by Lila Dubois
Séan kissed her temple. “Why?”
“Because I think—”
“Excuse me, what are you doing?”
They both jumped at the sound of another voice.
A blonde woman Séan didn’t recognize was walking down the hall toward the nursery. She was carrying a plastic tub like the ones stacked on the tarp on the floor.
“We are not done talking!” another voice shouted before Tristan appeared at the top of the stairs. He pounded down the hallway after the blonde.
“Dr. Heavey,” Sorcha said, pulling away from him. “We were able to go through some old records, and we think we know who the children are.”
“You do?” Melissa walked in to the nursery and deposited her box on top of the others. “That may help answer some questions about who murdered them.”
“Murder?” Sorcha said in a thin voice.
“All of them were murdered? Even the children?”
“Yes.” Melissa squatted down and opened a case, pulling out a laptop. She took the camera from around her neck and plugged it in to the computer. “The adult female’s leg was broken shortly before death. Her ribs and most of her phalanges were also broken, indicating some sort of aggressive physical altercation. The children both had fractures to the hyoid bone—they were strangled.”
Bile rose in the back of Séan’s throat. Sorcha made a strangled noise. “But, but he was only a baby.”
“Yes, it is a rather grim—”
“Stop.”
Tristan’s quiet word cut through the tension and sadness in the room like a knife, pulling everyone’s attention to him. He hadn’t come in—he still stood in the hall, a few paces back from the door. He was lit by the subtle hotel hallway lighting, while the nursery was in shadow, the last hints of sun gone. The first drops of rain hit the windows at Séan’s back and a gust of wind rattled the glass. Séan urged Sorcha away. The old glass didn’t keep out the cold, and if the storm was bad enough, it might break the old windows that were no longer supported by the heavy wood shutters.
“Don’t. Move.” Tristan’s words were heavy with warning. His gaze swept the room, seeming to linger at odd points. Séan grabbed Sorcha and pulled her to a stop.
“I told you already.” Melissa got to her feet. “I’m sorry about your kitchen.”
“Melissa, stop.”
She stopped talking, and for a moment they all stopped breathing. Séan had no idea what had alarmed Tristan, but his agitation, fear and worry were like palpable things, infecting the rest of them.
“What is it?” Séan asked, voice low but loud enough to be heard.
Tristan’s gaze swept the room again, stopping not on Séan, Sorcha and Melissa, but on empty space.
“There are ghosts all around you.”
Chapter Fifteen
To See and Believe
Sorcha sucked in a breath at Tristan’s words. Her muscles tensed and adrenaline filled her system. She wanted to run far and fast away from the room. She forced herself to keep looking forward, not to glance around and see the ghosts Tristan said were there.
Séan wrapped one arm around her waist and pressed his chest against her back. She relaxed a little. He felt strong and solid at her back. She knew he would protect her. With him there nothing could come at her from behind.
Tristan’s gaze focused on Séan, and Sorcha tensed. She may have accessed a memory writ in blood and seen a ghost, but out of all of them it was only Séan who’d been possessed, possessed by an angry ghost so full of determination that his purpose lived on 150 years after his death.
His arm across her stomach was hard as steel. She wrapped her fingers around his forearm, not sure what to do. She felt safe with him, but intellectually she knew he was probably the most dangerous thing in the room.
“This is preposterous.” Melissa, who’d risen when Tristan spoke, crouched down again. “You all need to leave, not because there are ghosts but because you’re destroying my context clues.”
“You don’t believe, but that doesn’t make the ghosts any less real.”
Sorcha exhaled and she could see her own breath. The sky outside was black, and the light that crept in from the hallway cast long shadows. Séan pulled her a little closer.
“Can’t you feel it?” Sorcha asked the other woman. “Look how dark it is, how cold.”
“That’s a good point.” Melissa went to the emergency stand lights they’d used that first night. She flicked the switch, but nothing happened. “The battery must have run down.”
“Tristan.” Séan’s voice rumbled at her back, and Sorcha relaxed. He sounded like himself, though tense. “What do you see?”
Once again the chef’s gaze scanned the room. He grunted, then looked to the side. Even from this distance, Sorcha could see the sadness on his face.
“There’s a man and a woman. They’re fighting.”
“This is ridiculous,” Melissa said.
“He’s…he’s killing her. She cannot survive such a beating. No one could.”
Sorcha sucked in a breath. He was seeing what she’d seen, but he hadn’t touched the blood. The last suspicion that what she’d experienced was nothing more than a figment of her imagination vanished.
“You believe this?” Melissa looked at Séan and Sorcha. “You believe he can see ghosts?”
“I…I saw it too,” Sorcha said, voice shaking.
Tristan looked at her. “You see it now?”
“No, when I touched the floor, where the blood soaked in.”
“You mean to tell me that you both think that you’re seeing into the past, to the moment when this woman was killed by whoever assaulted her.” Melissa’s voice was calm, curious.
Sorcha didn’t answer. She was too caught up in the flashes of pale gray mist she kept seeing out of the corner of her eye. She was scared to turn her head and look.
“Séan,” she whispered, “do you see anything, over there behind Melissa?”
Before he could answer, Tristan made a strangled sound, then screamed, “No!”
The sound jerked Sorcha into action. Grabbing Séan’s hand, she ran for the door.
Tristan met them at the portal. Taking Sorcha’s arm, he pulled her into the hall with one hand, while the other hand came up, smacking into Séan’s chest and stopping him in his tracks.
“You cannot come out here,” Tristan said, voice low. “He’s waiting.”
Séan went still. “Who?”
Tristan shook his head. “I don’t know, but he’s waiting for you, reaching for you. He’s tried to enter the room, but he’s weak inside. He’s waiting for you to come out here.”
“It must be the man who possessed you before. The brother.”
“Brother, whose brother?” Melissa was at Séan’s shoulder. Her face was no longer calm, but rather than frightened, she looked irritated.
Sorcha looked at Séan. When their gazes met, he smiled, nodded to her slightly, as if to say it would be okay.
“There are records at Séan’s house, old parish records, because his house used to be the parochial house.”
“We went through them,” Séan said, picking up the explanation. “They were from the 1860s, around the time of Fenian Rising.”
“There were school records too. We found three boys who had no last names. In the parish records, their births were there, but not their baptisms, and there was no father listed.”
Melissa frowned. “That’s unusual. I presume that the parish isn’t large, so it would be odd that the priest didn’t know the children’s origins.”
“Unless they didn’t have last names, or didn’t use them and weren’t baptized in the Catholic Church.”
“But that would mean…” Tristan trailed off, his gaze still focused on something only he could see.
“They were the bastard children of the Lord of Glenncailty.” Séan said.
Melissa looked over her shoulder, then nodded. “That would make sense, though you’d assume the lord would have brought in
a tutor.”
“Glenncailty isn’t easy to get to, even today,” Sorcha said.
“And you think this angry man—” Tristan looked at something to the left of the door, “—is the woman’s brother.”
“Yes, but there’s more. We didn’t find just two names, we found three, all of which were in the records one year and gone the next. Charles was eleven; Henry, nine; and George, five.”
Melissa cleared her throat. “The male skeleton may be Henry. And the infant might not have been entered into the parish records yet and certainly wouldn’t have been in school records.”
“But that means there are two children unaccounted for,” Tristan said.
“No.” Sorcha shook her head. “The oldest child, Charles, died in 1866, as part of an uprising.”
“We’re missing a body.” For the first time, Melissa sounded grim. “If you’re right—and as of now it’s circumstantial—there were four children, which is supported by the context clues here. We have two bodies, and the oldest child was probably buried, but the five-year-old is unaccounted for. We’ll need to do a full excavation of this room and—”
The wind howled outside. With a crack, one of the windows shattered and the icy wet wind whipped around the room. The upper plastic box, the one Melissa had been carrying, fell off the stack, the lid coming loose. It crashed to the floor and little bones rolled out.
In that moment Sorcha didn’t see bones or some long-dead baby, but her own child, dead only moments after it left her body.
She shoved past Tristan, knocking Melissa out of her way. The cold wind cut through her clothes, but she didn’t care. Her baby was there, her baby needed her.
“I’m here, my sweet baby,” she said.
He smiled up at her, a few little white teeth showing in the smile. His lacy cap had come off. She picked it up off the floor and put it on his head before gathering him in her arms and standing. She rocked him in her arms, swaying side to side.
Someone said her name, but she didn’t look up. They said it again and she frowned. That wasn’t her name. They must be talking to someone else.
“My baby, my precious baby,” she whispered. “You’re all that’s left.” Tears ran down her cheeks as she thought of her other children. “Your bastard father killed them. My sister, Carol, and her family dead, because they protest what he’s done to them. He called it an uprising and killed them all. Your brother, Charles, was with them, playing with his cousins, and your father killed him too. Your brother looked too much like me, he was too Irish.”
She threw her head back and laughed. The man she’d loved, the man she’d abandoned her family, honor and church for, had killed the child they’d made and brought into this world together. Her pretty Charles with his red hair so much like hers and ready smile that was the spitting image of her brother, Aoghan.
“Your uncle Carrig, my sister Carol’s husband, was a good man, but proud. I thought that I could protect my family. After all, he wouldn’t dare hurt them, not when I’d been so good to him, not when he loved me.
“But he didn’t love me, and he didn’t love Charles, because your brother looked and acted too much like me. He loved your brothers, Henry and George.”
She turned slowly in a circle, looking at the window. Below the window, in a patch of light, was Henry. If she didn’t look too closely, it seemed that he was only sleeping.
“He took Charles from me, killed my family. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t find out, but I did. And now I’ve taken what he loves from him.”
More tears spilled from her eyes. “I’ll burn for an eternity for what I’ve done,” she whispered. She kissed the top of her baby’s head. “I’m sorry, precious boy, but he loves you too.”
Wrapping one hand around her baby’s neck, she squeezed. He started to kick and thrash, making small noises. She hugged him tighter, squeezed harder.
When he stopped struggling, she took her baby and laid him by his brother. There were red marks around Henry’s neck where her fingers had pressed, but their faces looked peaceful in death.
They were better off dead then living.
Again someone said her name. She rose and turned, and for a moment the scene before her wavered, the bright sunny nursery, with all the finery he’d brought from London and Paris, disappeared, and the room was dark and destroyed, the beds pulled down, the windows broken.
“Mary.”
The darkness faded, and there he was, a silhouette against the sunlight. The man she loved, the man who’d betrayed her.
“You killed them.”
“They rebelled.”
“You killed Charles.”
“He was sympathetic to their cause. I left him alone with you for too long when he was young.”
“He was only eleven.”
“I’m leaving. I’m taking Henry and George with me. The baby can remain with you until he’s older.”
“You will not take my children anywhere.” She smiled, a horrible thing. She saw the silhouette of his shoulders jerk as he scanned the room. She knew the moment he saw the bodies. She laughed when he ran to them, touching Henry’s already cold skin. Charles was dead, at his father’s hand, and when George returned from his lessons she’d end his life too, rather than let him live and be made into something evil, like his sire.
“You bloody witch!”
They leapt at each other, all remnants of civility gone. His fists landed hard and heavy, dropping her to the floor. She kicked at him and he stomped on her leg. She curled into a ball, hissing. Pain exploded in her sides as his boot connected with her ribs. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her up, slapping her across the face with his other hand.
“You murdering Irish whore.”
Her head hit the floor as he threw her down.
Murderer. He called her a murderer, and God and the saints forgiver her, it was the truth. But her sins were nothing to his.
She pushed to her hands and knees, wanting to rise up and look at him, but she couldn’t. Her leg was broken and now that her crimes were done, her strength was gone.
“I’ll burn in Satan’s Hell for my sins,” she said, “and I’ll see you there beside me.”
“Sorcha!”
He picked her up, and she struggled, laughing all the while. She kept her eyes closed, not wanting to see his face.
“Sorcha, Sorcha.”
“No, don’t come out here! He’s waiting for you. Give her to me.”
There were more hands, other people touching her. It must be his man of affairs, the other Englishman he’d brought with him. Or maybe it was the head of the garrison. Maybe he’d turn her over to his soldiers to be used as a whore. He’d threatened it before. She wouldn’t fight anymore, she deserved—no, wanted—to die, so she could go to Hell to pay for her sins.
A hard pinch to the soft skin on the inside of her arm made her eyes pop open. Sorcha stared at the ceiling and for one terrifying moment didn’t know who she was. In that second, before the lingering spirit of Mary let go, she was both people—Sorcha Kerrigan, who’d loved a man who would never marry her and born a child that didn’t survive, and Mary O’Donnabhain, who’d turned her back on everything and everyone to be mistress to the Lord of Glenncailty, giving herself to a man who’d killed her family and their oldest child, committing terrible sins to hurt the man she’d once loved.
She drew in a great shuddering breath. Melissa was kneeling at her side, one hand on her head, the other on her arm. “Hold still,” Melissa said.
Sorcha ignored her, rolling her head to the side, looking for Séan. She was lying on the floor in the hall, Melissa beside her. Tristan stood in the nursery doorway with his back to them. The silvery-gray outline of a man stood just behind Tristan, between him and the hall. She could see through the figure, pick out the details of Tristan’s clothing on the other side.
There was a second, paler ghost standing at the door. It was a man, and though he seemed to waver in and out of focus, she could see that he wore a ca
p and a simple shirt and pants. He was moving, raising his fists in the air and bringing them down towards the open doorway. His hands stopped midair, as if they’d hit the door, but it was open. The movements were creeping, as if the figure were playing in slow motion.
Séan was standing just inside the doorway, still in the nursery, and when she looked at him, he started forward. The hatted man’s head came up and swiveled to look at Séan, transparent gray hands reaching for him. She sucked in a breath to warn Séan, but before she could, Tristan shoved him back.
“They’re here,” Sorcha said.
“What? Who?”
“The ghosts.” Sorcha pushed herself up on one elbow so she could see into the nursery. Ghosts filled the room. There were five, six, maybe seven. “God protect us.”
There was a woman in a long dress with her hair up sitting in a chair with a boy on her lap. As she watched, the woman stroked the boy’s hair, then put her hands on his neck.
“No, no, don’t,” Sorcha whispered, but it was too late. She watched the silvery tableau as the mother strangled her child, holding him tight as he thrashed. Then the mother and child faded away…only to reappear again.
Each moment played over and over on some horrible endless loop. She watched the same woman lift a baby from the crib, rocking him and talking to him before strangling the infant.
In the center of the room were the ghostly images of a man and woman. It was the same women, her ghostly form repeated, so there were many versions of her—rocking the older child, lifting the baby, and standing toe to toe with the man.
Her hair was no longer up—it streamed around her shoulders. It took only moments for him to overpower her, and then he beat her with a savagery that was terrifying to see. When the man walked away, the woman dragged herself across the floor, to the place where she’d laid her children.
Sorcha blinked and the ghosts faded until she couldn’t see them anymore. They were gone.
And yet Tristan’s shoulders were still set, and he still held Séan back.
Sorcha pushed to her feet. “Tristan, can you still see them?”
He looked over his shoulder at her and his face was grim, deep furrows bracketing his mouth. “Oui. You see them?”