are the best layers and see what dates I can get the chicks delivered.”
Ah. The kid was going to raise chickens. Katy leaned her head back and closed her eyes to the drone of the idling engines as they taxied to the runway.
“You’re supposed to watch while he tells us what to do in an emergency,” he whispered.
“This is my fourth flight today. I could probably give the demo myself. In fact,” she added, opening only one eye at him, “I happen to know you’re supposed to put on your own oxygen mask before you help me put on mine.”
The kid gaped at her for a full three seconds, but Katy saw his tiny shoulders go back and his chest puff out as he returned his attention to the attendant. The captain came on the speaker, thanked everyone for flying with them, and said they were next in line for takeoff. The weather in Bangor, Maine, was seventy-three degrees with clear blue skies, and thanks to a good tailwind, he expected to be landing in one hour and forty-seven minutes.
Katy figured she could subtract several degrees off that temperature for her eventual destination up in the northwestern mountains. In fact, by the time she got there around nine or ten tonight, it would probably be closer to fifty.
She’d hadn’t given herself much time before starting her new job in Spellbound Falls—and that was by choice. She didn’t want to spend even one day at home in Pine Creek answering questions about the two months she’d been in Colorado—mostly because she’d actually spent the last two weeks in Idaho trying to forget what had happened in Colorado.
She’d agreed to only a quick dinner in Bangor with her folks before heading up the mountain. She hoped she could make it through that much. Because even though she’d gotten really good at lying over the phone, Katy wasn’t sure how long she could hold up under her father’s scrutiny. And if by some miracle she made it through dinner, there was still the chance her mother would know all was not well—physically or emotionally—with her youngest daughter.
Which brought Katy back to her ongoing litany of the last few days. Please, please let me be healed—at least enough to fool Mom. Deep down, Katy knew she’d been getting by on adrenaline and denial, but she had to. This was no time to fall apart. She needed to make the most of this job, needed to become the person it would demand her to be. By rescuing others, she’d rescue herself. That was her new, and only, mantra.
As of three weeks ago, when she’d finally decided she could no longer deny inheriting her mother’s little . . . gift, Katy had obsessed over whether or not it was possible to actually hide an injury or illness from a former trauma surgeon who also happened to be a medical intuitive. If not, then a motherly hug might be all it was going to take for everything to go to hell in a handbasket right there in the middle of Bangor International Airport.
Please, please don’t let Robbie be with them. Because hiding anything from her magical big brother was nearly impossible, considering he was Guardian of the MacKeage and MacBain and Gregor clans and could friggin’ travel through time at will.
Was there a reason she couldn’t have been born into a normal family with plain old everyday talents instead of being a first-generation Highlander whose father hailed from twelfth-century Scotland? Not to mention her two male MacKeage cousins who could manipulate the energy of mountains and Winter MacKeage Gregor was an actual drùidh.
Funny how the MacKeage and MacBain males were strongly encouraged to do at least one tour of duty in the military—in essence putting themselves in harm’s way on purpose—but a MacBain female who was strong and capable and a damn good equestrian couldn’t do something even remotely dangerous if it served no intrinsic purpose to humanity in general or the clans in particular.
So Katy had rebelled by not going to college. Instead, she’d taken a night course at the regional high school and gotten her real estate license. The problem was she’d been damn good at that, too, which was why everyone had been surprised when instead of buying the business when her boss retired five years ago, Katy had run off to Bangor and enrolled in a two-year course to become a paramedic.
She’d felt crazy and brave and filled with more purpose than she’d