There was no one about. A single table lamp at the end of the hallway lit the walkway in a yellow glow. She stepped out, dressed all in black, holding a black flashlight, and—in what she thought might be a bit of overkill—wearing a black knit cap on her head. She looked every bit the burglar. Or grave robber. She closed the door behind her with the faintest of bumps and turned the old-fashioned skeleton key to lock it. It clicked louder than she might have liked, especially in the otherwise silent hotel, but she didn’t think it wise to leave her room unlocked. Who knew what kind of weirdoes might be out lurking that night?
Despite her best efforts, each step managed to find a creaky floorboard to announce her journey from her room to the top of the stairs. The steps were even worse.
Creak. Creak. Creeeeeak.
She was sure she must be waking up everyone in the hotel. All three of them. But she made it to the door without anyone suddenly turning on a light and asking where in the world she thought she was going at that hour. Another open and close of a door and she was outside in the cool night air. Cold, actually, that far north on the coast in October. She was glad she’d gone with the hat after all.
The earlier walk with Philip quickly proved its value. It was dark as Hell outside. Well, actually, she didn’t suppose Hell was all that dark—not with all that fire and everything—but it sure was dark in Ayrsduff. There were absolutely no streetlights and every light in every building was off. Even the pub. She wondered whether anyone was awake at all. Did they even have a fire station or a police station? It sure didn’t look like it. The only lights in the whole town came from a weak moon behind some unhelpfully thick clouds, and Maggie’s flashlight. She shined it ahead of her and hurried to the graveyard.
But when she got there, she began to regret not having gone on a longer walk with Philip. She stood at the gate of the cemetery—a waist-high iron-bar affair—but realized she didn’t know where Catrìona’s grave might be. She had supposed it would be a small graveyard. It was a small town after all, but it was an old town and a lot of people had died there over the centuries. Finding a single grave out of a hundred with only a flashlight was going to be slow work. Not to mention more than a little eerie.
She lifted the latch on the gate with a disquieting creak and pushed it open with an even more ominous one. Not that there was anyone around to hear it. Just her and a graveyard full of flesh-eating zombies. Fighting off a shudder, she stepped into the cemetery.
It was perfectly quiet. The only sounds were the very distant crash of waves against the shore and the very near squelching of her shoes on the wet grass. It was slippery and the earth shifted sometimes under her feet. She pointed her flashlight directly in front of her, lest she trip on a headstone, but she also needed to sweep the beam around the cemetery, searching for the open grave, unless she was prepared to step over every square inch of the grounds, flashlight straight down, until she came across it.
She expected the defiled grave should be easy enough to spot, if only because of the large pile of dirt that would be next to it. Maybe even some crime scene tape like in Edinburgh, although she wasn’t convinced Ayrsduff even had a police force. There’d been no sign of it yet. She walked carefully forward, alternating between sweeping the area for dirt piles and checking her feet for tripping hazards.
As she got deeper into the cemetery, she began to notice trees that blocked both her view and her path. It was getting hazardous quickly. She needed to find that grave.
The next swing of the beam revealed a dark form that could have been, maybe, a pile of dirt. Or a small hill in an otherwise flat area. No, it definitely looked like a pile of dirt. It was pretty far away though; the beam of her flashlight barely reached it. She turned and began walking toward it, moving the beam up and down and all around the form, trying to discern whether it really was what she hoped it was.
She was excited enough by the prospect of finding the object of her quest that she overlooked two things. The first thing was the fact that a flashlight beam moving over a large something would be quite visible from the road. The second thing was the open grave right in front of her.
“Oof!”
She dropped the flashlight as she plummeted into the grave and her glasses almost, but not quite, fell off. The knit cap did fall off though, and she banged her knee rather hard against the top of the wooden casket she found herself sprawled upon. She righted her glasses and fetched her flashlight, which had landed half upright against the earthen walls, shining its beam up the wall and onto the hopelessly weather-faded gravestone above. But Maggie knew it had once said Catrìona. And Maggie knew she was sitting on top what had once been Catrìona.
The smell wasn’t as bad as the grave in Greyfriars. Maybe it had been so long that there was nothing left to smell. She suspected it might smell worse inside the coffin, but she had no intention of finding out. Even if she’d wanted to, she wasn’t sure how she’d manage to open the lid while standing on it. But she didn’t want to. Instead she decided to see if she could figure out from the scrapes where the grave robber had pried open the casket and cast a divining spell there. Then get the hell out of there before anyone—dead or undead—found her.
“
Too late. She instinctively clicked off the flashlight, like that would do any good. All it did was confirm she was down there. A moment later, a light shone down on her and she could make out the uniform of what was likely the only police officer in Ayrsduff.
“
“Uh….
“
“
The officer tipped back his hat and scratched his head. “
Maggie didn’t like his tone. “
The officer hesitated, but he could hardly refuse. He knelt at the edge of the grave and reached down to pull her out.
“
The officer didn’t say anything for a few seconds, instead regarding her with a suspicious gaze. Finally, he asked, “Beurla?” The Gaelic word for ‘English.’
But the last thing Maggie wanted to do was speak English. Her American accent would be unmistakable. No, it was better to have a strange, but unplaceable, accent in Gaelic, than an accent that was easily identified in English—and remembered for reporting it to Sgt. Warwick and her evil partner when they eventually tracked her movements to Ayrsduff.
“
But the officer reached out and grabbed her shoulder. “
“
“
She had no doubt of that. “
“
Maggie nodded exaggeratedly. “
She was done falling into open graves. If the third time was the charm, she didn’t want to know what the charm would be.
The officer seemed off balance by Maggie’s apparent denseness. She decided to press her advantage. He was very young, maybe a year or two her junior, and not entirely unattractive. She stepped closer to him. “
“
“
That did it. Young Eamonn was stunned just enough for Maggie to slip away. “
*
Maggie opened the hotel’s front door slowly and peered inside. It was just as dark and silent as she’d left it. Once she stepped inside and locked the door behind her, she reached down and took off her shoes. Even after the sprint from the cemetery, there was still some moist grave soil on them. She didn’t need Rhona asking why muddy footprints from the front door to Maggie’s room had suddenly appeared overnight. She snuck slowly up the stairs, each step creaking at least as loudly as on her way out. She hurried down the hallway, dimmed flashlight in one hand, muddy shoes in the other. When she reached her door, she awkwardly fished the key out of her pocket and finally collapsed into the safety of her room.
After her door closed again, so too did the door to another room, which Maggie had completely failed to notice was cracked open as she tip-toed past.
*
The next day presented Maggie with a quandary. They’d booked two nights, so she would have another chance to go grave-diving. The question was how to spend the day with Philip when all she really wanted was for the day to end. She could try one of her ditches and head to the cemetery for a daytime attempt, but she wasn’t keen on trying the magic in broad daylight, and since Ayrsduff was approximately six buildings long, she doubted she could really lose Philip long enough to accomplish her goal anyway.
That meant a very long day in a very small town for a very impatient Maggie.
So she was stunned—albeit pleasantly so—when, after lunch, Philip suggested a walk through the cemetery.
“Really?” Maggie asked, as if he’d just asked her to fly to Paris with him on his private jet.
“Sure,” Philip replied. “In old towns like this, the cemeteries go back for centuries. I bet there are some pretty interesting people buried in this town. Pirates, rum-runners, witches…”
“Witches?” Maggie nearly choked.
“Well, not real witches,” Philip clarified. “But didn’t Rhona say there was a witch whose grave was just dug up? I bet we could find that easily enough.”
Easier than at night, Maggie thought. “I bet you’re right.”
“Let’s go then.” Philip stood up from their lunch table. “Let’s find the dug-up grave of the Ayrsduff Witch.”
“Yes.” Maggie stood up as well and smiled. “Let’s.”
*
“Well, that was easy,” Philip remarked as they reached the grave.
Try it at one in the morning with just a flashlight, Maggie thought.
“Catrìona NicInnes Ramsay,” Philip read the weathered gravestone. “Huh. I wonder why they dug her up.”
“I wonder who dug her up,” Maggie remarked.
Philip nodded. “Good point.” He peered into the grave. “I bet she knows.”
Maggie cocked her head at him. “Who? Catrìona?”
Philip shrugged. “Well, whoever did this probably had a reason they selected her out of all the graves in this cemetery. And it’s not like anyone comes to Ayrsduff on their way to somewhere else. This was very specific to her. I bet she’d know why they chose her. It’s a shame we can’t ask her.”
Maggie turned and looked into the grave too. After a moment, she nodded. “It sure is.”
*
Dinner was at the pub. Nothing fancy, but good food and a room filled with amiable Gaelic conversation. Maggie insisted they speak only Gaelic too. It was good practice, she reminded him. And who knew if Officer Eamonn MacEachran might stop by. As a result, however, Philip didn’t talk much and it wasn’t long before they headed back to the hotel.
Rhona was in the sitting room, feet up on an ottoman and reading a large book by the small fire. “
“
“
Maggie nodded. Twice, she thought. Instead, she said, “
Rhona looked to Philip then back to Maggie, a strange expression unfurling cautiously on her face. “
38. Séance
Rhona led Maggie and Philip into the hotel’s drawing room. It looked more like a library, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, an oriental rug, and a large oak table centered under an ornate chandelier.
“What? No crystal ball?” Philip whispered to Maggie, in English even.
“Shh,” she rebuked him. This was serious. She knew that, even if Philip didn’t.
“
Maggie nodded. She knew that was true.
“
Maggie knew that was true too. She sat down next to Rhona. Philip hesitated, then sat down as well, on the other side of their host. Rhona reached out and took their hands. “
Maggie and Rhona both looked at Philip.
“What?” he said, again in English.
“
He looked hurt. “
Maggie wasn’t sure she was—believing him, that is. But she did want him to stay. Iain had freaked out when he’d seen too much too fast. Maybe, if this worked, it might be easier for Philip to accept other things. Things about her. If they got that far.
Maggie was about to reply with the name of her Ayrsduff ancestor. That was why they were doing it in the first place. To ask the ghost of Catrìona Ramsay if she knew why, some three centuries after her death, someone had disturbed her earthly remains. But Maggie didn’t just know that there were ghosts, that some stayed close, and that others could be summoned. She also knew that the ones who didn’t stay close might not like to be summoned. That summoning a three-hundred-year-old spirit from the serenity of the next world was inconsiderate, arrogant, and improper. At least for something like this. Catrìona had left this plane ages ago. It was best to leave it left.
But that didn’t mean Maggie didn’t have an answer to Rhona’s question.
“Sarah MacKenzie,” she said suddenly. “
Philip nearly swallowed his tongue. “Sarah MacKenzie?! Are you kidding?” Again with the English, as if the question wasn’t irritating enough.
Maggie met his gaze with a steely glare. “
He stared back for a moment, then nodded. “
Rhona stood up. She lit several candles about the room and dimmed the chandelier. Then she sat down and took their hands again.
“
ing. Philip raised an eyebrow to Maggie, but her scowl discouraged any more disrespect. He just closed his eyes too. Maggie followed suit, and Rhona continued. “
Maggie cracked her eyes open and peered around the room, scanning for any sign of Sarah’s ghost. Rhona opened her eyes too. Philip didn’t bother. Nothing happened.
“
Again, nothing.
Rhona frowned. Maggie did too. They both looked at Philip, who had finally opened his eyes.
“
Rhona closed her eyes for a few moments, then opened them again and looked to Maggie. “
Maggie frowned. “
Rhona shook her head. “
“
Rhona nodded and let go of their hands. “
Maggie ran her hands through her thick hair. “Damn,” she muttered. She should have realized. Then Rhona told her something else she should have realized.
“
39. Brìghde’s Journal, Interrupted
No more séances. No more graveyards. Just home. Philip couldn’t drive fast enough. She needed to get home. Right then. That night. She needed to read the journal. Brìghde’s journal.
She needed to understand.
She was afraid she already did.
When Philip finally pulled up to her flat late that night, Maggie jumped out of the car with barely a “Thanks” shouted over her shoulder and sprinted toward her door. Philip yelled something about leaving for the conference the next day, but she ignored him. There was nothing that would delay her from what she needed to see.
Last Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 3) Page 17