Kael and I got to our feet and stepped back. My eyes widened. Blood trickled from the corner of the man’s mouth and ears. Then, as suddenly as the fit started, he stilled. He somehow looked thinner, paler. In the light of the nearby streetlight, his eyes were glassy.
My heart raced. Had I done that? I clutched my hand to my chest. I hadn’t been touching him, though.
“Is he…dead?” I asked.
“A puppet,” said Cordelia as she came up behind me. Had she been watching the entire time? Her steady gaze was locked on the body at our feet.
“A puppet?” Kael rumbled.
“Poisoned with a yearning to deliver the message to Olivia and nothing else. He’d been driven to the point of exhaustion and starvation. The mage’s doing, most certainly.”
The blood dripped from the man’s lips to the cold sidewalk.
“But it’s barely been two days since the mage stole the key,” I said. “He wouldn’t have gotten in this state in such a short amount of time.”
The witch pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders. “The mage’s dark magic would work quickly. This man didn’t have a prayer. ”
Who was he? Had he chosen the mage as his master, or had it been forced upon him? It hit me then, as I stood with a shifter and a witch in the darkness, that we were standing over a dead body.
I glanced around. The last thing we needed was for someone to call the police. My gaze fell to the man’s jacket as if I could see the fingerprints I had left there.
“I will get rid of him,” Cordelia said. “You need to hurry if you have any hope of catching the mage before it’s too late.”
So many questions burned in my mind about my magic and the crazy visions, but it appeared I would have to find the answers elsewhere.
“Thank you so much for your help, Cordelia.”
She gave me a small smile and a nod.
What was she going to do with the body?
Before I could ask, Kael grabbed me by the elbow and quickly towed me to my car. He seemed eager to put distance between himself and the witch.
“Stop manhandling me.” I jerked my arm from Kael’s grasp. “Or next it’ll be your throat I set my knife against.” I wiggled Chaucer in front of his face.
Kael scoffed, unfazed. He opened the door for me, waited for me to settle into my seat, then shut my door before rounding the front of the car. How was it that one second he seemed ready to physically haul me to Scotland, and the next he was being a gentleman? The guy was an enigma. Were all shifters like this?
We passed buildings and sidewalks as we made our way to the airport. I tried not to think about the possibility of anyone else trying to follow me.
“Why did you call me Livvie?” I asked in the silence.
I got a shoulder shrug in answer.
I rotated my knife in my hand, studying the dark grains in the handle as we waited at a stoplight. “No one has ever called me Livvie besides my dad.”
“You must have been really close to him,” Kael said quietly.
“Yeah, I was.”
Kael took a turn to the left, making the final stretch to the airport. “What happened to him?”
“His wretched car wouldn’t start. Instead of calling a cab or asking for a ride like a normal person, he decided to get out his old bike and head to campus his own way.” I paused, a tightness in my chest. “He was struck as he crossed the road. I was on a dig in Mexico at the time.”
Kael was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry.”
I shoved my knife back into my bag. “He died being his normal, stubborn self, doing something he shouldn’t have been doing in the first place. It was the way he would have wanted to go.”
“It sounds like you.”
“No,” I said as we pulled into the airport. “When it’s my time, I want to see it coming.”
It was a sixteen-hour flight to Inverness, Scotland. I slept on the flight, cramming myself next to the window in an attempt to not fall asleep on Kael. I still woke with my head lolling onto one of his broad shoulders. He hadn’t seemed to mind. Thank goodness I hadn’t drooled.
I was still exhausted as we boarded a bus that would take us on a two-hour ride to Kinloch Hourn. It was there we would find Aileen, the witch who would hopefully help us find the second key.
A sense of excitement rippled through me as the countryside ambled past us. It always did when I found myself in a land steeped in rich history. The archeologist in me yearned to explore crumbling castles, ancient abbeys, and secret ruins.
The wistful wanderings of my mind were interrupted twenty minutes into the ride by Kael’s loud snoring. It was borderline snarling. I was glad there were only a couple of other people on board. They cast a couple of annoyed glances our way but didn’t say anything.
The bus finally arrived at our destination with loud, squealing brakes. The doors at the front opened, and I didn’t miss the opportunity to jab Kael sharply in the ribs to wake him. He jolted upward with a mumble and looked at me with bleary eyes. His hair was rumpled on one side, sticking up in all directions like one of those crazy-furred guinea pigs. I stifled a laugh as I nudged him, jerking my head toward the front of the bus.
“Come on. This is our stop.”
Kinloch Hourn was a small village. It consisted of narrow roads lined with small, white-washed houses and low stone buildings. The large hills of the highlands crowded the entire area like earthen sentinels, the peaks and lowlands alike wreathed in mist. Despite the ages, it seemed just as wild and ancient.
Shifting my bag onto my shoulder, I gripped the handle of my suitcase. It jostled and bounced along the uneven road as we made our way to what appeared to be a pub of some sort. There were a pair of young men outside, laughing over some joke about an old man and a blonde.
“Pardon me.” Kael stepped up to them, his own large canvas bag heavy in his hand. “We’re looking for the bed and breakfast?”
They pointed us in the right direction, which turned out to be a mile out of town. Luckily, neither of us minded walking. Kael peered into every dip in the grass and glared at every rock.
Was he always this paranoid?
Birds chirped in scraggly brush beside the road that was little more than dirt and loose stones. The waters of the Loch Hourn were still in blues and grays beneath an overcast sky that threatened sharp wind and rain to come. In the distance, a few deer, with their crooked antlers spreading wide, crossed a meadow.
I was a bit annoyed at the shifter stalking beside me, staring down every patch of weed and mossy stone walls. He was killing my mood.
“Look, I know we’re on a mission to track down a powerful mage of darkness and recover a relic that unlocked some crazy inside of me, but seriously, could you lighten up a bit?”
“This isn’t a field trip, Olivia.”
“Well, it’s not a funeral, either.”
“There it is.” Kael pointed to the bed and breakfast, effectively axing any further argument.
The bed and breakfast was a little place with stone walls and a sharply pitched roof. Smoke wound skyward from a chimney, and square windows glowed with soft light. I gave a little sigh, imagining myself reading a book by the fire and sipping a cup of tea.
“It looks charming,” I said wistfully.
Kael rumbled again that we weren’t on a vacation.