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The dim light at the end of the tunnel made tears well in my eyes with relief. I ran full out and didn’t stop until I was breathing the fresh, pine resin scented air, almost tripping over yellow caution tape.
“Callista!”
I whipped around to see Tom Black jog up to me, shoving branches out of his way.
“Tom!”
My own time then.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
“Thank God you’re all right,” he rushed out, gripping my shoulders. “Where have you been? Everyone’s been searching for you all afternoon. Maggie and her team checked the tunnels again and again, we all did, but there was no sight of you.”
All afternoon?
I blinked hard, checked around the warm, green woods. It wasn’t autumn. It was...
“It’s summer,” I said. “It’s the summer solstice today.”
Instead of returning me to my own time at Samhain, I had been boomeranged back to the same day as my first time-jump. That was...unexpected.
“I suppose so,” he said, then frowned at my long skirt. “What the hell are you wearing?”
“Where’s Maggie?” I rushed out.
Tom gestured towards the west. “She and another team are looking for you out in the valley. Come back to the truck with me, and I’ll radio everyone that you’ve been found. Crap, girl, you’ve given everyone a major scare today.”
“Sorry.”
“Where’s your gear?” he asked as we hiked along the wooded trail.
“Lost it. Tom, I need you to trust me on something.”
He shrugged. “What’s up?”
“I need you to drive me someplace as soon as we get to your truck. Will you?”
* * *
Tom opened the door for me when we reached his truck. When I was settled, he walked a few paces away to radio the rescue teams combing the mountain for me that I had been found. Personally, at the moment I wasn’t so sure myself.
“It’s the very next mountain toward the west,” I directed him as he drove the winding paved highway. “There should be a town at the base. It might be a gated community.”
If it was there at all. I didn’t know. But I did have faith in Bryant’s vision, and in the man himself.
Not for the first time Tom gave me a grimacing look and shook his head, probably wondering if my faculties were in proper working order. I’m sure it all sounded ludicrous. Rantings from a distraught, dehydrated woman who had been lost for hours inside a mountain.
“But you’re not going to tell me the name of it,” he remarked.
I was going to tell him that I didn’t know the name of Bryant’s future(or present)community. I was only glad that he had been willing to drive me there instead of the local loony hospital. Which would probably be our next stop, if this didn’t pan out.
“Tell me when we get there,” I said, laying my aching head back on the seat rest and closing my eyes.
I let go of a heavy breath and felt for my trusty rose quartz, then slumped remembering that it had shattered in the cave room. Instead, I thumbed the emerald signet ring for reassurance. It was my anchor to reality now, to Bryant himself.
He was dead though.
Had been dead.
