Miraculously, the ice beneath her held.

She looked back at Grey. He just stood there as if he couldn’t feel the freezing water, staring at the priest, his sword raised as if he intended to throw it like a lance.

The heavy, humid air around them suddenly crackled with electricity, humming so sharply it hurt her ears.

The sky began to sparkle with such brilliance Grace had to cover her eyes with her hand. Lightning snapped over the surface of the pond, sending tingles of awareness through Grace’s body that stopped just short of being painful.

Grace peeked through her fingers at Grey. He was frantically breaking the ice with the hilt of his sword while shouting something at Daar in a language she didn’t recognize.

“No!” she heard him yell as he climbed onto land and began running again, ignoring the swirling, electrically charged air that surrounded the priest. Grey swung his sword in a long, sweeping arc and sliced Daar’s stick cleanly in half.

If she lived to be a hundred, Grace would never be able to explain what happened next.

Daar’s stick, now two distinct pieces, floated in the air as if held up by strings. The two pieces of wood twisted and twitched, bolts of lightning shooting from them in every direction. Sparks rained through the air like fireworks, spraying upward and out in flashes of sizzling white energy.

A stream of brilliant blue light suddenly appeared from the clouds over TarStone, capturing one of the sticks as it danced in the air. Grace watched, fascinated, as that stick vibrated the merest of seconds, then suddenly flew out over the pond and landed on her. She stared, unmoving, as it hummed with the resonance of a purring cat against her chest, enveloping her in crystal-clear blue light.

The other stick fell back to the ground with a loud thud, striking a rock and shooting out a blast of laser-sharp energy toward the five of them that was so bright Grace was sure she would be blinded for life.

The percussion of the explosion beside her finished the job of shattering the ice they were lying on. She grabbed the stick on her chest as she fell into the freezing water.

Only it wasn’t cold.

Or dark.

As the water closed in over her head and Grace sank toward the bottom of the pond, the stick she clung to enveloped her in a warm blue light so bright it shone through her eyelids. Slowly, and without effort on her part, she rose back to the surface until her head was above water.

A pair of strong hands suddenly grabbed her and began pulling her through the water. She couldn’t see or hear a thing. Spots danced in her eyes, and her ears still rang with dulled thunder from the explosion.

Grey had finally come to her rescue. She was going to let him know just how much his timing stank, just as soon as she came to terms with what had just happened.

Grace was lifted onto the shore. She looked over through the spots still flashing in her eyes to glare at Grey, only to find herself face to face with Michael MacBain.

Now, where had he come from?

And where was Grey?

Grace heard her name bellowed again, this time from the north end of the pond. She squinted and saw Grey making his way along the edge of the now open pond, his stride angry and determined, water dripping off his hair and shoulders—and that damn sword still in his hand.

She looked at Michael. “I—I think you should leave now.”

But he wasn’t paying her any attention. He was staring across the pond. Grace heard him whisper the word drùidh under his breath.

Drùidh? Wasn’t that a wizard or something?

She looked in the same direction as Michael. Daar was now sitting on the rock he’d been standing on earlier, his hands dangling over his knees, his head shaking slowly back and forth as he stared out at the floating slabs of ice littering the pond.

“Wh-where’s Jonathan? And the other men?” she asked in her own strangled voice.

“Gone,” was all Michael said, unable to look away from Daar.

“G-gone where?”

He finally turned his haunted gray eyes on her. “Back to my time, I think,” he murmured faintly, his face draining of color. In unison, they both looked back at the spot where Jonathan, Frank, Tom, and Wayne had been standing.

“Get away from her, MacBain,” Grey said, now standing on a rock next to them, his sword pointed at Michael.

Grace let go of the stick and scrambled up to stand between Grey and Michael. The cold suddenly struck her like a violent slap to the face. She looked down and saw that the stick was humming quietly on the rock, still glowing with shimmering blue light. She reached down, picked it up, and clasped it to her chest. The cold retreated as fast as it had come.

“Move out of the way, Grace,” Grey said, his stare never leaving Michael.

“He saved my life,” she reminded him. “While you were busy attacking a priest, I might add,” she said, if for no other reason than to get his mind off his obsessive anger at Michael.

Grey finally looked at her. “I saw him like that before, four years ago. I thought he was going to…that he was…”

“He was going to what?”

He shook his head, unable to explain his actions any better than she could.

“I want to go home now,” she told him. “I want to see Baby.”

Callum, Ian, and Morgan silently stepped out of the woods and moved to surround Grace and Michael.

She pointed her stick at them threateningly. It wasn’t a sword like the one Grey had, but she was ready to smack them with it if they so much as scowled at Michael.

“Be careful with that thing, girl!” Daar shouted from across the pond, where he stood wringing his hands.

“Don’t be pointing that at anyone!”

She stared at the stick in her hand. “Where—where’s the other half?” she asked in a quivering whisper.

“It disintegrated when it…well, it’s ash now, floating in the pond,” Grey said, also staring at the stick in her hand.

“What in hell happened here?” Callum asked, having no clue of the danger the stick presented. “We saw lightning.”

“It’s a long story,” Grey said, turning his gaze to her. “Will ya set that thing down, lass?” he asked, his voice coaxing and a little distraught.

She hugged it back to her chest. “It keeps me warm.”

“Then at least don’t point it at anyone, like the old man said.” Grey looked at Morgan. “What happened to the men on the snowmobiles?” he asked, his voice now sounding more like the Superman he was supposed to be.

Morgan darted a look at her, then at Grey, and slowly shook his head. “They’ll not be missed,” was all he said, grinning a bit. “Nor will they ever be found.”

Michael, who had been sitting on the rock with his arms wrapped around his knees, finally stood up.

Grey raised his sword. Grace lifted her stick away from her chest, but she didn’t quite dare point it at Grey.

“He didn’t know anything about these men,” she said, lifting her chin.

Michael agreed with her. “That’s right,” Michael said, moving to stand beside her. Grace guessed his pride wouldn’t let him hide behind a woman.

“I heard their machine laboring toward the pass, and I hid at this end of the pond to see what they were doing,” he explained, facing Grey. “I saw them leading Grace onto the ice against her will, and I was waiting to ambush them.”

“Something you’re fond of doing,” Grey said in a low growl. “What are you doing up here?”

Grace saw Michael gaze out at the pond before he turned a narrowed look back on Grey. “There were men in town yesterday asking questions about where Grace’s plane had crashed. I thought they might be from StarShip Spaceline, but something about them made me suspicious. I came up here to see what it was they seemed to be looking for.”

Michael let out a tired sigh and wiped his wet hair back from his face. “I found nothing but the empty plane, but I remembered these men had been asking the store owner if he had maps of the snowmobile trails. So I decided to keep climbing up here to the trail to see what they were doing.”