Beyond the Highland Myst(654)

When she'd regained consciousness, she'd been lying in the road.

Alone. With a sick, horrid feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Watching the man she loved being brutally shot had been the purest hell.

She'd heard the bullets ripping into his body with dull, wet sounds, she'd seen his blood spurting, and— if it had indeed been only an illusion courtesy of the queen, as she prayed it had been— the look of pain and shock on Adam's face had been stunningly, horrifyingly real.

She'd forced herself up on shaky legs, trembling, desperately looking around for someone to tell her that it hadn't really happened. That the queen hadn't really let him die.

But there'd been no one there to reassure her. Only thick, swirling fog and aching silence.

Apparently. Faery was done with her.

There wasn't even any blood anywhere; no sign that anyone had ever been on that road but her.

So what, she'd raged, shaking her fist at the dense bank of clouds above her. I don't even get to know what happened? That's bullshit. If you think I'm just walking away without explanations, you are so wrong! Where is Adam? What happened? Show him to me! Tell me he's okay!

But walk away, or rather drag her miserable self away, was exactly what she'd finally ended up doing.

She'd been out of her head for a time. She'd raged and shouted until her throat was raw, until she was capable of making only broken croaking sounds. She'd stalked and paced and stomped until her legs had given out, until she'd slumped against the car, then slid to the ground in exhaustion.

She'd huddled, shivering in the chilly fog while the day turned to night around her, waiting.

Absolutely certain that at any moment Adam would "pop" in, flash her that lazy-sexy smile, tell her he was okay, then finish the stupid, awful conversation they'd been having.

She would tell him that she loved him. And somehow everything would be all right. So, he didn't have a soul or a heart. So, he was physiologically different from her, sprung of an alien race. So, she could never become immortal.

So what

She would take what Morganna had taken: a life with him. Whatever she could have of him. They could make things work, she knew they could. It might not be her idealistic teenage fantasy, but it would be enough. It would be far better than having nothing of him.

Fourteen hours later it had dimly penetrated that she couldn't sit in the middle of the road forever. That she was stiff and cold and hungry and needed desperately to go to the bathroom.

That she was slowly going crazy sitting in the dark by herself, torturing herself with imaginings.

Surely the queen hadn't let him die. Surely Aoibheal wasn't so callous, would never sacrifice one of her own. Surely she'd swept him away and healed him. Surely she'd kept her word and restored him.

But those "surelys" weren't entirely comforting, because if he was okay and restored, then where was he?

If he was okay, how could he just leave her sitting in the middle of the road, with no answers, no matter how messy of an argument they'd gotten into?

Unless, unless, unless...

Oh, the "unlesses" just sucked!

Unless he hadn't really cared about her at all.

Unless it had all just been a brief diversion for him.

Unless she'd never been anything more than a means to an end.

No. She refused to believe that. Just as she refused to believe he was dead.

"He's okay," she whispered to herself. "And he's going to come back. Any minute now."





* * *





Any minute became any day became any week.

Gabby moved woodenly though time. Detachedly going thorough the motions, void of passion, an automaton.

Though, upon returning home, a part of her had wanted nothing more than to barricade herself in her house and hide, to curl in bed with the covers snug over her head, there was a bigger part of her that harbored a special and very personal hatred of quitters, of people who just gave up and left.

It was something she could never permit herself to do.

So the very next morning after returning to the States, she'd gone in to work at Little & Staller, acting as if she'd never even been gone.

And just as she'd figured, no one had bothered to clean out her desk. Cases were still stacked every bit as high and haphazardly as ever they'd been. Cleaning it out would have taken time, and all the interns at Little & Staller were overworked. Besides, anyone foolish enough to clean off another person's desk inevitably got stuck with their caseload.

No, her desk would have sat untouched until one plaintiff or another had called, demanding to know why their case hadn't been heard yet. Until some fire had needed putting out.

Without saying a word to anyone, she'd walked in, plunked her double-shot espresso on the desk, sat down, and begun working on arbitrations. Woodenly. With brisk efficiency. Refusing to think about anything but the case at hand. Losing herself in her work. In the innocent people who needed her to help them, needed her expertise.