Three Stories About Ghosts

  “Offer’s still open,” Agatha said, focusing her voice into a tight spell that shot straight through his ward and into his left ear.

  John suppressed a shudder. Not this again. “There isn’t enough room on your broom for the both of us,” he answered through the same spell.

  Agatha shook her head and stared down towards the ground, as though to study some building miles below to their right.

  “You know she’s only trying to be nice,” Trish said in his mind. He wasn’t sure he could ever get used to that, the voice of his wife playing in his mind. He wondered for the hundredth time that morning how the life essence of one departed could attach itself to his. From what he knew of the Sky Mother, it wasn’t possible.

  Trish materialised behind her mother on the broom, looked over at him with a mild glower, and shook her head. Alive or dead, he wasn’t about to let Trish talk him into sharing a broom with her mother. Exhausted, unshaven, and still wearing his suit and underwear from yesterday, he nonetheless had his dignity to protect.

  “It was here, wasn’t it?” Agatha asked, pointing to a village ahead of them in the distance.

  John stared at her in confusion for a moment, but her meaning dawned on him in a rush. He remembered where he was. He swallowed hard and let a little more rain drench his face. The mound of grief that he locked in the core of his heart was calm for the moment, but he didn’t want to look down. He kept his head raised and nodded.

  “You knew?” he asked.

  Trish had a smile on her lips as she sat behind her mother, facing towards him and swinging her legs underneath her. Somewhere between the house and here, she’d fixed her hair into a ponytail, the deep wells under her eyes had been replaced with her usual rich amber hue, and the light in her eyes had returned. He suppressed a shudder down his back, but found he couldn’t look away from her. He couldn’t help the smile that parted his lips.

  “You think I’d let my nineteen-year-old daughter out of my sight? Especially with a Trevelyan?”

  John’s heart lurched for a moment.

  “You watched us?” he asked, not able to keep the shock from his voice.

  “No, imbecile,” Agatha said as she tutted at him. “I knew where you were taking her and chose not to stop you.”

  This was it. They were right above it, the hotel he and Trish had run off to twenty years ago. We were so young. He looked down to find the hotel still there, still the same. Twenty years and the building hadn’t changed a bit. He turned to Trish, and their eyes met. His smile seemed to widen itself.

  “I told her she could do better than you, but she seemed set, despite my efforts,” Agatha said.

  John frowned and turned to defend himself, but found Agatha smiling back at him. He wasn’t sure, but as she turned away, he thought her lower lip trembled.

  “Best nights of my—” He had to catch himself as a wave of grief threatened to break the banks of his heart. He tightened his lips and stretched out his back. They didn’t have time for this; they were almost at Laird Bellard’s exclusion wards. He shook his head, trying to push the memory of escaping to the highlands with Trish from overwhelming him, and steadied himself.

  He raised his wand higher in greeting as they approached the mild shimmer in the air that marked the outer boundary of the exclusion ward, but found himself met with a solid rejection. He furrowed his brows and turned to find Agatha slowing to a halt too. She raised her Warden emblem to open the exclusion ward, but it refused her and stayed shut.

  He shook his head, but before he had found Laird Bellard’s number in his phone, the ward rippled and shifted and two clansmen floated out to them, each cradling a yew branch brimming with force under their right arms and wearing the black and red Bellard warrior robes.

  He turned to find Agatha alone on her broom, Trish having dematerialised, and raised an eyebrow at her. She turned her hand and gestured for him to stay back as she nudged her broom forward and flew straight up to the clansmen.

  “What the hell kind of greeting is this?” she asked in her imperious Warden’s tone.

  “Ah,” the lead clansman said as he surveyed the two of them. “We weren’t expecting visitors.” He turned and exchanged a look with his colleague. “The Laird has locked our lands,” he said, bowing his head slightly in apology.

  Agatha turned to look at him. John floated over to the clansmen and tried to remain patient. They were only doing as they were ordered, and they each held a branch of power long enough to vaporise them both.

  “I’ve yet to find anything but a warm greeting from the Laird,” he said in as formal a tone as he could manage, “despite the cold outside.” He gestured to the air around them.

  The lead clansman bowed his head but still shook it. “I do apologise, sir, but our orders come from the Laird himself.”

  John decided that the two men weren’t going to budge, and so he dialled the Laird on his phone, waited for a few moments, and smiled as a raspy voice coughed twice, muttered something, and talked to itself.

  “Ah, what’s this? A call. Oh, it’s John. How do I answer this damned thing? Phi,” he called, “Phiona, come here. How do I answer this poxed trinket?” His voice had grown a touch more hoarse, and John wondered if he’d quit smoking pipes like he’d promised the last time they’d met.

  “What?” the Laird continued. “What do you mean it’s already connected? John?”

  “I’m here,” he answered.

  “John, you grey-haired bastard, where the hell have you been?” Laird Bellard shouted. John put the phone on speaker and turned it so the clansmen could see the screen. “Times like these you need your real family, boy, not the fat-arsed Warden bitch you call a—”

  “I’m here too, my Laird,” Agatha said, doing nothing to hide her contempt. “Have you grown out of another reclining chair yet, you manatee?”

  “Hah!” the Laird shouted down the phone. “Almost.”

  “We’re being held at your outer wards by a couple of burly-looking men,” Agatha said. “They’re packing some serious firepower. Expecting trouble?”

  “Always,” the Laird answered. “Alan, Calum, that you?”

  “Ah”—the lead clansman lurched forward a touch—“yes, my Laird.”

  “Let ’em through. Where’re you going, John?”

  “We’d like to see Margaret Goodland, if you’d permit.”

  “Me?” the Laird laughed down the phone. “I can’t permit a damned fart with that woman. But you can see her, if she’ll see you. I’ll meet you there in five. Bye.”

  “Bye.” John hung up the phone and gestured to the clansmen. They bowed, turned, and led the way through the ward.

  JOHN SMILED AS he watched Laird Bellard hunch over a basket outside Goodland Cottage’s heavy oak front doors. He stood a head and shoulder shorter than the clansmen flanking him, but even in his old age the raw power of the man hummed from his every nerve and sinew. John couldn’t help but smile as he walked the stone-paved lane, lined with waist-high hedgerows on either side.

  The Laird kept glancing back to a list in his left hand as he poked through the basket with his right. “Two loaves, two dozen eggs,” the Laird said as he rummaged, oblivious to their arrival. “Three bunch of sausage. Cheese, pickles, grapes, and—” He paused and grimaced. “Shite. I forgot the fruit,” he added, turning to the clansman on his right, a tall, thin young man wearing the familiar black and red of the Laird’s guard.

  John’s heart rose a little as the Laird spotted him, flashed a wide grin and walked over in his relaxed gait, extending his hand.

  “It’s been far too long,” John said as he took his hand. The Laird’s handshake was characteristically subtle, barely registering. In their world, where others tried to infuse their handshakes with etheric force to seem more powerful, Laird Bellard barely even twitched his hand muscles. He reminded him of John’s father in that way, his power being self-evident and always understated.

  His grey beard was cut short and pointed at the ch
in, and his short hair, still shot through with a few black strands, was combed back, sitting drenched against his head as the rain clouds kept up their deluge. He dressed in his usual oiled long coat, deep green except for patches of black grease stains here and there, and a pair of worn jeans.

  “It has,” he said, his deep highland burr sounding even raspier in person than on the phone. He turned and walked up to Agatha. “Well, I could’ve gone a bit longer before seeing her again.” He turned back to John with a grin and gestured over to Agatha, towering at least two feet above him. She smiled and inclined her head.

  He gestured for them to follow him and led the way over to the cottage’s front door. He raised his hand to knock, but Claire Goodland, the professor’s daughter, opened the door and stepped out. She wore a white blouse that was immediately specked with rain, tight-fitting blue jeans, and a pair of pink slippers. Her blonde hair framed her face as it sat across her shoulders and her green eyes, usually bright and warm, seemed etched with a heavy weight—like she too hadn’t slept in weeks.

  She held a steaming cup in her hands and took a sip as she raised her eyebrows and looked at the Laird with an exhausted smile on her lips.

  “Hi, Claire,” Laird Bellard said as he extended an arm and patted her on the shoulder. “I know what you’d said, about the spell and all and visitors, but I thought she’d make an exception for two friends? Phiona also gave me this for you.” He turned and gestured for the tall clansman to place the basket down by the front door. “I forgot the apricots and peaches.”

  Claire reached out and hugged him. “Thank you,” she said, her voice dripping with fatigue. The sound took John by surprise. She had always been so sprightly. Grief affects everyone in its own way, he supposed.

  John stepped forward. “Hello, Claire,” he said. For the first time, she looked past the Laird and over to him. Her face lifted a touch, and she returned his smile, then turned to greet Agatha.

  “Yes, please do come in out of the rain,” she said, turning back to open the front door. “Sorry,” she half sighed as they all stepped into a dimly lit hallway with ornate wallpaper and a low ceiling, “the house is in a bit of a state.”

  “Oh, don’t fret your arse over that,” Laird Bellard said. He sent the clansmen out to stand guard outside the front door with a gesture of his hand. “Want me to send Mimi over to you again, refill your freezer with cooked meals?”

  Claire smiled but shook her head. “Thank you, but we’re still going through the last batch. Neither of us is eating much nowadays.”

  The Laird shook his head and sighed as he took off his coat, revealing a green woolly jumper over a white-collared shirt. He shook off the rain and hung the coat up.

  “I understand. I’ll go see to the ward stones while you all talk, if it’s alright,” he said. He gestured back to John and Agatha. “Think our friends want to see your mother. Let me know if you need anything.”

  Claire smiled again but shook her head. “The wards are fine, Laird, thank you. If it’s all the same to you, I think my mother would like to speak to them in private.”

  He paused and stared at her for a moment, but nodded and walked back to the coat rack, put on his coat, and clasped John’s right arm. “It’s good to see you again, lad. Come see us, once in a while, will you? We miss you.”

  John smiled and nodded as he shook his hand again. “As soon as I can, I promise.”

  The Laird smiled, bowed his head slightly to Agatha, and walked out, the clansmen at the door falling in behind him. In half a moment, they were up in the sky, heading back to Bellard Castle.

  “Welcome,” Claire said, as she placed her cup down on a side table in the hallway and closed the front door, “to Scotland. It’s been a while.”

  Agatha stepped forward and took her hand. John glanced over to her, and had to look again as he saw a genuine look of concern on her face. It seemed so out of place.

  Claire squeezed Agatha’s hand back and led them both to a small study through a door along the corridor’s left. The study was filled with mahogany furniture, empty bookshelves lined every wall, a waist-high globe stood by the tall window, a large circular table sat in its middle on a round rug, and seven or eight small chairs were dotted around.

  Margaret Goodland sat on a chair at the table, mouthing silent words as she held a slip of paper against an oil lantern and read it over and over. She was frail at the best of times, but she’d aged a decade since he’d seen her last year.

  She looked up and seemed to stare past them for a moment, distracted and unfocused as she kept muttering to herself. Then she turned to Agatha, and it was as though she’d flicked a switch. All of a sudden, her eyes, the same green as her daughter’s, focused, her frown disappeared, and she sat up straighter. She ran a hand through her wispy grey hair and tied it behind her in a ponytail, smoothed her red, floral blouse and grimaced for a moment as she pushed her chair back and stood.

  “Agatha, John,” she said, her voice filled with warmth and love, as he always remembered her to be, “welcome. Oh, Sky Mother’s love, it’s good to see you both. What are you doing here?”

  John stood by the door and leaned against the side of a bookshelf as he watched Agatha walk over and take the seat next to Margaret. She had furrowed her brows and looked over to the note Margaret had been reading.

  “Oh,” Agatha said, her voice suddenly strained with pain, “oh, Margaret, I’m so sorry.” The two women looked at each other for a moment and embraced. Tears formed at the corners of Margaret’s eyes, though she screwed them shut.

  “If I’d known, I’d have come—” Agatha tried to say.

  “I know,” Margaret cut her off. “He was never registered in your Warden Tower; you couldn’t have known.”

  John stared, lost. He went to ask about the note, but Claire took his hand and led him out of the room. She pulled him across the corridor and into a kitchen, out of the back door and into a small, well-kept garden. They stood under a short awning over a patio as the rain hammered down around them.

  “What’s going on?” John asked once Claire had closed the patio door. “What was that note?”

  “A letter from Raghav’s mother in Sindhustan.”

  John gestured for her to go on, but she turned away. Raghav was a post-doctoral student at Preston College with Claire. They studied medicine together and were the best of friends. As her face started to glow red and a solitary tear formed in her left eye, ice clutched at his heart.

  “Is he alright?”

  “No,” Claire said. Her lips began to tremble, and she turned away to wipe fresh tears from her eyes.

  “What?”

  “He was with Trish, Kate, and my father,” she whimpered.

  Though he wasn’t sure how, John found his heart sank lower yet, and his shoulders hunched down as he breathed out hard. He hadn’t known anyone else was with them, but Raghav and Professor Goodland were nearly inseparable. He should have known to check in on him after the incident.

  “I’m so sorry, Claire. He was like a brother to you.”

  She nodded, still with her back turned to him as she wiped her eyes.

  Raghav would have been registered at birth in Sindhustan, but should have been visible to the Warden Tower in America. Why hadn’t he registered with them when he arrived? Petty politics and jurisdictions, he supposed.

  “After Damavand,” she started to say; she paused to catch a sob. “Damavand, and through the eighties, there were symposiums and conferences around the world, every year, trying to talk through all of our differences.” She took in a deep breath, held it for a moment, and let it out in a long, drawn-out sigh. “People like my father, and yours, identified the cost of war on our Sky Mother. It was beyond anything we could imagine, and beyond even the most selfish will to take from Her. But they had to learn that the hard way.” She turned and looked up, and a fresh pain shone out from her eyes. She shuddered and dropped her head.

  John slowly nodded and stared on, waiting for he
r to go on, but she didn’t.

  “Yes,” he said as he stared at the back of her head. “The symposiums are still meeting every winter equinox.”

  What did any of that have to do with Rhagav? He reached a hand out and placed it on her shoulder. Her body shook at his touch, and she turned further away.

  “Raghav and I were born on the same day,” she said as she drew in a long, halting breath and tried to compose herself. “We were meant to be born a week apart. My dad had budgeted to stay with my mum for a week, then apparture over to Sindhustan and see his second child born.”

  That didn’t make any sense. “What?”

  “At one of those symposiums in 1985, my mum and dad met a Maji from Sindhustan in the hotel bar.” She started to cry again and shook her head as she suppressed it. “That night, my brother, Raghav, and I came to be.”

  By Nafarin’s warded ass. What?

  “It was a different time,” Claire continued. “They both grew up in the sixties.”

  John sighed out hard. “So Margaret grieves for her husband and his son too, and you for your father and a brother.” John shook his head and thought of anything he could say. “I’m so sorry, Claire. If I’d known I’d—”

  “It was a bit of a secret. The Laird knew. He had to lend my dad use of his apparture in the town to let him go back and forth between the two women bearing his children. Your dad knew. He funded it. I thought you knew.”

  John shook his head as it dropped. “I’m sorry, Claire. I thought we shared our grief, but now I can’t even imagine what you two are going through.”

  She twitched her lips as she tried to smile at him. “So now you know,” she said as she exhaled a long breath and wiped her eyes clear one more time. “We didn’t know he’d taken Raghav, but he was with my father when they died.”

  John was reeling. Why wouldn’t Trish have mentioned Raghav coming with them? She’d have normally taken a mana canister over for him on any expedition, but she hadn’t. He thought about asking her and started as he felt her materialise in the next room.