"No?" she said, thinking she needed to sit down. She needed to sit down quickly.

"Mum told you not to tell," Dairinn said.

"She told you not to tell either," Rory shot back. "And you blathered your story, didn't you?"

Dairinn scowled and crossed her arms. Danni stared at Rory, watching him make his decision about whether he would say more. But she'd already remembered what Rory could do. He understood. He understood not just people, but animals, too. All kinds, from birds to beasts. Not like a language, but a comprehension. As if their wants and needs became pictures in his head. And it didn't stop there.

"Once there was a man who came to our door," Dairinn began.

"It's my story, I'll tell it," Rory interrupted.

Dairinn clamped her mouth shut and sat back with a huff.

"He was a tourist," Rory picked up where Dairinn had stopped. "And he didn't speak English or Gaelic or any other language I'd heard."

"But Rory knew what he was saying. Sure and he could tell Daddy what it was and-"

"I said I would tell," Rory said crossly.

"G'wan, then."

"And I could speak what my Daddy said back to the man. It was Russian, I learned later. I could speak Russian."

"He can't do it now, though," Dairinn said, a little smugly. "Only then."

Rory shrugged, shooting a dirty look at his sister.

"Tell us what you are going to do?" Dairinn asked next.

"What I am going to do?" Danni said.

"Well, you're not here to make pasties are you?"

Danni looked down at her hands. "Casserole," she said.

The twins snickered, watching her with expectant eyes. Danni knew what they wanted, but how could she answer their question? Did she really know why she was here? Was there an actual reason? Or was it an accident that had tumbled her through time? Colleen had seen it coming. Dairinn looked as if she'd anticipated her arrival. What did that mean?

You can do whatever it is you put your mind to . . . .

She thought of Sean and her heart ached. Here, now, he was so real. Solid, achingly beautiful.

"I'm here to save someone," she said softly.

"You've the right of it," Dairinn said, as if she'd already known the answer. "But the Book is gone, if using it was your hope. 'Tis a blessing, though. Do you understand?"

"No."

Rory said, "If it is a life you want saved, the Book can make it so. If it's a treasure you're wanting, it can give that, too. Whatever dream you may have, the Book brings the power to grant it."

"But it cannot be used in such a way," Dairinn said. "It does not give without taking, and the greater the gift, the higher the price."

"It will take a piece of your soul," Rory said softly. "Take it like a coin from your purse. You might not even notice that it's gone until one day you need that coin and you no longer have it."

A piece of her soul. Would it be a worthy trade for Sean's life? For those of her mother, her brother . . . herself? Would the piece she gave today-from her grown self-affect the young one sitting in front of her now?

"Aye, it's a puzzle, isn't it?" Rory said. "You may not miss the piece you've given up, but someone else might."

"What do you mean by that?" Danni said.

"Well, a heart you've lost cannot break," Dairinn answered. "But what would your one true love feel if the part he most loved of you was gone?"

"She read that," Rory said.

"I didn't."

"In a fairy tale."

Dairinn opened her mouth in hot denial but Danni interrupted. "How did you get so smart? You seem much older than five."

Both pairs of eyes swiveled to her face. "Do you think the world is made up of only what you see?" Dairinn asked instead of answering.

Danni shook her head.

"Neither do we."

The statement felt heavy in the air between them, and Danni didn't know how to respond to it. She sensed the simple declaration should answer her query, but it only left her with more questions, more confusion. Since she'd awakened yesterday morning, she'd been trying to find out why they'd been brought here. Now she sensed she was close to the truth. These two children knew-not only why she was here, but what would happen next.

Colleen's harsh, pained voice whispered in her head. Even then you could have stopped it.

Danni stared into Dairinn's eyes, believing it now. Dairinn might be able to change the course of fate, but she was afraid-afraid of the cost. Afraid of the Book. Danni was afraid, too, but she would risk it. If it meant holding back the tide bent on washing her life away, she would risk everything.

She needed help though, and perhaps she could find it here, with the two of them.

"There's something . . ." Danni began, but she stopped, trying to decide how or even what to say.

Suddenly Dairinn leaned forward and held out her hand. Danni looked at it, so small and innocent there in front of her, but she hesitated, knowing that touching Dairinn-touching herself-could open a door she didn't know how to close. Dairinn raised her eyes in mute challenge.

Before she could change her mind, Danni clasped Dairinn's hand in her own and then Rory put his over both of theirs. For a moment, nothing happened, and then Danni felt a humming, a low vibration that trembled through her fingers, up her arm to the heart of her. She wanted to shy away from it, to pull her arm back and break the connection, but she didn't. She was done with running away and denying what she didn't want to face.

In her mind an image formed. Frowning, she realized it was Sean's brother and she was seeing him on the floor of the kitchen, lying in a pool of blood beside his mother. Dead. She frowned, not able to comprehend why she would be seeing this. Sean's brother hadn't been on the floor, hadn't died. Why . . .

Before she could ask why she'd seen something that hadn't happened, the kitchen door swung open. And Cathan MacGrath walked in.

Chapter Twenty-eight.

SEAN slowly made his way to the bay where the Guillemot was docked. The fog was thick as the sun shot its first ray over the horizon, making him feel as if he walked through a damp web. It obscured the harbor and the ocean beyond. Only the road and the thundering crash of waves let him know he was going in the right direction.

The heavy gray mist fit his mood. He'd grown up around strange and unexplainable things. He was Irish, and who among them didn't believe in another way, another reality? He didn't expect fairies to emerge from the hills and start with their mischief, but he knew the world was much more than rich earth, roiling seas, and the heavens above.

He looked around him. Here he was, a man out of time. Misplaced, out of step with his own rhythm. Yesterday, when he'd tried to put an explanation to how he'd come to be here, he'd blamed-or credited-his grandmother. But now . . . after this morning, he thought it was Danni. . . . Could she have brought them here in the same way she'd brought him to the worst of his childhood horrors in those dark hours before dawn?

He remembered how she'd looked yesterday when she'd awakened in his arms. She'd been as baffled by what was happening as he. She couldn't have faked her shock when they'd both realized that somehow, impossible though it was, they'd awakened twenty years earlier. If she'd done it, it hadn't been intentional.

So where did that leave him? Them?

He rubbed his hands over his face, feeling the rasp of stubble. He'd forgotten to shave this morning. He forgot a lot, but he couldn't recall ever feeling the whiskers on his cheeks and chin being so rough, so crisp and abrasive before. The feeling brought another sense of disquiet into his head. How many times in the past twenty-four hours had some ordinary sensation caught him like this? Made him think that it had been an eternity since he'd felt the things he was feeling now?

"For fuck 's sake," he mumbled, increasing his stride, now desperate to reach the Guillemot and busy his hands so he had no time for this pensive idiocy.

But the train of his thoughts chugged on, taking him up a winding track, past harrowing canyons, clanging over defunct switch-backs. Last night, with Danni . . . He closed his eyes and everything inside him tightened at the memory of her body wrapped around his. Her soft mouth touching him, kissing him, making him feel like nothing else in the world mattered-had ever mattered. Jesus, it had been like a sensory explosion-every second of it. So real, so tangible, so opposite anything he'd known. Again, he saw his existence before her through the insulation of a cocoon, shielded from the experience, the taste, the scent of life itself.

So why was it now that he could suddenly feel ? Pain . . . joy . . . the ache of needing . . . the agony of wanting . . . the sweet reward of giving.

His grandmother had told of the remarkable things she'd seen since his earliest memories-things she had no way of seeing, no way of knowing. And he'd suspected all along that Danni had the same gift, though she'd never said as much. But what Danni had done this morning was beyond his ability to comprehend.

He could still hear his mother shrieking, insane with her drunkenness and rage. He'd never forgotten that day, how he stood in the shadowed entrance of the kitchen, too frightened to even try to shield his brother from the erupting violence. He'd never forgotten the blood, the death hanging with the stench of old cabbage and cigarettes in the sudden quiet.

But what had happened this morning and what had happened that day so long ago . . . they weren't the same thing. He understood now that his terror and imagination had added an element of malice to the memory. A possessed rage in his father that had been notably missing.

But what about the other? What about Trevor?

It started in the same way, he and his brother coming home from school, laughing with their friend Connor. They'd heard the raised voices when they entered and had gone to the kitchen where they'd watched in horror as their parents' argument escalated from his mother's usual litany of drunken discontent to unalterable brutality. But then . . .

All those years ago, Trevor had jumped into the violence and tried to stop it. Trevor, not Sean. Sean had stood petrified in the shadowed doorway, watching his world slashed to pieces by the same butcher knife his mother used to cut the potatoes for their dinner. He hadn't prevented Trevor from racing into the middle of the fight. He hadn't protected him. And in the end, his mother's frenzied thrusts of the knife had found Trevor with unerring accuracy. She hadn't meant to do it-hadn't even realized she'd stabbed her own son.

Only after Trevor had fallen to the floor did the paralysis that gripped Sean relent. He'd rushed forward, lifted his brother and carried him away from his warring mother and father, back to the doorway. Sean remembered holding his hands over the raw and lethal hole in Trevor's chest. Watching helplessly as the blood, as the life poured out of him.

Only after his mother lay dead did his father notice his two sons and realize he'd lost more than his wife.

But today, Sean had stopped Trevor. And his father . . . his father had protected his oldest son, risked his own life to keep Sean safe. In the end, his mother was still dead, but by her own actions. He knew in his heart that part of it hadn't changed. His hurt and rage had warped the memory until it placed his father vengefully over her corpse, knife in his hand. But Niall had only acted out of self-defense-both times. He'd never wanted to hurt Sean's mother.

Christ. Sean didn't know what to think now. What did it mean that Trevor had survived the surreal reenactment that morning? Had Danni only shown him what he'd always wished he would have done? Protect and save his little brother? The guilt over not doing that very thing had eaten away at him all his life. How many years had he spent hating himself for it? Perhaps he'd twisted Danni's dream-her vision-into what he so desperately wanted.

Lost in his own confusion, he came upon the dock suddenly. He smelled it first, the reek of gutted fish, waterlogged nets, and tar. Next came the sounds of the waves slapping against the moored boats, the creaks and groans of sodden wood, the hollow thud of the hull brushing the dock pad. The thump of footsteps on the deck. Then he was through the fog and stepping on the blackened creosote-treated pier that jutted out to the bay. Half a dozen ships were anchored here. A half dozen more slips already empty. The Guillemot was still tied off and rocking.

"You're late," Niall said, giving Sean a hard look.

Michael glanced away from the spool to watch, and before Sean could respond, another boy came up from the cabin and smiled at him. He had a round and open face, still soft with youth and innocence. A thousand freckles dusted his nose and cheeks and bright blue eyes sparkled at him. He gave Sean a quick, shy smile that showed a missing front tooth. The sweetness of it clenched around Sean's heart. Jesus, it was Trevor. . . .

"I said you're late," Niall repeated, this time with irritation.

"Sorry," Sean said, still distracted by the image of Trevor. It couldn't be real, could it? Trevor was here, alive.

Sean moved quickly aboard and went to work pulling in the lines and raising the anchor, moving with the quick efficiency that came from a childhood spent on this very deck.

But he couldn't help stealing glances over his shoulder at the boy-a stranger and yet so achingly familiar-who stood next to Michael, whispering in shared camaraderie.

Underway, heading into the rising sun, Sean stared at the glittering sea, thinking it looked like the end of the world, where the sun flamed over the rippling waters. He couldn't get his mind around what was happening, what had happened. As he struggled with his thoughts, Niall came to stand beside him, glancing occasionally over his shoulder to Trevor at the wheel. Michael sat beside him, teasing his brother and laughing at something Trevor said back.

Christ in heaven, Danni had changed the past.

She'd saved his brother.

He drank in the sight of the two boys, bonded by blood and life. Reunited by the will of a woman Sean would never understand. But he was grateful-so grateful he wanted to drop to his knees and weep-no matter that it was unnatural, however Danni had done it. He glanced away, fighting to keep the tears stinging his eyes in check.

Not only had Danni changed the outcome, but she'd changed Sean's perspective on what had happened that day. This morning, he'd seen the look on his father's face as his mother plunged her knife into him. There'd been so much grief and sorrow in his expression that it defied words. It went deeper than the slashing blade, deeper than the sea itself. And he'd seen his father take the blade of her knife to save Sean from the same fate.

There wasn't time to dwell on it now, but the realization lifted a weight Sean had borne for nearly as long as he could remember. And relieved of the burden, he felt lighter. Stronger.

Soon they were baiting the leaders and dropping them into the sea. It was steady, strenuous work, but somehow it soothed Sean, allowing him to deal with the pressure of his thoughts without having to openly acknowledge them.

Michael and Trevor worked side by side through the morning. Gone was the bristling hostility Michael had worn the day before, and in its place were camaraderie and laughter. While he worked, Niall glanced at his sons with pride. Today they both smiled back.

The day progressed, moving with the sun and tide. They filled the hold completely and were calling it a day early. Sean was glad. He needed to see Danni, to explain why he'd been so distant with her this morning. Hope she understood that it was shock that had driven him to silence and then solitude. Not her.

As they pulled the lines and headed back, Sean came to stand beside his father. It was peaceful and somehow soothing to be there with the man he'd loved and hated with such warring intensity. They were the same height now, both layered with muscle and sinew over long heavy bones. Brawny men with large hands and broad shoulders. Built for physical labor.

"It's a grand vessel," Sean said, leaning back against the dash.

Niall made a sound of humor. "The Titanic she's not, but she's Irish made and seaworthy."

"Well, the last of it's more than the Titanic could boast."

"I suppose."

They rode in silence for a moment and then Niall asked suddenly, "What are you doing here, son?"

The question surprised him nearly as much as the casual "son," at the end. The leap through time had brought Sean's age very close to Niall's, and yet his father seemed many years older. It was there in his eyes, in the sag of his shoulders.

"I've come to work," Sean answered.

"Aye, that's what Mum says." The look Niall turned on him was piercing. "It's not the way of it, though, is it?"

"You tell me. You seem to know."

Niall gave a bitter snort of laughter. "That's God's truth. I seem to know."

The cryptic response settled around them and Sean tried to decipher the meaning. "You're talking of Nana's gift?" he said at last.

Niall gave him another sideways glance. "Am I? And what gift would that be?"