Chloe stared at Dageus’s chiseled profile, sorting through facts that were suddenly imbued with a terrible significance: He knew more languages than anyone she’d ever met, languages long dead; he had artifacts in mint condition; he was searching books that centered on the history of ancient Ireland and Scotland. He’d stood her in the center of a circle of ancient stones and asked to her to go somewhere with him that he couldn’t tell her about, but had to show her, as if only seeing was believing. And in that circle of stones a powerful storm had risen and she’d felt as if she were being torn apart. There’d been a sudden climate change, the scenery currently included full-grown, century-old trees that hadn’t been there before, and there was an elderly man claiming to be his father—in the sixteenth century.

And while they were on that topic—if any part of her current circumstances was actually real—what was his father doing in the sixteenth century, for heaven’s sake? She latched onto that lovely little bit of blatant illogic as proof that she must be dreaming.

Unless . . .

What if I told you, lass, that I’m a Druid from long past?

“What?” she snapped, glaring up at him. “Am I supposed to believe that you’re from the sixteenth century too?”

He finally looked at her then, and said stiffly, “I was born in fourteen hundred and eighty-two, Chloe.”

She jerked as if he’d struck her. Then she started laughing, and even she heard the note of hysteria in her voice. “Right,” she said gaily. “And I’m the Tooth Fairy.”

“You know you felt something about me,” he pressed ruthlessly. “I know you did. I could see it in the way you watched me sometimes.”

God, she had. Repeatedly. Felt that he was strangely anachronistic, felt a bizarre sense of ancientness.

“You’re strong, Chloe-lass. You can accept this. I know you can. I’ll help you. I can explain it to you, and you’ll see that ’tis no’ . . . magic, but a sort of physics modern men doona—”

“Oh, no,” she cut him off, shaking her head vehemently. A hiccup terminated her laughter abruptly. “It’s impossible,” she insisted, rejecting it all in one grand unilateral sweep. “This is all impossible.” Hiccup. “I’m dreaming, or . . . something. I don’t know what, but I’m not going to”—hiccup—“think about it anymore. So don’t even bother trying to convince—”

She broke off, suddenly too light-headed to continue. The trauma of the storm, the absurdity of the conversation was all too much. Her knees felt as if they might buckle beneath her. Really, she thought dimly, there was only so much a girl could be expected to handle, and time-travelling Druids just weren’t part of it. More of that helpless laughter bubbled inside her.