Each hellish possibility was worse than the last, slicing like a sword into his gut.
Cian slumped down against the wall, hands fisted, jaw clenched.
Waiting. Waiting.
“Aha—there you are!” Jessi exclaimed brightly, as she rounded the corner. “Finally!” A dozen yards away, at the end of the very last row (did it ever work any other way?) with the words UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY emblazoned in red across it, between a few dozen smaller stampings of the word FRAGILE, the tall plywood crate perched on end.
She glanced anxiously at her watch. It had taken her forever to find him. She was afraid that any minute now Stone-face was going to come crashing through the doors behind her, with half of Edinburgh’s Airport Security in tow.
When she’d first pushed through those double doors, she’d expected to find a small storehouse, not an industrial warehouse that stretched the length of a football field, with tiers that climbed all the way to a forty-foot ceiling, and row after row of numbered boxes, crates, and assorted packages.
She’d wasted precious time searching aisles of numbered items, before deducing that the unnumbered items lacking tickets were probably stored at the far end of the humongous building because the staff knew no one would be collecting them anytime soon.
The crate must have been the most recent arrival, as it was all the way down in the final spot at the end of the row. Sprinting toward it, she called out the summoning spell. “Lialth bree che bree, Cian MacKeltar, drachme se-sidh!”
Nothing happened.
She repeated the chant, expecting light to blaze from the cracks, and the crate to begin rocking or something.
Again nothing.
Drawing to a breathless halt in front of it, she pressed her ear to the wood panel. “Cian?” she called. She glanced warily over her shoulder. Despite the vastness of the warehouse and her apparent solitude within it, she was nonetheless reluctant to make a commotion. Squaring her shoulders, she opted for something more than an exclamation but less than a shout: “Cian!”
She pressed her ear to the plywood again. Was that a muffled roar? She listened a moment. Sure sounded like it. Yup, there was another.
She drew back and pounded on the crate with her fists. “Cian, I’m here! Can you hear me? Come on! Get your butt out here now! We have to hurry. I don’t know how long we have before they find us. Lialth bree che bree, Cian MacKeltar, drachme se-sidh!”
Total silence.
Just when she’d begun to think something must have gone seriously wrong en route, or she had the wrong crate or something, brilliant light blazed from the cracks, the warehouse felt even larger than it was, and she heard the rustle of inner packing.
A powerful fist splintered through the wood half an inch from her left ear.
Blinking, Jessi scrambled back.
He heard her, calling him.
At first Cian thought her voice was but another figment of his tortured imaginings, then it snapped impatiently, “Get your butt out here now!” and he laughed aloud. She was his prickly Jessica; they’d made it to Scotland, and she was freeing him again.
Pushing against masses of packing and cushion-wrap, he shoved from the mirror and turned his body into a battering ram.
He crashed a fist through the wood, then another, kicked and pounded at the crating with all the caged fury and impotent rage that had been riding him for two endless days.
He demolished the front of the crate, ripping it to shreds with his bare hands.
When he glanced up from the splinters, it was to find Jessica backed up flush to a shelving unit, staring at him, her face pale.
“Och, Christ, woman,” he hissed. Devouring the space between them in two strides, he cupped her jaw with one big hand, tipped her face up, and claimed her mouth in a kiss. Once, twice, three times. Then he drew back and glared down at her. “I thought you were dead. I couldn’t fucking get out of there and I thought of a thousand things I’d done wrong and imagined a million deaths for you. Kiss me, Jessica. Show me you’re alive.”
Jessi blinked up at Cian, stunned.
Kiss me, Jessica, his words hung in the air. Show me you’re alive.
When he’d come crashing out of the crate, for a moment she’d genuinely thought he’d gone crazy, so stark and inhuman was the expression in his eyes. Then he’d turned a look on her that had scorched right through her clothing, her skin, seared all the way to her bones, and before he’d even spoken, she’d known it had been fear for her that had put that wildness in him.
She’d been stunned. She’d been secretly thrilled. Because, although she’d been refusing to admit it even to herself, the whole time she’d been sitting in the airport, trying to figure out a way to get to him, she’d been suppressing an ever-growing panic, and not just because he was her best chance of staying alive. Somehow, it had gotten personal. A thousand worries had been plaguing her. Worries about him: Where was he? Was he okay? What if the mirror had inadvertently gotten broken? Would he die? Would he be stuck in there forever?