Eleventh Grave in Moonlight (Charley Davidson #11)(38)

A sweaty kind of panic set in. If I died here, no one would know who I was. They’d never find my body. And if they did, they would have no way to identify it. Unless they spotted the tiny tattoo Pari had given me on my wrist that said in bold script MRS. REYES FARROW. That might give them a clue.

Still.

I had to get a handle on this shit. But first, I had to get home.

I could try to dematerialize and find my way back, but knowing my luck, I’d end up in a terrorist training camp. Or a men’s prison. Or a feminine hygiene commercial.

Left with little choice, I began walking.

On the bright side, no angels stalking me.

On the dark side …

No, I was not going to succumb to the dark side.

I repeated that mantra and channeled my inner Luke Skywalker as I walked for what seemed like hours. The landscape was like nothing I’d ever seen. Not in real life. It was rocky and grassy and woodsy and smelled fresh, like dirt and salt and ozone. I followed the sound of the ocean and came to a stunning cliff that dropped at least a hundred feet, white waves crashing against sharp, jutting rocks below. Then I turned right. It seemed like the right thing to do.

It was all so breathtaking, but I had places to view and people to do. I didn’t have time to roam about, searching for signs of life.

Wait. What if I hadn’t gone anywhere? What if I’d actually gone back in time? Was that possible? I went over what I knew about dinosaurs, which was basically: Flat teeth, herbivore. Sharp teeth, run.

I made a mental note to run either way.

After another seventeen hours—or possibly thirty minutes—I spotted an isolated house tucked between two rocky hills. Like a haven. Like a sanctuary for lost travelers. Or, more likely, like the den of a serial killer. Either way, it was my only choice. I started toward it.

Two years later, breathless, frozen, and near death, I knocked on the door of the quaintest little serial killer’s cottage I’d ever seen. A woman in her fifties answered, her face round and rosy cheeked from the bitter winds of the strange land.

“Oh, heavens,” she said—at least I think that’s what she said—as surprised to see me as I was to see her. She turned and called out. “Bernie! Got a we’an on the stoop.”

“It’s no a tea leaf, is it?” a male voice called out.

She eyed me up and down. “Don’t look like one. Closer to a drown doo.”

I hugged myself to squelch a shiver as a man around the same age as the woman walked up, his eyes bright with excitement. “Got a lassie, eh?”

The woman nodded. “What’re you doing out in the cold?”

Their accents were so thick, I couldn’t even decipher which language they were speaking. “Um, do you speak English?”

Bernie laughed and slapped his leg as the woman, to whom I’d yet to be introduced, said, “We are speaking English, love.”

“Oh.” I knew every language ever spoken on the planet, both alive and dead. But every once in a while I had a little trouble with accents. The Scottish lilt being one of them. ’Parently.

“Am I…” I could hardly say the words out loud. “Am I in Scotland?”

The woman cackled in delight. “You’re a dear we’an, aren’t ye? Come in out of the cold.”

“Thank you.” I stepped inside as the man hustled off.

He came back with a blanket and wrapped it around me. “That’s a sin about your clothes,” he said, gesturing toward my apparel.

He was probably right. As wet as my clothes were, they probably looked sinful. Showed a little too much. Maybe they were really religious.

“Aye,” the woman said, glaring at her husband. “Downright awful to see a bonnie lass nigh in the skuddy.”

He shrugged. “Tea?”

“Lassie’s American, ye wanker.”

“Oh, right. Caffee then?”

Now that I understood. I was still running on one cup. I wouldn’t last much longer.

A smile blossomed across my face. I hoped. My face was fairly numb, so I could have just drooled. “Please.”

Watching the couple as they worked making “caffee” and biscuits was like watching an American sitcom. They were hilarious, their banter both loving and demoralizing. My kind of people.

After filling my belly with biscuits that weren’t biscuits at all, Bertrice and Bernie offered me the use of their phone.

“Thank you so much,” I said, but I had no idea how to dial to America.

Bertrice showed me how to dial the operator, and eventually, after several attempts and failed connections, a phone rang on the other side of the world. On about the third ring, however, I’d completely lost my train of thought.

I stood in a dark hallway. The cottage was actually round, and right in the middle was a wooden, octagon-shaped closet.

I stepped closer. Examined the carvings. The way the door slid open.

The Brummels were using it as a pantry, but I’d seen a closet exactly like this one in the convent Reyes had sequestered me away in for eight months. The one that took us forever to figure out how to open. The one that, when I stepped inside, made my light disappear from the celestial realm. It just vanished.

Nothing—no room, no material, no bank vault—could block out my light. Even Earth itself didn’t block it. The departed saw it from anywhere in the world. It was a beacon to them. A lighthouse so they could find their way to the portal when they were ready to cross.