Pursuit (Through Time 1)

“Think not?” His smile was smug. “Think again.”

“Grrr …” She made a sound but decided she would change the subject. She looked around and asked, “And where did Trevor go off to?”

Chance shrugged. “I doona have a clue.”

“Well, I am sadly disappointed in him. He should have joined our efforts to save those people.”

“Och lass, doona be so judgmental. He has his beliefs, just as ye have yers.”

Royce frowned over this as she silently conceded his point. It was at that moment she felt the atmosphere wiggle. Trevor stepped out of his shifting to stand before them, a grin on his face and a large, blue-velvet–covered globe in his hands.

The thought still jumbled in her mind as she looked at her old friend. Yeah, beliefs or not, he just up and left!

She stomped over to him, slapped his arm roughly, and then wagged

a finger. “How could you just leave like that?”

“Ow—no need to keep hitting me every single time you don’t agree with me, Red. I saw you two had things under control so I decided to go off and find Danté and get the Lugh Orb.” He shoved the blue-velvet–covered ball into her hands.

“Still, you should have helped us,” she said as she removed the velvet cover and held up the transparent Orb. Humans would call it a crystal ball, she thought, but it was so much more.

“I wouldn’t have been much help … and besides, Red, you know we are not supposed to interfere with humans,” he said, avoiding her eye.

“We weren’t interfering with humans—we were interfering with Pestale,” she shot back at him. “He was punishing me for shifting away from him when he wanted me to stay. He was, I believe, attempting to manipulate my behavior towards him in the future.” Her free hand went to her hip. “Since when do we let a Dark Fae interfere with humans? We don’t—we use our brain, which tells us that we are supposed to take Pestale and his black magic down.”

He eyed her, frowned as he thought about this, but said nothing. Chance slapped him on the back and said, “’Tis never easy to go against one’s orders, and Trevor has only just begun to look into the face of evil. He’ll learn.”

Chancemont LeBlanc had once again surprised her. Until the last hour she had spent with him, she had thought he was just a big, handsome hunk set on revenging his sister’s cold-blooded murder, but … he was more so much more. He was full of logic and good sense. This new side of him intrigued her. And then there was Trevor, whom she had considered one of her dearest friends, totally shocking her with his callous behavior towards humans. She had not thought he could be so … Fae cold-blooded about the humans she adored.

She eyed Trevor sadly and decided not to give him any slack. “Well, what’s that to say to anything—all new to him? This is all new to me, but making the right choice has got to take precedence over all else.”

“Ho ho, look at little Miss Know It All. Ye can’t cut things into black piles and white piles. Making the right choice is different for everyone. Too many colors in this world, lass.” Chance put up his hand to silence both Trevor and her and put an end to the argument. “Now, how do we use this, Trevor m’man?”

Trevor stood taller, and his face took on what Royce thought of as his ‘I’m a Royal Prince of the House of Lugh’ look. “The family Orb is thousands of years old. We consider it a Hallow, for it developed a life of its own. The Orb’s loyalty will always be to the family who first gave it life, the House of Lugh, but as years go by, it continues to grow and become—”

“Not interested in a history lesson, lad. What does it do?” Chance interrupted, and Royce looked away and bit her bottom lip to keep from giggling.

”Uh, we, or rather I will ask it to locate Pestale for us.”

The Orb began to glow a soft shade of amber, and Royce stared at it.

Chance stared at it as well, but Royce suddenly remembered that she had to let them in on Pestale’s near breakthrough with time travel.

“Yes, yes, it was very clever of you, Trev, to retrieve the Orb, for it may help us, but first I have to tell you both what Pestale has done.”

She turned back to Chance, who took her fingers in his firm grasp, brought them up to his sensuous lips, and looked at her intently. “Aye, then I should like to know, lass, what else besides kissing ye did Pestale do?”

“Pestale kissed you?” Trevor’s face expressed revulsion.

She waved his remark off impatiently as she pulled a face at him. Then she turned back to Chance. “Stop that … he only kissed me—”

“Only, ye say, but that is quite a bit more than he should have done!” snapped Chance, getting angry all over again.

“I’ll say,” agreed Trevor. “Arrgh—how could you let him?”

“Do you two want to know what he has done, or don’t you?”

They kept silent and waited for her to go on, so she did. “He shifted us to a place that he called ‘in between time’. Apparently he has created a dimension—don’t know what else to call it—but it is nothing more than a cloud where time stands still. He hangs out there so that he can’t be tracked, and he is working on getting through the time barrier … so that he can shift through time, using ancient black magic.”