“Not ever what?”

“No one has ever kissed me the way you do. Let alone anything more.”

A virgin? Was that even possible? “You mean you’ve never...?”

“Never.” She lowered her head and removed her hands from his shoulders.

“Hey.” He caught her gaze. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.” He kissed her again, briefly, then placed a protective arm over her shoulders and walked her home. “So are the men in Scotland blind?”

She laughed. “Nay.”

“What then?”

“My father is very protective.”

“Does your father know you’re here?”

“Much to his dismay, but we had no choice.”

Interesting, a protective father who sent his daughter away to a different country without any money. Something wasn’t lining up.

Both kept silent, stuck in their own thoughts.

They were within a block of his home when Myra stiffened, and all color washed from her face. She stopped and spun in a slow circle.

“What is it?”

“Someone is watching us.”

“Some of the neighbors are busybodies.”

“No, Todd. The one that watches wants more than to gossip.”

Now the hair on his neck stood on end. It wasn’t so much what she said, but the complete certainty in her tone that alarmed him. He moved his hand to where his gun normally was. He’d left it on his nightstand in his room. “Let’s get you inside.”

She needed little encouragement and within a minute was safely tucked behind his locked door, while he and his gun checked-out his yard.

He didn’t like the fear he saw in her eyes. The uneasy feeling they were being watched was hard to shake off. With his gun in front of him, he circled the house twice, poking around his garden tools in his shed and behind the fences to neighboring properties.

If someone had been there, they were gone now.

He found her, curled up, clenching a butcher knife in her hand. “He’s gone,” she whispered.

“I didn’t find anyone out there.”

“But you felt him, didn’t you?”

A denial was on his lips. “Maybe. Who do you think might be watching us?”

She started to shake.

“Hey, hey. Stop that.” Todd pried the knife out of her fingers and gathered her in his arms. “It’s okay.

Nothing is going to happen to you. Shhh...”

He held her until he felt her body heat up and the shaking stopped. It took him some time to calm her down, but once he did, he tucked her into her bed. He left her bedroom door open and slept on the sofa.

Michael pulled back, into the darkness just as he had been taught by Grainna. Following Tara’s sister had paid off at last. She’d finally lead him to the young Druid virgin. When Grainna returned, and although he didn’t know when, he knew his mistress would, she would be pleased with what he had discovered.

He considered taking the young Druid woman and holding her until the solstice, but the cop she was staying with was a problem and he decided to wait a bit longer.

Grainna would know what to do, and she would have him do it when she returned.

He placed a cigarette to his lips, covered the tip with his hand, and lit the end without a match or a lighter.

She was running and the woods surrounded her. Vines reached their spiny fingers around her ankles tripping her, causing her to fall to the forest floor.

She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came. His hands crawled over her body, pinching, probing. Female laughter crackled from the shadows, damning her body, laying claim to her virginity. ‘You will break my curse, and in return I will end your life quickly. The others will suffer.’

“Noooo!”

“Wake up.” Todd shook her torso, avoiding her hands when they clawed at him. “Myra, wake up.”

She woke to her own screams. Todd’s grip held her firmly in place. Her breath came in small gasps.

Her heart raced. “She is coming for me.”

“It’s just a dream.” A damn scary one from what he could tell.

“No, it’s more than that. She’s coming back. I’m sure of it.”

“Who’s coming, Myra? Who are you so afraid of?”

“Grainna.”

He couldn’t get any more out of her. She stopped talking and rocked.

He called her so often over the next two days, he might as well have stayed home. She tried, unsuccessfully, to reassure him she was fine, but he could tell her nerves were on edge.

As were his.

He tapped his pencil while watching the videos for the third time. “What do you think that is?” He pointed to the flash on the screen just before dawn.

“Lightning?”

Jake spit out a sunflower seed shell and hit rewind. They watched the clip again. “Might be.

Although I don’t remember any rain last week. I’ll look up the weather pattern online, see if I come up with anything.”

He watched the video of Myra walking around the island, appearing lost. The static on the screen annoyed them both. Then they saw her riding the raft over to main park. “Aren’t those on tracks?”

Jake pointed to the raft in question.

“Everything in the water is on tracks, except the canoes. Do they still have them?”

“Don’t think so.”

Jake pulled himself out of his chair and flipped on the lights. “We’re wasting our time. We can’t tell when she went to the island, and there’s no other way but by that raft. Unless she swam.”

Todd remembered their conversation the day they spent on the beach. She vowed she had no idea how to swim. “Someone would have noticed a woman in the water.”

“Well, she couldn’t have gone unnoticed for two days. What does that leave? She appeared out of thin air?”

A head poked around the corner and told Todd he had a call. He flopped down at his desk and grabbed the phone, “Blakely.”

“Mr. Blakely, this is Mr. Harrison over at Graystones.”

Todd shifted in his chair, moved the receiver from one ear to the next. “Hello, Mr. Harrison.”

“I am so glad to have gotten a hold of you. I have stunning news for you and your companion.”

“And what might that be?”

“First, I want to apologize to Miss MacCoinnich.

She was right about the year these pieces were made. In my defense, I have never seen antiques so well taken care of from that time-period outside of a museum. Why even our people didn’t believe it until it was dated by our expert in Renaissance.” He took a breath and continued to ramble on about how rare and exciting it was to have such marvelous examples of early twelfth century art, and how the pieces would likely bring a bidding war amongst the many galleries in Los Angeles, New York and London.