Page 50 of Alec

“You’re right,” Ava said, and took a scroll from one of the shelves to spread it out on one of the podiums. “This is a scroll I found a couple of weeks ago.”

“It’s blank,” she said, frowning.

“It just looks like it is. It’s a Fae viewing scroll that belonged to Tasgall’s daddy, I think.” Ava glanced at Sawney. “If one of the clan touches it, you can make the past appear. All you need to do is think of what you want to see, and it creates a window to that time and plays a little movie of it.”

Olivia stepped back and suppressed a shudder. “There’s nothing I want to see in the past, I assure you.”

“I expected as much, and I’d never ask that.” The laird’s wife grimaced. “What I’d like to see is what happened just before you first came here. When you fell into the pit in our world, and that old man hurt you.”

Although she was tempted to refuse, no one had asked her to do anything since she had arrived at Dun Talamh. At the same time, she suspected Ava hadn’t told her husband that she was coming here or using the viewing scroll. “Why?”

“I think something came in with you at the same time, but you didn’t see it, and Alec only had eyes for you,” the other woman said. “I need to get a good look at the whole situation, and that old guy, too. Tell you what. Think of what you saw when you came out of the pit. That’ll be easier, I imagine.” She indicated the scroll to Sawney and said, “Would you do the honors?” He rested his hand on the edge of it.

Olivia’s fingers trembled as she reached out to touch the parchment and thought of that terrible moment when she had been flung out of the pit. Instantly an image of Alec catching her appeared. Her stomach clenched when she saw her formerly stunted body also take on a faint glow before her arms and legs began growing out of her clothes. Yet seeing Alec and how carefully he held her made her nausea dwindle.

“Thank you, Sawney,” Ava said to the guard, who tilted his head toward them both and resumed his position outside. Ava gently closed the door.

“I’m so lucky he was there,” Olivia told her. “I don’t know what I would have done if I’d arrived here alone.”

“You’re tough. You’d have come looking for us. There.” Ava pointed to a chunk of ice in the image that fell from Olivia’s back onto the stone floor. A moment later it sprouted wings and flew off into the shadows. “That’s the same bug that I stepped on when we found the laundress and her girls frozen. Numbed my whole foot.”

Olivia touched her shoulder, recalling how it had felt just before Alec had caught her. “I remember now. It did the same thing to my right shoulder blade, but it went away a few seconds later. Maybe the trap healed that, too.”

“Can you go back to your memory of the old man who hurt you?” Ava asked. “I know it’s upsetting, but maybe that will tell us more about the bug.”

She didn’t want to even think about him, but nodded and touched the scroll again. This time it showed her dangling from the edge of the pit, and the old man coming to stand over her.

“That jerk sure is butt-ugly,” Ava murmured, and winced when the man stomped on Olivia’s fingers. “I’ve never seen him before, but he seems familiar.”

Olivia couldn’t watch him kick her in the face, so she started to look away. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something glitter in his hand.

“Look.” She tapped the scroll, and the image enlarged to show the chunk of ice he was holding, and how he tossed it in after her. “That’s how it got on me.”

“It didn’t freeze him, so he must have been the one to enchant it.” Ava peered at the image as the man turned away.

“No.” Olivia covered her mouth as the last image she had seen appeared: the old man’s filthy toga was turning navy blue, and dark hair was growing out of his bald scalp. “He’s changing into Renard Beaumont, the owner of the property. I met him just before I came inside the castle.”

“So did I.” The other woman’s expression turned grim as the scroll went blank. “That jerk has to be some kind of Fae to be able to shape shift.” She met Olivia’s gaze. “Did Beaumont smell bad to you, too?"

“Yes.” She couldn’t believe she hadn’t made that connection. “Not as bad as the old man, but it was the same kind of stink. Like something rotting.”

“We need to talk to my husband about this once he and the boys have dealt with the MacBren,” Ava said, taking down the scroll from the slanted top and rolling it up. “Beaumont could be some kind of Fae shapeshifter. If he’s the one sending these bugs in to attack us, then he has to have a reason for that.”

She wasn’t telling her everything she knew, Olivia guessed. “You already know the reason he’s doing this.”

“One possible reason, yes.” As the laird’s wife put the scroll back on a shelf, she told her about the black widow killer and some of the things she had said before she had burned to death in the smelting furnace. “She told Rory that her ex wanted her to look for treasure in here. She murdered all of her husbands before the last, so I think she meant him. He went missing right before she came into the trap.”

Olivia considered that for a moment. “Do you think Beaumont could have killed her husband so he could take his place?”

“I think Beaumont was her husband.” Ava’s jaw tightened. “He’s a very rich man in our time, and so was the black widow. Maybe that’s how he keeps adding to his fortune, by marrying and then getting rid of wealthy women.”

“Just when I thought he couldn’t get more disgusting.” Olivia shuddered. “It’s odd, though. Why would he have hidden a treasure inside the place he cursed?”

“It’s safer here than anywhere else, for one thing,” the laird’s wife pointed out. “But if he really wanted his wife to look for it, then he doesn’t know where it is. That may explain why he keeps sending in these enchanted bugs, too.” Shouts from the outside passage made her draw a long dagger from her belt.

The door burst open, and Farlan looked at both of them before sighing with relief. “My lady, Mistress Gibson, you should be down below with the other ladies.”

“We’re okay, Seneschal.” Ava tucked away her blade. ‘What’s all the hoopla about out there?”