Free The Curse of Clan Ross by L. L. Muir

Montgomery had to find Ewan and get his daughter out of that cursed tomb.
    “Ewan!  Ewan!” he bellowed, not caring if the whole clan roused. “Get up, Ewan.”
    “I’m up and at ‘em, Monty,” his friend grumbled as he swung his door open. “Will I need me boots?”
    “Aye. And hurry.”
    He couldn’t help but pace in the moonlight while he waited for Ewan to emerge from his cottage. At the last moment, he thought to call out his apologies to Ewan’s sister. She did not answer. It was probable she slept on, uninterrupted. This was not the first time he had roused Ewan in the middle of the night, but he hadn’t done so for months. Not since the last time he’d been chased from his bed by such nightmares. But then he’d been grieving over never seeing his sister again, not because she’d perished.
    As his daughter would do if he didn’t get to her in time.
    He tried to explain this to Ewan as they made their way up the rise to the Castle.
    “But ye don’t have a daughter, Monty. Ye don’t even have a wife.”
    “I ken the truth, Ewan. I’ve not gone daft. I must just make bloody sure, aye?”
    Ewan laughed. “It makes perfect sense, but only because it is the wee hours before morn. Tomorrow I don’t plan on being kind about it. Not kind at all.”

CHAPTER NINE
    Jilly was suffocating. Whether it was from the staleness of the air, the lack of oxygen, or a panic attack making her lungs feel tiny and useless, she was definitely suffocating.
    Each time she had awakened to find that the nightmare continued, she’d gone through what was now a routine. She tried on the necklace and imagined Laird Ross, being careful to imagine Quinn, the 21 st century one, not Montgomery Ross, the statue. She had concentrated on the Muir sisters, individually and together. She had not only clicked her heals like Dorothy, but had found hope in another old movie, digging in her pockets to find a modern penny. Unfortunately, there was no light by which to read the year, but surely it would get her back to the 1980’s at least.  
    At this point, she didn’t care why she was in the tomb. The century didn’t matter. Ritual sacrifice didn’t matter. Air did.
    All her rituals failing once more, she lay on the floor to conserve air and tried to remember Laird Ross’s theory about dust settling. She wasn’t sure if she should hope for more time than Isobelle had, or wish for it to all be over sooner. There really was no guessing how much air and days remained, and it was the not knowing that drove her quietly out of her mind.  
    Too bad she hadn’t magically travelled back in time, to a year where the castle would have been filled with medieval dinner guests. Or better yet, filled with men like Michelangelo’s Highlander.  
    The food would have probably killed her anyway.
    Suddenly, like a flood of light, memories of her grandmother’s warnings poured onto the darkened stage inside her mind, overlapping like rushed dialogue in a manic play.
    “Never trust a Scot.”
    “Scottish soil is poison for MacKays.”
    “The devil’s playground.”
    “ Avoid it like the plague.”  
    Closing her eyes did nothing to stop Grandma’s voice.
    “Never let them know you speak Scots.”
    “$100,000 for every year you stay away.”
    “Wyoming is your home.”
    “Stay in Wyoming.”
    She so wished she had.
    Then, in the cool darkness, with nothing but imagined variations of blackness before her eyes, one question rose to the fore and drowned out all the mislaid warnings. She’d wondered it a million times, but chalked it all up to the ravings of an eccentric, bitter woman whose occasional mention of her Scottish husband was only to mutter the word wicked . But now, the question screamed out for an answer, like a long ignored middle child who had taken as much neglect as it could take.  
    How had Grandma known?
    How could Ivy MacKay have suspected what would happen to her granddaughter in a remote Scottish Castle less than a year