“Your fingers start to curl, as if you’re imagining touching whatever it is you’re thinking about.”

She blushed. She hadn’t known she was so transparent.

“Och, lass, ’tis charming. Do you recall that I said I could show you a Scotland no other man ever could?”

She nodded.

“Well, this afternoon, lass,” he said with a strangely wry note in his voice, “I’ll be making good on that promise.”

Some distance from the castle in which Chloe and Dageus were currently breakfasting, a man leaned back against the side of a nondescript rental car, talking quietly on the phone.

“I haven’t had the opportunity to get close,” Trevor was telling Simon. “But it’s only a matter of time.”

“You were supposed to take care of her before they left London,” Simon’s voice was faint on the cell phone, yet still rang with implacable authority.

“I couldn’t get near her. The man is constantly on guard.”

“What makes you think you can get close on Keltar ground?”

“He’ll drop his guard eventually, if only for a few minutes. Just give me a few more days.”

“It’s too risky.”

“It’s too risky not to. He has an emotional bond with her. We need his ties gone. You said so yourself, Simon.”

“Forty-eight hours. Ring me every six. Then I want you out of there. I’m not willing to run the risk that one of our Order is taken alive. He must know nothing about the Prophecy.”

With a soft murmur of assent, Trevor hung up.

Chapter 15

15

The day had been sunny and surprisingly temperate for March in the Highlands: mid-forties, a light breeze, the sky dotted by a few fat, fluffy white clouds.

It had been one of the most exhilarating days of Chloe’s life.

After breakfast, she, Dageus, Drustan, and Gwen had driven to the north, taking the winding roads to the top of a small mountain, above the colorful, bustling city of Alborath, where’d she’d met Dageus’s cousins, Christopher and Maggie MacKeltar, and their many children.