The sky beyond the windshield is a dark, threatening gray. It looks as though it might storm any minute, but no rain has fallen yet.

“Thank god,” I mutter to myself as I push my little rental car to drive even faster. The car is tiny and makes a rattling sound as I press on the gas. I wonder if I should ease up a little, but that doesn’t seem like a possibility. I have to get to Vanara, the small country where I was raised, located just beyond the borders of Scotland. I’ve been traveling for hours, and the landscape outside my window has become nothing but a dark green blur. I try to keep focused on the road in front of me, but my thoughts are twisting in a million different directions.

It’s been years since I’ve been back to Vanara. Over a decade. But everything here feels the same. The deep green of the fields outside my window, the somber looks of the people everywhere I stopped between the airport and the car rental kiosk. Even the sky—leaden now—feels completely unchanged since the day I left.

I glance up and shiver. It’s nearly summer, but the moment I landed at the airport, I dug into my suitcase for my coat. One of the most distinct memories of my childhood is shivering. I remember wrapping my skinny arms around my chest and just shaking with the cold. I was always freezing here. Maybe that’s why I’ve run all the way to California. Los Angeles is crowded and expensive and filled with people certain they’re the main character, but it’s the complete opposite of Vanara. In LA, I’m never reminded of my home.

Which is strange, really. Because it’s not like I hate it here. I’ve never hated Vanara. I’ve always thought of it fondly, but my father always insisted that I seek out my future somewhere else. Somewhere far, far away. He had been insistent on the far away part.

I give my head a shake and focus on the road as it begins to narrow. There have been trees lining the road almost the whole way, but as the road narrows down to one lane in each direction, the trees close in. If I rolled down the window, I could put my hand out to touch their black trunks. They feel like they’re crowding me, trying to block my path. Trying to tell me to turn back.

“Stop,” I say aloud to myself. I’m letting my imagination run away from me, and that’s not going to do me any good. All that matters is getting home to my dad.

My throat feels tight as I think of his call yesterday. His voice had been so hoarse—it was hard to even hear him. For a moment I wasn’t sure if he was even on the phone, but then I heard his breath coming in short, raspy gasps.

Come home, he’d said.

The words rattled me then just as they rattle me now, thinking of them. He’s never said those words to me before. He’s never asked me to come back to Vanara. He’d always insisted that Vanara—even all of the United Kingdom—was too small a place for the person he was sure I was going to become.

I won’t have this place holding you back! he’d told me.

I swallow and take a shaking breath, trying to relax my death grip on the steering wheel. I’m almost home, I remind myself.

Then—out of nowhere—a dark shadow appears in my peripheral vision. Faster than possible, the shadow darts out in front of the car.

I gasp and yank the wheel, swerving fast to avoid hitting…whatever it is.

The tires squeal as I start to skid across the damp road. The wheel is turning in my hand, even as I try to grab hold of it. The car is completely out of control, and my heart jumps into my throat.

But I haven’t been driving in LA without learning a thing or two about evasive maneuvers. Gritting my teeth, I grab hold of the wheel and take a deep breath, trying to move it in the same direction the car is veering. It seems to work, and after a second, I realize the car has stopped moving.

Adrenaline sweeps over me, making my hands shake, but when I look around, I see that I’m still on the road, and still in one piece.

Then, remembering why I swerved in the first place, I whip around to look at the road behind me.

What the hell was that? I wonder, searching for the shadow I’d seen. But the road is completely empty.

My brows draw down, but before I can wonder any more about it, there’s a high-pitched ping, and when I turn to look at the dashboard, it’s lit up like a Christmas tree. There are a bunch of those little indicator lights lit up, but I don’t know what any of them mean. One of them looks like lightning has struck the car, another looks like a thought bubble, and the third is blinking alarmingly.

“This is great,” I grumble, and kick open the door. I walk around the car to observe the damage and see right away that one of the tires is completely flat. But that seems like small potatoes when I notice that there is smoke billowing from the engine. It’s not a lot of smoke, but when it’s coming from the engine of a car, it probably doesn’t need to be much to be a problem.

I run my hand through my hair, feeling a tension headache starting to build.

“No, no, no, no,” I chant as I pull open my door again. I reach over and yank open the glove box to riffle through the papers.

“Hello?” a voice answers when I dial the number on the paperwork. “This is Maggie at Greens Meadow Rentals. How can I help you?”

I explain the situation to the woman on the phone, and she clucks sympathetically.

“Well, now, we can’t have that. Tell me where you are, love, and I’ll send a tow truck out to get you. I have my best guy on the road now, and he’ll get you straightened out.”

I fumble with my phone to figure out where the hell I am and give her directions.

“We’ll sort you out,” Maggie assures me.

“Thanks,” I breathe, then drop my phone into my bag and get out of the car again. I lean against the side of the car with a sigh, wondering what else could go wrong.

It’s still not raining, though the sky continues to threaten, and I pull my hood up over my head, just in case.

I keep looking, but there’s still no sign of whatever it was that darted across the road. Everything is quiet, with only a distant song of the Scottish crossbill from the trees above me. Maybe it’s the bird, maybe it’s just being back home, but I take a deep breath, feeling a strange comfort as I look up into the trees.

It’s so quiet I can hear the truck before I can see it. I step away from my car and look down the road, finally seeing the cab of a tow truck heading right for me.

I step into the road and wave my arms, as if there’s anyone else on the road the driver could possibly mistake me for.

The truck slows as it draws close to me, then drives slightly past to park in front of my car, backing closer so the driver can hook my rental onto the truck.

“Finally,” I sigh, glad this will all be over, and I’ll be on my way again.

The cab door of the driver opens and closes, and I walk around the back of my car to say hello and to thank the driver.

But when I round the back of my car and see the guy who has just stepped out of the cab, I stop in my tracks.

The breath seems to have been stolen from my lungs as I look at the man standing in front of me. He’s tall—easily over six feet—and he has a perfect, muscular build. He looks like a sculpture of a Roman god plucked from a fountain. He has dark hair that sweeps down over his forehead, partially obscuring bright green eyes.

I blink stupidly. I can feel that I look deranged, but the driver of this tow truck is the hottest guy I have ever seen, and I feel betrayed by Maggie for not giving me a heads-up on this.

I give my head a hard shake. Okay, so yes, he’s the hottest guy I’ve ever seen. Seriously ever. But that doesn’t matter right now.

I clear my throat and try to sound businesslike. “Hello,” I say, my voice cracking. I clear my throat again. “I have car. A car. And it’s broken. And I could use help. You know—from you. Because you’re the professional.”

Shut up, shut up, shut up!

The man takes a step toward me, and as he does, his eyes swept down, then all the way back up to my face. He’s sizing me up, and whatever he sees doesn’t seem to make him happy, because his green eyes narrow dangerously.

“You,” he says, his voice so deep I can nearly feel it rumble in my chest. “You shouldn’t be here.”