The Wellspring (Kaitlyn and the Highlander #12) - Diana Knightley Page 0,106

I just thought I should come get Katie. I wanted her to see him — I just thought she should be there.” I focused on a shell in the sand while Hayley asked me, quietly, “You still doing okay?”

I nodded.

Quentin said, “Did you guys get the vessels?”

James grinned for the first time. “Fuck yeah, Mags has all he ever wanted.”

Quentin helped James sit up. “Did you bring them? So we could put them into the bank or something?”

“Oh right... I totally didn’t think about that.”

My eyes shot to the vessel lying beside his legs. Thank God. If it was gone I would totally freak out.

I took a deep breath.

I was going to go get Magnus.

“Okay…” I awkwardly climbed to my feet and then had to pause to make sure I wasn’t going to fall back down. “Thank you for telling me.” I wiped my sweaty hands on my pants, dusting sand off my seat. “He’s not dying right? He’s not…?”

James climbed to his feet too. “Hey, you know, let’s just go get him, you know?”

“Yeah, okay, thank you, I’m going to go. You’re coming with me to show me where he is?”

“Yep, as soon as you’re ready to go.”

I looked around at the faces. “I need to pack for the kids… It’s cold right?”

James said, “Yep, freezing.”

Emma said, “You’re taking the kids?”

“Yeah,” the whole time I spoke, I nodded, trying to look positive and confident, if not a little crazy. “If Magnus is… then… they need to see him.” I started walking toward the boardwalk to the hotel.

James called after me, “I don’t think it’s that bad, he probably just needs some time to rest—”

“Probably, James?” I rounded on him. “You can take that shit out of here, there is no ‘probably’ or ‘maybe’ or ‘he mights’… I won’t listen to it. Me and his children are going to go to him. We need to and… Yeah… yeah.” I turned to Quentin. “Can you take me to the house to gather my things? We need our camping equipment too, some rations, food, enough for a time, I don’t know…” I looked at James. “Just until he recovers and is strong enough to jump, right? Just long enough?”

James nodded. “Yep, just until.”

We all returned to the house, surrounded by security, to pack. I was frantic. It was hard to concentrate. I just kept dumping stuff in the middle of the living room. Quentin, armed, moved it out to James’s truck. We decided to jump from the south end, and we would take the dead body with us. Quentin and James disappeared into the garage with old blankets and a roll of duct tape. Quentin said, “This is a new low for me.”

When they returned, I asked James questions as we worked. “So the plan went off without a hitch?”

“Kind of, I kept the Campbells away, he gathered all the vessels, Fraoch chased you away.”

Hayley and I looked at each other.

She said, “Weird, now that I think about it…”

“I know, he was… that guy looked a little like… but maybe it’s just because we heard it, maybe James telling us put it in our head. Last night we didn’t think he looked like Fraoch, right? This is just our imagination.”

“Yeah,” she zipped up one of our bags. “Because in my memory the vessel was gone, right? Same for you?”

“Yeah, it was gone. That’s how I remember it.”

“So even though the Trailblazer has already gone back in time, our thing happened first, not next, right?”

“God, I don’t know. Yeah, sort of? I can’t figure out what things are replaced in our memories and what aren’t, it’s all… Discombobulated.”

Hayley said, “It could have totally been Fraoch chasing us. Now that I think about it, it was totally him. We were gathering the vessels and then he was chasing us, and it was so scary when we jumped on the ATVs and drove them away into the woods, terrified out of our minds.”

The next time I passed James carrying a load of blankets, I said, “So after he got all the vessels…?”

“I was being chased, there was a big brawl. Fraoch was fighting three men at once. Magnus saw right when some dude sliced my arm. He rode over and fought my guy and killed him. I hurt my shoulder when I fell off my horse. Don’t joke on me, fighting on horses is not easy.”

“I’m not joking on you, those are all skills they did not teach in high school. I’m glad you lived