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  The underbrush scratched at my arms as I ran through the trees.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Truth or Scare

  Budapest, Hungary 2031

  Seated comfortably on the train to Budapest, with Leslie now fast asleep, Alana seized the moment to mention her mum and the book with the letters once again.

  “We need to talk,” Alana murmured.

  Da looked up from the castle drawings he was reading and Alana prayed her bravado wouldn’t fail.

  “I know ye don’t like it when I nose through your things, but I found something in yer study before we left. A book.”

  “I’m sure ye found quite a few books in my study.”

  Alana looked over at Leslie’s sleeping form. She was now openmouthed and snoring in a somewhat distracting fashion.

  “It had a design printed on the spine. I know ye know it. It’s the one Mum accused me of takin’ on my birthday.”

  He straightened his shoulders.

  “Inside, there was a bundle of letters with my name on them.”

  Da sighed deeply, an almost grief-stricken sound.

  “I know the ones.”

  “And….”

  “And I was goin’ to give them to ye.”

  “When? It’s been four months since she died.”

  He was silent, sitting ramrod straight against the seat.

  Alana was surprised to see how drawn and sad he looked, then he lifted a briefcase from the floor, and squeezed the handle so tight his knuckles grew white. “We didn’t have the letters the whole time.”

  “Leslie knew about them, too.”

  “This is a sensitive subject. Let’s talk when we get to the hotel.”

  She followed her Da’s look and glanced from side to side but there was no one around. “I’ve waited long enough.”

  “Be reasonable, a mhuirnín, this is a public train. Nobody wants to hear our business.”

  The train plunged into a tunnel with great jolting and shrieking, and Leslie bolted upright, wiping the drool from her chin.

  Leslie rubbed at her eyes and looked from Alana back to Cullen. “What’d I miss?”

  “Da was just about to tell me why he hid my letters from me.”

  “Watch yer volume there, lass.”

  Alana’s lip quivered, “I was so bold to her, Da, it hurts my heart to think of all the nasty things I said.” The tears streamed down her cheeks. “She loved me so much, regardless of my bad behavior, and I never told her I loved her.”

  “Bollocks, Lana. She knew ye loved her.”

  “I can just imagine what my letter for this year would have said. ‘Dear Alana, ye’ve turned out to be a terrible disappointment—an unholy brat. Thanks for all the tears.’”

  Cullen pulled a small square of paper from his pocket. “Dry yer eyes, lass. Ye didn’t read all of the letters. I’ve kept this one close to my heart.”

  Alana unfolded it. It wasn’t like the others had been. It wasn’t yellowed with age, only creased where her father had obviously folded it.

  My Dearest Alana:

  As a mother, it is pure agony that I imagine you reading this—especially given that I am most likely in trouble if this is in your hands. By now, you know I’ve written you a letter each year exactly one week after your birthday, just in case anything ever happened to me.

  My own family died and left me with a lot of questions and so I felt the need to prevent you from ever feeling that way. It’s been sixteen years now and I’m writing this letter in a rush. If what I suspect is true, then I am in danger. There are many things you don’t know about me that I should have told you by now.

  First of all, I am a time traveler of sorts; I’ve been able to visit past lives on several occasions, thanks to a magical heirloom passed down through my Gigi and The Book of Rochus—the grimoire that I accused you of stealing. This is a very long story, one I don’t have time to write out but you may remember the bedtime tales of the Purple Delhi Sapphire and The Temple of Indra. I must confess these chronicles were true and I lived them.

  The one story I didn’t share that I regret the most involves a psychic medium and how I found out that I was pregnant with you. Again, I wish I had more time but the thing is: she told me you were a dark spirit and that you would grow to bring about death beginning on your sixteenth birthday. I’m sorry I never told you. Maybe I could have prevented whatever is about to happen next. Please know I understand that you would never hurt me or your father on purpose. This may just be your destiny as much as it was mine.

  I hope you can read this sprawling hand writing, it’s the middle of the night and I’ve just received a call that you’re in trouble. If something happens to me, please remember this book is powerful and so are you. I believe in my heart that you are gifted like me and I know you are good. I’m sure by now the dreams have begun. Listen to your heart and to your Da and Leslie. You were and are the best thing that ever happened to me. I love you, Alana.

  These words were told to me once upon a time and I just know they are true. Somewhere and sometime we’ll be together again.

  Tears streamed down Alana’s face, soaking the page.

  “How?”

  Leslie looked at Cullen, then she leaned in and whispered. “We think your mothers alive but she’s trapped in the past.”

  “She can’t be. She died . . . I saw her die.”

  “You didn’t actually see her die, a mhuirnín,” Cullen clarified.

  “I did and it was my fault.” Alana repeated herself at least three times before Leslie finally broke in.

  “What do you mean it was your fault?” Leslie prodded.

  Speaking the truth aloud rattled Alana, and she clamped her lips tight aware that she was once again on the verge of tears.

  “Come on, Alana, you can tell us anything. We love you no matter what but we need to know.”

  “I was so angry with her at dinner that night when she said I couldn’t attend the coven meetin’. I mean, I understand now why she was suspicious of Móraí, but at the time it all seemed so magical and safe. Móraí called me that night and asked if I could find the book. I’d seen Mum put it in her bag. I thought why not—she already thinks I stole it anyway. And I was curious about it, too. She’d gotten so worked up. Móraí had been teachin’ me about herbs and how they could be used in spells and I couldn’t help but wonder what was in the book. I promised myself I’d put it back tomorrow and no one would know. So I did it—I took it and Hannah’s mum picked me up.” Alana shivered.

  Cullen leaned across the gap and put his hand on Alana’s knee.

  “It's not your fault that your grandmother manipulated you.” His eyes, fiery green and encouraging, were intent on Alana’s face. “You trusted Móraí and the Walshes’ and they betrayed us all.”

  “Why did Hannah and her mum trick us? I’ve never understood what I did to make them hate us so.”

  Leslie wiped away a tear from Alana’s cheek. “It wasn’t you at all, honey. Hannah’s mum blamed Sophia and me for her husband, Sam’s death. It’s a long story and I’ll tell you later when we’ve got more time. Keep going. We need to hear your story now.”

  A sob escaped Alana’s throat but she went on, as if the memory were a bubble that might pop at any time. “Móraí flipped the book open in front of me and told me to read. They all started chanting halfway through. Then the woman in the cloak picked up a large knife and cut my hand.”

  Cullen tried to hide his fury but failed. “Móraí blamed yer mother for the death of yer Uncle Liam and she thought magic would bring him back. That evil Sandra woman brainwashed her and together they tried to use yer mother, too, but Sophia saw through them. My Aeval saw right through them.” Cullen’s voice broke and he had to stand and walk away to compose himself.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  A Pitchfork in the Road

  Hunedoara, Romania, 1494

  The young man shouted after me, but I kept moving and to the best of my knowledge he wasn’t
following. He most likely knew where I lived so I wasn’t concerned.

  The cottage in the woods was surrounded by trees. Wood was stacked beneath the eaves and to the left a cow lazily munched her cud under the shade of a tree. I took in the prolific view. Then a small black cat noticed me from its position in the shade of the house and bounded forward.

  Daphne. Had she been with me in every life? Was she immortal like Sandra? Given my beloved pet’s ripe old age that explained why she was still alive. I stopped to pet her. I’d held my breath for years anticipating the day Alana and I would be forced to discuss pet heaven. Thankfully, that day had never come. Now, I quite possibly knew why. I suddenly had so many questions and finally there would be answers.

  I pushed open the door to the house. It was a mess; the cupboards were wide open, and bundles of food waited on the table.

  “Hello!” I called, pulling a piece of clinging wet hair from my forehead.

  Elena’s head popped up from the cellar. “Where have you been? You’re late—we must hurry.”

  Then she stopped short and stared at me.

  “Who are you and why are you all wet?” she finished.

  For the longest time, we stared at each other. The charge made the tiny hairs on my arms stand on end.

  “I asked you a question,” the woman said.

  My gaze flitted back and forth between her and the voices I thought I could hear off in the distance.

  “I know you,” I whispered, recalling the woman from my regression. Elena Maria Catargiu-Obrenovic—my mother. She faintly resembled my own daughter Alana and I pondered the complexity of gene pools.

  She stepped out of the cellar and lowered the door as gently as if it were glass. Slowly, she straightened her slender back. “Sit, and quickly tell me what’s happened to my daughter, Sofia. You may look and sound like her but I am no fool and I can see you are not. ”

  “I am Sophia…” I started.

  “Do not lie to me, changeling. I can see your aura and I am a very dangerous woman to trifle with.”

  “I am Sophia,” I said again, more firmly. “I come from another lifetime. I need your help.”

  At the woman’s glower, I swallowed my words. I had been through this once before. There was no real way to explain without sounding like a crazy person.

  “Someone’s coming,” she whispered. “We’re too late.” She pushed me into the root cellar. “Whatever happens, say nothing unless you’re sure we are alone. I should never have tried to help that devilish woman.”

  “Arrest her! Arrest the witch!” Came shouts from the woods.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Hot Blooded on the Tracks

  Budapest, Hungary 2031

  Cullen watching with an ache in his heart as his daughter barely held it together. The minute they made it into the privacy of the hotel suite, she pulled the letter from her knapsack and the flood gates opened once again.

  He pulled her into his arms.

  “Calm down, lass, before ye yack on this lovely hotel’s carpet. If Mum’s alive somewhere in the past, Leslie will find her and I’ll bring her home.”

  She stilled in his arms.

  “I don’t get it. How is it possible to be in the past?” She questioned.

  Da rubbed a hand over his face, and then pulled a folder from his briefcase, the one containing all the research they’d done since Sophia first disappeared.

  “We’re no experts.” He explained.

  “Where is she then? Why hasn’t she come home?”

  He opened the folder and thumbed slowly through the letters. “It’s not that simple, a mhuirnín.”

  “But she said in the letter than she can time travel. She went into the past before and returned.”

  “To be sure, darlin’, but we don’t know how this all works. It seems this time is different. The other times, she travelled into a past life—into the body of Princess Sapphira, her aunt Zafira and the bride of Dunlace Castle. She used the book and was helped by an alchemist named Rochus, but he’s dead and anyway yer mum hasn’t had contact with him since before ye were born.” His voice trailed off; he looked out toward the wall, his gaze far away.

  “So what makes ye think she is in the past and not simply dead or missin’ like ye told me?”

  “It’s a lot of things…where to begin is the question.” Cullen looked to Leslie.

  Leslie took a deep breath and let it out in a slow, thoughtful sigh. “Why don’t you tell her what Móraí told us?”

  He nodded. “Aye. Sandra was trying to open the time portal to go back to 1494. Both Leslie and I already suspected Sandra and that husband of hers were up to no good with all of their regressions, but they disappeared that night. They surfaced a month ago, which is why I left suddenly on business. We were sure that they’d kidnapped Mum and took her on the run.” He thought back to the six different people he’d interviewed who’d claimed to have seen Sandra and Remus. The excitement and then the disappointment when they’d stated that there was no Sophia with them. “Everyone said the same thing and one hotel even had video footage. It was just a man and a woman—the two of them, and sometimes just Sandra and a bird. We were back to square one and then in a moment of brilliance, Leslie found a notepad that yer mother had scribbled on after one of her past life regressions. She examined the things yer mum wrote.”

  “Like what?”

  “Dracula’s Castle, for one thing, and the name, Elena, the reddish wolf.”

  “Who is that?”

  He thrust a thin sheaf of papers at Alana, but Leslie intercepted. A slight frown formed between her dark brows.

  “Cullen, slow down.” She turned to Alana, who was now shaking. “Sit, you’re looking wobbly, this is a lot to take in. Why don’t you tell us what you remember about the night your mother disappeared? You were there. You probably know more than either of us.”

  Alana did as she was told, flopping onto the leather couch. She rubbed at the scar along her palm—a not so tender reminder of the worst night of her life—and envisioned the bird circling the room so fast that it blew out the candles and flipped the pages of the spell book. “We were in a basement. There were candles and skulls. Someone was chantin’.”

  “What were they chanting?” Leslie questioned.

  “I can’t remember. I don’t know the language; it was sort of Russian but not really.”

  “Romanian?”

  “Could have been. They cut my hand and told me to read from the book. A woman in a cape,” Alana hesitated as if recalling the memory, “she squeezed my hand and forced blood drippings into the skull.

  Cullen felt a crushing rage race through him at the sound of her words. “Sandra.” He practically spat at the name. “If I ever get my hands on that woman.”

  Leslie cocked one brow at him, as if to settle him and then turned back to Alana. “Go on.”

  “I screamed my bloody head off. Next thing I knew the room was a twirl and I could hear Mum’s voice. I thought I was in a dream but then I opened my eyes and saw her—she was calling for me to run and trying to get past the tornado to save me. Then she was gone. Sucked up into it.”

  Leslie moved to Alana’s side, squeezing the girl’s arm. “Do you recognize her?”

  Alana took the picture from Leslie’s hands. It was a photocopied painting of a woman in front of a Castle.

  “It looks like mum.”

  “Yes,” Leslie said. “We think so. There’s another painting by the same artist and we think it’s of Madam Brun, granted she looks much younger in it.”

  “I never met Madam Brun so I don’t know what she looks like. I only heard mum talk about her.”

  “Oh, you met her. Sandra Brun was the one who cut you.”

  Alana squinted, as if she were failing to place her. “She had a cloak on and everything was dark and fuzzy.” She started to cry once again.

  “It doesn’t matter. We can stop talking about it. Are you happy that we told you, Alana, or is this just opening an ol
d wound?”

  “I don’t know how to feel. I’m happy that Mum’s alive—but I’m heartbroken that she’s trapped in the past and that it’s all my fault. I can’t believe she didn’t die—that tornado that erupted in the room, it swallowed her whole.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Leslie said doggedly. “Sandra is the villain here. And you’re right. We think that the tornado was a swirling time vortex like the one your mother had been through before.”

  “A door through time,” Cullen added. “It took her back to 15th-Century Bran Castle. We don’t understand why there—why at that time—we think it had something to do with Sandra and her man. We were hopin’ ye would know or remember somethin’ they said in that room.”

  “There was no man in that room. Oh wait, there was a man—he was a bird and then he turned into a man when Leslie showed up, but that makes no sense…I think they drugged me.”

  “Oh, they drugged ye, to be sure. We had yer stomach pumped, but anythin’ that comes to mind is useful, so be sure to share.”

  “We know Sandra wanted to go back to the past. Móraí said as much,” Leslie explained. “We just can’t figure out why they sent your mother instead or if it was your mother’s doing.”

  Cullen took Alana’s hand. “Yer grandmother was agitated in the end—she kept repeating herself in the hospital—sayin’ that Sophia was never supposed to go—never supposed to get hurt. She could have been after pullin’ the wool over my eyes once again. Jaysus knows she did that enough, but I don’t think so. I think Sandra’s plan was to go into the past but it blew up, quite literally, in her face and yer mother was sent instead, now whether yer mum did that on purpose or not for the greater good—I haven’t a baldy.”