Last, but certainly not least, we wrap up our August adventures with Susanna Kearsley’s The Firebird.

Here’s Susanna:

Nicola’s not looking for adventure. But when a client brings a family heirloom—called “the Firebird”—to her gallery to be appraised for sale, she has to help, despite the fact that helping means she’ll have to use the psychic “gifts” she’d rather hide, and call a favor in from an old boyfriend, Rob, whose gifts are even greater than her own.

Using Rob’s abilities to “see” the distant past, they start their search in Scotland for the client’s long-dead ancestor, a little girl they know will one day own that family heirloom. When they find her, she’s in danger.

Anna sat up fully, straightening her back as her own gaze slipped to the colonel and she asked him, ‘Is the devil really on his way here?’

Colonel Graeme, as he often did, delayed his answer with a question of his own. ‘And do ye fear the devil, Anna?’

Anna heard again the wicked wailing of the wind, and was not sure. She looked to where her mother and her father stood, and then towards the door that was still blocked by Captain Jamieson and guarded by the colonel, and it seemed to her that nothing could so easily get past those two men and their swords, and suddenly she knew that she was not afraid. Not really.

So she said as much. And when she asked the colonel, ‘Can your ship outrun him?’ she felt something stir within her, like the thrill at the beginning of a great adventure.

Nicola knows there are risks in following a firebird. In Russian folklore, when a firebird drops a feather, any fool who picks it up and tries to chase the bird itself is in for trouble. But…

A single white feather had snagged on a low clump of blowing grass and withered wildflowers, fighting the wind that was trying to tear it away.

It was only a gull’s feather, ragged and plain, not a feather of flame from a firebird, but I felt Rob’s amusement before I looked up at him.

There were those eyes again, daring me, waiting.

‘That’s how it begins,’ he said, ‘isn’t it?’

Hands in his pockets, he patiently watched while I looked down again at the feather. The wind caught its
end and it started to lift and on impulse I bent down and reached for it.

So two women in two different times set out on separate quests, connected by a simple carving that—just like the Firebird in the fairy tales—may lead them to a treasure nothing like the one they each set out to find.

Leaving a comment on Susanna’s blog gets you entered to win The Firebird and the other nine stories.

Thanks so much for joining us on our whirlwind tour through ten adventures in ten days! Winners will be announced tomorrow on any of the participating authors’ websites/Facebook pages:

Alison Atlee, The Typewriter Girl (Facebook) (Website)

Jessica Brockmole, Letters from Skye (Facebook) (Website)

T.J. Brown, Summerset Abbey: Spring Awakening (Facebook) (Website)

Sarah Jio, The Last Camellia (Facebook) (Website)

Susanna Kearsley, The Firebird (Facebook) (Website)

Katherine Keenum, Where the Light Falls (Website)

Stephanie Lehmann, Astor Place Vintage (Facebook) (Website)

Kate Noble, Let it be Me (Facebook) (Website)

Deanna Raybourn, A Spear of Summer Grass (Facebook) (Website)

Lauren Willig, The Ashford Affair (Facebook) (Website)