She saw them as colors in her mind’s eye, rather than emotions—bright, vivid, detailed, and four-dimensional. They were energy turned into matter, traveling at a velocity that made them timeless.

Constant, without beginning or end—just always present, everywhere.

Grace opened her eyes when Daar released her hand and sat back in his chair, staring at her. “She’s still with you, Grace,” he told her. “Mary’s been your guardian since you were born, and she’ll walk in your heart for the rest of your life.”

She couldn’t speak. She looked at the tin on the table beside them, then back at Daar.

“Give this gift to Winter, Grace. Allow your daughter the chance to fulfill her destiny. Give her life, and then let her come to me when she’s ready.”

“Will she want to come to you?”

“Yes.”

Grace lowered her lashes, trying to decide if she believed him or not. The man was an ordained priest, for crying out loud. He might swear a bit, but surely he couldn’t lie to her.

“Ask me something,” he told her, as if he could read her thoughts. “Exercise that left brain of yours.”

Grace decided to take him up on his offer. Or call his bluff. She had a million questions she wanted answered—about what exactly had happened at the pond, how Grey and the others had been able to travel through time, and why the priest couldn’t have found her someone who wasn’t eight hundred years old.

She decided to take things one step at a time and asked about something that had been worrying her all week. “What happened to Jonathan? And the other men? Are they dead?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “But they are finding themselves in a bit of a mess.” He suddenly chuckled. “Don’t worry about them, girl. With their modern knowledge, they’re probably ruling some twelfth-century nation by now.”

“When you pointed your stick at them, what were you intending?”

“It’s a staff, girl, not a stick. And I was intending only to propel them into space for a quick little trip around the world, maybe drop them in the Sahara Desert for a vacation.” He suddenly scowled.

“MacKeage damn near did us all in.”

“Can you tell me if ion propulsion works?” she asked, getting them off the subject of Grey’s little indiscretion.

“No.”

“No, it doesn’t work, or no, you won’t tell me?”

He shot her a warm grin. “It works, Grace. Eventually. As a matter of fact,” he said, leaning toward her and whispering, “your fourth daughter will see that it does.”

Grace covered her mouth with her hands. “She will?”

“But don’t tell Grey,” he said, still leaning forward and still whispering.

“Why?” she whispered past her hands.

“Because he’s wanting a parcel of boys to rebuild his clan back to the greatness it once was. And it will go much easier on all of us if he doesn’t realize he’s not getting them until it’s too late.”

“You didn’t tell Grey he was having daughters?”

“I’m old, girl, not stupid,” he said, leaning back in his chair again, his voice overloud.

“So you had a talk with Grey? When?”

“The day after he threw my staff into the pond.”

“I’m sorry he did that, Father,” she said sincerely, wishing she could get her hands on it again herself.

“Not half as sorry as I am.” He suddenly stood up. “It’s getting late, and I’ve a long walk ahead of me.”

“You’re not walking all the way back to your cabin, are you?” she asked, standing also.

“Well, I can’t get there any other way. Your husband saw to that right enough.”

“He’s not my husband yet.”

He turned and looked at her. “Aye, Grace, he is. You just haven’t realized that fact yet. You think you’re needing a ceremony to make it legal. I do wish you’d stop with this foolishness, though, about not sleeping with the man. He’s a veritable bear to be around.”

Grace felt herself blush all the way down to her toes. She was standing in the middle of her kitchen with a priest, and he was all but telling her to have sex with Grey.

“It’s not a sin, you know,” he told her, looking somewhat perturbed. “You’re married in all eyes but your own. But it is a sin against nature for a woman not to lie with her husband.”

She wanted to melt into the floor from embarrassment. “You—you’re from a time much earlier than Grey, aren’t you?”

“Aye.” He straightened his shoulders and puffed out his chest. “I’ll be fourteen hundred and ninety-two come March.”

She blinked at him. Good lord, the man was ancient.

“Well, this is the twenty-first century,” she told him, just in case he hadn’t realized that fact. “And women are good for more than warming a man’s bed. And men are a bit more civilized about not demanding such things.”

“I suppose they did away with spanking, too,” he muttered just as he left, leaving Grace to stare at the open door of her kitchen that led out onto the porch. She walked over and slammed it shut behind the audacious old priest, and half a ton of ice came sliding down off the roof like thunder. Grace opened the door back up to see if she had just been condemned to hell for killing a priest.

He was standing in the middle of her driveway, glaring at her. She smiled and waved and closed the door again, softly this time. There were spots swimming in front of her eyes for a good two minutes from the brightness of the sunshine outside.

The ice storm had lasted nine days, and the ice was still melting off the trees. The electricity hadn’t come back on yet, but she had seen the line trucks working their way up her road just this morning.

“Well, Mare,” she said to the cookie tin as she went to clean up the cocoa cups. “I guess I should thank you for saving my life the other day up at the pond.” She stopped her chore and picked up the tin, turning it around to face her. “It felt like you,” she told her. “When I saw that warm blue light coming down from TarStone and into that stick, it was as if…as if I could feel you there. And suddenly I wasn’t afraid.”

She waited a bit longer this time before she put the tin back on the table, just in case Mary had something she wanted to say. The Oreo cookie tin suddenly hummed with warmth, and the air in the kitchen gently glowed with blue light. Grace stared around herself in awe, then clutched Mary’s tin to her chest. Grey hadn’t been lying. It was the tin she’d hugged in the snow cave. Mary had been saving her again.

Just as she had during the plane crash and after, while she’d waited for Grey to find out where they were.

And in the snow cave, keeping her warm, keeping her alive until Grey returned. All this time…Mary had been with her, watching over her and Baby.

Patiently waiting for Grace to keep her promise.

Grace thought back to their childhood and all the times Mary had pulled her out of messes she’d made from experiments her brothers kept bringing home to her. Like the time Mary had pulled her out of Pine Lake, when Grace had fallen in trying to reach her weather balloon, which had come crashing back to earth prematurely.

And all the nights Mary had climbed into bed with her because Grace had been overwrought. Like when the Challenger had blown up or whenever something had happened in the news that told her the world had lost another pioneering hero. Mary had been younger by three years, but she had been Grace’s rock to cling to whenever the world overwhelmed her.

And Grace knew that Grey was her new rock. He’d proven himself more than once already to be a fine guardian angel, worthy of the name Superman most of the time.

All she had to do now was coax that sword away from him, get electricity wired to his bedroom, and convince him that daughters could be the future of his clan. Basically, all she had to do was take a not so modern man, polish the roughened edges of his ancient soul, and cover him with a more modern, more civilized veneer.

Chapter Twenty-four