Chapter 3

Morgan blinked again, trying to clear her vision. She felt a gentle hand probing at the back of her head and batted it away.

"Easy now. Just checkin' how bad you knocked your head," came Nathan's voice.

Morgan laid still until he finished. "Happy now?" she asked, her lips quirking just enough to take the sting out of her words. She liked Nathan, and she trusted him. She wouldn't ever want to hurt the kind man's feelings.

"Your skull is just about as thick as your brother's," Nathan answered with a wink.

"Where is Buck?" she asked. Morgan started to sit up, this time Nathan slipping an arm behind her shoulders to help her up. She looked around the unfamiliar room, stopping when she saw Buck coming in the door. Relief flowed through her at the sight of her brother.

"Hey there, Mo," he said. Nathan shifted out of the way for Buck to get to her side. Morgan let Buck run a hand over her hair, something she had stopped allowing around the time she turned twelve and declared she was too old for childish pats on the head.

She tried to act like she wasn't affected by the warm hug, Buck pulled her into, but she closed her eyes and breathed in Buck's familiar scent, needing the comfort of something familiar.

When Buck let her go, Morgan looked around the room again, trying to focus on the familiar faces rather than the strange surroundings.

"Where are we?" she asked Buck. Then looked around the room again. "Where's Chris?" Alarm flared in her chest. Had something happened to Chris? Were they not all here together? Was he hurt?

The sound of shattering glass had all of them ducking and Morgan heard no fewer than three guns clear leather and the click of hammers being pulled back.

The door swung open and Buck moved to cover Morgan, his gun pointing at the newcomer with the others.

Morgan moved so she could see around Buck's shoulder as he crouched next to her, gun in hand. A young woman was frozen in place, her eyes terrified at the sight of all the barrels pointed at her.

Buck holstered his gun first. The others followed suit, but the woman still didn't move.

"Sorry 'bout that, Miss Cheyenne," Buck said. Morgan glanced at the woman to see if she was moved by Buck's charm, but the woman seemed unmoved. Not that Morgan blamed her. Buck was clearly distracted, looking for the source of the broken glass.

"Right there," Vin said quietly.

Vin and Josiah moved toward the table near the couch.

"Something here just exploded," Vin said, lightly moving the small shards of glass that littered the table.

The woman did come into the room then, giving Vin and Josiah wary looks before examining the damage.

There was an ungainly oversized candlestick with a fabric cylinder on top. Morgan couldn't imagine why someone would use such a large candle, or why they would put something clearly flammable around the top. Something that would dim the light of the flame no doubt.

"The light bulb exploded," the woman—Cheyenne—said. She turned a suspicious glare on the men closest to her. "What did you do?"

"Ma'am, we didn't do a thing," Josiah said. "That thing just broke into all those pieces."

"Things don't just break on their own," Cheyenne said suspiciously. She eyed their guns.

Morgan poked a finger into Buck's back. "Where's Chris?" she asked, losing patience for everyone's curiosity of a broken piece of glass.

"Nathan sent him out lookin' for some willow bark for your head," Buck said.

"He's ok?" Morgan asked. "He's not hurt? No one's hurt?" she demanded. She needed to know they were all ok.

"Just you and that gal over there," Buck said. "Think she took a hit to the head like you."

Morgan and Buck both turned their attention to the woman. Cheyenne looked like she was hurting, her eyes looked like she was fighting against how bright the room was.

"Miss," Buck said. He gave Morgan a last look before getting to his feet. "Cheyenne."

Cheyenne took a step back at his approach.

"Oh for Pete's sake," Morgan huffed. She swung her feet off the settee and stood, swaying slightly and blinking away the blurriness that settled over her vision. She got her sight cleared and stepped forward, giving Vin a light push away from the woman. "You're all going to make her swoon. Or shoot you."

Cheyenne looked at Morgan and Morgan offered the woman a solution. "You want them to take their guns off?"

Six voices all spoke over each other.

"Not doin' that."

"No way."

"Ain't happenin'."

Morgan started to roll her eyes, but realized how much more that would hurt her already painful head. She felt Ezra move closer to her side and stopped herself from pressing her fingertips to her temples.

"Look, do you guys need help finding a hotel or something?" Cheyenne asked.

Morgan took in the other woman's strange outfit, wondering how quickly Buck would send her to a convent if she ever showed that much skin. Cheyenne was moving toward a small table in the kitchen, grabbing a small silver square, about the size of a dictionary, but more slender.

Cheyenne set it on the table and opened it, but sideways, not like a book. Morgan moved closer, feeling her heart skip a beat when a picture of an apple glowed on the cover of the book. Morgan couldn't resist reaching a finger out towards it and brushing it across the apple.

"It's not hot or anything," she said to Ezra, surprised that, even thought the apple glowed like it was white hot, it was cool to her touch. She saw Cheyenne eying her and Morgan withdrew her hand.

There were no pages in the slender book. Cheyenne pushed a black square and the inside of the book lit up. Morgan felt the men around her flinch back. She shifted to look at the square that faced Cheyenne and felt her heart leap with fear.

"What is that?" she demanded. It was a picture of the mountains. But not a painting. It was like looking through a window. She looked to Ezra, wondering if he had ever seen a trick like this before. She hoped he had, because it was unsettling enough to not know where they were. But as Morgan looked around at the strange furniture, the window in the book, and then jolted as she saw a glowing globe hanging from the ceiling, her heart started to beat faster, and her head started to spin.

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Chris walked cautiously through the yard behind the house. He didn't like being caught off guard. And finding himself in a strange place had him off guard. He didn't know where they were. Or why. He rubbed at the back of his head, not sure if he had bumped it. But then, none of the others seemed to know any more than he did. It irked him to be separated from his men and Morgan when they didn't have any idea of whether there was a threat, or what the threat was.

There was a loud roaring and Chris tensed, his hand going to his gun, sure that it was the sound that he had heard before the flash of light and all of them landing in that field. It grew closer and Chris pressed in closer to the side of the house, looking in the direction of the noise.

It was train. But not like any Chris had ever seen. There were no cars attached to it, no tracks for it to run on, and it roared past, black smoke billowing out the back instead of the top of the strange engine. He got a glimpse of three people in the strange train and then it was gone.

Chris cursed under his breath. What was this place?

He looked along the street the train had roared down. It wasn't cobblestone, it had a black surface covering it. There were other trains—or whatever they were—on the street not moving.

Chris saw people moving farther down the street and went back into the back yard. He had no interest in meeting anyone else from this place. The half-clothed woman who had reluctantly let them into her house was strange enough.

Chris glanced toward the upper apartment of the house. Morgan was up there, unconscious and no one seemed to know how serious it was, or if she would be ok. He needed to find the willow bark Nathan had asked for.

The hardscrabble neighborhood didn't have any willow trees that Chris could see. He'd have more luck finding willows near some water.

He headed back towards the field, keeping a hand on his gun. At the far edge of the field, the side that didn't line up with the industrial area on the opposite end, it looked like the land sloped down. He hoped that meant there was water. Water and willows. He needed to get the bark and get back to Morgan. He didn't want to admit how scared he was to see her lying there with her eyes closed.

#

Cheyenne felt hemmed in as the strangers started to edge in closer to her, all of them fixated on the screen of her laptop.

"Ok, hotel or the street," she said. "Those are your choices." She needed to get them out of here. She didn't know what she had been thinking, bringing in armed strangers to her house.

She eyed the guns again, even more uneasy now that she had seen how easily the men pulled them out. At least her brother kept his gun tucked into the waistband of his pants for the most part. Cheyenne stood and backed away from the men. The girl with the group looked like she understood.

"You've gotta be a witch or somethin'," the youngest man with the group said. He looked at her Macbook and then at her. "That thing some sort of lookin' glass to another place?"

"It's a computer," Cheyenne said, not sure why she even answered his crazy question.

"A what?" the man with the deep voice asked.

Cheyenne looked at their clothes again, dusty and like they were straight off the set of Bonanza. Their confused faces, the way they kept looking at the light fixture on the ceiling like they expected it to strike them, then at the computer screen with wonder.

"Where exactly did you say you were from?" Cheyenne asked, eying them as suspicion and fear warred in her.

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