The Highlander's Touch (41 page)

Live with me forever Cease my endless solitude. I will cherish you. I will show you worlds you’ve only dreamed of I will walk beside you, hand in hand, until the end of days
.

Lisa reached for the goblet.

Champagne had never tasted sweeter.

Catherine Stone’s cervical cancer was indeed preventable. While doing research for
The Highlander’s Touch
, I was distressed to discover the number of women who die from this disease each year. Cervical cancer is killing some 200,000 women annually, and at least 370,000 new cases are identified each year. It has been estimated that only 5 percent of women in developing countries have been screened for cervical dysplasia in the past five years, and only 40 to 50 percent in developed countries.

A simple Pap screening test performed by a gynecologist can detect cervical dysplasia in its precancerous stages. The earlier it is detected, the less invasive the treatment. An annual Pap screening test changed Catherine’s life and could change the lives of many others. We women need to take care of ourselves!

If you’d like to learn more about the Knights Templar, I suggest
The History of the Knights Templar
by Charles G. Addison (Adventures Unlimited Press); or
The Trial of the Templars
by Malcolm Barber (Cambridge University Press). For an interesting look at the mythology surrounding the Order, I recommend
The Holy Grail
by Norma Lorre Goodrich (HarperCollins). I tried to detail the history of the Order as accurately as possible in the face of myriad conflicting sources. My research uncovered as
many references to the Templar’s involvement in the battle at Bannock Burn as sources that deny their involvement. However, the Scottish Order of the Knights Templar, associated with the area around Roslyn Chapel, is still in existence today.

The last I heard from Lisa, she had just graduated from a local university and was preparing to go on to medical school. She was adamant I mention that she
finally
got to go to college.

And Circenn? After having lived for so many centuries, he is not quite as driven by a thirst for knowledge as Lisa, and instead devotes his days and nights to pleasing his woman.

Oh, and I nearly forgot—Adam insists I mention him. If you’d like to know more about him (I keep reminding him he is
not
the hero, so nobody cares), you may find him in my novel
Beyond the Highland Mist
, irritating Laird Hawk Douglas.

Better him than me.

Best wishes,
Karen

K
AREN
M
ARIE
M
ONING
graduated from Purdue University with a bachelor’s degree in Society and Law. Her debut novel,
Beyond the Highland Mist
, was published in 1999 and received a Top Pick from
Romantic Times
, a Barnes & Noble Top Five Pick, was nominated for two RITA awards, and a Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Historical Time-Travel. Her second novel,
To Tame a Highland Warrior
, received another rave review and Top Pick from
Romantic Times
. At the RWA 2000 conference she received the Waldenbooks Bestselling Debut Romance Author Award.

Karen resides in Cincinnati, Ohio with her cat, Moon-shadow, where she is currently completing her next novel for Bantam Dell.

Visit Karen online at:

www.kmoning.bizland.com/tartan

Adam Black raked a hand through his long black hair and scowled as he stalked down the alley.

Three eternal months he’d been human. Ninety-seven horrific days, to be exact. Two thousand three hundred twenty-eight interminable hours. One hundred thirty-nine thousand six hundred eighty thoroughly offensive minutes.

He’d become obsessed with increments of time. It was an embarrassingly mortal affliction. Next thing he knew, he’d be wearing a watch.

Never
.

He’d been certain Aoibheal would have come for him by now. Would have staked his very essence on it; not that he had much left to stake.

But she hadn’t, and he was sick of waiting. Not only were
humans allotted a ridiculously finite slice of time to exist, their bodies had requirements that consumed a great deal of that time. Sleep alone consumed a full third of it. Although he’d mastered those requirements, over the past few months, he resented being slave to his physical form. Having to eat, wash, dress, sleep, piss, shave, brush his hair and teeth, for Christ’s sake! He wanted to be himself again. Not at the queen’s bloody convenience, but
now
.

Hence he’d left London and journeyed to Cincinnati (the infernally long way—by plane) looking for the half-Fae son he’d sired over a millennium ago, Circenn Brodie, who’d married a twenty-first-century mortal and usually resided here with her.

Usually.

Upon arriving in Cincinnati, he’d found Circenn’s residence vacant, and had no idea where to look for him next. He’d taken up residence there himself, and had been killing time since—endeavoring grimly to ignore that, for the first time in his timeless existence, time was returning the favor—waiting for Circenn to return. A half-blooded Tuatha Dé, Circenn had magic Adam no longer possessed.

Adam’s scowl deepened. What paltry power the queen had left him was virtually worthless. He’d quickly discovered that she’d thought through his punishment most thoroughly. The spell of the
féth fiada
was one of the most powerful and perception-altering that the Tuatha Dé possessed, employed to permit a Tuatha Dé full interaction with the human realm, while keeping him or her undetectable by humans. It cloaked its wearer in illusion that affected short-term memory and generated confusion in the minds of those in the immediate vicinity.

If Adam toppled a newsstand, the vendor would blithely blame an unseen wind. If he took food from a diner’s plate, the person merely decided he/she must have finished. If he
procured new clothing for himself at a shop, the owner would register an inventory error. If he snatched groceries from a passerby and flung the bag to the ground, his hapless victim would turn on the nearest bystander and a bitter fight would ensue (he’d done that a few times for a bit of sport). If he plucked the purse from a woman’s arm and dangled it before her face, she would simply walk through both him and it (the moment he touched a thing, it, too, was sucked into the illusion cast by the
féth fiada
until he released it), then head in the opposite direction, muttering about having forgotten her purse at home.

There was nothing he could do to draw attention to himself. And he’d tried everything. To all intents and purposes, Adam Black didn’t exist. Didn’t even merit his own measly slice of human space.

He knew why she’d chosen this particular punishment: Because he’d sided with humans in their little disagreement, she was forcing him to taste of being human in the worst possible way. Alone and powerless, without a single distraction with which to pass the time and entertain himself.

He’d had enough of a taste to last an eternity.

Once an all-powerful being that could sift time and space, a being that could travel anywhere and anywhen in the blink of an eye, he was now limited to a single useful power: He could sift place over short distances, but no more than a few miles. It’d surprised him the queen had left him even that much power, until the first time he’d almost been run down by a careening bus in the heart of London.

She’d left him just enough magic to stay alive. Which told him two things: one, she planned to forgive him eventually, and two, it was probably going to be a long, long time. Like, probably not until the moment his mortal form was about to expire.

Fifty more years of this would drive him bloody frigging nuts.

Problem was, even when Circenn
did
return, Adam still hadn’t figured out a way to communicate with him. Because of his mortal half, Circenn wouldn’t be able to see past the
féth fiada
either.

All he needed, Adam brooded for the thousandth time, was one person. Just one person who could see him. A single person who could help him. He wasn’t entirely without options, but he couldn’t exercise a damned one of them without someone to aid him.

And that sucked too. The almighty Adam Black needed help. He could almost hear silvery laughter tinkling on the night breeze, blowing tauntingly across the realms, all the way from the shimmering silica sands of the Isle of Morar.

With a growl of caged fury, he stalked out of the alley.

*   *   *

Gabby indulged herself in a huge self-pitying sigh as she got out of her car. Normally on nights like this, when the sky was black velvet, glittering with stars and a silver-scythe moon, warm and humid and alive with the glorious scents and sounds of summer, nothing could depress her.

But not tonight. Everyone but her was out somewhere having a life, while she was scrambling to clean up after the latest fairy debacle. Again.

It seemed like all she ever did anymore.

She wondered briefly what her ex was doing tonight. Was he out at the bars? Had he already met someone new? Someone who wasn’t still a virgin at twenty-four?

And
that
was the Fae’s fault too.

She slammed the car door harder than she should have, and a little piece of chrome trim fell off and clattered to the
pavement. It was the third bit of itself her aging Corolla had shed that week, though she was pretty sure the antenna had been assisted by bored neighborhood kids. With a snort of exasperation, she locked the car, kicked the little piece of trim beneath the car—she refused to clean up even one more thing—and turned toward the building.

And froze.

A fairy male had just stalked out of the alley and was standing by the bench in the small courtyard oasis near the entrance to her office building. As she watched, it stretched out on the bench on its back, folded its arms behind its head, and stared up at the night sky, looking as if it had no intention of moving for a long, long time.

Damn and double-damn!

She was still in such a stew over the day’s events that she wasn’t sure she could manage to walk by it without giving in to the overwhelming urge to
kick
it.