“Shawna, lass, are you alright?”
For a moment, her heart beat too quickly. Then she realized that Father Time was her great-uncle Lowell, re-costumed after his turn at the caber throw.
“I’m fine, Uncle.”
He smiled broadly, then slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek.
“Are ye happy, child?” he demanded.
“Aye, Uncle,” she said carefully.
“It’s good, when you think of the child.”
“Aye,” she said. His words had sounded somehow strange. As if he might have known something about Danny.
“Uncle Lowell, do you know something?”
“Eh? My ears are getting bad, lass. What did you say?”
“I said?—”
“Too much noise here! Bleedin’ pipes! And what a thing for a Scotsman to say, eh?”
“I said?—”
“Come this way so I can hear what y’are a-sayin’.”
He winced against the noise and motioned to her to follow him.
She did so.
They moved deeper into the field of the Druid Stones, returning to stand where her wedding had so recently taken place. Where the altar stone lay. Vacant now.
“Ah, Shawna, lass, it has become a strange world, eh?”
“Uncle Lowell, please, is there something you know about Danny—’’ she queried, breaking off abruptly.
She thought that she had seen a shadow. A cloaked figure, slipping from one Druid Stone to another.
“What’s that?” she murmured.
He pulled her close against him. “What?” he demanded.
“A figure—one of the cloaked figures.”
“Witches!” he whispered feverishly.
Shawna frowned. Looking across the slope of the hill where the play with the caber throw continued, she could clearly see Edwina standing with Sabrina and the women in her group of Wiccan healers.
“We need to get back, Uncle Lowell,” she said uneasily. “But if you know something, if you can tell me something?—”
“I can tell you something.”
Shawna stared as the figure she had seen suddenly came around the stone nearest them. The figure allowed her cowl to fall back.
It was Mary Jane.
Shawna stared at her. “And I refused to believe that you might be guilty! You weren’t even with me in Glasgow! How did you get your hands on my child?” Shawna demanded. “Uncle Lowell, get someone, we need help, we can’t let her go.”