The Perils of Effrijim

by Katie MacAlister

  “Er...what, exactly?” I asked, confused.

  “Destroy the stone, naturally!” she answered, rubbing her hands together with much pleasure. “It’s only fitting! Just as Alec destroyed the lady’s stone, thereby damning all ladies of the family, so now must you destroy the laird’s stone. It will affect not only Alec, but all his descendants as well—a just punishment, don’t you think, for a man who killed his own wife for bearing him a daughter?”

  “To be honest, I don’t think that’s very fair,” I said slowly, and to my surprise, Raphael interrupted me.

  “We’ll do it. Where’s this laird’s stone kept?”

  Lily shrugged. “That I do not know. Alec would never tell me the location of the Stone Room. There was some curse on the men to keep them away from it...you’ll have to ask him for that information.”

  “But—” I started to protest.

  Raphael clamped a hand over my mouth, and hustled me out of the room before I could say anything.

  “Don’t let Alec bully you!” Lily called from the bedroom. “Be firm with him!”

  “Why all of a sudden are you so hot and bothered to help her?” I asked a moment later as we hurried down the hall.

  “It’s like you said—the sooner we help her, the sooner she’ll go away and leave us alone to enjoy our clotted creamapalooza. Where did she say we’d find her husband?”

  “The long gallery, which is evidently on the ground floor, or the stable yard, or possibly the dining hall. But sweety, we can’t destroy the laird’s stone, not if it will affect a bunch of innocent people!”

  “Who says it will?” Raphael flashed a quick grin. “Fiona said the family line had died out, so there won’t be any descendants to harm, in addition to which, I don’t believe at all that a stone has anything to do with people’s health and happiness. So we’ll just find this stone, drop it into the moat, tell her the job is done, and our way will be clear to enjoying our honeymoon.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s going to be a good idea to mess with something so historic,” I said.

  “You worry too much. Everyone concerned is dead already, aren’t they? It’s not like there’s anything we can do to hurt them now.”

  I held my tongue, but I wasn’t so sure on that subject. Allie, a woman who had made her living summoning and releasing ghosts before she met Christian the sexy vampire, had told me that ghosts could be bound to a spot, but since Lily and assumedly her husband were already stuck at the castle, it didn’t seem like breaking a stone would change their status.

  “I don’t see why she couldn’t come with us to find him,” Raphael muttered as we hurried down the pinwheel stone staircase.

  “She said she doesn’t go down where her husband roams. I can’t say I blame her, given what he did to her. Have you ever heard of the word ‘therian’? As applied toward a person, that is?”

  “Therian?” Raphael thought for a moment before shaking his head. “It’s Greek for wild animal. I can’t imagine it being applied to a person—good lord!”

  A woman’s scream rent the night, coming from the floor below us. Raphael dropped my hand and dashed down the stairs. I hurried after him, slipped on the highly polished wooden floor, and ended up falling against him where he stood in the middle of a long hallway, his hands on his hips. Despite the fact that my mother describes me as being built like a brick house, Raphael didn’t budge when I slammed into him.

  “Who is it?” I asked, collecting myself enough to peer around him.

  His indignant snort told me everything I needed to know. A moment later, a woman’s scream echoed down the long passage, but this time, it was followed by feminine giggles and, “Stop it! Ye’re goin’ to make me wet myself if ye keep ticklin’ me that way! Alec, stop! Nay, ye mustn’t!”

  Although the hallway was lit with night lights at either end, there was sufficient illumination from outside to highlight the two nearly translucent figures that came down the hallway toward us. In the lead was a woman with her skirts hitched up and breasts almost wholly out of her corset, her hair tousled halfway out of her French hood, and bare legs flashing as she barreled down on us. In close pursuit was a bearded man clad in a flapping linen shirt, and pair of breeches. “Run from me, will ye, ye lusty vixen? Ye’ll not be escapin’ me that easily!”

  The look on Raphael’s face was not welcoming, but it was no cause for the woman racing toward us to shriek loud enough to wake the dead. So to speak.

  “Lord bless me!” she gasped as she caught sight of us. She came to an immediate stop, her hands on her cheeks for a moment before squeaking and hurriedly rearranging her breasts back into her corset. “Hsst! Alec! We’re havin’ visitors!”

  “Aye, I see them.” The ghost who was evidently Lily’s husband cleared his throat, puffed out his chest, and strode toward us in a haughty manner. “I am Lord Summerton. By what right do you come to my home and ogle my wife?”

  “I have my own wife to ogle, thank you,” Raphael said stiffly. “Perhaps if you kept yours confined rather than let her run the hallways half naked—”

  Sir Alec had been in a stretch of shadow, but as he stopped in front of us, he was lit by both the outside light shining through the window, and the slightly orange glow of a security night light.

  My jaw dropped as I got a good look at Sir Alec. “Holy moses! Raphael, do you see that?”

  “By the saints!” Sir Alec said at the same time, his eyes wide as he stared at Raphael.

  “Ooh,” breathed the disheveled woman. She looked from one man to the other. “’Tis like seein’ twins!”

  “My boy!” Sir Alec shouted, enveloping Raphael in a bear hug.

  Chapter Three

  “Erm...” Raphael was obviously too disconcerted by the fact that he was being hugged by an Elizabethan ghost to rally much along conversational lines. “Do I know you?”

  “Ye’re the very image of me when I was a lad,” Sir Alec answered. “Ye can be no other but the spawn of my loins!”

  “Didn’t you say you had Scottish ancestry?” I asked Raphael as I continued to marvel at the ghost. He had a beard, but it was close-cropped enough to make out the shape of his jaw. He had the same stubborn chin as Raphael, the same strong jaw, wide brow, and brown curly hair. Even their eyes were the same, a tawny amber that I knew could glow with molten heat, or glitter with cold intent.

  “Yes, but way back. My mother’s family. They weren’t named Summerton, though.”

  “Ye’ve the look of me! Of course ye’re my kin!” Sir Alec crowed, giving Raphael another hug. “Grizel, ‘tis one of my descendants, come back to the ancestral home!”

  “How d’ye do,” the woman answered, bobbing a little curtsey at us. “Pleasure to meet ye.”

  “You, I take it, are Sir Alec’s second wife?” I asked. Grizel nodded, a faint blush visible on her cheeks despite the dim light and her transparency. I eyed her curiously, expecting to see a much harsher woman, the type who wouldn’t mind coming between a man and his wife. But this woman was fresh-faced, bearing an air of innocence that made me wonder if Lily had told me everything.

  “This lovely is Grizel, the light of my heart,” Sir Alec said proudly, wrapping his arm around her and hauling her up to his side. “She’s not related to ye, though, more’s the pity. I only had one brat, and she was off the she-witch who was my first wife.”

  His expression turned sour as he spoke. Grizel elbowed him, whispering, “’Tis not fittin’ to speak ill of the dead, husband.”

  Sir Alec suddenly grinned, making my knees wobble for a moment so similar a sight was it. “That’d be us as well, ye daft hen!”

  “Oh, aye,” she giggled. “I’m ever forgettin’ that.”

  “She’s soft on the eye, but a bit light in the head,” Sir Alec said fondly, giving his wife a squeeze to take the sting out of the comment. “Now then, ye’ll be wantin’ to have a tour of the castle, won’t ye? I’ll be happy to show it all to ye...all but the Stone Room.”

&nb
sp; “Oh?” Raphael and I exchanged glances. I cleared my throat. “Er...why not the Stone Room?”

  Sir Alec shot me a sharp look. “The laird’s stone is there. The stone was cursed centuries ago, and so long as it’s kept in peace, so will be the happiness of the men of Fyfe.”

  “But we’re not from Fyfe,” I argued.

  “He’s the spittin’ image of me!” Alec said, nodding toward Raphael. “I cannot allow him into the stone room. ‘Twould be a great danger.”

  “How so?” I asked, as we started down the hall.

  “’Tis the curse, lass. The Thane of Fyfe shadowed be, thrice around the stone bound; in its light, the devil can see, and the beast within be found.”

  “What does that mean?” Raphael asked, frowning as he tried to puzzle it out.

  “Any man of Fyfe who sets his hands upon the stone will be forever changed,” Alec answered with a meaningful look.

  “Oh? What about the women?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Only the lady’s stone affects them, and even if the laird’s stone would, they don’t know where the Stone Room is. It’s a secret room, ye ken, its location told only to the ruling master of Fyfe and his heir.”

  “I know where it is,” Grizel said suddenly.

  “Ye’re daft woman. Ye don’t.”

  “I do,” she insisted. “I saw you go into it from the privy not long after we were wed. You counted five stones up from the floor, five stones over from the door, and five stones in from the corner. The back wall of the privy swung open, and you disappeared into it. I was going to tease you about it when you came back out, but that was last I saw of you until...”

  Grizel’s smile faded as she looked away, her fingers fretting the material of her skirt.

  “’Tis all right, lass. We died together, and we’ll stay together for all eternity,” Sir Alec said, his voice gruff as he comforted his wife.

  Raphael exchanged another glance with me. I could see he was as hesitant as I was about the whole thing. “I think we’ll take a rain check on the tour of the castle, if you don’t mind,” I told the two ghosts.

  Sir Alec looked crestfallen until Raphael told him we were on our honeymoon.

  “Oh, then ye’ll be wantin’ a bit of privacy,” he said with a wink. “Grizel and I are still on ours, as well. It’s goin’ on for five hundred years now, but she’s still as saucy as a minx! Ye go and have a wee cuddle with yer wife, and I’ll be doin’ the same. Come here, ye red-headed Eve!”

  “Ye’ll naught catch me until I say ye can!” Grizel squealed and leaped away, racing down the hall into the shadows, a grinning Sir Alec in pursuit.

  I looked at Raphael. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Probably. Where did Fiona say the old laird’s quarters were?”

  “Somewhere on this floor. I’d guess below our rooms. But Raphael...” I bit my lip, hesitant to put into words a worry that had nagged me ever since I’d spoken with Lily.

  “You don’t want to destroy the stone,” Raphael said, trying the door to one of the rooms. It was locked. He moved on to the next one. “I figured you wouldn’t.”

  “No, it’s not that. That is, yes, that’s part of it—Fiona may have said that there was no family living, but they obviously missed your side of the family.”

  He shook his head and tried another door. “I told you—my Scottish ancestry is quite small, a great-times-ten grandmother, or something like that. Even if she was someone related to Sir Alec, by now the ancestry has been diluted with good old English stock.”

  “Sweety, you look just like him,” I said, pointing out the obvious. “No wonder Lady Lily thought she recognized you. I wish she’d told us it was her husband you resembled, but I guess if she hadn’t seen him in several hundred years, she probably forgot just what he looked like.”

  “It doesn’t matter. This situation is due to genetic coincidence, nothing more. Ah, this one is open.” He stuck his head into a room, reaching around for a light switch. Dim light flooded a room empty of all furniture, but containing several boxes of what appeared to be dry goods for the restaurant located on the main floor. “This looks promising. Where would the privy be, do you think?”

  “Lily said there was one connected to the bedroom. You aren’t seriously thinking of destroying the stone, are you? I know we told Lily we were going to, but that’s before we met Alec and Grizel. He doesn’t seem at all like the sort of person to cold-bloodedly murder his wife. Not to mention I’m more than a little bit concerned about what destroying it might do to you.”

  “I’ll be perfectly safe, sweetheart. Do you see anything that looks like a privy?”

  With much foreboding, I pointed toward a small alcove off the main room. As privy’s went, this one was fairly small, more a tiny little closet with a long open shaft in the center of the floor. A board had been laid across it for safety purposes, which Raphael skirted as he squatted next to the back of the stone wall. “Five up, five in, five over,” he murmured to himself as he tapped on stones. One of them made a dullish sound, which turned into a low rumble when he put all his weight into pressing on it. “Et voila! Your secret passage, milady.”

  The air that swirled out of the passage around us didn’t smell foul or unclean, but my nerves were still all on end. “I doubt there are lights down there.”

  “Stay here,” Raphael ordered as he got to his feet. “I’ll get a torch from the car.”

  I used the time it took him to run down to the car and back to form plausible arguments why he shouldn’t go into the passage, but they fell on deaf ears.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said firmly, giving me a pat on the behind as he shoved one of the boxes from the main room into the doorway to keep it open. He switched on a powerful flashlight, the light showing dark stone steps eerily leading down to inky blackness.

  “I don’t suppose you’d consider letting me go first?”

  The look he gave me spoke volumes.

  “All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you when this curse or whatever it is bites you on the butt.”

  “You’re the only one I allow to do that,” he said with a leer before doubling over to get through the four foot high doorway. “Besides, I don’t believe in centuries-old curses.”

  I grabbed the back of his shirt and followed. “You believe in vampires.”

  “I would prefer not to.”

  “And ghosts.”

  “Again, not by choice.”

  “And werewolves and imps and all other sorts of things we’ve seen.”

  An indignant snort was my answer to that. “I may be forced to believe in vampires and ghosts, but that doesn’t mean I buy into every supernatural idea out there. People do not turn into wolves, Joy. It’s physically impossible.”

  “Uh huh. Watch your—ow. Sorry.”

  Raphael rubbed his forehead where it had hit a low overhanging stone. The staircase we were on was a miniature version of the grand staircase, a narrow stone spiral that seemed to go on forever. “I think this is the bottom,” Raphael said as he moved a few steps forward. The light pooled around an iron-banded wooden door.

  “Bob, wait,” I said, grabbing his arm as he was about to open the door. “We can’t just up and destroy the stone and Sir Alec. It’s cruel.”

  “Cruel? Didn’t he starve his wife to death?”

  “Yes, but...well, after meeting him, I’m not too sure about that. I think we should talk to Lily again. Maybe things weren’t quite as she remembered.”

  His lips were warm on mine as he gave me a swift kiss. “Let’s take a look at this famed laird’s stone. If it’s small enough to move, perhaps we can just hide the thing, and tell Lily it’s gone.”

  “I don’t see what good that will do, but it’s better than nothing,” I grumbled.

  He laughed and slid back a solid slab of wood which barred the door, swinging it open. It had suitably creepy squeaking hinges, but nothing rushed out of the room at us when Raphael shone his light inside.
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  “Rats?” I asked, peering over his shoulder.

  “Not that I can see. It’s just a small, empty room.”

  And so it was. There was a slight musty odor, but as Raphael said, it was a small, empty stone chamber.

  Empty except for a plinth, upon which sat a greeny-grey chunk of stone approximately the size and shape of a large wheel of cheese. “That’s gotta be it,” I said, eyeing the stone carefully as Raphael shone the light on it.

  “I’d say so. Hold this while I see how heavy it is.”

  “Sweety—” I started to say, but my words stopped as Raphael reached out to grab the stone. A blinding flash of light startled me into screaming and dropping the flashlight, which promptly went out. I scrabbled around on the floor until I found it again, quickly switching it on. “Oh, my God, what was that? Are you all right?”

  I shown the light to where Raphael had been standing, my jaw dropping as I blinked in absolute stupefaction at the thing that stood in his place.

  A lion, golden, tawny-eyed, complete with mane, fuzzy ears, and an almost comical expression of utter disbelief, stared back at me.

  Chapter Four

  “Oh my God,” I said, my skin crawling as I reached out to touch the tip of the lion’s nose. His eyes crossed as he followed the movement of my hand. “Oh my God! I knew it! I knew something like this would happen if you tried to destroy the stone! OH MY GOD! You’re a werewolf!”

  The Raphael lion rolled its familiar amber eyes and opened its mouth as if it would speak. All that came out was a guttural grunt.

  “All right then, you’re a werelion! Same difference, Bob! Oh, my God, what are we going to do?”

  Frustration filled Raphael’s feline eyes as he made the same guttural noise a couple more times.

  “Don’t swear, sweety. We’ll figure something out,” I said, patting him on the top of his furry head. “That’s what that beast within bit from that curse must have meant. That’s all fine and well, but I am not going to spend my honeymoon with an animal. Let’s go find Sir Alec and see what he has to say about this. It’s his stone, maybe he knows of a way to break this transformation.”