Excerpt of Healing the Highlander by Melissa Mayhue

HEALING THE HIGHLANDER
Pocket Books, February 26, 2011

At her darkest moment, when she’d thought her future was
lost, her sister’s new family had offered her a glimmer of
hope. Robert had brought her here, seven hundred years into
the past, depositing her in the care of his parents.
Without even a hint of a Faerie in sight, Leah felt safe
and secure for the first time in what seemed like forever.
It was as if, at long last, she’d found a place to call
home.

And then, just as she’d thought herself free to relax,
Faerie magic had reared its ugly head once more.
When that emerald sphere of magic had engulfed Robert and
the woman he loved, Leah had felt as if her heart were
about to burst out of her body. She’d felt the magic’s
pull, as if it sought to drag her along with the other two.
The hair on her arms had raised and her clothing had stood
out from her body as if she were being sucked into the
magic to return to her own time along with them. The
dragging, pulling, suction had ceased only when the child,
Jamie, had jumped into the circle and the three of them
poofed into the future in a shower of magnificent colored
sparkles.

How did she admit all that to the woman who had taken her
in and even now worried over her?

She owed Margery MacQuarrie honesty even if it was the
honesty of a coward. With a quivering breath, Leah wiped
her eyes and tried to own up to her failings.

“Not because they left me behind, Grandma Mac, but because
I was terrified the magic would take me along with them.
Right back to...to all the things I’d thought I’d escaped.
And when that poor little boy —,” her voice cracked with
another sob as she acknowledged the monster her cowardice
had made of her. “When the magic took Jamie instead, I was
grateful, as awful as that makes me, grateful it was him
and not me.”

Leah allowed Margery to enfold her in her comforting
embrace, once more giving herself over to the tears that
had taken so long to find their release.

"My poor, gentle-hearted lassie,” Margery murmured as she
rocked back and forth. “You’ve no a need to take the lad’s
going onto yerself. While it may be that Jamie took yer
place, you must see that he belonged with Robbie and
Isabella. Just as you belong here with us.”

“Do you really think so?” Leah pulled back from the older
woman, searching her face for any sign that Margery simply
patronized her with platitudes.

Nothing but sincerity shone in the older woman’s eyes. “I
do, lass. The magic of the Fae works in its own mysterious
way. And though I ken you believe you’ve no use for that
part of yerself,” she held up a hand to quiet the protest
Leah was about to make, “it is there, nonetheless. Just
know, until the day comes you want to embrace it, we’ll no
ever speak to it again, if that’s what you want.”

Leah nodded, slowly, overcome with gratitude for this
caring woman who’d taken her in and treated her as if she
really were her own flesh and blood. “It is. I only want to
be normal.”

“Well then,” Margery smiled and rose to her feet, patting
down her skirt as she did. “You’ve naught to worry over.
After all, yer Leah MacQuarrie, daughter of Robert,
granddaughter to Hugh and Margery. You can hardly be more
normal than that, now can you?”

Leah rose hesitantly to stand, mindful of the raw burns
covering half her body, the result of her having used her
Faerie powers one last time to heal Jamie. The same boy
who’d then gone to the future to take her place. The pain
would be gone in a few days and her body would return to
the way it had been. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad trade for
either of them.

Jamie, with his freshly healed body, would have all the
advantages the twenty-first century had to offer, plus the
love Robert and Isabella obviously felt for him.

She, after a few days to recuperate, would have the rest of
her life to live out as a normal person, in the safety of
this time and place, without ever having to touch the
Faerie magic again.