LITMIR.BIZ

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The two dogs looked up but didn’t get to their feet.

      “Good evening, how are we getting on?” Fergie said with a grin. If St. Patrick had had such an affable grin, he could have charmed the snakes out of Ireland instead of ordering them to go.

      Scott essayed a smile. Heather did not. Dakota stared.

      “I’m Fergus MacDonald, the poor chap responsible for this castle. And you’re the Krums, from the U.S, like Jean here. Scott, Heather, Dakota. Welcome, welcome.” He was working uphill, but, trouper that he was, went gamely on, “Are the dogs all right for you? No allergies?”

      “We’re fine, thanks,” said Scott. “Heather’s got a poodle at home.”

      “The lab is Bruce,” Fergie said, “and the terrier is Somerled. Good lads, aren’t you?”

      The dogs fluttered their tails against the tile of the hearth and with grunts of satisfaction let their heads fall back down.

      “We have several fine single malts, a continental aperitif or two, or—’tis the season and all—we have wassail. My special recipe. And lemon squash for the lass.”

      Dakota crept forward. “Squashed lemon?”

      “It’s kind of like Seven-Up or Sprite with lemon,” Jean explained. And to Fergie, with a deep inhalation of cinnamon and nutmeg, “I’d love a cup of wassail. Do you make yours with cider?”

      “Oh yes, and with wine, fruit, and spices. The latter two used to be quite special, mind you, in these northern climates.” Delicately Fergie pushed aside several clove-studded lemon and orange slices and ladled out a cupful. “Here you are. And you, Mrs. Krum?”

      “I guess you don’t do cosmopolitans,” Heather said.

      “If that’s what you’d prefer,” began Fergie, “I’m sure I can…”

      “Let it go, Heather.” Scott extended both hands. “We’ll take wassail, thanks.”

      “Very good.” Fergie placed two more cups in his hands, the small, smooth hands of someone who’d only worked with his mind, then gave Dakota a tall glass adorned with mint and a cherry.

      Scott drank deeply. After a tentative sip over her protruding lower lip, Heather allowed, “It’s good,” and retracted the pout.

      Reminding herself that the drink was full of alcohol and her stomach was full of air, Jean let one swallow of insidious sweetness slide down her throat. Then she cradled the warm cup between her cool hands and pushed aside any comparison of the crimson drink to crimson blood. Nor did she ask if Thomson or Portree had taken Fergie up on his offer of sandwiches in the staff sitting room…no, wait, was that a door opening far down the hall and a couple of male voices?

      “What’s that burning in the fireplace?” asked Dakota.

      “Peat,” Fergie answered, and launched a soliloquy about peat bogs, and wood as a precious resource, and the Yule log in the Great Hall among other observances planned for tomorrow night—his smile was that of a child anticipating Santa Claus—and how the Log represented the Yule bonfire, which was a major observance along the outer rim of Scotland and its islands, the areas heavily influenced by the Norse, as evidenced by the fire festival Up-Helly-Aa in the Shetlands every January.

      None of the Krums blinked. Jean edged closer to the door. Yes, her internal sonar detected Alasdair’s voice.

      “This is the time of year,” Fergie went on, “when trows or trolls come out from the underworld and carry mortals away. Not to worry, though, we’re protected here at Dunasheen by our Green Lady.”

      Not necessarily, Jean thought.

      “The Green Lady’s our resident ghost or fairy, a glaistig, green being the fairy color. The story goes that you can hear her singing, in a fashion, when something either bad or good is going to happen. Or you can see her gliding silently toward the house…”

      The glass wobbled in Dakota’s hand and her eyes expanded to fill half her face. Heather reached out a protective hand, but her slice of a gaze turned toward Fergie. “You’re scaring the kid, Mr. MacDonald.”

      “Fergus, please,” he replied, and, “Oh. I’m sorry. Mind you, it’s just a story.”

      That wasn’t what he said a little while ago, but Jean had learned with her nieces and nephews to soften the edges a bit. Storyteller discretion advised.

      Fergie added, “I’ve never seen or heard a thing.”

      Oh. With slightest of prickles between her shoulder blades, like invisible fingertips tracing her spine, Jean realized that she had heard a thing. That low murmuring wail in the drawing room hadn’t been Tina’s voice carried over the moor. The Green Lady had been announcing Greg’s death.

      “I’m not scared,” Dakota said. “I saw a ghost while we were driving up to the house, a ghost closing the gate in that tall wall.”

      “Did you now? In the garden, was she?” Fergie caught himself. “Erm, likely you saw our manager making a round of the premises.”

      Jean doubted that. Pritchard hadn’t been on the premises.

      “Dakota,” said Scott, “what did we tell you about saying things like that?”

      “I don’t know whether it was a man or a woman,” she insisted. “But it was a ghost. I saw it in the light of the headlights.”

      Jean had to bite her tongue to keep from blurting questions. Did the child see someone in a yellow raincoat or even a reflective coat like those worn by the police? Had she seen the man in mottled black, whose jacket had had some sort of shiny, water-repellant coating? Or was the poor child, like Jean and Alasdair, allergic to ghosts? She’d have been better off allergic to the dogs. Her parents would have sympathized with that.

      Standing up, Heather seized the girl’s arm and pulled her toward a corner of the room, Scott following. “Dakota, we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. This is your grade school graduation trip, remember?” Her sotto voce hiss wasn’t sotto enough, and carried over the jazzed-up, dumbed-down version of “Silent Night” that jangled from the speakers.

      Dakota’s lower lip, shining with pale pink lip gloss, trembled. “The counselor told you to take a trip together to make up for Dad having to travel so much on business. You brought me along to kill two birds with one stone, you said.”

      “We could have gone to Cozumel by ourselves,” Scott told her. “But you wanted ghosts and castles, so we came to Scotland.” And, to Heather, “No wonder she’s seeing things.”

      “We bought you a book to read while we had our happy hour at the pub,” Heather said, and to Scott, “She was looking at the ghost stories there at the bookshop. There was a rack of them by the front desk, below the Dunasheen guidebooks.”

      One of Jean’s ears twitched backward, dropping an eave or two. An intriguing café-and-bookshop stood across the street from the pub, the Flora MacDonald, in Kinlochroy. The Krums had stopped there, then, to wait until check-in time—a formality that the MacLeods had skipped.

      “Dakota, you said if we went on this trip you’d show a better attitude.” Now Heather played the guilt card.

      “Never mind,” said Dakota. “Just forget it.”

      “We’ll overlook it this time,” Scott told her. “But if this trip is going to work, you need to straighten up and fly right.”

      No fair, Jean thought. It wasn’t the girl’s responsibility to see that the trip went well, any more than it was her responsibility to fix her parents’ marriage.

      And she thought, so the Krums had been on the premises, more or less, at the time of Greg’s death.

      Fergie stirred the punch, pretending he wasn’t hearing the Krums’ mutters, but his crestfallen gaze crossed Jean’s. She sent him an encouraging smile.

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