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ocean echoing on the beach, but she did not hear it.
    She was widely awake, staring up at the unfamiliar beige silk pleats of an unfamiliar canopy over the very unfamiliar bed she lay in. Her heart lurched and she jerked to sit up. She took in the bed, with its brown paisley coverings and striped sheets, the fleur-de-lis pillow cases, the larger brown velvet pillows behind them, Her gaze lifted, bewildered, and she saw the entire sparsely furnished stone chamber— and it hit her, hard. She was not at her home in South Hampton.
    She was still clad in the sea-foam evening gown' now, she saw her silver sandals on the floor.
    The events of the night rushed over her—she'd been at her father's fundraiser and a powerful warrior had appeared, thwarting the demonic attack.
    She breathed in hard. Last night had been real. A warrior from another time, blessed by the gods, had come to help her fight the demons. Her mother had told her to embrace her destiny and trust a golden Master. Tabby had seen him coming, powerful and blessed, from the past. The CDA rumors were true. She trembled with excitement. She couldn't wait to tell Tabby, Sam and Brie.
    Ye need to hold on to me right.
    Allie gasped, because the last thing she recalled was being flung across the pastures and horses, the velocity ripping her body apart.
    Where was she? She was obviously in someone's ancestral home—she had toured Europe and Britain extensively enough to know an old manor or castle when she was in one. Allie threw the covers aside, stumbling from the bed to the window. The panes were golden glazed glass. She jerked hard on the latch, and the moment she opened the window, she breathed in crisp, scented air that was unmistakable.
    She was to the Highlands.
    She stared out of the window, stunned. She was on a high floor, and she saw castle walls to her left, ending at a round tower. She realized she was in another, similar' corner tower. The castle itself was perched on the top of a high hill, and she saw the sparkling blue waters of a loch or river far below. Across the body of water were the barren, harsh hills and higher mountains of the Highlands. Clouds shrouded the peaks.
    Her mind raced with dizzying speed. She’d been to Scotland many times, but not until after her mother's death. Her mother had been born in Kintyre, her father's parents in Glasgow and Aberdeen, so curiosity had brought her to the land of her ancestors. She was definitely in the Highlands now; she just wasn't sure where.
    Calm down, she told herself, but it wasn't fear which clouded her mind. It was excitement.
    Her golden warrior had brought her here. But the plaid he wore marked him as an Highlander, too.
    She stared out of her window, at the lake or river below, and her senses took over. Allie realized she was looking south, but slowly, she leaned out of the window and gazed lo the west.
    She breathed harder now.
    The magnetic pull was familial, and timeless.
    The Ancients were near—in the west.
    Allie trembled. Every time she'd visited Scotland, she'd been drawn to the small, quaint
island
of
Iona
as if a nail to a magnet. There, she'd wandered the ruins of the late medieval abbey and the Benedictine monastery, aware that the ground below had been hallowed by the great St. Columba, who had raised the very first monastery on the island's shores. She'd become entirely unaware of the other tourists. Beneath her feet, the ground had throbbed. And above her head, whispers from another time, another era, seemed to beckon her. She felt as though if she reached up into the sky, she might pull someone down to stand beside her; or if she reached into the ground, she might lift some past person up.
    Later, lying awake in her bed at the Highland Cottage Hotel on Mull, she had laughed at herself for almost believing that she had heard people from another time. But she was certain of the power and purity of the ground itself, Iona was a holy place, even if she was one of the few people to