Free Not Without Juliet (A Scottish Time Travel Romance) (Muir Witch Project #2) by L.L. Muir

New York.
    Holy shit. What if the guy was really dreaming about her too? What if he might be sharing the whole emotional ride?
    Jules shook her head and sighed. It wouldn’t make any difference if he was—he’d just think it was a dream about his own wife. And that thought made her instantly sad.
    She dragged along next to Ewan, hoping he’d take her somewhere quiet where she could sit down and shut her eyes for a minute. What she really needed was to just confront her sister and get the hell away from her, and her husband, but the woman was even farther out of her reach than before. Over five hundred years away. And the only short cut back was through that tomb, now inconveniently guarded by Jules’ personal Angel of Death.
    It was just so surreal. What had it been, an hour since she’d started running down that hill? She couldn’t have made it into another time zone, and yet she’d traveled centuries? What a crock. Maybe, after she’d rested a bit, she could figure out another explanation. And it was a great plan...
    ...until they rounded a corner.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    Since she’d come through the back entrance to the castle, Jules had never seen the great hall except in a photo gallery on the internet. But this was no polished museum. It was a madhouse. Tables filled every corner except for the raised dais where three large items were the only decoration. The tomb—the one she had to have been inside. A giant carved throne which looked a little too imposing to sit in. And a massive statue of Jillian’s husband, in his kilt. It looked so much like him—or at least what he looked like through binoculars—that she expected him to walk right off the stage.
    But the most shocking part, and the thing making her nauseous again, was the crowd.
    They were all dressed in medieval garb. Every last one of them. Women, children—even the dogs looked a little barbaric.
    She turned back to Ewan and took a good look at his clothes. His kilt was nothing like any kilt she’d ever seen in real life. In the movies, yes. But modern day Scotsmen did not dress this way, not even for their Highland Games and Scottish Festivals. She knew. Her parents had taken her to them every year. They’d always been searching the crowds for some reason. When she was big enough, she realized they were searching for Jillian.
    Always Jillian. Their lives had centered on finding Jillian. If her parents hadn’t been driving across that long stretch of Wyoming highway, hunting down one more lead, they would have still been alive. But they’d been sure they were going to find her that time, just like every other time, and Jules had refused to go along. She found a friend whose parents would let her sleep over for a few days. She hadn’t even told them goodbye.
    Of course, if she’d have gone along, she’d be dead too. No one could have survived, even with seat belts. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about that. But she’d been pretty damn sure how she felt about Jillian.
    Out of habit, and a sort of homage to her parents, she’d kept going to the festivals. She’d even looked for Jillian, but her reasons were different. She wanted her sister to know she was responsible for their deaths, responsible for how they’d wasted the short lives they’d had—looking for a girl who never looked back.
    Watching the Scots gathering around for their evening meal, all the anger came flooding back, swirling in her nearly empty stomach like the ghost of a rotten meal—anger so sharp it brought tears to her eyes. She nearly turned around and headed back to the cellar, ready to confront her sister, mad enough to rip off the hitter’s head and spit down the hole. But she’d never get past him. Not without a gun. And she wasn’t sure these people even knew what a gun was.
    She let out a harsh breath. It was no use fighting it. She really was Dr. Who, and there was a monster inhabiting her tardis. She had to figure out a way to capture that monster so the