“I lost the wee lassie.” Raibeart tried to smile, even as he appeared guilty.

Euann looked up from where he sat on the wide tread of the marble staircase. He’d been resting his head against the oak baluster, staring at Cora’s frozen form. It was about like watching paint dry…only slower. The carved look of the long t-shirt and leggings revealed her shape. She was a pretty woman, and that moment where his lips had touched hers for a mere second played in his mind. Even now his lips tingled with magick.

It had all been some kind of phoenix trick, but that didn’t make him feel any less. He knew true love could not be forced by magick because forced love wouldn’t be real. But here, now, it felt more real than anything he’d ever known. There wouldn’t be signs of movement from Cora for a long time, but he didn’t want her leaving without getting a chance to talk to her.

Raibeart’s words worked their way into his thoughts, and he frowned.

“What do ya mean ya lost her?” Euann asked.

Raibeart gestured his hand in the air. “I thought ya could check those peepers ya have all over the woods.”

“Peepers?” Euann grabbed the railing and pulled himself up from the stairs.

“Those peeping tom cameras,” Raibeart said. “She’s a fast little thing. I couldn’t keep up.”

Euann reached for his pocket, only to find it empty. He glanced at the stairs and then the floor. “Crap, I must have left my phone somewhere.”

“Want to borrow mine?” Raibeart pointed in the direction of the dining room, which led to the offices where the elders worked. With each new property the MacGregor family acquired, their empire grew. It took all of them to keep it running. “It’s in the liquor cabinet in Fergus’s office next to the whiskey.”

Euann arched a brow.

“What? It’s not like he’s using the whiskey. He’s traveling the world with your aunt, Elspeth. It is a shame to let it go to waste.”

“I think she prefers to be called Donna,” Euann said.

“Reincarnated Aunt Elspeth then,” Raibeart chuckled. “How many names does a woman need?”

“Raibeart, try to focus. What happened to the child? Why did she run away?” Euann doubted anyone that powerful would have reason to be frightened of anything in the forest. “Are ya sure it’s not just a game of hide-and-seek?”

Raibeart shrugged. “Perhaps, but I think it was more likely she was being chased. Last I saw, she was headed toward Helena’s old repository.”

Euann felt the name like a slap across the face. He still carried a lot of guilt over what had happened to Helena.

“Too soon?” Raibeart asked with a look of pity. “Ya still pining for her?”

“No,” Euann said a little too quickly.

“So ya still pining for Charlotte?”

“No. I’m happy for Niall. Why does everyone keep asking me if I’m in love with Charlotte?” He walked around the front hall, looking on the floor for his cellphone.

“Cause ya got drunk and said,” Raibeart did a very girly interpretation of Euann’s voice, “‘I’m in love with Charlotte,’ ya dunderhead.”

“You’ve professed your heart to a million women while drinking.” Euann’s eyes were drawn to Cora. “How many engagements have ya broken?”

“So does that mean you’re now pining over Miss Rockface?”

Euann didn’t dignify that with an answer.

Raibeart crossed over to Cora and patted her stiff hair. “She’d make a pretty wife, don’t ya think? Wonder if she’ll forgive me for giving her the ol’ stiffy?” He knocked on her shoulder a few times.

Euann coughed uncomfortably, and mumbled, “Old is right.”

“Ya hope to look this good when you’re six hundred,” Raibeart quipped.

“You’re over seven hundred, and we both know it.”

Raibeart frowned. “Am I? That can’t be right.”

“Try to focus. What did ya do with the phoenix kid?” Euann walked away from Cora so his uncle would be forced to stop touching her as Raibeart turned to follow him with his eyes.

“Not me. Gremains.”

“Gremains? Dammit, Raibeart, are ya just now telling me gremains are chasing her?” Euann instantly rushed toward the dining room to go to the back gardens. He grabbed the doorframe to stop his momentum and then pointed at Cora. “Watch her, don’t let her leave.”

Euann didn’t wait for an answer as he hurried to the back gardens. They should have dealt with the gremains the morning he saw them harassing Raibeart. At the time, the gnarled little pests seemed pretty low on the scale of worries. Since moving to Wisconsin, his family had had run-ins with lidérc, wraiths, demons, spirits, and questionable baked goods. The MacGregors weren’t the only ones drawn to the source of power emanating from beneath Green Vallis.

“Jewel?”

The girl didn’t respond to his call. For all her power, she was still a child…presumably. She could have been playing a game by hiding in the woods.

Euann tried to focus his hearing but had a difficult time filtering through the sounds of the forest. It had been a long time since he’d needed to hunt. The gray fox inside of him seemed half awake. Or was it lazy from little use? Usually, his brothers shifted and took care of the tracking.

The last threads of evening light illuminated the path as he moved from the back gardens into the woods.

Cora had stirred the fox inside him the night before. He knew his inner burden was there. It had been dormant for so long that Euann often forgot it existed, but now was the time for the animal to wake up and take over.

Euann glanced around. He almost felt guilty about shifting after so long even though he had no reason to. If he woke the animal, would it be willing to go back to sleep? Primal instincts were hard to control and deny, and he was out of practice.

Euann leapt forward so that he would shift out of instinct and land on all fours. Instead of paws hitting the cobblestones of the garden path leading to the forest, his hands slipped, and he slammed his chin on the hard stones. The force jarred his teeth and sent a sharp pain to his temples. His knee struck the hard ground.

He’d faceplanted on the path.

Euann grabbed his chin and groaned as he rolled onto his back. “What the hell was that?”

His palms stung. His knee throbbed. His chin and jaw felt like they were on fire.

Euann pushed to his feet. Blood dotted where the cobblestone had scraped him. He examined his injured palms. Gray fur had tried to sprout from the back of his hands but only showed in patches. The beginning points of fangs sharpened the tips of a couple of teeth. He stretched his hands, trying to force paws to form. They didn’t.

His body had forgotten how to shift.

That wasn’t possible. The fox was in him, part of him. That would be like forgetting how to breathe.

And yet, here he was, unable to call the beast out.

Euann limped down the path into the woods, trying to ignore his sore knee as he went after the child. Though they had fought Helena and won, the idea of anyone hanging by her ruins was disconcerting. What if any of her residual powers still clung to the grounds? Magick was born of energy after all, and Helena’s magick had been some of the worst.

Helena was a wraith they had trapped in a statue in the mid-1700s, but before that she had been a woman in love with him. Euann had never returned that love. Like Charlotte, Helena had represented something he was missing—normalcy, hope, companionship. When a luck demon had attacked the family, it had been enough to wake Helena’s wrathful spirit from her stone prison. His family had been able to subdue Helena and set her spirit free, but Euann had not gone back to the statue since. He felt he was to blame for her sad fate. If he hadn’t pretended to feel more than he had for her, Helena would never have taken the dark path.

“Jewel?” Euann called. “It’s okay. No one is going to hurt ya. I can chase the gremains away. Please turn back around and come toward my voice.”

For some reason being reminded of Helena’s statue caused him to run faster, and he ignored the pain in his body. With a few notable exceptions, females who came in contact with the MacGregor family didn’t have the easiest of times. Helena turned into a wraith. Lydia was subjected to Erik’s obsessive behavior after a love potion went wrong. Jane had been attacked by her banshee mother. Charlotte went insane after they erased her memories.

Now Cora was frozen with Raibeart probably waiting to propose to her, and gremains were chasing Jewel.

“Jewel? Lassie, come with me, please. Let’s go inside where it’s safe.”

Euann slowed as he came to where Helena’s statue had once stood. It was now a pile of rubble on the ground, looking nothing like it had been.

Suddenly a rock flew at him. He dodged it, swatting his hand to knock it away. The laughter of a gremain followed the mild attack. The small, knobby creature poked its head up from the crumbled statue and launched another stone. This time, it hit Euann in the thigh above his sore knee.

“Ow! Stop that,” he ordered, batting another stone with his hand. “Jewel, where are ya?”

“Ju-elle.” The word was repeated back to him in a gruff, barely decipherable tone.

The gremain laughed again, this time throwing with both hands. Euann tried to dodge the projectiles but found his body frozen in mid-action. The stones stopped, hanging in the air as if time slowed.

This wasn’t like being petrified by a spell. He’d been hit with that whammy more than once. Usually, petrifying spells only stopped the person for whom it was intended, like Cora by the door. And typically, the mind froze and became unaware of what was happening. Euann was fully aware.

“Jewel?” The sound was distorted and long as if stretched over time. The blur of someone moving through the area went past. When the figure stopped, Euann glimpsed a familiar face.

Kenneth?

Euann tried to speak but couldn’t fight the hold the altered time had on his body. The moment only lasted a couple seconds, and he couldn’t be sure, but the man had looked like his brother.

Was this another of Jewel’s games?

Suddenly, two rocks pelted him—one striking his cheekbone under his eye and one his shoulder. The gremain cackled. Euann stepped forward, released from the spell. He ignored the annoying creature and hurried to follow the mysterious figure.

“Kenneth?” Euann limped as he searched the trees. “Kenneth, are ya out here, brother?”

Panic and fear filled him, tightening over his heart and drowning out the hope he wanted to feel. This was the closest any of them had come to seeing Kenneth. It made no sense that his brother would be in Wisconsin, arriving the same time as the phoenix child.

Was Kenneth trying to call out from another reality?

Euann stopped on the path. His magick tingled in awareness. He felt a tug on his pants. The sensation caused him to jump a little. When he turned, Jewel looked up at him. She was alone.

She curled her finger, indicating she wanted him to come down to her level. Euann bent over.

“We need to go,” she whispered. “He’s coming.”

Euann placed a protective hand on the child’s shoulder. “Who’s coming? The gremains can’t hurt ya.”

Jewel’s eyes widened as she stared over Euann’s shoulder, and she visibly gulped. “Hi, Daddy.”

Daddy?

Euann felt a presence behind him. Seeing the girl’s fear, he turned slowly so as not to startle whoever stood behind him.

“Step away from the child,” a man ordered. The hint of a Scottish accent touching his words.

Euann looked up. The fading daylight haloed the man from above.

“Kenneth?” Euann was too stunned to move from his place crouched on the ground. “Is that really ya, brother?”

“Euann.” Kenneth’s tone was flat. He nodded once and shifted his weight.

Euann had pictured reuniting with his brother in many ways, but this was never one of them. Kenneth’s hair was cut short. His eyes were lined with dark circles as if he hadn’t slept well in a long time. He wore khakis and a green polo shirt like he’d been trapped in a nine-to-five job in a boring office rather than a portal to the supernatural unknown, or wherever else he could have been.

Kenneth lifted his arm toward Jewel. Euann’s hand slipped from the child’s shoulder. Jewel lowered her head and stared at her feet as she moved toward Kenneth.

This was not the homecoming Euann had expected. He pushed to his feet. So many questions filled him in a rush. He was desperate to have answers. “Jewel called ya Daddy? Ya have a child? What’s going on? Where have ya been? We have been searching for ya for twenty-five—”

“I can’t be here.” Kenneth averted his gaze.

“You’re here, brother,” Euann insisted. “Ya have come home. Of course, ya can be here.”

“Tell the family not to look for me.” Kenneth reached toward Jewel. “They should have given up by now.”

“Why would we give up? We love ya.” Euann leaned, trying to force Kenneth to look at him. “We will never stop trying to help—”

“If ya want to help me, stop trying to help me.” Kenneth gave a sharp, angry motion as he beckoned Jewel to hurry.

“Jewel, I think Cora wants to play with ya. She’s waiting inside.” It was the only thing Euann could think of that might tempt the child. “The princess is imprisoned in stone and she needs ya to save her.”

Jewel’s face brightened, and she ran toward the house.

“Dammit, Jewel, wait,” Kenneth yelled after her. To Euann, he demanded, “Why did ya do that? Do ya know how hard she is to catch?”

Euann stepped in Kenneth’s way when his brother would follow Jewel. “She’ll be fine at the house. Ya and I need to talk first. Where have ya been? How is it ya have a daughter?”

“If ya forgot how babies are made, I can’t help ya.” Kenneth tried to step around Euann, but he moved to block his brother’s path to the house.

“Now is not the time for jests. That is not an answer. Ma and Da are searching for ya even as we stand here. They’re in West Virginia trying to summon ya back from wherever ya have been stuck, and now ya just show up…” Euann eyed the man’s clean-cut clothes. “Have ya even been in danger?”

Kenneth sidestepped him again.

When Euann moved to force his brother to talk to him, he found himself again frozen in time. The image of Kenneth blew past him in a blurred movement as Euann was trapped in place. It would seem his brother had picked up a few magick tricks while he had been away.