Though it felt like a week, Kris arrived in Drumnadrochit, on the west shore of Loch Ness, a day later.
She’d been able to fly directly from Chicago to Heathrow; however, unlike the rest of the people on the plane, she hadn’t been able to sleep. Instead, she’d read the books she’d picked up on both Scotland and Loch Ness.
Loch Ness was pretty interesting, even without the monster. The lake was actually a three-hundred-million-year-old crack in the earth’s surface. Because of its extreme depth—nearly eight hundred feet—the loch contained more fresh water than all the other lakes in Britain and Wales combined, and never froze over, even during the coldest of Highland winters.
Since there had been over four thousand reported sightings of Nessie, which no doubt fueled the forty million dollars attributed to her by the Scottish tourism industry, it wasn’t going to be easy to debunk this myth. Kris certainly wasn’t going to get any help from the locals.
By the time London loomed below, Kris’s eyes burned from too much reading and not enough sleeping. However, she couldn’t drag her gaze from the view. She wished she had the money to tour the Tower and Buckingham Palace; she’d always dreamed of walking the same streets as Shakespeare. But she was traveling on her own dime, and she had precious few of them.
The city sped by the window of the bus taking her to Gatwick Airport where she boarded a flight to Inverness. A few hours later, she got her first glimpse of a fairly industrialized city. Why Kris had thought Inverness would be full of castles, she had no idea. According to her guidebook, it had nearly sixty thousand people and less than half a dozen castles. Still she was disappointed. Quaint would play very well on film.
She got what she was hoping for on the road south. The countryside was quaint squared, as was Drumnadrochit. White buildings backed by rolling green hills, the place should have been on a postcard—hell, it probably was—along with the long, gray expanse of Loch Ness.
The village was also tourist central, with a wealth of Nessie museums, shops and tours by both land and sea. Kris would check them out eventually. They’d make another excellent backdrop for her show. The charm of the town would highlight the archaic myth, illuminating how backward was a belief in fairy tales. The excessive glitter of tourism would underline why the locals still pretended to believe.
Kris had once adored fairy tales, listening avidly as her mother read them to her and her brother. In those tales, bad things happened, but eventually, everything worked out.
In real life, not so much.
Her driver, an elderly, stoic Scott who’d said nothing beyond an extremely low-voiced, “Aye,” when she’d asked if he often drove to Drumnadrochit, continued through town without stopping. For an instant Kris became uneasy. What if the man had decided to take her into the countryside, bash her on the head, and toss her into the loch, making off with her laptop, video camera, and anything else she might possess? Sure, Lola would miss her eventually, but by then Kris would be monster bait.
A hysterical bubble of laughter caught in her throat. She didn’t believe in monsters—unless they were human.
She lifted her gaze to the rear-view mirror and caught the driver watching her. He looked like anyone’s favorite grampa—blue-eyed, red-cheeked, innocent.
And wasn’t that what everyone said about the local serial killer?
The vehicle jolted to a stop, and Kris nearly tumbled off the shiny leather seat and onto the floor. Before she recovered, her driver leaped out, opened her door, and moved to retrieve her bag from the trunk.
Kris peered through the window. They’d arrived at Lakeside Cottage, which, while not exactly lakeside was damn close. Kris would have to cross the road to reach the loch, but she’d be able to see it from the house. The village of Drumnadrochit lay out of sight around a bend in the road.
“Idiot.” Kris blew her bangs upward in a huff. “No one’s going to bash you over the head. This isn’t the south side of Chicago.”
She stepped out of the car, then stood frozen like Dorothy opening the door on a new and colorful world. The grass was a river of green, the trees several shades darker against mountains the hue of the ocean at dawn. The air was chilly, but it smelled like fresh water and—
“Biscuit?”
A short, cherubic woman, with fluffy white hair and emerald eyes stood in the doorway of the cottage. For an instant Kris thought she was a Munchkin. She certainly had the voice for it.
“I made a batch of Empires to welcome ye.” She held out a platter full of what appeared to be iced shortbread rounds topped with a cherry.
Since Kris hadn’t eaten since the flight to Heathrow, she took one, despite her belief that a biscuit should only be served warm, dripping with butter and honey.
At the first bite, her mouth watered painfully. Crisp and sweet—was that jelly in the middle?—she couldn’t remember eating anything so fabulous in a very long time.
“It’s a cookie,” she managed after she swallowed the first and reached for a second.
The woman smiled, the expression causing her cheeks to round like apples beneath her sparkling eyes. “Call it whatever ye like, dearie.” She lifted the platter. “Then take another.”
Kris had to listen very hard to distinguish the English beneath the heavy brogue. She felt as if she were hearing everything through a time warp, one that allowed the meaning of the words to penetrate several seconds after they were said. She hoped that the longer she stayed, the easier it would get.
“Thanks.” Kris took two cookies in each hand. “I’m Kris Daniels.”
“Well, and don’t I know that.” The plump, cheery woman giggled. The sound resembled the Munchkin titters that had welcomed Dorothy to Oz. Kris glanced uneasily at the nearby shrubbery, expecting it to shake and burp out several more little people.
Then she heard what the woman had said, and a cold finger traced her spine. If they already knew her here, knew what she did, who she was, her cover was blown, and her story was crap before it had even begun. Why hadn’t she used a false name?
Because she hadn’t thought anyone in the Scottish Highlands would have seen a cable TV show filmed in Chicago. And how, exactly, would she present herself as Susie Smith, when her credit cards and passport read Kristin Daniels?
“You know me?” Kris repeated faintly.
“I spoke with ye on the phone. Rented ye the cottage. Who else would be arriving today bag and baggage?”
Kris let out the breath she’d taken. She was no good at cloak and dagger. She liked lying about as much as she liked liars, and was therefore pretty bad at it. She needed to get better and quick.
“You’re Mrs. Cameron,” Kris said.
“Effigenia,” the woman agreed. “Everyone calls me Effy.”
Effy’s brilliant eyes cut to the driver, who was as thin and tall as she was short and round. “Ye’ll be bringing that suitcase inside now, Rob, and be quicker about it than a slow-witted tortoise.”
Kris glanced at the old man to see if he was offended, but he merely nodded and did as he’d been told.
Very slowly.
Kris’s lips twitched. She’d have been tempted to do the same if Effy had ordered her around.
Rob came out of the cottage, and Effy shoved the plate in front of him. “Better eat a few, ye great lummox, or ye’ll be starvin’ long before supper.”
He took several. “If ye didnae cook like me sainted mother, woman, I’d have drowned ye and yer devil’s tongue in the loch years ago.”
Looming over the diminutive Effy, deep voice rumbling like the growl of a vicious bear, Rob should have been intimidating. But there was no heat to his words, no anger on his face. He just stated his opinion as if he’d stated the same a hundred and one times before. Perhaps he had. The two did seem well acquainted.
Effy snorted and shoved the entire plate of biscuits into his huge, worn hands with a sharp, “Dinnae drop that, ye old fool,” then she reached into the pocket of her voluminous gray skirt and pulled out a key, w
hich she presented to Kris. “Here ye are, dearie. And what is it ye’ll be doing in Drumnadrochit?”
“I’m…uh…” Kris glanced away from Effy’s curious gaze, past Rob, whose cheeks had gone chipmunk with cookies, toward the rolling, gray expanse of the loch. “Writing.”
“Letters?” Rob mumbled.
“Why would she need to travel all this way to write a letter?” Effy scoffed.
“Some do.”
“I’m writing a book,” Kris blurted.
There. That had even sounded like the truth. Maybe the key to lying was thinking less and talking fast. No wonder men were so good at it.
“A children’s book?” Effy asked.
Kris said the first thing that popped into her head. “Sure.”
Silence greeted the word. That hadn’t sounded very truthful.
“Mmm.” Rob gave a throaty, Scottish murmur, drawing Kris’s attention away from the loch and back to him. Luckily for her, it also caught Effy’s attention.
“Ye ate them all?” She snatched the empty plate from his hands.
“Ye said not to drop them. Ye didnae say not to eat them.”
“And if I didnae tell ye not to drive into the water, would I find ye swimming with Nessie of an afternoon?”
Rob didn’t answer. Really, what could he say?
“Nessie,” Kris repeated, anxious to keep their attention off her inability to lie. “Have you seen her?”
“Mmm,” Rob murmured again, this time the sound not one of skepticism but assent.
“If ye live in Drumnadrochit,” Effy said, “ye’ve seen her.”
Kris laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Everyone’s seen her?”
Effy lifted her chin to indicate the loch. “Ye have but to look.”
Kris spun about. All she saw were waves and shadows and rocks.
St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Lori Handeland
The Nightcreature Novels
Blue Moon
Hunter’s Moon
Dark Moon
Crescent Moon
Midnight Moon
Rising Moon
Hidden Moon
Thunder Moon
The Phoenix Chronicles
Any Given Doomsday
Doomsday Can Wait
Apocalypse Happens
Chaos Bites
Anthologies
Stroke of Midnight
No Rest for the Witches
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
MARKED BY THE MOON
Copyright © 2010 by Lori Handeland.
Excerpt from Moon Cursed copyright © 2010 by Lori Handeland.
All rights reserved.
For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
ISBN: 978-0-312-38934-5
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Marked by the Moon Page 29