Kate picked up on the second ring. I’d never been so thrilled to hear her voice.

“Hello?”

“Kate, it’s me. Step into a room that Mom isn’t in, okay?”

I could hear the quick shuffle of her feet followed by the sound of a door closing before she squealed into the phone.

“Oh, my God, Laurel! You’re okay? You’re safe? Are you really…are you really in the past? How the hell are you calling me?”

Smiling, I slid down to the floor on the other side of Raudrich’s bedroom door and leaned against it as I answered her.

“Yes, yes, and yes, to your first three questions. I’m okay. I’m safe. And I’m speaking to you from the year sixteen hundred and fifty-one. As for how I’m calling you…you can thank the same magical witch that sent me to this time for that.”

“Oh, I will. Laurel, I have so much to tell you. You know as well as I do that I’ve got way too much time on my hands.” She paused and snickered. “Or, I guess I should really say hand. Anyway, way too much time with nothing to do. From the second you and Marcus left for the airport, all I could think about was where you were going and what you would be seeing, so I decided to do some research. Where are you exactly? Are you at Conall Castle or are you on the Isle of Eight Lairds?”

I smiled into the phone. She sounded more like her old self. It was really good that she was able to make a joke about her injury without crying.

“Wow, Kate. You must either be really bored, or Mom must be driving you up the wall for you to have done research. Which is it?”

I was the bookworm. Kate definitely was not. Kate had read my first novel out of obligation only. Besides that, I wasn’t sure she’d picked up a book since college. Not that I would ever complain about her doing research on this time. It was bound to come in handy. Perhaps Kate would be able to provide me with some of the answers Morna had been so unwilling to give.

“Honestly, it’s neither. It was just that when you left, I couldn’t shake the feeling—even as crazy as it seemed at the time—that this whole thing was actually real. If it was, I knew this had to be something pretty momentous, ya know? So I just started looking up what I could find about both places. So, tell me, where are you?”

“The Isle of Eight Lairds.”

Her voice was giddy with excitement. “Oh, good! I learned way more about that place anyway. Laurel, I haven’t slept in days. It’s going to take me weeks to come down from the amount of caffeine and chocolate I’ve consumed since you left. I’ve been working my way through everything I could find on that place like a maniac. Are you sitting down? I have some seriously serious shit to tell you.”

“I am.” I’d called believing that I would be the one doing most of the talking. I was quickly getting the feeling that I was wrong.

“Okay, good. Let me think about where I should begin. I wasn’t really expecting to hear from you, so I’m not prepared. I was actually just planning on telling you in person.”

I quickly interrupted her. “In person?”

“Yeah, in person. Do you really think for a second that after all I’ve learned that I was going to leave you there alone? No way, girlfriend. I already have flights booked for me, Mr. Crinkles, Mom, and Marcus’ dad to Edinburgh in three weeks. I would’ve booked them sooner but David couldn’t get off work before then.”

My brain couldn’t possibly keep up with the totally unexpected news she was dumping on me. “Hang on. You need to slow down. Mom and David know where Marcus and I are? What did you tell them to make them believe you? I can’t imagine either of them took that news well. And more than that, how were you going to get back here when you got to Edinburgh?”

Kate took a deep breath. I suspected that she realized she’d started to let herself run away with things in her excitement. When she spoke again, her tone was calm and collected.

“I’m not an idiot, Laurel. I did tell Mom and David where I thought you were, but I obviously didn’t tell either one of them that you were chilling hundreds of years in the past. And I figured we’d get back the same way you did. We’d go looking for Morna.”

“How did you get them to agree to go with you?”

“That was trickier, but I told them that you guys had decided to stay in Scotland for the rest of the summer and you wanted everyone together to celebrate Marcus’ birthday at the end of the month. When I told them that I would foot the bill, they happily agreed.”

I nodded, my thoughts suddenly drifting to what a pain in the butt my mother would be while adjusting to this time. I dreaded the thought of her being here, but I also knew that if Kate was planning to join me here, we could hardly just disappear off the face of the earth without telling her. We were her world, and despite her helicopter nature, we both loved her dearly.

“How can you afford that?”

Kate laughed into the phone. “I can’t, but what does it matter? I’ll not be coming back here, and I doubt they’re going to be able to find me to haul me off to debtor’s prison in the seventeenth century.”

“Kate.” Now, I was worried. I wanted to see Kate, but this was too big of a decision for her to make on a whim. “You can’t possibly know that you’ll want to be here forever. You don’t need to do anything that will ruin your life back home.”

“Oh, I do know that I’ll be there forever. You will, too.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“Laurel, you really should’ve read that book you found. Marcus wasn’t the only one inside it. I’m pretty sure you were, too. And unless there’s another one-handed burn victim with a black cat there at the castle with you now, I’m in the book, too.”