The Curse: Touch of Eternity (The Curse series) (11 page)

He felt as if he were being torn into pieces. Never in the past centuries had he thought he was capable of it. Of falling in love!

That’s why he’d gone to his secret refuge. If he’d gone home, Sean would have known something was up, and he certainly wouldn’t have been happy. And the others? To tell the truth, he didn’t really care about them. But he had
sworn his brother Blair an oath, and was therefore forced to obey him. He decided to keep his secret for a bit, at least until he really knew what was going on.

T
he sun reflected off the dark-gray hood as Blair McLean rubbed the milky polish in circles. He was in the courtyard, surrounded by a row of special cleaners and waxes to burnish his Bentley to a high sheen, when Sean came racing up the gravel path on his motorcycle.

Dust sprayed into the air as Sean tried to skid his way to a stop, barely three feet in front of Blair, but his rear wheel slipped, and he landed with a crash under his Moto Guzzi.

Strangely—and against all the experience he’d gained in the last 270 years—Sean found he wasn’t protected from injury. On the contrary. The gravel tore open his skin, leaving a three-inch gash. The power of the pain when he hit the ground took his breath away. His heavy bike squashed his foot, and he yelled out in surprise.

He crawled out from under his bike, gasping, his usual cocky composure completely shot. When he tried to walk, he was shocked to find that he could hardly put any weight on his ankle.

“
Bas mallaichte!
Bloody hell,” Sean said. “What on earth is going on?” He lifted his head and looked at his older brother.

Blair was grinning, his chest quivering from trying to suppress his laughter. “What is it? Don’t you like your motorcycle?”

“Are you nuts? I hurt myself, and you’re laughing?”

Blair stopped laughing. “Hurt yourself? How could that be?”

Sean would have really liked to punch his brother at this moment, but it hurt too much to move his shoulder. After so many years of feeling nothing at all, the pain was intensified and unexpected.

“No really… I hurt myself. I can hardly bear it.
Ifrinn
,” Sean gasped angrily.

Blair stared into his brother’s face, contorted by pain. Then it seemed he couldn’t help it; he started laughing again, so loudly he startled a family of red-throated divers right out of a tree. He couldn’t stop. He hadn’t laughed that hard in a very long time. He sank to the ground, leaned his broad back on his freshly polished tire rim, and rubbed the tears out of his eyes.

Sean’s crash had no doubt looked spectacular, but he’d always been a daredevil and he’d always gotten up without batting an eyelid—probably thousands of times. Blair had seen at least half of these wipeouts with his own eyes, and he’d never before laughed about them. Or anything else. No pain, no joy. That’s the way it had always been.

Sean was still rubbing his ankle and holding his bruised side.

“You have to admit, it’s kind of funny, isn’t it?” Blair asked.

“What?” Sean didn’t see anything funny.

“That you should finally feel something, now, only after a crash! Not when you bite your tongue or eat soup that’s too hot, but when you land under your bike while going forty miles an hour.”

Blair reached his arm around his brother’s shoulders to support him. Sean was laughing now, too, and together they swayed into the hall.

Nathaira Stuart looked up from her herbal dictionary in surprise when the two of them burst in. Blair dumped Sean onto a high-backed chair with a thud. Sean reached down and pulled a piece of gravel out of his knee, dropping it onto the floor in disgust. Nathaira put down the book crossly. She slowly shook her head at them and frowned.

“And what is going on here?” Her voice echoed through the silence of the great hall.

Blair and Sean looked at each other briefly before they both burst out laughing again.

“Stop snorting, you idiots!”

Nathaira tossed back her black hair, her green eyes sparking with annoyance. She looked confused. And she was not used to being confused. She took in the scene with marked disbelief, glancing from one face to the other. Her fiancé, Blair, was leaning on the back of the chair, trying to hold in his laughter and stand up straight. She had still not received an answer, so she stamped her foot angrily.

“Blair! Answer me! What is going on?”

He pointed at Sean and blurted, “He’s hurt himself. He was crying like a child!”

Nathaira spun around with a jerk to face Sean. “Hurt? What does that mean?”

She rushed to Sean’s side, looking at his leg with alarm and pulling away the fabric of his ripped pants.

“Blair, tell your fiancée to stop trying to get into my pants!” Sean, still laughing, twisted away from her.

She batted at him. “Shut up! This is serious! How could you be in pain?”

Blair put his hand on Nathaira’s hip. “Calm down. There’s bound to be a logical explanation.”

Sean nodded. He certainly didn’t want her to keep poking at his sore spots. Nathaira paced the floor, agitated, mumbling something incomprehensible. Then she rushed out of the hall.

Blair and Sean stared after her, surprised.

“’Tis funny, isn’t it?” Sean wondered aloud.

“I agree with you that it’s odd, but I don’t think it means anything special.”

“Why would you say that? Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

Blair wasn’t one for thinking too hard with no real reason. “Doesn’t matter. Nothing bad happened.”

“Yes, but don’t you want to know why this is going on?” said Sean. “I certainly do. Because if this is the way the winds are now blowing, then I think I might have to start driving a little bit more carefully.”

Nathaira came back into the room with a stack of books piled high in her arms. She dropped them on the table and pushed them around until she found the one she must have been looking for. All the books had one very thing in common. They were old. Very old.

“A long time ago, I read something in one of these books, something that can help us. Where is it?”

Blair seemed to be losing interest. He probably wanted to finish detailing his car before the typical Scottish weather would spoil his efforts. “
Mo luaidh
,” he said to Nathaira, “why don’t you look at your books in peace and we’ll all talk this over later. We should probably tell Cathal and Payton, too.”

Sean agreed. “Exactly. Give it some time. It doesn’t look like Payton’s going to be back this evening, anyway, and Cathal isn’t due back for a week. Let’s just see what happens.”

Nathaira sighed. “All right, but if something like this happens again in the meantime, I want to hear about it immediately. And as soon as Cathal is back, we will call the clan together!”

I
was not happy. I hadn’t seen Payton for several days, but my thoughts were constantly circling around him, like the seagulls we’d seen at the beach. That night had been incredible. Payton hadn’t tried anything, but I could tell he liked me from the way he’d looked at me. We talked for ages, and later, after it got dark, we lay next to each other on the blanket and looked up at the stars. Even when we were silent, we seemed to get along.

At one point in the middle of the night, I woke up to find Payton watching me. He smiled when he realized that I was watching him right back. Bravely, I had reached out for his hand. He stopped short, but after a second, he squeezed my hand, and held it the rest of the night.

And then, nothing.

To be fair, I had been the one to say I’d let him know when we could get together next. But deep down, I’d hoped he wouldn’t wait for me to call. It was impossible to concentrate on my report for school when I didn’t know how, when, or even if things would proceed with Payton. My head told my heart—unsuccessfully—to calm down and forget about the Scot. After all, I’d be returning to Milford in a few weeks and I’d never see him again.

I put down my pen and went to find to Alison. She was washing the dinner dishes.

“Hey, Alison. Do you think I could take the bus to Inverness tomorrow? I want to get a souvenir for my friend, Kim. And… I’m kind of embarrassed to say… but I’ve really been craving a Big Mac.”

Alison laughed. “And I thought you liked my cooking! Of course you can go to Inverness. If you want, I can drive you.”

That was exactly what I didn’t want.

“Nah, I can take the bus. You have enough to do as it is. But thanks for the offer.”

I sauntered back to my room and called Payton’s number. It rang and rang, but he didn’t answer, and I couldn’t help being upset.

I finished my paper, in a funk, and stared dolefully around my room. I switched the radio on and threw myself onto the bed. Maybe I should try again, I thought. But maybe he didn’t answer on purpose. Would he call me back? Did I even get the number right? I grabbed my phone and double-checked the number, and then felt even sadder than before.

The self-doubts kept rolling in: Maybe he didn’t have a good time with me. Maybe he’d expected more. No, he’d been the one holding back. Ryan would have tried all kinds of maneuvers with a cute girl alone at the beach. But Payton was different. Which was exactly why I had fallen for him.

I closed my eyes. Ronan Keating’s song “When You Say Nothing at All” was running through my head. The words described how I felt about Payton perfectly. Even when we didn’t talk, our hearts had a connection.

Yes, that was exactly it. It may sound completely crazy, but the first moment I saw him, my heart leapt in recognition. It knew he was something special. My heart understood everything. And when I had reached out for his hand in the middle of the night, I knew he needed me just as much as I needed him.

I jumped. My cell phone was ringing. I scrambled up and took a few deep breaths.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Sam. I saw that you called, and I called back as soon as I could. Unfortunately, there’s no reception in parts of the Highlands. What are you up to?”

I felt a huge relief. He didn’t have cell-phone coverage!

“Nothing special. I was just hanging out, listening to music, feeling kind of bored.”

The other end of the phone was quiet, and then Payton said in a serious voice, “I would like to ask you my second question now.”

“Which second question?”

“I answered all your questions, and you promised to give me three honest answers in return. Am I going to get my second answer now?”

“Of course. I had completely forgotten about that. What do you want to know?”

“You said you were bored. Is that the only reason you called me?”

He sounded serious; he didn’t seem to be playing with me. I thought about lying, but I had sworn to tell him the truth.

So softly that I almost hoped he wouldn’t hear, I mumbled, “No, that’s not the reason I called. The main thing is, I can’t get you out of my head.”

More silence. Then Payton’s tone of voice changed, and he sounded far more relaxed. “Fine. What do you want to do?”

I was stunned. I had just more or less confessed that I loved him, and his only reaction was “Fine”? You’d think he might have said something like “Yeah, I think about you a lot too,” or “I feel the same way.” Just about anything would have been more romantic than “Fine.”

I tried not to sound hurt. “Whatever. I’m up for anything. We don’t have to meet if you don’t want to.”

I decided that was the last time I’d give him a call. Until what he said next, that is.

“Well, of course, I want to see you,” he said. “I just don’t have time today. And tomorrow during the day I have to meet my brother. There seem to be some problems at home. I will have time tomorrow evening, though.”

“In the evening… OK.” I was glad to hear that he wanted to meet up with me, but disappointed that my McDonald’s ruse might go to waste. “So what do you want to do?”

“Surely you’re not planning to leave Scotland without having been to a pub? How about this—I’ll pick you up at the bus stop around eight.”

A pub wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. I didn’t know what Alison would think about that either. But I told myself it would work out somehow.

“OK. See you tomorrow,” I said.

“Yes, see you tomorrow,
mo luaidh
.”

Mo luaidh
? What did that mean? Payton had said it so tenderly before we hung up. Good thing I was going to Inverness. I wanted to buy a Gaelic dictionary as soon as possible.

That made me think of my grandma’s pendant, and I reached up to my neck. After the night on the beach, my skin had showed clear red marks where the pendant had been. I didn’t think it was an allergy because the burning sensation didn’t last. It was odd, though; it always came on at the most inconvenient of times. Like every time the thought of Payton crossed my mind, or when I tried to get close to him. I still wore the necklace every day. The burning feeling wasn’t as bad as it had been at the beginning—or maybe I’d gotten used to it.

I took it off and cradled it in my hands. Then I picked up the souvenir version, the one I’d bought at the tourist trap. I still couldn’t figure out why a pendant with a Scottish clan’s coat of arms was in Grandma’s attic. And a very old one, at that. An old pendant with strange features, like, oh, burning me at its whim. Maybe I could find out something about it in Inverness.

Ugh, enough thinking for today, I said to myself. I put the antique and the souvenir on my desk and thought about calling Kim. The five-hour time difference made it so tricky to call; I was always either interrupting Kim’s dinner or having to stay up really late. Instead, I threw myself in front of the TV and surfed around until I found a rerun of
Mr. Bean
.

An hour later, I turned the TV off, put my pajamas on, and slipped under the covers. I fell asleep almost immediately.

I was scared. “You must face your destiny! You cannot run away!” The old woman’s words echoed endlessly in my head.

“What destiny?” I wanted to ask, but the old lady had disappeared.

Sharp gravel was digging into my skin. I was kneeling on the ground and didn’t have the energy to rise. The wind was pulling at me, as if wanting me to move on. But where to? In desperation, I buried my head in my hands and hoped for help.