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“Thank you so much, Ellen. I swear I’ll find a way to pay you back for this. This and everything else you’ve done for me. Clint will bring him when he comes to the party this afternoon.”

“Bring who?” Syrie asked, entering the kitchen to looks of surprise from Rosella and Ellen.

“I thought you’d still be sleeping,” Ellen said, rising from her chair to refill her coffee. “It’s not even seven yet.”

“Nightmares,” Syrie answered, shuddering as she crossed to the cabinet to retrieve a cup and fill it with hot water from the kettle on the stove. With teabag in hand, she joined her friends at the table. “Who is Clint bringing?”

“My cousin,” Rosella said, concentrating on the cup in front of her. “Patrick. He arrived last night. From Scotland.”

A look Syrie couldn’t quite interpret passed between Ellen and Rosella before both of them once again turned their focus to the fascinating cups in front of them.

“What’s going on here that you’re not telling me?” Syrie asked.

After all this time, she knew the two of them well enough to recognize strange behavior when she saw it.

“Ellen has agreed to allow Patrick to stay here,” Rosella said, lifting her eyes for the first time. “For a while, anyway.”

“Rosie is worried that you might be uncomfortable with him living here with us, since, you know, he’s a guy and the only open room is on the other side of your bathroom.”

A man living in their all-female household? And on her floor? Syrie sipped her tea and considered the prospect.

“Men have to live somewhere, too. And he is your cousin.” She took another sip and lifted her eyes to meet the oddly anxious gazes of her friends. “It really makes no difference to me if your cousin moves in with us. Is he awful or something?”

“Oh, no. Not at all,” Rosella denied quickly. “He’s just…different. You know. A little strange, him being a foreigner and all.”

“And tell her your good news,” Ellen chimed in, almost as if to change the subject. “Show her!”

“Show me what?” Syrie asked.

Rosella held out her left hand, her cheeks coloring an even brighter pink than they already were. “Clint popped the question yesterday. It’s official now. We’re getting married!”

Staring at Rosella’s hand, Syrie realized this bauble she wore on her hand must be the “ring to seal the deal” that Ellen had spoken of the day before. “It’s lovely. I’m so happy for you.”

Easy to be happy for her dear friend when she could see how very happy Rosella was.

“Thanks,” Rosella said, allowing her hand to drop back to her cup. “But I’ve been so into myself the past week getting ready for Clint to get back, I feel like I’ve missed everything that’s going on around here. So, update me, ladies. Ellen tells me you’re bringing a guy to the party today. I want to hear all about him.”

What was there to say? Ellen had told her to bring someone she found interesting, and Gino was a fascinating young man.

“There’s not much to tell. He’s one of the waiters where I work.”

“And…” Rosella countered, trailing out the word as if she clearly expected more.

“Details,” Ellen added, her face breaking into a smile. “Tall or short, dark hair or light, skinny or fat? You know, all the juicy details we love so much.”

“Tall, dark hair, medium build, I suppose. Neither skinny nor fat. Unique eyes.”

It was his eyes that had first drawn Syrie’s attention. So dark they were almost impenetrable, and yet still they shone with his every emotion. Old eyes, her intuition told her. Old eyes, old soul. And, even without remembering anything about who she used to be, she knew in her heart that she’d always had a fascination with old souls, as if she had spent her whole life searching for one particular soul.

One particular soul that she had no doubt belonged to the eyes she’d seen in her nightmare.

Her breath hitched in her chest and she stood up quickly, moving to the sink to rinse out her cup to hide the tears that so inconveniently clouded her vision.

How silly of her.

No matter how hard she tried, the dream she’d had was little more than a blur of impressions, so why she insisted on thinking of it as a nightmare she could only guess. And that guess centered around her fear that the eyes floating in her hazy memory of the dream belonged to the soul she’d sought her whole life. Eyes that belonged to a man she’d found after a lifelong search. Found and then lost again when she’d lost her memory.

Nightmare, indeed.

* * *

Patrick stood in the middle of Clint’s room, feeling like a prime sheep awaiting the inspection of a buyer on market day.

He wore a tight, finely knitted garment Clint had called a sweater and a pair of pants called khakis. They felt restrictive and completely foreign. He couldn’t remember ever having been so uncomfortable in the whole of his life.

“I’d prefer to wear my plaid,” Patrick grumbled.

Though he’d intended the complaint only for his own ears, he’d obviously not been successful in his attempt.

“Not a chance,” Clint said with a chuckle, continuing to circle around him, inspecting from all angles. “It’ll be hard enough to explain all that long hair. No way I’m going to try to justify you showing up at that party with a blanket wrapped around you. We’ll have to get to the store tomorrow for some shirts that fit. For now, that sweater will have to work. Maybe shove up the sleeves if it gets too hot.”

Shoving up the sleeves might provide some relief for his arms, but what about the rest of him? He still felt as if he had been shackled within the constrictive garments.

A knock on the door drew Clint’s attention, leaving Patrick uncomfortably waiting to see what new torture device would come next.

“I knew I had these stuck back somewhere,” the young man entering the room said as he thrust something into Clint’s arms. “My brother left them here when he came to visit last year. They’re too big for me, so maybe they’ll work for your friend.”

“Sweet,” Clint said, lifting two separate objects up for inspection. “Thanks, Greg. I appreciate your help.”

“No biggie.” Greg started out the door, but turned at the last minute and sighed. “There is one thing, though, you should know. Some dickweed tipped off Professor Hudson that you had someone staying in your dorm room. I heard he went ape over it and is headed your way this afternoon, ready to go all establishment on your ass.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised. Being in ROTC hasn’t made me real popular with some of the people around here, so I’m sure they’ve been waiting to catch me doing something they could jump on. But no worries. We’re bugging out of here as soon as we can get Patrick put together, and these cowboy boots are the last piece of what we needed. He’ll be staying over at Rosella’s place from here on, so Hudson won’t have anything to have a beef with by the time I see him. But thanks anyway, Greg. For the boots and for the warning.”

“He’s a good friend of yers?” Patrick asked as soon as the door closed behind their visitor.

“He’s a friend,” Clint answered, handing over the boots. “I guess I don’t trust anyone enough to claim them as good friends.”

Patrick nodded, understanding such a feeling all too well. As he tugged the strange footwear onto his feet, another thought struck him.

“If there are known enemies here, why haven’t you dealt with them? Why would you leave them to skulk about and bring you troubles?”

Leaving his enemies to roam free sounded all too much like some political move his brother Malcolm would have suggested.

Clint chuckled, his face breaking into perhaps the first genuine smile Patrick had seen.

“You sound like my grandmother now. She always told me if someone was giving me a hard time, I should just sock ‘em a good one.”

Sock them? Patrick shook his head, frustrated at his own ignorance. Orabilis had told him that somehow the Magic would allow him to communicate with people in this time. What she hadn’t told him was how much of that communication still would be a mystery to him. He understood the words, but not always what was meant by the words.

“Why would you use footwear on yer enemies?” he asked, hating to look foolish, but hating worse not to understand.

“Footwear?” Now it was Clint who looked confused.

“Yer grandmother’s advice to sock yer enemies.” Patrick stood up to test the feel of the boots, surprised at a degree of comfort he hadn’t expected. “I canna see how giving them yer socks would change their behavior.”

“Give them my socks?” Clint’s grin turned into a full-fledged laugh before he caught himself. “Yeah, you’re right. Socks are something you wear on your feet. But sock is also a word people my grandmother’s age use when they mean to hit someone. You sock them. You hit them. Same thing. Make more sense now?”

Patrick nodded slowly, beginning to realize that he might never truly understand this strange place and time.

“Try not to be so literal, Patrick,” Clint advised as he walked over to open the door. “To fit in, you’re going to need to be more laid-back. And to win over this Syrie chick, you’re going to need to fit in. Try to follow along with what people say. Just go with the flow.”

Patrick nodded again, his mind occupied with the vagaries of this language as he followed Clint outside and across the lawn toward the metal beast that would carry him to see Syrie. Clint was correct, of course. To have any chance of success in his quest, he needed to fit in. He wasn’t sure how lying on his back might help, but he did understand the concept of going along with things, of doing what he was told. After all, a good warrior almost always did as he was told by his leader. If that was what it took to win Syrie’s heart, he could do whatever anyone in this strange place told him to do.

No matter how much he might want to do otherwise.

To prove to himself he could do this, he climbed into the belly of the beast Clint called his truck, and did his best to lie back.