Daar had been amused by Grey’s sudden forthrightness. It confirmed what he’d always suspected: Greylen MacKeage was aware that the priest he’d been supporting these last four years was also the person responsible for the storm that had carried him forward in time.
Well, Grey’s intelligence was never in question. But gaining the warrior’s trust would be near impossible now that Grey felt protective of Grace.
Not that Grey ever did trust him, Daar thought with a self-pitying sigh. Wasn’t that the very reason he lived in a cabin two miles away instead of at Gu Bràth? The warrior wished to keep Daar close in order to keep an eye on him, but he had no intention of living under the same roof with someone he suspected had caused such a great upset to the natural world.
Daar knew MacBain was suspicious of him also. That was the reason the young warrior had taken his men to Nova Scotia just nine months after arriving in the twenty-first century. But when all his men had died, MacBain had found himself drawn to Pine Creek. Though he didn’t visit his old priest and mentor and only nodded his head whenever Daar met him in town, Michael was at least attempting to walk the precarious line between the two distinct worlds of his life.
Daar was actually proud of Michael and had been mightily happy when MacBain had taken up with Mary Sutter—and mightily disappointed to learn she had died.
And Daar couldn’t figure out why that was. Why did Mary have to die at such a trying time in Grace’s life?
Could it be that Mary Sutter wasn’t a wizard at all but merely possessed the soul of a guardian? It wasn’t unheard of for angels to walk this earth for only a short time, to look after a charge and then suddenly disappear as mysteriously as they’d arrived.
But Grace herself, it seemed, was not willing to let her sister’s spirit completely depart. The poor grieving woman had been clinging to Mary’s ashes in an Oreo cookie tin. Grace carried that tin of ashes wherever she went. Daar had seen her place Mary on the mantel in the living room downstairs just this afternoon.
It was past time he had a little talk with Grace Sutter. More worried about the menace clouding the air tonight than Grey’s warning to stay away from Grace, Daar turned back toward the stairs that led down the north tower.
He took one last look at the stormy, unsettled sky and headed to the warm fire below. He was confident that the warrior would meet whatever challenge the stormy sky hinted at. After all, that’s why Daar had searched through all of time to find such a match for the woman who would have seven daughters.
Tomorrow, Greylen MacKeage would come face to face with his destiny—and then have to prove he was worthy of it.
Grace had not been successful in her plan to speak with Father Daar. She’d tried to talk with him twice, and each time he said he hadn’t the time. He was in the middle of a novena. She’d actually gone to the dictionary to look that up. And what she found was that a novena lasted nine days.
Which left her with Baby and the MacKeages. And
Jonathan. And the damn ski lift that she still wasn’t sure she wouldn’t blow up.
She didn’t even have any of them at the moment, except Baby, and he was busy sleeping the sleep of the innocent. Grey and Morgan were at Michael MacBain’s Christmas tree farm, setting up the equipment and hoping the temperature dropped low enough tonight to make snow. Callum had traveled back to her house to gather the hens, the goat, and the cats. She’d wished him luck when he left, and he had scowled the whole way to his truck. Ian was holed up in the ski lift shed, apparently not willing to share the house with her. Both Ian and Callum had refused to help Grey save Michael’s trees, and Grace suspected the only reason Morgan went was that he was worried that even Grey’s bitter determination would not be enough to get the job done.
Grace had caused a terrible upset in the MacKeage house by demanding they help Michael if they wanted her to help them. Ian had given her a black look when she and Baby had walked in three hours ago, and he had ignored Jonathan altogether.
And with Ian sulking in the ski lift shed, Grace couldn’t work on the lift until Grey returned. Not for all the sun in Florida would she face that angry old man alone.
Jonathan was in the dining room, back on his computer, probably trying to figure out what this little mess was going to cost him if they didn’t successfully retrieve Podly’s data. Grace couldn’t care less at the moment, and that lack of emotion toward something she’d worked so hard for surprised her. Several of the data collectors on Podly were hers. It was her chance to prove what she’d been saying all along, that ion propulsion was viable and at a reasonable cost.
But for some reason, she no longer cared if there were colonies on Mars within the decade. Sometime over the last several weeks, she’d stopped looking outward to space and turned her attention to what she had discovered to be the real challenge: living and loving and being content here on Earth.
And then there was Grey. He had taught her that there was something much more important than living on the cutting edge of exploration, technology, and modern-minded men. Grey had made her realize that for all of society’s evolution, mankind still needed the ancient values to survive. Men and women still needed to belong to each other. A commitment, a bond, and trust of another were still more important than mere coexistence.
Grace had always known these truths, but she had forgotten them sometime in the last fourteen years, living with people who looked only up and outward, not inside themselves.
“This MacKeage guy,” Jonathan said, walking into the great room of Gu Bràth. “Do you trust him to do as he said? Will he take us to the crash site tomorrow?” He looked at his watch and frowned. “I mean today. Dammit. It’s after midnight. We’ve wasted thirty-six hours already.”
“He will,” she assured him.
He walked to the hearth and held his hands to the warmth of the fire while he looked around the room.
“This is a hell of a place MacKeage owns.” He looked back at her. “I think my last offer of forty thousand was an insult. Where’d he make this kind of money? I’ve never heard the MacKeage name mentioned in the business world. He sure as hell didn’t make this kind of cash living in Pine Creek.”
Grace shrugged and closed the old book she had been looking through. She hadn’t been able to read it; it was written in a language she didn’t recognize.
“You don’t seem very worried about our satellite,” he observed, taking a chair across from her. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees as he stared at her. “What’s gotten into you? The Grace Sutter I know would be pounding the computer keys now, not reading some ancient tome.”
“Why are we doing it, Jonathan? Why are we trying so hard to travel into space? We haven’t even finished exploring Earth yet. Why aren’t we focused on that?”
Her questions seemed to surprise him. “Because it’s where the future is,” he told her. “A hundred years from now, Earth will be a wasteland. If we don’t travel up and out and explore new worlds, we won’t survive.”
“But it wouldn’t become a wasteland if we put all of our energies into saving it.”
He leaned back in his chair, waving that concept away. “That’s environmental bunk,” he scoffed. “And there’s no money in it. The profit is in space, because that’s where people want to go.” He leaned forward again. “And that’s where you and I can take them, Grace. Don’t get all introspective on me just because you’re visiting your childhood home.”
He got down on his knees in front of her and gripped the arms of her chair. “You’re just feeling something every scientist feels when he’s on the brink of a new discovery that could alter the future of the world. You’re worried about the ramifications.”