Lost Highlander Page 15

  “Yes, that was very nice,” she said. He squeezed her arm. She craned her neck around to kiss his shoulder, then felt a strange weight on her mind. Sighing, she closed her eyes and prepared to confess.

  “I work in a strip club,” she said, keeping her eyes closed. He got up on one elbow and looked down at her, open mouthed.

  “Are you a stripper?” he asked. She opened her eyes to look up at him and she could swear he seemed delighted.

  “No, I’m a cocktail waitress. I serve drinks.”

  “You don’t take your clothes off at all then?”

  “No. Jeez. Would you think that was a good thing?” She edged away a little so she could better see his expression. He shrugged.

  “Maybe. I never knew a stripper before.”

  “You don’t know one now,” she exclaimed. “And you should call them dancers. Not strippers.”

  He laughed. “If I ever go to one, I’ll remember that,” he said earnestly.

  “You’ve never been to a strip club before?” She could hardly believe it. Her heart felt like it grew three sizes.

  “Donald was going to have his stag party at one, but it felt weird since he was marrying my sister. I felt my loyalties should go to her first, so I backed out, then everyone else just chucked the idea and we played poker at the restaurant instead.”

  She sighed, enjoying the feel of her bare shoulder brushing against his chest.

  “That’s really sweet.” She sensed him making a face and she stifled a giggle.

  “Right. So you’re a graduate student and a waitress at a strip joint.” She nodded. “But you wear clothes, yeah?”

  “The clothes are really slutty.”

  “Oh, nice.” He ran his finger down her arm and leered.

  “I just thought you should know,” she said.

  “Well, that seems more exciting than being a bookseller.”

  “Ugh, it’s not exciting at all. It makes me sad most of the time. I love your job.”

  Sam looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, continuing to stroke her arm. She felt pleasantly sleepy and comfortably warm.

  “I love my job, too,” he confessed. “So why do you do it if you don’t like it?”

  Evelyn rolled her eyes, while at the same time falling a little bit in love with his idealistic innocence. “Because I’m neck deep in student loans and I make a metric assload at it.”

  “Metric assload, eh?” He settled back down beside her and put his arm around her. She snuggled against his chest and closed her eyes.

  “Yeah. I converted it for you so you’d understand how much I make.”

  He chuckled softly against her hair. “Then maybe I’ll let you pay next time we go out to eat,” he said.

  Evelyn barely registered this as she was drifting off to sleep, knowing somehow that if she really thought about it, everything would come crashing back to reality, and she’d remember that they were out of their time, with no prospects of getting back, not even any food to eat when they woke up, if they didn’t freeze in the night. So instead of really thinking about what Sam just said, she concentrated on his arms around her, holding her close under the blanket. Surely that was enough for now.

  Chapter 15

  Piper hovered worriedly over Lachlan’s clammy brow, smoothing strands of his tangled hair away from his face. His eyes were closed, but she knew he wasn’t sleeping, his forehead was tense and his jaw clenched. Glancing at the clock on the mantel she saw it had been nearly an hour since Evie and Sam went to the barn. She knew there was nothing out there, they should have been back at least twenty minutes ago.

  She reached into her trouser pocket and wrapped her hand around the pendant she’d found in her great-grandmother’s special jewelry box, the one that had been locked up in a wall safe, hidden behind a painting of a jumping horse. When Piper discovered the wall safe after taking the painting down for cleaning, a bizarre feeling of absolute certain knowledge washed over her. She immediately went downstairs to the library and made a beeline for a certain leatherbound book, Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. It wasn’t very old, just a nice reproduction edition.

  She opened it to the second act and flipped the page over. There across the bottom of the page, written in faded ink in her great-grandmother’s handwriting, was a set of numbers that Piper knew was the combination to the wall safe. Even as the rational voice in her mind told her that it wasn’t possible, she walked straight back to the safe and used the combination to open it. The only thing in the safe was an octagonal pierced brass box, with stiff, sticky hinges. Inside it, wrapped in a moth-eaten handkerchief, was the pendant. Piper hadn’t been overly impressed by the dull, primitive looking pendant, but figured it had to have some special value if Fenella kept it locked up.

  It was that same day that she’d taken Fenella’s remains into the crypt and had her private memorial. When she’d explored the rest of the crypt and saw the symbol on the box by the tomb of Lady Daria, she’d taken the pendant out of her pocket to compare it to the box. Once again she’d felt an overwhelming sense of information flowing over her, but this time she didn’t understand much of it. It was more a feeling of having a vivid dream, then have it slip away as soon as she woke up.

  Now Piper held the pendant in the palm of her hand and looked at it once more, remembering having the same odd feeling when she was in the crypt with Sam and Evie the night before. She’d been compelled to go back down there, telling the others she wanted to verify it was the same symbol when she knew full well already that it was the same. She’d just wanted to see if it would tell her something again, and it had. She knew it had because after feeling like she’d fallen asleep and woken back up, Sam and Evie were looking at her strangely. They were talking about something but she missed it all, too busy absorbing the thing that she couldn’t even remember afterward.

  Lachlan opened his eyes and sat up, looking at Mellie, who was still sleeping on the loveseat. He shook his head pityingly at the girl.

  “They have been in the stables a long time,” he said. She nodded, frowning at the clock and stuffing the pendant back in her pocket.

  “I’m going to see what’s going on out there,” she said, leaning over and planting a quick kiss on his forehead. He looked stunned and she felt herself flush with embarrassment, but quickly covered it with a flurry of activity, pulling on her boots and coat. He stood up, quaking and grabbing the back of the chair for support.

  “You should not go alone,” he said.

  “Sit back down, cowboy,” she said, reaching up to his shoulders and trying to press him back into the chair. Even in his weak, quavery state he was still a solid mountain and she gave up. “They’re probably in the kitchen getting drunk again. I’ll be back in a few.” Piper hurried away, pausing in the doorway to make sure he wasn’t going to follow her. He seemed undecided for a moment, then sank back into the chair, looking positively green.

  Piper ran all the way to the barn, annoyed at her huge estate. At first she had laughed at the golf cart that Sam liked to use, but now she considered getting a few more, or possibly just have bicycles posted all over the place. At the barn, she found no sign of Sam and Evie anywhere. Poking her head into every stall and hollering for them turned up nothing.

  She was at the last stall in the long row when she saw the glint of gold on the floor. Leaning over to see what it was, she gasped and lost her balance, stumbling backward and sitting down hard on the bricks. Frantically she dug into her pocket and pulled out the pendant, holding it out in front of her. It was old and scuffed, the symbol that was chiseled into it worn almost smooth.

  The pendant on the floor was the same size, with the same symbol embossed into the center of it, but shiny polished gold, no dents or scuff marks. It had brownish stains spattered on its chain and across its flat gleaming surface, but other than that it was the same. Piper felt strangely calm as she reached over and picked it up. She knew she was picking it up because she saw her hand holding it by the chain, th
e pendant swinging, but couldn’t feel the chain against her fingertips.

  As if a movie was playing out in front of her eyes, she saw Sam and Evie in the barn, this barn, but different. They were in a stable, with a horse. She could feel that Evie was scared nearly witless and saw Sam lying motionless beside her. Piper dropped the pendant into her palm next to the old one and the strange feeling was gone and nearly forgotten.

  She spit on her finger and rubbed at the brown flecks on the new pendant, the vague sense that Sam and Evelyn were in real trouble gnawing at her. Pulling out her phone she frantically hit the button to dial Evie. It went straight to voicemail. She called Sam’s phone, with the same result. She tried three more times, knowing that if Evie could answer her phone she would.

  Remembering that Lachlan would be worried if she didn’t come back right away, she stuffed the pendants into her pocket and ran back to the house.

  “They aren’t there,” she said, glancing at Mellie, who was awake now and sitting dejectedly in the corner of the loveseat drinking a cup of tea.

  “Where are they?” Mellie asked, looking worried. Piper shook her head sharply, focused on one thing only right now. Lachlan’s eyes were closed again, his head back. Piper sat down next to Mellie and motioned for her to lean in.

  “Something’s really wrong. I need to go down into the mausoleum,” she whispered. “It’s important. Will you come with me?”

  “No way,” Mellie said, shaking her head almost violently, hitting Piper in the face with her hair. Piper grimaced. She was fairly itching to go back down to Daria’s tomb.

  “Is there something amiss? Have your friends gone to the crypt?” Lachlan asked, getting up to stand by Piper. Piper quickly stood up and grabbed his arm to help steady him. He shook her off. “I’ll go with you.”

  Piper shot Mellie a dirty look. Mellie sniffled but refused to be swayed. She was trying to get as far into the corner of the loveseat as she could without seeming obvious about it, still not completely convinced of Lachlan’s innocence.

  “You shouldn’t go down there Lachlan, it’s too far. You’re too sick.” Piper reached up to check his fever.

  “Nonsense, Lass. I’ve fought in plenty of battles with broken bones and bleeding saber wounds. This fever is just an inconvenience.” He straightened up and cracked his neck, then started out of the sitting room.

  Piper rounded on Mellie. “Jesus, Mellie, you know he can’t go down there,” Piper whispered. “Can’t you just suck it up?”

  The poor miserable girl shook her head, tears starting again. Lachlan turned in the doorway and gave Piper a quizzical look. The man must have eighteenth century sonar hearing.

  “Why might I not go down there?” he asked. He stared at her when she couldn’t figure out how to answer, until realization dawned. “I’m down there, aye?”

  Piper rubbed her hand over her face, unable to look him in the eye. He nodded, but looked confused.

  “I wonder why?” he asked, then shrugged. “Come along. I needn’t look at my own tomb, if that’s what has you so distraught. I’d rather go back to my own time and die here then, than die here now of this bloody accursed illness.”

  ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

  At the crypt, Piper was so anxious to get inside, she fumbled the key in the padlock several times. Lachlan leaned against the cool limestone, trying to recover from the long walk, until she finally managed to get the door open. Piper hurried ahead with just one flashlight, barely even needing it, her feet taking her of their own accord. Fallen far behind her, Lachlan had a coughing fit, and Piper snapped out of her single-minded fervor to get to Lady Daria’s tomb to run back to check on him. He was leaning against a marble plinth with a heavy cut crystal vase on it.

  They were still two rooms away from Daria, three rooms away from his own final resting place. Thinking about it made her stomach feel like she’d swallowed a cold lump of lead. Shaking her head to try to clear it, she put her arms around his waist, clinging to him and not caring about his eighteenth century morals. He stiffened at first, then relaxed, and even gently placed his hands on her back. She sighed and buried her face in his chest.

  “I think you should stay here,” she said. “I - I have to go on alone.” He didn’t reply, but she could feel he was shaking his head above her. She pulled away and took the pendants out of her pocket, shining a flashlight on them.

  “Something’s wrong. More wrong now, not just you being here. I think Evie and Sam are in trouble, because of this.” She paused, trying to remember the things she thought she knew, felt herself being pulled inexplicably into the other room. “I think I can figure this all out somehow. Something will show me how.”

  “I’ll go with you, Piper,” he said, his voice a low rumble. Piper shivered at the sound of her name on his lips. He’d only ever called her lass up until now. She wanted him to go with her, she really did, but the other, the thing that was guiding her forward, did not, and she was scared of it. She shivered again and he rubbed her arms.

  “I am already dead, Piper. I cannot be harmed by this thing.”

  Piper started to cry, clinging to Lachlan’s waist. “Don’t say that, please don’t.”

  He smoothed her hair and pulled her close to him, leaning down to breathe in her scent, not flowers or herbs, something he didn’t know. Something not from his time. Piper leaned her head away from his chest and he kissed her gently, then pulled away. She gazed up at him with her tearstained face wreathed in the shadows from their flashlights. Lachlan wiped her cheeks with his fingertips and smiled.

  “Better go then, lass.” He gave her a nudge and she whirled on her heel and fled into the next room.

  Once again it was as if she were being transported on a conveyor belt. She barely felt her feet touching the ground until she was in front of Daria Glen’s tomb. Was this ancient ancestor of hers the one who was trying to tell her something, or was it something else attached to her? Feeling goosebumps crawling up and down her arms, Piper stood and waited, shining her flashlight on the words inscribed in the stone, the Gaelic poem Sam read last night. She held out the two pendants, waving them around in front of the tomb and over the box with the same design, frustration rising. She’d been compelled to come down here, practically transported by some unseen force, for nothing? All she really wanted was to run back to Lachlan, tell him it was a false alarm and keep him here, nurse him back to health somehow.

  Groaning, she leaned her forehead against the stone wall. A sudden intense urge to open the tomb overwhelmed her and she staggered back, reaching out behind her to keep from falling.

  “No way in hell,” she said quietly, glancing around. She instinctively knew that if she walked over to a groove in the wall and pressed inward and up, the part of the stone wall that was the crypt door would unlock and slide open easily. She knew exactly how much pressure she would have to exert to get it to open and what it would sound like. She almost screamed for Lachlan, but instead did exactly what she imagined herself doing, pressing, sliding, opening. The low scraping sound was eerier in real life than it had been in her imagination. A dry, musty odor wafted out, surrounding her. She stood panting in front of the opening with her eyes firmly shut for several minutes, not wanting to look inside at what might remain of Daria.

  Finally, she worked up the nerve to open her eyes. Her ancestor was just a lumpy form wrapped in a dusty, yellowing shroud, and Piper was so grateful to not be seeing a skeleton or worse, she actually laughed out loud.

  Edging closer, she peered into the tomb behind the shrouded figure, down by its feet. All the way at the bottom, still behind the stone door, was what looked like a linen bundle tied up with some sort of shaggy string. Holding her breath, Piper gingerly leaned over the lumpy form and reached as far as she could into the hole, grabbing the sack and hastily recoiling. She did a little nervous dance, rubbing the goose bumps from her arms, trying not to completely lose it.

  “Oh, gross,” she breathed with disgust when she saw upon closer i
nspection that the string tying the bundle together was a long hank of hair. With shaking hands, she managed to slip the fabric out of the hair tie and open it, revealing a clothbound book wrapped with a leather thong, several chicken bones and a cloudy, crackled vial that was completely sealed with wax.

  She sat down on the floor and spread the items onto the linen fabric. Shining the flashlight on them to better see what they were, her heart began to pound. What she thought were chicken leg bones, were shorter, wider at their tips. Finger bones, she thought with certainty, feeling faint. There were eleven of them, all different lengths. Were they from more than one hand? How many, and whose hands? The vial was filled with a thick sludgy reddish brown substance, drying near the edges despite the copious amount of wax used to seal it. She dropped it back onto the linen and moved away.

  “Blood and bones,” she whispered, thinking this seemed familiar somehow. “Ew. Ew. It really must have been a blood ritual.” Shaking her head in disbelief, she tossed the terrible artifacts and the book back into their fabric bundle, at the last second deciding with distaste that she better take the hank of hair as well, just in case. Her skin crawling, she heaved the tombstone back in place and then scrambled back to Lachlan, now wanting to get out of the crypt as much as she’d wanted to get in earlier.

  Chapter 16

  Feeling as if she would never be warm again, Evelyn rolled into a tight ball under the scratchy blanket. The hard packed earth dug into her hip bone and she came to the sudden, heart sinking realization of where she was. Peeking her head out from under the blanket and opening her eyes merely further assured her that she was still in the eighteenth century, still in a tiny log shack in the middle of the woods. It took her a half second to figure out that Sam was gone.

  Hurriedly, she stood up, trying not to fall over from the stiffness in all her joints due to sleeping on the cold hard ground, and struggled into her clothes. Figuring Sam was out doing something amazingly manly like hunting breakfast, she opened the door of the shack and peered outside. All she saw was woods and the trail leading to the creek, so gathering her courage and wishing she had Piper’s fluffy parka, she stepped onto the front stoop, and still not seeing any sign of Sam, made her way all around the little shanty.