LITMIR.BIZ

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or our own cat, whatever, as long as it’s got fur. I’ll get my notebook and lie in wait for Greg and his murder story. Or Fergie and his plans for saving the estate, whoever crosses my bow first.”

      “Right,” Alasdair said. Once again, they started off toward the house, this time walking even more briskly.

      Ahead of them, the courtyard gate opened and shut with a clang. A woman hurried across the gravel terrace and up the path, arms knotted across the chest of her fake leopard skin coat. One hand held Fergie’s largest flashlight tucked below her elbow like a semi-concealed weapon. Luxuriant golden-blond curls bounced around her pert, tanned face. Her tight red mouth loosened far enough to say, “Hello there. Have you seen a bloke in a red jacket?”

      “Greg MacLeod?” Alasdair returned. “He walked down to the old cas—”

      “Stupid sod! I told him he could wait ’til tomorrow, we’ve just arrived, not even unpacked, but no, we’ve come halfway round the world, he said, what’s a few more yards, dark or no flipping dark?”

      This was “the wife.” At first glance, Jean thought she was twenty years younger than Greg. At second glance, Jean realized that she wasn’t at all younger, she was simply fighting gleaming tooth, painted nail, and hair color a shade too bright for her complexion, against the forces of entropy.

      “I’m Tina MacLeod, Greg’s, well, Greg’s been going on for years about this godforsaken place, imagine that!”

      God had phoned it in a few times out here, thought Jean, but you could say that of Sydney or Brisbane, too.

      Alasdair’s expression remained neutral.

      “London was good, lights, a hotel, nightclubs, but no, that’s not enough, he’s stuck on the flipping family tree, been rattling on about it for flipping years. Here we could be sitting at the C Bar back home, having a cold one beneath the palms—do you know Townsville, that’s in the tropical part of Queensland—I read a brilliant story about a miniature dinosaur in the back garden, made perfect sense.”

      Alasdair managed to get a word in. “He’s gone down to the beach and round to the left.”

      “I’d better yank in his lead, then, it’s almost time for tea. Or drinks, more likely. Anti-freeze. Ta.” She picked her way past, the wellies she, too, had liberated from the stash by the back door slapping along the path. A few paces away, she switched on the flashlight. A bubble of luminescence danced before her like a will o’ the wisp leading unwary travelers to their doom.

      “Have a care,” Alasdair shouted after her. “The path’s right slippy.”

      “Ta!” Tina said again, without turning around.

      They waited while the light disappeared down the slope to the bridge, reappeared at the hulking shadow of the ruined castle, vanished behind the wall. Faintly, Tina’s voice called, “Cooeee, Greg!”

      It was bad luck for a woman or a blond or red-headed man to be first across the threshold at the new year, although whether Fergie’s Hogmanay package included that old custom, Jean didn’t yet know. He could have a twofer with Tina MacLeod.

      Exchanging dubious smiles, she and Alasdair turned away from the old castle, a dark shadow against the clouds. Great minds thought alike, but his was less likely to be visualizing will-o’-the-wisps and doom than pondering how dangerous ruins could be, and not from anything paranormal… It was the sky that was ominous, Jean told herself, not Skye. A year ago she’d learned that seasonal affective disorder was a real threat in the depths of a Scottish winter. It said something about the national temperament.

      As long as the free-range Aussies made it past the castle, they’d be okay. Even Jean, whose middle name was not “Grace,” had managed to get from church to castle along the pebbled beach without mishap.

      She and Alasdair pressed on across the gravel and stepped through the gate into the courtyard. The damp cobblestones inside glistened with streaks of gold, red, and green. The arched door in the angle of the wall displayed a wreath of holly and ivy tied with MacDonald tartan ribbons, hung so that the Green Man knocker—one of Fergie’s artistic endeavors—peeked mischievously from its center.

      They walked up the three steps to the door. Alasdair set his hand on the iron handle. From inside came a barely perceptible strain of music.

      Then a long, wavering, shriek, pulsing with anguish, echoed across land and water and set the gulls to screeching and flapping upward like winged ghosts.

      Jean spun around, her heart lurching. “That’s got to be Tina!”

      Instead of leaping back down the steps, Alasdair threw the door open. Sweeping Jean with him, he lunged inside and shouted, “Fergie! Diana!”

      She blinked at what seemed like a flood of light, although it was only the contrast—the aging ceiling fixtures weren’t emitting more than a yellow glow. This was the back door, the postern gate, where old and mismatched boots, limp hats, and a couple of tall vases bristling with umbrellas, walking sticks, and fishing rods had come to roost.

      “Fergie!” Alasdair bellowed, drowning out the music Jean could now identify as the CD she had given Fergie, the latest from her friend and neighbor Hugh Munro, who was singing lustily about heaving away and hauling away, bound for South Australia.

      From the open door behind her came a cold draft and an ominous—no, not silence, a distant sobbing, wailing sound that was neither wind nor sea. And Jean doubted it was a banshee, although on Skye, you never knew.

      What had happened? A path given way, a stone turned beneath an unwary foot, slippery mud, the force of the wind, the darkness—it was Greg, wasn’t it? He’d been wearing athletic shoes, not wellies, not that wearing wellies was a guarantee of traction. Or had Tina herself fallen?

      Jean ran back out onto the stone step, but heard nothing. Funny how her face was now hot, so that the wind felt like a slap with a wet fish.

      Two shapes rushed at her through the kaleidoscope of light and shadow and with a gasp she jerked back against the door frame.

      A big black lab and a little white terrier swarmed around her legs, leaving mud and damp on her jeans and the aroma of wet dog in her nostrils, then stampeded into the house. The last time Jean had seen them, they’d been dozing in front of the fire in the drawing room, inert as hassocks.

      She reeled back through the doorway to find Alasdair pulling out his notepad and wallet—there was the phone. He punched three numbers. “We’re needing an ambulance, someone’s injured at old Dunasheen Castle—Alasdair Cameron, at the new castle—Kinlochroy, aye—very good then.”

      He clicked his phone shut, jammed it into his pocket, and bellowed, “Fergie!”

      A wet yellow raincoat fell off its hook, crinkling to the floor. Hugh sang the old sea chantey about South Australia full of rocks, and fleas, and thieves, and sand. The dogs had vanished, leaving only a trail of muddy paw prints across the tile floor.

      In a stately home, no one could hear you scream.

      “No one heard you. No one heard Tina, either.” Jean jittered to the door and the darkness outside, then to the row of coat hooks, where she replaced the raincoat, then back across the tile floor to the cabinet where Fergie kept the flashlights. She grabbed two and handed one of them to Alasdair. “There’s a bell pull in the drawing room, Fergie used it this afternoon.”

      “Give it tug then, see if it rouses Fergie or Diana, or one of the Finlays. If not them, then the manager’s cottage is next the garden. The constable at Kinlochroy’s been alerted. I’m away back down to the old castle.”

      No point trying to convince him to stay put and wait for help. The roses in his cheeks had perished under a drift of snow, and his features tautened into his I’m in charge here expression. When he paused on the doorstep to throw her a crisp, ice-blue glance, she forced her chin up and lifted her left hand in a wave. “I’ll catch up with you. Be careful!”

      And

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