing the night they got back. Was something really different about her?

Evie shrugged and rolled her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she said, dismissing the subject and melting into another chair. “That baby feels like he weighs a lot more than eight pounds. By the way, Lachlan was so cute while he was shopping,” she said in an undertone, glancing at the door.

As if on cue, he came into the library, looking worn out and borderline shell-shocked from his day at the shops with Evie. He was wearing his modern jeans and a smart dark blue wool sweater that clung to his muscular chest and wide shoulders. The blue accentuated his eyes and her breath caught when he leaned over to kiss her on the forehead before lying down on the sofa.

“It’s so verra busy in yer time,” he said.

“Did you have any fun?” Piper asked sympathetically.

He covered his eyes with the back of his hand and groaned. “A wee bit, aye. I would have been eaten alive were it no’ for Evelyn, though.”

Evelyn giggled. “He’s not lying. Who knew there were so many cougars in town.”

“Did someone hit on him?” Piper asked, ready to take names.

“It was all harmless,” Evie assured her. “But guess what? Lachlan’s rich. He didn’t need the money you sent with me to give him.”

She sat there grinning until Piper reached over and slapped her lightly on the knee for leaving her hanging. Evie looked over at Lachlan, but he waved at her to tell the story.

“Ye lasses can carry on as if I’m no’ here. I shall just rest a bit, aye?”

“It turns out he had some coins in his sporran from his own time, that he says wouldn’t buy much more than a dinner at a pub, but were worth quite a lot at the antiques dealer today. It seems ever since the historical re-enactors moved in, there’s been a real market for authentic coins.”

Piper had been only half listening while she tried to get Magnus to smile at her, but her ears perked up at that last bit of information.

“Wait, what?” she asked. “The historical re-enactors aren’t real. I made them up to cover for Lachlan when he first got here.”

Evie shook her head. “We really have them now. They’re amazing. They do parades and give lectures at the museum. They pay a nice little fee in rent, and they’ve attracted a lot of new tourists.”

Piper stared at her blankly, still not sure how her rumor could have become a fact.

“I think it all started with Padma,” Evie said, squinting at the ceiling as if that would help her remember. Piper raised her eyebrows and Evie blushed. “Yes, I was wrong about her, okay? She’s really very nice once you get past her supermodel looks and Duchess Kate-level shoe collection.”

“Padma started the re-enactors?” Piper asked, not believing that for a second. Padma was an excellent museum curator but wouldn’t last four seconds living an eighteenth century lifestyle.

“Well, no. You did,” Evie explained. “With the story you told Dr. Stone about them being unruly and getting into fights on the property? You know that spread like wildfire. But then Padma joined this museum society thing, and at first I thought it was just a way for her to write off her London shopping sprees, but it turns out she really went to this big museum funding gala there. It’s where she met her new boyfriend, too. He’s the drummer in the band that was playing the fundraiser and I’m honestly not too sure they’re right for each other. He’s smoking hot though. But that’s also where she met Archie.”

“Who’s Archie?” Piper wailed, barely able to keep up with Evie’s twisting tale.

Lachlan snorted from the couch. Having spent the entire day with her, he’d endured many of her tangents.

“Archebald Bancroft of whatever-shire. I can never remember his estate name,” she said, eliciting another snort from the couch. “He’s the head of the historical re-enactors. I think Mellie has a little crush on him. You’ll get to meet him at your party.”

“But why did you let them move onto the property in the first place?” Piper asked, reeling from the information overload.

She didn’t know if she liked the idea of a bunch of strangers living out in the woods, especially if Daria was on the loose. Of course, Evie couldn’t have known that when she let them move in.

Evie looked chagrined that Piper might be upset with her. “They signed a lease, and promised to be good. And they have been! The villagers love them.”

Piper sighed and looked down at Magnus, who had been lulled to sleep by his mother’s comforting ramblings. His cherubic lips were slightly parted and his tuft of dark hair was standing up in a little baby mohawk. A shadow of the presence she’d felt when she was under the spell of the diary floated in her peripheral vision and she focused with all her might on the baby so it wouldn’t take her.

“Are you going to set him up with Mel, since she has a crush on him?” Piper said, forcing her voice to sound normal and not look around the room for any dark presence. There’s nothing there, she told herself. There’s no need to look.

“Probably not. I think he’s in his late twenties, early thirties, so he’s way too old for her. He’s very charismatic. If I weren’t a sad old single mother, I’d probably have a little crush on him too.” Evie sighed and sank further into the armchair, looking like she needed a nap as much as Magnus. “So, what did you do all afternoon?” she asked, looking over at the desk.

Piper glanced at the stacks of books, hoping she’d completely hidden the diary. Evie was rightfully scared to death of the thing and would ardently oppose Piper studying it. She wasn’t even sure Lachlan would approve, so she was going to keep it under wraps for a while, maybe forever. If she could find out what she needed to get rid of Daria, she could destroy the diary and be done with all her dark impulses.

“Just accounting stuff,” she said evasively. “You know well enough after all this time.”

Evie nodded and closed her eyes. Lachlan’s eyes were closed as well and his breathing was deep and even. Had they both just conked out on her? All three, if she counted Mags, who was still sleeping in her lap. She carefully gathered the baby to her chest and took him from the room to let the shoppers take their naps. After she put Magnus in his bassinet in the kitchen, she sat down at the table and stared out the window at the grey Scottish weather.

She was no closer to answers and all her senses were on high alert. She itched to get back to the diary. There was no going back in the library for it though. She didn’t want to wake either of them. They were so sweet, all passed out from buying her a birthday present. They were so dear to her. Evie, her best friend— more like a sister, and Lachlan, her love. Her life. If Daria was truly here and dared to confront her, she would regret it. Piper wasn’t sure how she would make that happen, but she knew she would find a way.

 Cold crept into the kitchen and settled around her, going deep into her bones. She tucked a blanket around Magnus, then continued to stare out the window, lost in her troubled thoughts.

He woke to sunlight streaming across his face and he lifted his hand to shield his sensitive eyes. He knocked a compress off his head and tried to roll to the side to see where it had gone. He was surprised to see Bella sleeping in a chair next to him and had to lie still for a minute to remember where he was.

At some point they had moved him from the sitting room to a bedroom, and now he was in a large, reasonably comfortable bed. He wasn’t being jabbed with straw at any rate.

He cleared his throat and tried to sit up, and found that his head didn’t throb, merely ached. His muscles were cramped, but not seizing up painfully and he could see with minimal blurriness. He considered it a win and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

He was wearing a long, wool dressing gown. Of course his clothes were nowhere to be found, so he sucked it up, pulled on his boots and quietly left the room without waking Bella. Poor lass must have been exhausted. He remembered her stroking his hair and pressing a cool cloth to his brow, but who knew how long ago that had been.

He found a staircase and went down it, following the scent of bacon and fresh bread. In the kitchen, he stood and calmly absorbed Quinn’s amused look and Catie’s scandalized one. A new woman, who must have been Quinn’s aunt, gave him one of concern.

“Well, if it isn’t Lazarus, rising from the dead. Should ye be up and about?” she asked, hustling forward to take his arm.

He floundered, glancing at Quinn for help. It seemed like he might have already met this nice lady, but had forgotten about it. He wracked his mind for a name, cursing the muzzy static that filled his head.

“Aunt Gwendolyn, please may I introduce ye to Connor McKellen ,” Quinn said from his seat at the kitchen table.