Free Reckoning (Book 4 of Lost Highlander series) by Cassidy Cayman

hear a peep outside. When John came home, I wanted to pretend everything was fine, so asked him to hand me my sewing basket. When I pulled away the cloth, all my things were gone, replaced by a dead crow. I screamed and flung the basket away and the sewing things clattered to the floor. I couldn’t tell John what I thought I saw, what I did see.
    27 October -  I don’t know when I’m awake and when I’m asleep, it’s all a bad dream. I’m afraid I’ll hurt the baby I’m so tired.
    30 October -  Today I went outside to ready the garden for winter. The cold air felt bracing and I wished Lady Glen would come round to give me advice. A hard wind almost knocked me over and when I turned around she was standing near the edge of the river. I called to her but she just stood there. Maybe she couldn’t hear me, but she had to have seen me waving. I couldn’t go down to her because the baby was asleep inside. No matter how much I waved, she didn’t come up, and I felt stupid after a while and went in.
    1 November - John is angry at me for not going outside. But there are dead birds everywhere. There were black feathers under my pillow and in the baby’s cradle. I held them up to show him, and I think he saw them, but the look he gave me, I’m not sure. When he left he slammed the door. Lady Glen came and stood outside the window, but when I looked directly at her, she was gone, so maybe she wasn’t there at all.
    8 November -  A leather pouch sat on the sill when I awoke this morning. Every morning I look out the window to see if Lady Glen is there, staring and smiling at me. I believe she may have never been real at all, but I can’t ask John. How would that look to ask my husband if he recalled seeing me speaking to a woman at our own table, or walking with her into the village. And where did I get the things she gave me? Unless none of those are real, either. I feel certain the pouch is real, but I don’t know what it holds. I’m too scared to look inside, but I’ve been rolling it around in my hands. Small hard sticks or knobby roots. Maybe it’s something for a tincture. Perhaps I’m to boil the contents and drink it to become well again.
    9 November - It had to be a dream. I woke up in the woods. Lady Glen stood over me. She’s tiny, but she loomed over me like a giant, like a banshee. She looked sad I think, or pitying. She told me it was time to go. Time to go. She repeated it until I agreed, to get her to stop her terrible droning. Did I walk home? I’m here again, so maybe it was a dream or maybe I was really there and walked home. Home. I don’t know where that is anymore. I’m going to cry now, quietly so I don’t wake John or the baby. And tomorrow I’ll go.

    ***

    Piper woke up with her neck slumped painfully to the side and the dog licking drool off her cheek. There is no happy place for an occurrence such as this, she thought, pushing Hoover away and rolling her head around to get the kinks out. The diary slid from her lap and landed on the floor. Everything rushed back at her and she dove for the book.
    Holy hell. Piper’s head swam and she rubbed her eyes. Rose had a baby in the eighteenth century. And sweet Lady Glen had to have been Daria. Popping up forty years after Lachlan killed her.
    “How?” she said, punching the sides of the bed and startling Hoover.
    Was Daria that powerful? Piper remembered her chilling look, her admonishment that death couldn’t stop her. Not even petting the dog calmed her down.
    At least she knew why Rose scuttled back to her own time, then tried to put an ocean between her and the witch who’d tried to drive her insane. It was no wonder she never spoke of her life in Scotland. She was too afraid.
    What happened to the baby back in the eighteenth century? Had John run away with her or had they lived an ordinary life after Rose disappeared?
    From all her mother’s accounts, Rose had been distant and secretive, running off to Vegas to remarry as soon as