Brianna’s fellow employees at the hydroelectric plant, and presumably taken through the stones into the past—there had been no time to recall Mandy’s remark about Jem being back in her head, let alone to make further inquiries. But now Brianna’s mind was moving at the speed of light, bounding from one horrifying realization to the next, making connections that might have taken hours to make in cooler blood.
Horrifying Realization Number 1: Jem hadn’t gone into the past, after all. While by itself this was undeniably a good thing, it made Horrifying Realization Number 2 that much worse: Roger and William Buccleigh had undoubtedly gone through the stones, searching for Jemmy. She hoped they were in fact in the past and not dead—traveling through whatever sort of thing the stones were was a bloody dangerous proposition—but, if so, that brought her back to Horrifying Realization Number 1: Jem wasn’t in the past. And if he wasn’t there, Roger wasn’t going to find him. And since Roger would never give up looking . . .
She pushed Horrifying Realization Number 3 aside with great force, and Mandy blinked, startled.
“Why you making faces, Mummy?”
“Practicing for Halloween.” She rose, smiling as best she could, and reached for her own duffel coat.
Mandy’s brow creased in thought.
“When’s Halloween?”
Cold rippled over Brianna, and not just from the draft through the crack under the back door. Did they make it? They thought the portal was most active on the sun feasts and fire feasts—and Samhain was an important fire feast—but they couldn’t wait the extra day, for fear that Jem would be taken too far from Craigh na Dun after passing through the stones.
“Tomorrow,” she said. Her fingers slipped and fumbled on the fastenings, shaky with adrenaline.
“Goody, goody, goody!” Mandy said, hopping to and fro like a cricket. “Can I wear my mask to look for Jemmy?”
NOTHING’S SO HARD BUT SEARCH WILL FIND IT OUT
HE’D FELT THE DIAMONDS explode. For some time, that was the only thought in his mind. Felt it. One instant, briefer than a heartbeat, and a pulse of light and heat in his hand and then the throb of something going through him, surrounding him, and then . . .
Not “then,” he thought muzzily. Wasn’t any then. Wasn’t any now. Now there is, though . . .
He opened his eyes to find that there was a now. He was lying on stones and heather and there was a cow breathing—no, not a cow. He made to rise and managed to turn his head half an inch. It was a man, sitting huddled on the ground. Taking huge, irregular, gasping sobs of breath. Who . . . ?
“Oh,” he said aloud, or almost. “ ’S you.” The words came out in a mangle that hurt his throat, and he coughed. That hurt, too. “You . . . okay?” he asked hoarsely.
“No.” It came out in a grunt, filled with pain, and alarm got Roger up onto hands and knees, head spinning. He did a bit of gasping himself but crawled as fast as he could toward Buck.
William Buccleigh was curled over, arms crossed, gripping his left upper arm with his right hand. His face was pale and slicked with sweat, lips pressed so tight together that a ring of white showed round his mouth.
“Hurt?” Roger lifted a hand, not sure where or whether to prod. He couldn’t see any blood.
“My . . . chest,” Buck wheezed. “Arm.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Roger said, the last remnants of muzziness stripped away by a blast of adrenaline. “Are you having a bloody heart attack?”
“What . . .” Buck grimaced, then something seemed to ease a little. He gulped air. “How would I know?”
“It’s—never mind. Lie down, will you?” Roger looked wildly round, though even as he did, he realized the sheer pointlessness of doing so. The area near Craigh na Dun was wild and unpopulated in his own time, let alone this one. And even should someone appear out of the stones and heather, the chances of whoever it was being a doctor were remote.
He took Buck by the shoulders and eased him gently down, then bent and put his ear to the man’s chest, feeling like an idiot.
“D’ye hear anything?” Buck asked anxiously.
“Not with you talking, no. Shut up.” He thought he could make out a heartbeat of some sort but had no idea whether there was anything wrong with it. He stayed bent a moment longer, if only to compose himself.
Always act as if you know what you’re doing,