“We walk.”
“Walk? You can walk into another dimension?” How convenient. He wouldn’t be able to prove anything when we walked right up to his regular house. Except that he was crazy, and I wasn’t. I couldn’t believe in the space of an hour I’d gone from liking someone who’d shifted from a murderer to a demon to an angel or possible mental patient. A super-hot mental patient, but still . . .
“Aye,” he answered. “As long as you’re walking with me. Come on. You’ll see.”
He spun on his heel, and headed into the woods. I held my hand up and squinted at the house. My grandmother was still in the window. I motioned after Gavin, and she nodded. Gavin seemed to have charmed her out of any parental fears about me hiking into the woods with a strange boy. Cool.
As I followed, I wondered why I wasn’t afraid of him. I had seen him that morning, covered in blood. I had no proof he wasn’t a killer—aren’t serial killers usually good-looking?—I had no proof of anything. Yet I was blindly following him into the forest. I hoped my intuition wasn’t on the fritz, but somehow in my heart, it felt right. I felt safe with him. Safer than I had ever felt in my entire life.
He was walking much faster than I was, and I had to admit, looked incredibly handsome in his open white shirt and rugged kilt. Walking behind him was no chore. The muscles in his calves flexed with each step.
As I sprinted to catch up, I noticed the handle of a small weapon peeking out from the top of his right boot. Score one for serial killer . . .
“You’ve got a knife?” I asked.
“Och, you’ve really been looking me up and down today, then,” he said. My face caught fire.
“No,” I stammered. I hoped he couldn’t tell what I’d been thinking. I cleared my throat and tried to recover. “I would just like to know if my ‘guardian’ is armed and dangerous. Clearly, you’re armed.”
He stopped so suddenly, I almost ran into him. He swung around and leaned toward me. “And I’m most definitely dangerous,” he whispered.
In a flash, he was holding the dagger beside his face. Considering that his face was inches from mine, I was glad to see the blade was covered by a black sheath.
A giant smile broke over his face. If I had freckles, I’m sure they would have melted off my cheeks.
“It’s called a sgian dubh,” he said, pronouncing it “SKEE-in dew.”
I couldn’t resist. “Can I hold it?”
“Sure.” He pressed it into my hand. “Just don’t take the blade out.”
“Why not?” I turned it over, my stomach fluttering with excitement. It was about twelve inches long from the silver-embossed tip to the amber-colored stone set in the handle.
“Because if the sgian dubh is drawn,” he answered, “it must taste blood before it can be resheathed. And I would hate to have to use some of yours.”
“You’re kidding!” I said, handing it back to him, sincerely hoping he was. He restored it to his boot as quickly as he had drawn it. “You would never hurt me . . . right?”
“Of course not,” he said. “I would only give your finger the tiniest prick. Wouldn’t hurt at all.” He winked, then turned and continued walking. “Where’d you get your necklace?” he called out over his shoulder.
“You’ve really been looking me up and down today, then,” I answered. When he chuckled in response, I felt like the luckiest girl in the world. “It was my mom’s.”
“She worked for the Abbey?” he asked.
My ears pricked up at the mention of the secret agency. “How do you know about the Abbey?” I asked.
“Who do you think helps the humans fight demons?” he asked. “The Abbey was created as a human and angel consortium. Humans can get a lot of places we angels can’t, and vice versa. So, your mom worked there?”
“Yeah, and my dad, apparently,” I said.
“That explains the attraction,” he mumbled.
“The what?” Does he mean “attraction,” like between my parents, or like he is attracted to me? I could barely contain my excitement at the possibility. I wanted him to confirm, to clarify, to at least say it again. No luck.
“I said, it’s no wonder you can’t keep your nose in your own business,” he replied. “It’s in your genes to want to get involved. Good for your folks. It’s a great organization.”
“Do you work for the Abbey?” I asked, thrilled to be on a little adventure with him, even if it was only to his house.
“I wish. It’s only for the most elite Warriors . . .” He trailed off, and I decided to stop talking for a bit. Better not to remind him that babysitting me was keeping him from pursuing his supernatural military career.
We walked for what seemed like a couple of hours, but it was hard to tell which direction we were going. I wondered if Gavin had purposefully walked us in circles to mess me up. I had to give up trying to figure out where we were and trust that Gavin would bring me back. Hopefully alive.
We emerged from the forest onto the edge of a cliff. A sweeping, green valley rippled with sloping hills, all falling away from the tree-topped mountains spread out before us. Thin waterfalls shot out of the rock face and fed fast-moving streams that twisted down to the bottom.
“There.” Gavin pointed into the valley.
“Your home is down there?” I asked, rather doubtfully. I couldn’t see the bottom. It was completely obscured by fog.
Gavin nodded, still gazing into the distance. “Aye, my village.”
“How do we get there?” I asked. “This hill is, like, straight down and covered in rocks.”
While the valley seemed green from our vantage at the top, at my feet I saw the sides were actually made of small, flat rocks with bits of emerald-colored scraggly plants somehow growing out from under them.
“It’s not rocks,” Gavin said. “It’s—”
“Scree,” I interrupted. “The slippery shale that lines the glens is called scree.” I instantly regretted how geeky I sounded. Why couldn’t I stop things in my brain before they came out of my mouth?
“I see you’ve read your Scottish geography books.” He said, seemingly not put off by my being a huge know-it-all. Only I hadn’t read any geography books, and I’d never heard of scree before it popped into my head. Weird.
“Why is it called scree?” I asked, trying to redeem myself by proving I didn’t have all the answers. “Because of the noise you make when you fall down it?”
“It’s from the Old English word for ‘slip,’ actually,” he answered.
“You don’t say,” I replied, peering anxiously over the side at what could be my imminent death, or at least a lot of ugly scabs.
“You can snow ski, right?”
“Kind of,” I answered. Skiing down a big hill into powdered snow was one thing. Hitting rocks that would hurt like heck, if not rip the skin right off me, was another.