Page 17 of First Light

Carys didn’t know what made her do it, but just before Dru was about to pick up his glass, she reached over and switched her glass with the strange man’s.

He looked at her with amusement, picked up the glass he’d poured for Carys, and drank.

Duncan sighed, then downed the whiskey. “Done.”

Carys picked up the cold glass holding the golden liquid, tipped it up, and drank it in one gulp. “Done.”

Dru’s eyes came alive, and the vivid blue seemed to get darker as she watched him. “I’ll see you on the edge of the forest, Duncan Murray. Be there at sunset.”

“Leave it.”Duncan took her phone and tossed it on the bed. “We don’t have much time. The days are short this time of year.”

“I’m not leaving my phone?—”

“If you don’t leave it, they’ll take it.”

“Whowill take it?” She shook her head. “You keep telling me all these mysterious rules, and I know a lot of them are based in old European superstitions, but?—”

“Ha!” He snorted. “Old European… Yes, it’s all superstition. Listen, woman, I traded something quite valuable for this passage, so you’ll listen to the rules I give you. Don’t take your phone. It’ll be safe here at the house with Mary and Andrew, and if you bring it to the forest tonight, you’ll lose it. Trust me, I’ve tried. No cameras. No film of any kind. No metal that’s not fine?—”

“What does that mean?”

“No iron or iron alloys.” He looked at her necklace. “Is that gold?”

Carys wore a necklace that had been her mother’s, a gold chain with two Welsh dragons on it, one in gold and the other in silver. “It’s gold and silver, yeah.”

“That should be fine,” he muttered. “Basically, anything modern, just leave it. I can’t even take a pocketknife to this place.”

She pointed to the knife hanging on his belt. “What’s that then?”

He drew the blade from the leather-wrapped sheath. “It’s bone with a flint blade, and I’ll be hiding it before we meet Dru.”

Carys was starting to feel like she was entering someone’s delusion. “Is this going to bedangerous?”

Was Duncan Murray really a serial killer who was going to dispose of her in the forest tonight?

After meeting you at a pub in a small town and introducing you to his housekeeper?

She listened to too many podcasts.

“Dangerous?” He shrugged. “Could be. Could be fine. You wanted to see Lachlan, so we’re going.”

“You said you went to this place when you were a kid, so I assumed that this was…”

“What?”

Some kind of elaborate prank to be honest.Carys was going along with all of Duncan’s plans, but in her heart, she didn’t really believe in any kind of alternate dimensions, shadow worlds, or different timelines no matter how many times her levelheaded engineer friend Laura told her that the science behind dimensional shifts were entirely possible in theory.

In theory. Not in practice.

“Text your friends,” Duncan told her. “Tell them you’re going camping with Lachlan for a few days and that you’re fine. Leave your phone here and give them Mary’s number. The last thing we need is more Americans showing up to harass my staff.”

Carys knew leaving her phone was good advice, but it also made her feel naked. But practically speaking, she knew that even if wherever they were going was just a remote area of Scotland, the signal probably wouldn’t work.

“Fine.”

“Good.”

Duncan was annoying her the longer he lingered in the room where Mary had put her luggage.

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