The Third Fate Read Free

too fatigued to muster her pace. The phone blared anew, and Paige answered it testily.
    “ What is it, Brooke?”
    The cheery voice on the other end ignored her rude beginning.
    “ You have something to tell us?” her cousin, Brooke, teased wickedly.
    Brooke and Lara were more like sisters than cousins. Their mother, her Aunt Anna, raised her alongside them. Their being twins – and she only 5 months younger – made them more like triplets. Anna had formally adopted her and named her as her own child after her mother had died giving birth to her. It was something her Aunt refused to discuss, and Paige assumed it was too painful a memory for her to relive. The few times they talked about her mother had been brief, and Sissy – as all three girls called her, doing so since they could speak – explained that she and Paige’s mother had been closer than any sisters there ever were, and that losing her own twin, Agnes, had been the most painful event of her life. After that, Paige hesitated to dredge up so awful a sorrow for her beloved Sissy.
    “ What would I have to tell?” Paige questioned, having no idea of what her cousin was talking about.
    “ Don’t you dare play the shy little virgin this morning, Paige Kinnell! We want details, woman!”
    Brooke’s voice carried overly well through the line, and Paige held the phone away from her ear, protecting her eardrum.
    “ What in all of Hades are you about, calling me in the morning and asking me silly questions? Details? Of what?”
    Brooke screamed in exasperation, and had Paige been at the library she would have hung up on her already. Half of Glasgow could surely hear her big mouth.
    “ Of that beautiful man you went on about last night on the phone! You know, the one with the black hair? The icy blue eyes? The body built to make a saint sin? That’s who! Are you daft? Do you remember talking to me last night?”
    Oddly, Paige did not remember that; however, she did remember the man. The man from her dreams.
    Oh bother! How can I explain this?
    “ I must have been dreaming or something. Sorry, but there’s really nothing to tell, girls.”
    “ Paige, honey… if those are your dreams, I need to know what you were drinking before you went to sleep!”
    Brooke laughed again, relating the conversation to Lara, who guffawed in the background. Paige smiled, her first of the morning. They made her crazy, but she couldn’t imagine life without them. The ‘Terrible Trio’, that’s what Sissy had named them in their elementary years. A strong bond glued them to one another; Sissy had seen to that.
    All ye really ha’ is each other. Never forget that, lassies. Never. Let no soul ever come between ye.
    “ All right, you two. I’ve got to get ready for work. Call me later. Maybe I’ll get out of there on time for once.”
    “ You should come out with us tonight,” Brooke invited. “We’re going to Jinty McGinty’s…It’ll be fun.”
    “ I don’t know,” Paige hesitated. “You know I don’t drink much, and sitting around while everyone else does is not all that fun.”
    “ Oh, come on! It’s been an age since you let your hair down. All work and no play make Paige a dull girl. You’re too timid, Paige. How are you ever going to land a man if you…” Someone or something interrupted Brooke’s sage-like lecture, saving Paige the trouble of begging off the line. “Sorry, Paige! Gotta run! I’ll call you at seven sharp. And for the love of Henry wear something more risque than a turtleneck.”
    The line went dead, and Paige heaved a sigh of relief, muttering as she readied for work.
    “ What’s the matter with my turtleneck sweaters anyway?”

Chapter Two

    Cael fingered the Celtic cross taken from around the female’s neck, a link to her in the days of separation since he’d indulged. Her blood song enchanted him even now in the safety of Fife Manor, his coven’s safe house, and he hardened painfully in recollection of the potent elixir that