by Lila Dubois
Table of Contents
Excerpt
Bones
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
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Note from Lila
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Lila recommends … Renee George
Excerpt
“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.
She watched with interest as the rest of them succumbed to a shared delusion.
“Séan,” Sorcha asked the bearded man who was holding her, “do you see anything, over there behind Melissa?”
Melissa looked over her shoulder. There was absolutely nothing there.
It was dark in the room now that it was seriously raining. The lights from the hall provided some illumination, but the shadows were long and eerie, so she could excuse the rest of them for imagining things. She did find it interesting that they were all “seeing” the same thing. It wasn’t far different from people who went to psychics and then convinced themselves of psychic power by reading in to every strange word the “psychic” said.
Séan and Sorcha ran for the door, knocking over a broken chair. Melissa gritted her teeth—there was no reason for them to be in here, making a mess.
Tristan stopped them at the door. “You cannot come out here,” he said to Séan. “He’s waiting.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, but he’s waiting for you, reaching for you. He’s tried to enter the room, but he can’t. He’s waiting for you to come out.”
“It must be the man who possessed you before,” Sorcha said. “The brother.”
Melissa made her way over, not wanting to miss a word of this strange drama. “Whose brother?” she asked.
“There are old parish records at Séan’s house, because it used to be the parochial house.” Sorcha’s face, already pale, seemed nearly translucent. She was genuinely scared.
“We went through them,” Séan said, his voice low and lilting. “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.”
“They were the bastard children of the Lord of Glenncailty,” Séan said.
Melissa looked over her shoulder, then nodded. “That would make sense if they went to the local school, though usually the children of a landed and titled man, even if they were bastards, would have been taught by a private tutor. In this case, a tutor from England, since no Englishman would allow his children to be taught by an Irish person.”
“Glenncailty isn’t easy to get to, even today,” Sorcha said.
Melissa considered what they said, ignoring the way they were all twitching and staring suspiciously at the shadows. “So the records indicate that there were children who may have been the children of the English landlord. They were enrolled in the parochial school, though they were not baptized in that church. That supports the theory since the Lord of Glenncailty would have wanted them baptized in the Anglican church.”
“We found three names. There are only two children’s bodies,” Séan said.
“The infant is too young to be in the parochial record.”
“But that means there are two children unaccounted for,” Sorcha whispered.
“We’re missing bodies.” Melissa looked around, tensed. There was nothing worse than missing bodies. Though she didn’t put any sentimental value on them, she did believe that death deserved notice. Most of the time death could only be confirmed with a body. “We’ll need to do a full excavation of this room and—”
A strong gust knocked a branch into one of the windows. It shattered, and wet wind whipped around the room. The plastic box containing the infant fell to the floor, the little bones rolling out.
Sorcha, who until then had seemed relatively sane, ran toward the remains, knocking Melissa out of her way.
“I’m here, my sweet baby,” she said.
“Oh dear,” Melissa sighed. Some people were overcome when faced with death and sadness—it seemed that Sorcha was one of them.
“Your bastard father killed your brothers,” Sorcha mumbled. “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.” Sorcha’s accent had gotten so thick Melissa could barely understand her.
“Sorcha!” Séan picked her up, and she struggled, laughing maniacally. Melissa had some chloroform in her kit—if Sorcha didn’t calm down soon, she would use it.
Séan carried Sorcha toward the door. At the threshold, Tristan stopped him.
“No, don’t come out here. He’s waiting for you. Give her to me.”
Melissa was more than a little alarmed—it seemed Tristan was as wrapped up in the delusion as poor Sorcha was. There was no one in the hall, no reason Séan couldn’t leave.
Sorcha screamed, thrashing so much that she fell from Séan’s arms. She was ranting in Irish, the words coming so fast that though Melissa spoke a few words of the language, she couldn’t make out anything. Melissa ran to her, putting one hand on her head. “Hold still.” It was chloroform time.
“He can see them,” Sorcha said dreamily.
For a minute Melissa shivered—the atmosphere was getting to her. The wind howled through the broken window, the shadows wavered as the lights in the hall flickered. Sorcha, with her pale skin, waves of red hair and eerily distant stare, looked like the kind of woman you would expect to see whispering about ghosts while standing in the rain. The only thing she was missing was a billowing white dress.
“Tristan can see the ghosts.” Sorcha blinked and seemed to come back into herself. “God protect us.”
Tristan’s face was grim, deep furrows bracketing his mouth. “You see them?” he asked Sorcha.
“I did. I think I was inside her, the mother, or she was inside me.”
“We know.” Séan touched her arm. “You were…talking.”
“Did you understand her?” Melissa asked Séan. “I didn’t get it all.” Though she didn’t believe the other woman had been possessed, which is what Sorcha was implying, it was interesting.
“What did I say?” Sorcha asked.
It was Séan who answered. “You said…that you had to kill them, your children, to hurt him.”
Tears filled Sorcha’s eyes, and she nodded. “The father, the Lord of Glenncailty, killed the oldest boy because he looked and acted Irish. She was angry, so angry.” Sorcha rubbed her arms.
“He kills one child, she kills two, and then he kills her.” Tristan shook his head. “That pain, that rage… They are not ghosts.”
“I saw them, I felt them. What can they be if not ghosts?” Sorcha asked desperately.
The mother of all collective hallucinations. Melissa kept that theory to herself.
“Memories.” Tristan’s gaze scanned the room, and for a moment Melissa believed that he could see something. “They are memories so strong that they left a mark. Ghosts are souls, left wandering because they cannot leave. These are not true ghosts, they are moments of history that even time cannot erase.”
“We can’t…we can’t make them go away?” Sorcha asked.
“No.”
“We need to leave, run.”
“I…can’t.” Tristan said, his voice filled with both horror and resignation.
Melissa had had enough. She wouldn’t let this go on any longer. Since Sorcha now seemed relatively normal, she went to Tristan. Taking his wrist in her right hand, she took his pulse—it was racing. Whatever he thought was going on, it was having a true physical effect on him. “All right, I believe you believe there’s something going on here.”
Tristan laughed, but it was a sad sound. “You don’t trust what you can’t see?”
“I’ve seen more dead bodies, graves and horrifying things than most people,” Melissa told him quietly. “Trust me, if there were ghosts, I’d know about it.”
It was time to end this. Leaving Tristan in the doorway, she went to her kit and pulled out a few things she always carried with her. “Ghosts, or memories, or whatever you want to call them, don’t exist, but people’s reactions are very real. That I can help with.” She took two road flares and an emergency horn out of the bottom of the kit.
“Most major religions have exorcism rituals,” she said. She’d found that explaining often helped people snap out of it. “They are called a variety of things. I’m not a cultural anthropologist, so I wouldn’t be able to tell you what the exact commonalities and differences are, but I know there are similar elements used in most. The first is fire.”
She popped the caps from the flares. There was a hiss and then red flame sputtered to life. She turned in a circle, moving slowly and solemnly. There was no mocking in what she did—her belief in the supernatural was non-existent. Her belief in the human mind and the need for ritual was ironclad.
“The second common element is sound.” Holding up the emergency beacon, she braced herself and pressed the button. The siren was so loud it was nearly physically painful. Sorcha and Séan both bolted from the room, hands clapped over their ears.
Melissa released the button. The sound stopped, the silence almost as deafening as the siren. She focused on Tristan.
“They’re gone,” he said. “That worked. The memories are gone.”
Bones
The Irish Castle
The Glenncailty Ghosts, Book 4
Lila Dubois
Published 2017 by Book Boutiques.
ISBN: 978-1-946363-54-1
Copyright © 2017, Lila Dubois.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Book Boutiques.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or events is wholly coincidental. The names, characters, dialogue, and events in this book are from the author’s imagination and should not to be construed as real.
Manufactured in the USA.
Email [email protected] with questions, or inquiries about Book Boutiques.
Blurb
Sins and secrets aren't the only skeletons in the closet...
London forensic anthropologist Melissa Heavey isn't anything like the characters in her grandmother's beloved television crime dramas. Especially since an accident left her crippled and weary. While in Dublin to rest and recuperate, she's asked to help the local Garda Síochána identify bones found in a rural luxury hotel.
Curiosity-seeking bone gawkers were not the clients Tristan Fontaine anticipated when he took over the Glenncailty Castle restaurant. And a scientist taking over part of his kitchen for her lab? He's having none of it. Yet she's not backing down...and his pulse won't stop speeding up when she's near.
As their attraction flares, Melissa soon discovers why Tristan is so dismissive of the bones—he's been talking to the ghosts themselves. But the bones aren't Glenncailty's only secret, and Tristan is hiding a tragedy in his past more frightening than what's lurking inside the castle walls.
Previously Published
(2014) Samhain Publishing, Original title: The Shadow and the Night.
Dedication
For Mack, even though she’s a mass-murdering psychopath.
For Amy, who agreed to become a pseudo expert on forensic anthropology to fact check my science. Any mistakes are definitely her fault. I mean, like 100% her bad. I never make mistakes.
For Kristi Alford-Metcalf, who was the first person besides me to love Glenncailty Castle and its mysteries. Thank you. You made me want to tell a good story.
For Farm Boy, who doesn’t mind that I exploited his native land for the sake of a story, and who tirelessly translated text and dialogue into both French and Irish. He also didn’t freak out when in a first draft some of the ghosts had the same names as his siblings. I assure you it’s due to laziness when writing, not a latent desire to murder any members of his family.
For all my readers—thank you. I hope that you enjoy Tristan and Melissa’s story.
Acknowledgements
Cover Artist: Valerie Tibbs, Tibbs Design
Chapter 1
Biting her lip, Melissa pushed through the pain. Her biceps strained, her elbow creaked and her fingers shook. With a little hiss of frustration, she dropped the soup can. The innocuous can hit the floor and rolled under the vanity in the little guest room of her grandmother’s house.
Trembling from the effort, Melissa gingerly sat back on the bed. Unfortunately, that put her level with her own reflection in the mirror. Her face was flushed and there were tears in her eyes. Irritated with herself, she wiped them away with her right hand while her left lay limp on the bed.
She was wearing a thin sleeveless undershirt, and the mirror showed the long, jagged scars that started midway down her upper left arm, coated her elbow and stopped mid-forearm. Besides the scars, her arm looked skinny and weak, the muscles atrophied after months with her arm braced to her side. The physical therapy was helping, though it was humiliating that she found a simple soup can so hard to lift.
“Melissa?”
Her grandmother’s voice snapped her from her brown study. She grabbed an embroidered hip-length jacket she’d bought in China and pulled it on. The long sleeves hid her scars. She carefully bent her left arm, feeling her elbow creak as she slid the knotted buttons through the loops. Her mangled arm didn’t bother her grandmother, but Melissa was more comfortable with it covered up.
“Melissa?”
“Coming, Granny.”
Bouncing to her feet she left the little room on the second floor of the terraced Dublin house and bounded down the stairs, taking them two at a time just to prove her legs still worked. Granny waited in the wood-paneled hallway at the bottom.
Her normally smiling grandmother looked grim.
Melissa pulled up short. “Granny?”
The older woman reached out for Melissa’s arm, but pulled her hand back. “Follow me.”
A lump forming in her stomach, Melissa shuffled behind her grandmother through the small, twisting halls of the two-hundred-year-old house until they reached the kitchen. It had been remodeled and enlarged in the ’70s, and there was just enough space for a table. Her grandmother shooed her into a seat, then took one herself.
“I need to ask you a question, and I’m very serious about this.”
“Very well,” Melissa said, no idea what this could be about. Up until the time that she went away to university, Melissa had spent almost every summer in Dublin with her grandmother and loved her ferociously. Returning to London each August had been heartbreaking, and for weeks she’d wander her parent’s house with an affected Irish accent quite unlike her own public-school British one. She’d finally gotten a chance to stay here more permanently when she’d come to live with her grandmother to attend University College Dublin, where she’d gotten a degree in Archaeology before the discovery of the bog bodies had shifted her interest to Forensic Anthropology.
“A man from the Garda Síochána called, and he was looking for you.”
“The…oh, the police. Why?”
“That’s what I need to know.” Bracing her elbows on the table, Bridget Ferguson leaned forward. “Did you steal a body, or maybe just some bones? Something you thought was interesting to study but might actually be the bones of a royal family somewhere, bones that would prove that the current rulers are impostors?” The older woman’s gaze was hard and focused.
“Wha… What bones? What ruling family?” Melissa stared at her grandmother in total confusion. They had the same hazel eyes, but Melissa had gotten her father’s fair hair, not the black of her mother and grandmother—though she’d seen a dye box in the bathroom, confirming her suspicion that her grandmother’s hair was no longer naturally dark.
“Or maybe you found something, a piece of jewelry, a letter, a trinket of some kind.”
Melissa narrowed her eyes. “Granny, have you been watching those crime shows again?”
“Well, of course I have. I have to know what my favorite granddaughter is doing while she’s running around all corners of Christendom.”
Melissa’s lips twitched. “Granny, I’ve told you, I’m not like the lady on the TV show. I don’t solve crimes. They usually know who did it before I get there.”
“And you’re sure that you didn’t accidentally bring back some mysterious bones?”
She looked so hopeful that Melissa hated to say, “No.”
“Ah, well then.” Her grandmother sat back with a little sigh of disappointment.
“Did the police actually call?”
“As if I’d make up something like that,” she humphed. “They did call, and they said something about some bones.”
“That’s odd.”
As a forensic anthropologist Melissa wasn’t like the character on the crime dramas her grandma watched, but she did travel all over the world looking for human remains. She’d gone out with the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, called CILHI, to help identify remains from the Korean War and Vietnam conflict, spent some time in South America helping to sort through the warehouses of remains that the state-run laboratories were holding but didn’t have time to work with, and then most recently had been in Bosnia and Africa to help process mass graves.