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Beyond the loch.
“Fine.” She pulled on a sweater and boots. “I’ll just walk around and around and around the damn thing until he shows up.”
Or someone else tossed her in.
Hand on the door, Kris paused, remembering that day, the huge, black beastie with the oddly familiar eyes. Certainly they’d been gray instead of blue, but a mere change in color could not take away the soul inside.
If a shape-shifting, cursed kelpie even had a soul.
Kris yanked open the door and stepped into the night. She couldn’t believe she was accepting this …
“Insanity,” she muttered, tromping across the road, then down to the loch.
But was it insanity?
She was going to find out.
Kris scanned the shore—nothing, not even a body—before turning her gaze to the loch.
In this darkest hour when the moon had fallen and the sun was not even a hint upon the horizon, the water skated like black ice to the opposite shore. Waves sloshed, but she couldn’t see them or anything else. Not a boat. Not a log. Not a rock. Not a—
“Nessie!” she shouted, then picked up a stone and threw it with all her might into the darkness. “I know you’re out there. I know who you are.”
The stone hit. Kerplunk. The silence that followed seemed to roar in her ears. Kris began to speed walk down the shore. He couldn’t hide from her. Not forever.
“Liam!” she shouted. “Liam Grant!”
She reached a thick grove of trees. Beneath them the night loomed ever darker. Fuck it! she thought, and plunged inside.
“William! Billy! Whatever the hell your name is. Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
She felt like a fool, but she didn’t stop. She wouldn’t stop. Not until he faced her and told her the truth.
She reached Urquhart Castle. This time no one stood at the top. The wind wailed through the ruins like a banshee.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Are you deaf? Or maybe you’ve just got water in your ears. If you have ears.”
Kris paused, listened, heard nothing but the wind and the water. Still, she could have sworn—
She tilted her head, caught that wicked scent. He was here. Somewhere. The back of her neck even prickled.
Her gaze scraped the castle, the ruins, the loch, and the trees. Then suddenly she knew.
“You’re right behind me, aren’t you?”
CHAPTER 24
“I do have ears, mo chridhe.”
Kris spun. Liam couldn’t see her expression, but he heard the pain in her voice, even before it broke on the final word. “You don’t get to call me mo whatever.”
“My heart,” he whispered, and his chest ached.
Her chin came up. “You don’t have a heart.”
“I do, and it is yours. Forever.”
“I hear forever for you is really forever.”
