Page 9 of Shaw

“I don’t know. Doesn’t seem like the people here like you much, so maybe he thought anyone else would be better.” She pushed herself off the wall and walked past him to look through the narrow slit that served as a window. “Whoa. We’re really not in Cali anymore, Toto.”

Outside the castle were forests, valleys and mountains, and not a single sign of civilization anywhere. On the two walls that surrounded Dun Ard, dozens of men stood watch, holding spears and bows as if prepared to shoot anyone who approached the place. There had been a lot of guards surrounding that hall room, too, she recalled—and everyone had looked at Shaw the same way they would a hungry grizzly bear about to start chomping heads. After what she’d seen him just do, she didn’t blame them.

That was the other thing that confused her: if he was so dangerous, why wasn’t she afraid of him? Was she really so stupid?

He won’t hurt me, ever.

Julianne didn’t know why she sensed that, only that she did. It wasn’t because he was the finest-looking man she’d ever met; she had never put looks over personality. Shaw might be very easy on the eyes, but there was something about him that made her want to hold him close and tell him it would be all right. As if he were a little kid instead of a man. Eva had taught her how to recognize guys who didn’t care if they hurt her; those lessons had kept her from going along with everything weird Mitch had wanted all the way back to their honeymoon.

It’s just because he’s my rescue and he’s messed up, she told herself. No one falls in love when they’re drowning together.

As for the rest of the situation, she didn’t want to believe it, but what else could explain all this weirdness? When that Valerie woman had told her it was the twelfth century she’d panicked, and suddenly transported herself across that ginormous room. Before today she’d just been a strong swimmer and a happy person, but her limits put almost everything else out of her reach. She couldn’t even guess the simplest two-hundred-dollar categories on Jeopardy, even if they were about the Kardashians.

You have something better than brains, Eva used to tell her. A big heart.

Body heat warmed the bare skin on her arms and shoulders, but as he came closer Shaw didn’t touch her. He simply stood right behind her, and when she glanced back at him she saw he was looking out of the window slit. He smelled a little like the sea, and under that very much a guy. She’d always liked a clean man’s scent like his, and seeing his handsome face only a few inches from her own made her insides go like pretzels. She didn’t know this dude, but her breasts wanted to do cartwheels and the rest of her had started heating up, like she was about to get busy with him. How the heck was this man making her body go bonkers like this?

I did not just bail on one bad relationship to dive into another. Not even I’m that dumb.

“My apologies for bringing you here,” Shaw said, his voice barely above a murmur. “I’ve no wish keep you away from your time and family. ’Tis only that I’ve dreamt of you for weeks now. I blink, and you’re in my arms, and come home with me.”

He had dreams about her? When they’d never met? Had the oil-slick thing made him misplace his marbles?

Until she could figure out a way back to Napa and the future, Julianne would be stuck at Dun Ard. That meant making the best of a bad deal, aka the story of her life since Mom and Dad had died and truly since she’d left Mitch. She couldn’t blame Shaw for any of this until she had more facts. She guessed he really was messed up, but she also had to be careful, or her sympathy for him might get her sucked into an impossible situation. So might her boobs.

“I’ll help you if I can while I’m here, Chief,” she said, turning around to face him. “But I seriously have to go back to Napa as soon as possible. Everything that uber matters to me depends on it.”

He smiled a little, but his eyes remained dark and sad. “My thanks, my lady.”

Speal woke from a terrible nightmare, in which a wounded sister she’d pulled from the sea turned into a battered, burnt effigy with broken blade tips for teeth. Wanting but not willing to puke, she shaded her tired eyes against the glare of the sun, and saw the sails fluttering overhead. From the undulating movement beneath her she still remained on the fishing boat. She’d seized this vessel from a Fae disguised as a mortal after capturing him and his crew. Sending her sovereign, the Fae enchantress Derdrui, back to Insii Orc had allowed her and half of her Cait Sith sisters to search for the MacMar Clan, yet the sons of Mar remained hidden.

How ridiculous it all seemed now, as if she’d had a bad dream during a long and fevered sickness.

She didn’t want to remember what had happened on the full moon, a night she had arranged for them to spend on an empty island during the search. Once each month the Cait Sith reverted to their true forms so they might hunt and release the wilding natures gifted to them by their Therion blood. Yet once on the island and in the midst of the change they had crossed the path of a dark horror not of the mortal realm. The fiend had ripped through her and her sisters as if they were no more than mewling kittens. As she’d herded her sisters back to the fisher she’d left six of them dead where they’d fallen after being torn apart.

The dark beast had not butchered them all. They yet had the chance to live. Yet how could she face their sovereign if she were losing her mind now?

“Teine.” Speal pushed herself up into a sitting position, and looked around at the others on the deck. All sat in their own huddled misery, and returned her regard with weary resignation. “Teine, come here.”

“I reckoned you’d nap the rest of the day,” a cool, mocking voice said. “As for Teine, doesnae she now rot on the island where you left her and the others? Forget you that we bury our dead? Or mayhap ’twasnae convenient for you.”

Speal looked up at the tall figure of her dead sister standing over her, and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes.

“I cannae go mad. No’ now, with Derdrui prepared slay us all.” She dropped her arms and let out a sobbing breath. “Fia’s no’ there. ’Twas a fancy, naught more.”

“Dearg’s the fancy one. Ever I’ve been as plain as a spinster.” The ghost of the murdered shifter crouched down in front of her. She looked exactly like Fiacail, save for her kind dark eyes, which had become flat and cold. “Now you’ve mentioned the wee horror, saw you her slain in the night, or did you merely strand her on that lifeless rock? I wished a word with her on how we last parted.”

“She’s dead. I saw the black monster tear out her throat and toss her into the sea.” Fiacail was alive, and angry, Speal thought, staring at her sister’s battered face and singed hair stubble. “How can you yet breathe?”

“I met a strange merrow of sorts.” She took hold of her arms and drew her to her feet. “He came upon me as a shark attacked me, and used his magic so I might live differently. I’m no longer Cait Sith.”

“How can you say thus?” Speal seized her tightly and gave her a hard shake. “Fia, for the love of the Gods, dinnae speak off your head. We’ve yet failed again to find the MacMar. I must return to Insii Orc and tell the enchantress thus. In her mood of late, she’s likely to slay every last one of us.”

“Why tell that fiend that you failed, sister?” Fiacail smiled, and for a moment her teeth look larger and pointed. “Indeed, why return to Insii Orc at all? Come away with me and our sisters. We shall join my master and help him. Once he enslaves that marked chieftain, he shall use him to seize a kingdom of merrows, where we shall rule at his side, all of us made sea princesses.”

Speal had loved this sister more than any other, and she had spent nearly every day of her changed life at her side. Fiacail had been sometime eccentric and often sympathetic toward mortals, but she had never once expressed such desires. Had such come from Dearg’s lips, she would have believed it truth, but not Fia.

“You’re spewing naught but jobby,” Speal told her flatly. “You no more wish rule a kingdom of merrows than spawn a dozen babes with some randy mortal. Why test me with such drivel? Because I didnae save you? Because I didnae end myself after Dearg stabbed you and pushed you into the sea?” Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she didn’t care. “If no’ for the others, I reckon I should jump in and drown with you.”