Free Chrysocolla by B. Kristin McMichael

to accept anything from him, but I hadn’t listened. It was one of the reasons I was in this mess right now.
    “That only works if you let him put it on. Your willingness to take it from him is what sealed it on you. If you don’t take anything from him, you won’t have to worry about that,” Kye explained. He didn’t seem too worried about the bracelet.
    “And you have enough stones to travel through several times and back again,” Ty added, patting my back. He knew how this was terrifying to me. I had only just learned how to time travel. I wasn’t anywhere near prepared to deal with Logan, who had lived more than three lifetimes traveling as he pleased. Somehow I needed to get caught up on everything, and I needed to do it before Logan found the last stone or we all were in trouble.
    “So we just sit here and wait?” I asked. I didn’t really like Kye’s approach now that I knew Logan could come and go as he pleased even in Egypt.
    “How about we go treasure hunting?” Seth replied.
    “Treasure hunting?” I asked, not sure where that was going.
    “Isn’t Logan looking for one more stone? What if we find it first, and don’t tell him? He can spend the rest of his life looking for that stone and in doing so will leave us alone.” Seth looked at me, waiting for a response. He was right on my track. He was ready to go on the offensive.
    I raised my eyebrows at the thought. I did want Logan to keep busy and away from me. Seth’s plan actually sounded decent. I was all for getting the last stone and not telling Logan, and I was definitely on board for being left alone. Why couldn’t Logan just go away? Treasure hunting it was then. Ty nodded, and Kye smiled and nodded, too. That sounded like a great plan.
     

Chapter 4
    The Last Stone
     
    I sat and stared at Kye. He was still not making any more sense than he had the first time he explained it to me. With the goddess’ power running through my blood I was connected to all the stones. I should, in theory, have been able to feel them, just as the goddess could see when someone asked to use her power. Kye said that by embedding the stones in me, she was essentially giving me her power. While I only had five of the hundred stones, it was enough to make me feel the magic of her where ever it was. I had her powers now, supposedly all of them to some extent.
    I understood that the stones were inside me, and how I was to access their power, but that didn’t help when feeling for the missing stone. Kye assured me that it was within my realm of ability. I trusted him. It made logical sense, but that didn’t mean I could do what he wanted. Somehow, I was now connected to the stones. According to him, it would be easy to find the lost stone. It wasn’t. And I was pretty sure I wasn’t connected to anything besides the ones I loved.
    “Mari, focus,” Kye told me for at least the twelfth time. Focus really didn’t seem to help anything.
    “Just give it another shot,” Ty said a little more kindly.
    At least he wasn’t getting fed up with my lack of ability to do things perfectly on the first, second, or tenth time. Ty had been there since the beginning, and it was nice to have him there now, even if he couldn’t do anything to help. No one could. I wished time traveling came with a manual.
    Training was just a bit hard with Kye. He had high expectations of me. I had to imagine the person Kye knew as his mother, and the person who was me were completely different. It wasn’t fair for him to compare me to my future self. She had years more experience on me.
    I wished I had more help. The guys were good motivation, and while I had yet to figure everything out, they were also an endless stream of suggestions. I was completely drained and had no more ideas, so I appreciated them greatly, well at least Ty and Seth. Not exactly Kye, who sat with a scowl on his face watching me fail again.
    It wasn’t fair that Dee got to bail on us. So what if he had a wife and