“Most of the items shouldn’t be too difficult to find. Herbs and things grown locally, which I’m sure Gwendolyn will have no problem helping us locate. We also need the portrait, which we already have. The only thing that we don’t have is Alasdair’s ring. Morna says here that she gave it to him, and that he would’ve passed it down to Eoin. We didn’t find any such item in our original dig, so we better hope that it’s down here in this room somewhere, or we may have a problem.”
“Oh, doona worry yet. We’ve spent our time looking through the books that could hold the location of the ring.”
Adelle leaned to the left as Blaire approached her right-hand side, giving the girl a better view of the spell.
“Adelle, did ye see this? It looks as if the spell may only work for a short time.”
“What?” Adelle leaned forward to stare down at the page once more, her veins suddenly flooded with panic. Sure enough, scribbled in tiny Gaelic letters, the paper stated that once the original spell had been set into motion, it could only be reversed until midnight of the night before the anniversary of the massacre.
One month from today.
*
1645
Just passing through on his way back to Kinnaird Castle, the stranger sat silently in the back of the tavern. He watched as Arran Conall downed one goblet of whiskey after another, until he couldn’t begin to contemplate how the lad was still conscious, let alone rambling on as he was doing.
“I doona think I should give ye another, lad. Ye are far enough gone into the cup as it is, aye?”
The stranger listened in as the tavern master tried to discourage the lad from drinking more.
“Nay, not nearly far gone enough,” Arran argued. “We shall all be dead within the month, according to my brother’s wife, and I dare say I’ve no had nearly enough to drink to let me forget that.”
The stranger stood and slipped quietly outside into the cold night air. It was time he finished his journey with haste.
He had very interesting news to share with his master.
Chapter 24
Morning brought particular success down in the spell room and we’d only been working for a short amount of time. We’d finally found the spell book with the title that matched the one I’d been trying to sound out when Eoin walked in on me a few days earlier.
The process of searching through the Gaelic books in the spell room moved much more quickly once Eoin knew the truth. Since our heart-to-heart a few days prior, our days were spent either in the spell room sifting through books or meeting with Arran to discuss the best way to find out who was to be responsible for the upcoming tragedy.
It was nice to live openly among them and to finally be able to behave normally. It seemed to me that the friendship I shared with Eoin grew stronger with each passing day. I enjoyed every moment I spent with him, and the realization made me even more anxious to return home before I surrendered my heart completely.
I hovered uncomfortably around the spell room while Eoin read each page, searching for whatever spell might be helpful. I was unsure of how to help, most of the books already having been gone through, and found myself staring at him while he worked.
God, he really was beautiful. I’d never in my twenty-eight years in the twenty-first century seen a man that looked so much like a man. He oozed masculinity, but not in a way that seemed to diminish his intelligence. He was smart as a whip, no doubt, and his eyes displayed a sort of hidden kindness; the kind that, while hard to get to, would change your world if you were able to get him to open up and show you his true self.
He must have felt me staring at him, and he turned to catch me red-faced as I scrambled to look as if I were doing something productive.
“Come here, lass. This is it.”
I walked over to his side, surprised when he turned toward me, opening his arms and prompting me to sit on his knee. Hesitantly, I took a seat, trying to think of spilled finger paint, runny noses, and sticky fingers; anything to keep me from concentrating on the hard chiseled body I now found wrapped around my own.
“What does it say?”
“This is the spell she used. See, her own notes are written along here.” He grabbed my hand from my lap and, using his hand, guided my fingers along the side of the page. Tingles swam over every inch of my body. Cheetos in the carpet, boogers on the chair backs, pink eye outbreak. No thought helped.
“I see. Will it work to switch us back?”
“Aye. I think it will.” He didn’t let go of my hand as he continued. “We need a few items. Mary can locate most of them. But it speaks of my father’s ring, and I doona know where that is. I believe he always meant to leave it to me, but his death was sudden, and I doona think it crossed his mind.”
“Well, we can find it, right?”
“Ach, lass. I suppose we shall have to. But it says something else as well.”
I looked up into his eyes, waiting for him to continue.
“The spell will only work until midnight on the twenty-eighth of December, then ye canna return home.”
“Well, we have to find it by then anyway. That’s right around when they think the massacre happens.”