brave, are ye, thinking I won’t kiss you in front of your

children? What makes you so certain I didn’t win?”

Her face flushed and she scrambled to her feet. “It’s time

to eat.”

“Peg,” he said quietly as she headed down the ledge,

making her stop and look at him. “The day wil come that ye

don’t have them to hide behind.”

“No, actual y, it won’t, because the twins and I are stuck

together like glue.”

He canted his head, studying her. “Ye forgot I told you the

magic goes about its business whether ye believe in it or

not. And Peg?”

Up went that pretty nose in the air again.

“Someone who believes holds the advantage over

anyone who doesn’t.”

“And … and you believe?”

“I was born believing, lass.”

Whereas figuring out how to make Peg believe was

probably going to be the death of him, Duncan realized as

he watched her silently turn and walk away, her hands

bal ing into fists as she shoved them in her pockets. Only

problem being that in doing so, he’d likely be damning

himself to hel for manipulating the magic for no other

reason than to prove that he was bigger and stronger than

a curse, and a hel of a lot harder to kil than Wil iam

Thompson.

Chapter Fifteen

Duncan had just reached the mouth of the fiord when the

mother of al whales suddenly breached in front of the smal

boat he’d rented from Ezra. He grabbed the gunwale and

cut the motor as the whale slapped back into the water, the

force of the splash creating a wave that nearly capsized

him. It resurfaced close enough that he could have touched

the behemoth as it began swimming alongside the boat,

keeping pace even when he opened the motor to ful throttle

again.

Duncan cut diagonal y toward land when he was halfway

up the twelve-mile-long waterway and started looking for a

place to go ashore. The whale disappeared only to

resurface on the other side of him and gently bump the

bow. Not wanting to argue with the beast, he continued

down the fiord another few miles before the whale surfaced

on his left side and nudged the bow toward land.

Guessing it didn’t get any plainer than that, Duncan

slowed back to an idle and scanned the shore until the

moonlight revealed the smal beach spil ing out of the

dense evergreens growing al the way down to the high tide

line. He turned toward it and shut off the engine to let the

boat drift in eerie silence until it scraped onto the gravel,

and glanced over his shoulder in time to see the whale slip

back below the surface.

“Thanks for scaring ten years off my life, you big bastard,”

he muttered as he walked to the front of the boat and

stepped onto the beach—only to have a surge of energy

shoot through him with enough force to knock him on his

ass, causing him to hit his head on the bow on his way

down.

Go sit on your mountain, Mac had said, and feel the

power it wants to give you. Hel , he’d have to sit, as he couldn’t seem to stand on it. He grabbed the bow and

pul ed himself back to his feet with a curse, fingering the

bump on his temple as he wondered if the energy stil

humming through him might leave him permanently

sunburned.

The whale breached again not a hundred yards offshore,

and if Duncan wasn’t mistaken, he’d swear he heard

laughter. He turned his back to it and set his hands on his

hips as he gazed up at the black shadow looming into the

night sky. “And you, you big bastard, nap time’s over, so

wake the hel up.”

The gravel beneath his feet shifted and Duncan tried to

catch the boat even as he lunged toward the trees, only to

miss on both counts; the boat surged into the fiord as he

sunk into frigid water clear up to his waist. “For the love of

Christ,” he growled, slogging up into the woods, “you could

at least have a goddamned sense of humor.”

He dropped down on a bed of moss and unclipped his

cel phone off his belt, then pul ed it out of the leather pouch

and poured out the water as he eyed his boat now sitting

forty yards offshore. He unlaced his boots, pul ed them off,

then poured out the water, and unzipped his jacket and

shrugged it off. He then started unbuttoning his shirt with a

sigh—only to stop midbutton when the boat suddenly lifted

on the back of the whale and shot farther out to sea. He set

his elbows on his knees and dropped his head in his hands

with a muttered curse. For the love of God, he hadn’t

grabbed his backpack and sword. He snapped his head up

and jumped to his feet. “You dump that boat and I’m coming

after you with a harpoon!”

The behemoth sunk below the surface to leave the boat

floating in the middle of the fiord, the moonlight glistening

off the motor as it rocked on the gentle swel s. He heard

quiet laughter again, this time coming from the woods

behind him, and sat down on the moss then flopped back

spread-eagle with a groan. He must have real y pissed off

the magic sometime in his youth, because he stil couldn’t

come up with one good reason why he deserved this.

What in hel was so al -fired important about accepting a

cal ing he didn’t even want, anyway? Like he’d told Mac,

there were enough magic-makers running around Maine

already; what did Providence care if he remained a mere

mortal making his way through life one day at a time?

Duncan snapped his eyes open when he realized the

ground beneath him was slowly moving up and down even

as he heard what sounded like … snoring. Wel , hel ; the

mountain real y was sleeping.

Then who—or what—had been laughing in the woods

behind him?

Okay, he had two choices: He could build a fire to dry out

his pants and boots and go find his calling, or he could lie

here until he rotted. Neither choice held al that much

appeal, but apparently just giving up wasn’t programmed

into his DNA. He used a heartfelt groan to propel himself

into a sitting position, pul ed off his socks and wrung them

out, then put them back on and reached for his boots—only

to find just one. The cel phone was there along with its

pouch, and one boot. And he was far enough away from the

water that it couldn’t have fal en in.

Duncan quietly undid the sheath on his belt and slowly

pul ed out his knife as he stopped breathing to listen. Other

than the soft snore of the mountain, he didn’t—

There, just over the knol to his right, he heard

what sounded like slobbering. He rol ed to his hands and

knees and silently crawled across the carpet of moss,

lowering to his bel y when he reached the tangled roots of a

large cedar.

He slowly peeked over the top, then blinked to make sure

the blow to his head hadn’t messed with his vision,

because that sure as hel looked like a dog chewing on his

missing boot. A puppy, actual y; a gangly blond pup that

definitely had some lab in the mix, about seven or eight

months old. Which meant one of two things: Either Mac had

given him a mountain that was already occupied, or the pup

had become stranded here when the earthquake had

created the fiord.

Then again, maybe his fal had knocked him out and the

puppy fairy had paid him a visit while he’d been asleep.

“Psst,” he whispered, causing the young dog to stop

midchew, every muscle in its scrawny body freezing except