exhausted him, but [ustlie you know how it is when you’re overtired. He felt too juiced to nap. So he took a sleeping pill. He’ll be out till morning.”
Her satisfied smile let me know I’d hit the mark on my earlier guess. Floraidh must have more nasty crap hidden around here than just her bowl-o’-death. The realization made me wish I had the time, and the backing, to spotlight
A clatter from the kitchen startled me into silence. “What could that be?” wondered Dormal. She was such a bad actress she wouldn’t even have made the cut for a high school play.
We all shuffled into the hallway and stared at the kitchen door, as if we thought it might sprout lips and explain the antics of its hidden inhabitants.
“Perhaps one of your cats?” Vayl suggested.
“I can’t abide cats,” Floraidh said. “Dogs are fine, which is why I allowed you to bring yours along. But cats are sly, sneaky creatures. We don’t let them anywhere near the property.”
Rhona’s mouth dropped. I could see her prepping a protest. But Viv’s hand on her wrist held her back. Both women jumped at least an inch off the ground when another series of metallic clangs shot through the door.
“Do you have a maid?” asked Cole. “Because it sounds like somebody’s in there making milk shakes.”
We crept to the kitchen door like the original group of characters you see in a horror movie. If I’d been forced to pick our first victims of the masked serial killer with the steak knife/hanging rope/sharpened high heel . . . Viv and Lesley. They looked about as scared as you can get without puking or peeing yourself. Since they seemed like responsible adults, I assumed they’d used the bathroom before coming downstairs. That left the upchuck. I slipped to the back of the group, giving them uninterrupted aim at Dormal’s broad back just in case their cock-a-leekie soup came unglued.
Floraidh nodded at Cole and he opened the door, pushing it all the way into the room so the ten of us could squeeze into the doorway, as if a photographer on the other side had demanded a group shot of our heads peeking in from every which direction.
Viv hid her face in Cole’s shoulder and Lesley screamed as the brown-suited man who’d nearly wrecked our van hours before yanked another cookie sheet out of the cabinet and let it bang to the floor. He straightened and turned to the women, scratching his short brown beard as he searched their faces, as if trying to place them in his memory. He’d pushed his hat back, revealing the wasted planes of his face, making me wonder if the rest of his body looked just as skeletal. Hard to tell beneath all that loose material, especially the way he stood, with his shoulders hunched over his lean chest, as if he’d been punched by too many bullies as a kid and still felt his midsection needed protecting.
“Who are you?” demanded Iona, her fingers pressed firmly against her belt buckle as if she thought it might snap if she breathed any harder.
He pointed his finger at her. Then he opened his hand to encompass all of us. “King Brude is the master of this territory. Defy him at your peril! [at t h”
Floraidh and Dormal exchanged satisfied little smiles. Expressions I’d have missed if I hadn’t been watching for them.
“It’s a ghost!” shrieked Humphrey. Despite the fact that I could’ve used hysteria as an excuse, I stifled an urge to slap him. There’s always one dumbbell in the group who has to admit the obvious. As proven by his next statement. “He’s gone!”
Yup, as soon as Humphrey’d put a title to him, our visitor had faded. We squeezed through the door, fighting for space since all of us wanted to be the first to touch those cookie sheets, determine they at least were real. I made it through first. Picked one up and put it on the counter, where it banged just like it had when he’d touched it.
Rhona began polling us. “Did you see it? You did? Are you certain?” When she was satisfied she announced, “We have all seen a collective apparition! Here, in Tearlach! History has just been made!” In an aside to Lesley she added, “Wait’ll I tell the girls on the GAPT—Ghosts Are People Too—committee. They’ll be so jealous!”
Viv had collapsed into a chair, pale, shocked past tears. Iona knelt beside her, rubbing her hands as if she’d just come in from a blizzard. “Did you get that recorded?” Floraidh asked Cole. “With your spectrum doohickey, I mean?”
He shrugged. “I might have. Let me check.” He pulled out his Monise, a portable computer Bergman had designed. A multi-talented gadget, it talked to all the cameras as well as our laptop. “Un-freaking-believable,” he murmured.
“What is it?” asked Vayl, who’d come to stand beside me next to the stove. I badly wanted to crack it open, see if the death bowl still rested inside.
“No video from the kitchen. At least, nothing until we came in.” He glanced up at Floraidh. “I’m going to have to tinker with the settings. This shade is giving off much lower impulses than our equipment is built to record. But I think I can adjust it to pick up its energies if it comes back again.”
As she nodded, Rhona strode up to her and grasped her arm. “You must let me help this ghost. The GAPT group was made for this very purpose! To protect innocent souls like the one we just witnessed from the foul specters in their own plane as well as the crass abuse of establishments who would use them as little better than zoo specimens!”
Floraidh narrowed her eyes until Rhona snapped her hand away, as if the Scidairan’s skin had suddenly become too hot to handle. “We are a proper business. In my point of view, he was trespassing. If he returns, I can’t be responsible for who sees him. And if it happens to be a group of tourists who have come calling just for that purpose, so much the better. I’ve got to make a living same as anyone else.”
“WHAT!”
Viv leaped at her mother, with Iona following so closely the three of them resembled a huddling football team as Viv’s fingers flew. Iona turned her back to Rhona as she interpreted. “Viv says maybe we should all get going. The convention organizers won’t wait for us, even if her mum is presenting later in the week.”
Rhona tried to shove through the shoulders of the younger girls so she could confront Floraidh a [ont wis she spluttered, “You can’t just put him on display like some sort of trophy! He’s an innocent man!”
