Reunited (Book 2 of Lost Highlander series) by Cassidy Cayman Read Free Book Online

fainted.
    When she’d woken up, the hut she lived in with her grandmother was completely different. There were more chickens, and the cow was brown instead of black. All of her herb pots were gone. When she tiptoed to the window and peeked in, her grandmother was young and vibrant, sitting on a stool and brushing her long golden hair. There was a baby in a basket beside her who started to cry and her grandmother had told the baby to hush, calling it by her mother’s name.
    Agnes ran into the forest, scared she’d gone mad. She hid in the cowshed at nights and stole food when her grandmother took the baby into the village. After several days of this, she wandered up to her own front door and pretended to be a young widow looking for sewing or washing work. Thankfully, her grandmother took pity on her and she at least made a few coins so she could get a proper room at the inn. She kept taking jobs from women in the village and each night tried to find a way to get back.
    She gathered all the herbs she had been working with at the time she’d been thrust backwards into the past and desperately kept trying to recreate what had happened. Each night she ground the same herbs and repeated the strange words she’d heard herself say, all to no avail.
    It was only when she’d taken a sewing job that was especially arduous—someone’s fancy cousin would be visiting and they wanted to show off with new dresses for all five of their daughters—that she’d torn up her fingertips. That night she once again began to grind up the herbs and sing, feeling heartsick for her old life and trying to hold onto hope.
    “But there was something different this time,” Lachlan said with a dramatic pause.
    “Her fingers were cut. She bled on the herbs,” Mellie said, effectively taking the wind out of his storyteller sails.
    “Aye, that’s right,” he said with a frown. “And it was also her thinking so hard about her own time. That’s what the witch could never get on her own, as she had no heart, only greed and lust and … “ he trailed off and looked at Piper, his eyes full of love.
    “Y’see, there’s no need for all of the wickedness if ye can focus hard enough on where ye want to go. Ye must have a true feeling. Ye can make it work with the bones and sacrifice as well, but that is what caused us to get sick. Agnes learned to control the travelling and never got ill.”
    “What was the thing she said? Was it a chant?” Mellie asked, hand firmly wrapped around her crucifix. “She remembered it, aye? And taught it to you?”
    Lachlan nodded. “It has no meaning that I know of. It’s no’ really a chant. We didna know how to write it, but she never forgot it after it came to her, unbidden, the first time.”
    Mellie whimpered. “How can you know it’s not evil?” she insisted.
    Lachlan merely shrugged. “I canna know, lass. That is the truth of it.” His eyes were full of pain.
    “And you still need blood?” Piper asked.
    She had been hopeful when Lachlan had said there was another way, but if there was still blood involved she didn’t know how it was much different from Daria’s spell.
    “Aye, we could never get past that. But it needn’t be much, and it needn’t be from an unwilling victim, only yerself. And definitely no bones. I think the witch just enjoyed—” he stopped at the look on Mellie’s face. “That is all over now,” he said firmly.
    He shook his head as if he were remembering something. “And I can only do it on this land, Glen land, or at least verra near. I rode out into the mountains, and it wouldna work at all. And I’d had several, er, practice trips with no trouble from the forest near this castle.”
    “Practice trips?” Piper said. “You were here before and didn’t come find me?”
    “No,” he assured her. “I couldna get here the first few times. Once I went backwards and immediately came back when I realized my mistake. The next time I went forward and saw yer