Knight Moves: Merriweather Sisters Time Travel (Merriweather Sisters Time Travel Romance Book 2) (5 page)

“Charlotte. I’ve been trying to reach you all night.”

It was a couple of hours later in Romania, but Charlotte was still up. Her baby sister was so different. Charlotte was content to roam the globe with nothing more than a backpack, while Melinda preferred to live in the same town all her life and always over-packed. She worried Charlotte would never come back and would instead drift aimlessly, listening for something only she could hear.

“It’s late, Mellie. What’s wrong?”

“So how do you think our sister came to be the model for a painting dated sometime in the fourteenth century?”

Melinda waited for Charlotte to digest the entire story. When she’d left the museum, Melinda spent every moment searching for any information about her sister. Scrolling through thousands and thousands of images, and all she’d come up with was a big, fat nothing.

Charlotte let out a half-sigh, half-grunt, and Melinda swore she could feel the coming lecture all the way across the distance. Guess tonight Charlotte was playing the big sister role.

“Listen, sis, you need to get out. Go sightseeing. You’re turning into a hermit. It isn’t healthy. Don’t you think it’s time to accept Lucy’s gone? She died. She didn’t vanish. You’ve got to let go. Move on with your life.”

“Is that what you’re doing? Moving on with your life? It seems to me like you’re running away. I don’t want to argue. Didn’t you hear me, other people have gone missing—”

“Stop. You’re completely obsessed. You’re only twenty-six, way too young to be so obsessed with death. Lucy has taken the next step in the journey.”

“Don’t give me that New Age hocus-pocus stuff. That’s what people say to make themselves feel better. I feel like there’s a hole in my heart. I’ve tried, honestly. I don’t know why I can’t let this go.” Melinda took a deep breath.

“Come to London. Are you still on the dig? Help me see what we can find. Together. There has to be an explanation.”

 
“We’re still in the Carpathian Mountains and we’re snowed in. In fact, I’m surprised I can even get a cell signal. I’ll always love Lucy, but I’m not going to shut my life down. She wouldn’t want that. She’d want us to laugh and find someone to love and to go on living.”

Melinda could hear Charlotte speaking to someone in the background, and then she came back on the phone.

“You know there is another explanation…they say everyone has a twin. I think you found Lucy’s. Who knows; maybe the woman hanging on the wall is some old ancestor of ours.”

Melinda had to agree. Her baby sister had a point. The explanation made sense, but it wasn’t very satisfying. Was she looking too hard? Trying to find answers that weren’t there?

“I booked my ticket for two weeks. I’m gonna stay, spend the rest of the time looking, and if I don’t find anything then I’ll come home. I’ll say goodbye for good. Is that what you want to hear?”

Charlotte’s voice was gentle across the miles. “I know it’s hard. She’ll always be our sister. We’ll always love her. But it isn’t healthy to obsess. Finish doing whatever you have to and get the feeling that she’s still alive out of your system. I’m not trying to be cruel, Mellie, just realistic. You know how you get. Call me when you get back home. How about this? I’ll come home in time for Easter. We can make chocolate bunnies and dye eggs like when we were kids.”

Melinda looked at the time on the phone. As late as it was, she might as well stay up. She scoured the internet looking for anything related to missing persons around Blackford Castle. Then she searched on time travel. Wow, so many search results. She found all kinds of way-out-there theories. Tons of fiction. Lots of romance books, some of which she noted to read for fun later, and way too much speculation. Not to mention all the occult books. They looked the most promising. Talk about some crazy ideas.

Melinda ordered an early breakfast from room service and ate in the room. She’d located a couple of bookstores nearby that offered a large selection of books on the occult.

The smell of incense in The Cauldron bookstore almost knocked her over. The proprietor acted like he was a wizard or some other magical being. She barely resisted the urge to laugh every time he popped up around the corner and peered at her through electric-blue glasses with pale blue lenses.

The shop was full of books on spells and New Age practices. Melinda swore she went through every book in the place. The only thing she seemed to find in common was they all thought certain days of the year were most favorable. Was it coincidence Lucy was lost on the first day of summer? It was one of the dates mentioned.

Could her sister somehow have gone back in time? And if she did, how did she go back?

 
If these books had any truth to them, she was trying during the wrong time of year. Tomorrow was Valentine’s Day. According to the books, the next favorable day would be the first day of spring, in late March. She didn’t have that long to wait.
 

Three of the books had the most information. She felt a little silly believing in this hocus-pocus stuff, but if it worked…

When she leaned over to pick up her tote bag, her necklace fell out of her sweater.

The wannabe wizard reached for it. Melinda stepped back, not wanting him to touch it.

“Let me see?”

She held it up. “Look, don’t touch.”

He peered at the gems and charm on the heavy gold chain. “That necklace has power.”

She forced herself not to roll her eyes, and instead plastered on her best fake smile. “So I’ve been told. What do I owe you?”

As she left the store, Melinda tucked the necklace under her shirt. She passed an advertisement for Stonehenge. It kept coming up. Like when you bought a certain kind of car and all of a sudden saw loads of them on the road.

Stonehenge. During her research, boatloads of mentions about Stonehenge kept popping up. People ascribed all kinds of supernatural happenings to the stones. It was worth a look.

There was one ticket left on a day trip by bus from London to Stonehenge. Thank goodness for online booking. What did people do before the internet?

Melinda locked everything of value, including her passport, in the safe in her hotel. All she brought along was the room key, lip gloss, and money. She finished putting on all of her outerwear, then headed out of the hotel to meet the bus.

There was a seat in front by the window as she boarded the bus. Melinda settled in, took out her notebook and one of the new books, and started reading.

There were all kinds of people on the bus. Everyone from older couples and kids traveling for their gap years, to all the New Age hippies and self-described witches and warlocks. Many of them looked at her curiously or tried to engage her in conversation, but she shut them all down. She wasn’t in the mood to talk or make friends. She was on a mission.

When they arrived, Melinda followed two girls with rainbow hair off the bus and into the cold wind. She could see the appeal of the place. There was some kind of energy in the air. Feelings of hope. Melinda walked around people-watching as she whispered over and over, “Take me to Lucy, take me to Lucy, take me to Lucy.” She felt a little silly, but since no one could hear her, what could it hurt?

Several hours went by and it was time to board the bus back to London. Nothing had happened. No matter how hard she wished, no matter how many rocks she touched, she was still here. Maybe the woman was an ancestor. It certainly made more sense than believing her sister could’ve somehow traveled back in time.

But the idea wouldn’t leave her head. And she wondered if you could go back, how could you control
when
you went back? Because even if she found a way, how would she know she had the right time period? All she knew was Lucy, or the woman who looked like Lucy, was in the fourteenth century. What if she got there at the beginning and Lucy didn’t go back until the end? Or what if she got there at the end and her sister had died an old woman? Worse yet, what if she got there and Lucy wouldn’t arrive for thirty years? Talk about a long wait.

Heck, what if she ended up in ancient Rome, Regency England, or, heaven forbid, what if she went all the way back to the time of the dinosaurs? Melinda certainly didn’t relish becoming a lion or dinosaur snack.

By the time she arrived back at the hotel and enjoyed a nice, quiet dinner, she decided to go back to Blackford Castle one last time. She would search the grounds and outbuildings once more and then go home.

Melinda felt a little more comfortable driving on the left side of the road, though her sense of direction was abysmal. When she’d gone downstairs for breakfast, the hotel delivered flowers to her room. The card read,
Happy Valentine’s Day. Miss you, sis. Love, Charlotte
. The bouquet was an assortment of flowers all in pink, white, and red. It was beautiful.

Lunch was fish and chips from a shop in a tiny town. Melinda thought she was on the right track in her journey, but later on, the signs looked wrong. Somehow she must’ve turned left when she should’ve turned right.

Instead of a sign for York, she saw a sign for Blackpool. She recognized the name from her map. “Crap on toast. I’m on the opposite coast.”

A very unladylike word left her mouth as she looked for a place to turn around. Up ahead she saw a side road, turned right, and followed it. It was a narrow one-lane road with deep ditches on either side. She was afraid she’d get stuck if she tried to turn the little car around in the middle of the road, so she drove on looking for a wider place to turn around, hoping she wouldn’t dead-end at the ocean. She could smell the sea. One of her favorite scents of all time.

Melinda came around a bend in the road. “What are the odds?”

A partially ruined castle stood on the rise, looking very forbidding and a little sad. It seemed to be abandoned. She didn’t see any National Trust signs or car park areas with a ticket booth, so she found a grassy, flat area and parked.

Leave it to her to want to go to Blackford Castle and end up—where? It was a Merriweather family gift to be so awful with directions. Thunder boomed, and Melinda took note of the sky and the dark clouds. Looked like it would start storming any minute. She didn’t want to be in the car in a middle of a field during a storm. Not since the accident she’d had in high school when she parked in a field, only to have the car sink up to the roof in mud during a thunderstorm.

Nope. The castle was a better choice. She grabbed her thermos and map and ran for the gate with the big, sharp teeth hanging down. Right, the portcullis.

It was cold with the wind blowing, but at least she was dry. That didn’t last long. The rain started to blow sideways, and she would be soaked if she didn’t move. The front door stood partially open.

She ran for it. “Don’t let me get hit by lightning.”

The door was heavy. She pushed but it wouldn’t budge. Annoyed, she turned sideways, sucked in a deep breath, and tried to squeeze through. No go. She tried again and failed.

“Third time’s the charm, right?” Melinda unbuttoned her coat, forced all the air in her lungs out, sucked in her tummy, and squeezed through, scraping her cheek as the storm started to howl.

The cavernous room smelled of the ocean, damp, and dust. That smell when a house sits empty and unloved for a long time. Dim afternoon light filtered in through holes in the wall. She looked up. Good. The roof was mostly intact.

Lightning made her jump, but illuminated a corner that might provide a better windbreak. Melinda walked past a fireplace large enough to have a party in and stopped to admire the carvings. There were falcons carved into the stone. This place must have been beautiful in its heyday. Why would anyone leave? This was security. If it were hers, she would never leave. Melinda blew on her hands to warm them. Completely preoccupied with her trip, she’d left the mittens behind at the chip shop.

As she made her way to the far corner, she spied some kind of wooden bench. Grateful she wouldn’t have to sit on the cold stone floor, Melinda sat down and leaned against the wall.

Surely the storm would be over soon. She opened the map and used the light from her phone to illuminate the page.
 

Wow. Talk about a wrong turn. She was on the west coast of England instead of the east. She found the town of Blackpool and saw the Irish Sea. Blackford Castle was too far away to make the drive tonight. Being so unfamiliar with the small roads, she wasn’t comfortable driving after dark. She’d have to find a place to stay and head to Blackford in the morning. Her cheek felt wet. She touched a finger to her skin. Blood. She must’ve really scraped her cheek.

The smell of ozone filled the air when the lightning struck, making her jump. It seemed awfully close. In the flash, she spied something in the rubble to her left.

Melinda knelt down on the floor where she saw the glint. There was a small object. If she could just reach it…
 

A shock jolted through her as her fist closed around the small, round object.