The only thing she’d change would be to ditch the large spray of white heather and red rowan berries in a vase on the vanity. She’d replace the oh-so-Highlandy display with something Polynesian. A tasteful arrangement of bird-of-paradise came to mind. Or perhaps she’d choose wild orchids and frangipani.
Otherwise, she’d loved the suite on sight. Her breath had caught the instant Malcolm swung open the door. Even the plaid sofa and the several large black-and-white photographs of the Hebrides couldn’t detract from the immediate sense of welcome and belonging.
She could see herself curled up before the fire, listening to the wind howl outside as she sipped hot chocolate and lost herself in a good cozy mystery.
It was the kind of place she could have stayed in forever.
And that scared her more than if a troop of glittery-winged, green-gowned faery folk had popped out from behind the village’s memorial cairn to wave their sparkly wands at her.
She didn’t want to like anything here, yet . . .
“Enough!” She gave herself a shake and crossed the room to the sofa—deftly pretending it wasn’t tartan—before she turned into one of those people who constantly yearn for a pot of tea and scones.
Or should it be shortbread and whisky?
Sure she didn’t want to know, she dropped onto the sofa and reached for one of the books on the pine side table. Past her second wind, she hoped a bit of reading would help her fall asleep.
Unfortunately, the first book she grabbed was
Rivers of Stone: A Highlander’s Ancestral Journey
by Wee Hughie MacSporran. Half-afraid the title might summon the Long Gallery Threesome, Mindy slapped the book back onto the side table and reached for another.
This one’s cover bore a color, full-sized photo of a tall, rather portly Highlander in a kilt. Obviously the proud author of this
A Highlander’s
series, Wee Hughie MacSporran had rosy red cheeks and thinning auburn hair, and beamed from beside the world-famous Bannockburn statue of Robert the Bruce.
Mindy eyed the cover photo, thinking the man looked rather like a kilted teddy bear. But it was the title that made her toss the book back onto the pile:
Royal Roots: A Highlander’s Guide to Discovering Illustrious Forebears
.
Not caring when the book slid across the little table and landed on the floor, she drew her feet up beneath her and then shuddered.
Were all Highlanders so ancestral-crazy?
Frowning, she was about to reach for the third and last book when her cell phone rang. The caller ID said
restricted
, but it could be only Margo, so she flipped it open and took the call. “Hello?”
“Mindy!” Her sister’s voice came through the line. “You’re in Scotland! How are you? What are you doing now?”
Mindy pulled a tartan throw over her knees and glanced at the hearth. The fire was already dying down and the room was beginning to chill.
No, it was turning icebox cold.
Mindy frowned. “What am I doing?” She cast another look at the peat embers. They resembled char-coaled marshmallows with just a hint of orange glow. “I’m relaxing by a crackling fire, sipping single malt, and romanticizing about my journey to the Isles tomorrow.”
“O-o-oh!” Margo’s excitement was palpable. “I knew it! There one day and you’ve fallen under Scotland’s spell. It happens to everyone. I told you—”
“Sorry. I lied.” Mindy shifted on the sofa. “But I am curled up before a peat fire. Sadly, it’s little more than a clump of smoldering ash just now. I’m not drinking whisky, though I could be if I wanted. There’s a small welcome bottle and a glass on the bedside table.
“Otherwise, I’m in a darkened suite in a Victorian coach house on a wet and windy night in the middle of nowhere. If you ignore the wind”—she glanced at the night-blackened window and shuddered—“it’s very still and quiet. And although I wouldn’t have believed it, it’s getting colder and eerier with each passing minute.”
“But have you seen any mist?” Margo’s enthusiasm wasn’t dampened. “They say it rolls down the braes and clings to the corries. They—”
“I don’t know what a corrie is, but—”
“It’s a cleft in the side of a mountain, sort of like a deep and narrow ravine,” Margo the Scotland expert explained. “A brae is the hillside itself and—”
“I don’t care what they are.” Mindy glanced at the dark window again. The wind gusts were starting to rattle the panes. “If there are braes and corries out there, I didn’t see any. Your mist was everywhere, pea-soup thick and blotting any heathery hills or romantic castle ruins that might have enchanted me.”
“You’ll come around!” Margo laughed. “I’d dare anyone to go to Scotland and not fall in love. No way is my own sister going to be the one exception.”
Mindy pinched the bridge of her nose and tried not to sigh. “Actually,” she began, feeling a pang of sisterly guilt because Margo truly did love Scotland, “my suite is quite nice. It’s got two levels and is airy. I could see it in Hawaii or Florida if I switched the pine furnishings and tartan for tropical prints and bamboo. Get rid of all the photos of the Hebrides and replace them with Maui sunsets.
“The suite is called the Havbredey”—her tongue twisted on the word—“and it means—”
“I know what it means, you goose!” Margo laughed again.
“I should have known.”
“Yes, you should have. I can tell you all kinds of things about Scot—”
Margo broke off abruptly and Mindy could hear the murmur of voices in the background. Then the creak of a door followed by the distinctive tinkle of the wind chimes that announced new customers at Ye Olde Pagan Times.
“I’m back.” Margo was on the line again, sounding a bit breathless. “Anyway, it’s about the Hebrides that—”
“Are you at work?” Mindy knew Margo’s boss, an eccentric old woman named Patience Peasgood, though nice, wouldn’t appreciate Margo chatting overseas on work time. “You can call me when you get off. I’ll hear the phone, even if I’m asleep. I don’t want Patience—”
“That’s the best part!” Margo almost shouted the words. “It was Patience who told me to call you. She and Madame Zelda insisted—”
“You mean Marta Lopez.” Mindy rolled her eyes. “The Puerto Rican tarot reader.”
“She’s good whether you like her or not.”
“Ice cream is good, too, but look what happens if you eat it all the time.”
“You’re just jet-lagged. Listen—”
“I’m all ears.” Mindy settled back against the cushions. “What’s up?”
“I’m flying over to see you!” Margo’s voice swelled with glee. “Can you believe it? Patience gave me unpaid leave to come and—”
“I’m not even there yet.” Mindy tightened her grip on the phone. “Not in Barra, anyway. I’ll be staying at one of the island’s best hotels and you know how hard it was to get a booking. The lady said they were full up and—”
“Don’t worry! I don’t mean now.” Margo would be waving a hand, Mindy knew. “Patience put some strings on my leave, but that’s no bother. She’s looking for another girl to help out afternoons and weekends. As soon as she finds someone suitable, she said I can have the time off to fly over and join you. Unless business gets too busy and then . . .”
Mindy listened to Margo rattle on. Her chances of coming didn’t sound that solid. Even so, a wave of dread crashed over her at the thought of her ghost-busting enthusiast sister appearing at Barra.
“That’s wonderful!” Mindy hoped her voice didn’t come across as squeaky.
But she knew it did.
“Don’t be so alarmed.” Margo’s reply proved it. “My trip might not even happen. But if it does, I promise not to embarrass you.”
“I didn’t mean that. . . .” Mindy combed a hand through her hair, unable to finish.
Margo already had embarrassed her—or would have—if Mindy wasn’t always one step ahead of her. Feeling sweat bead her brow, Mindy glanced at her hand luggage, on the floor near the suite’s large four-poster bed.
A super-duper ghost-detecting device was tucked into the side pocket of the carry-on. The latest in spook-sleuthing technology, according to Margo and everyone at Ye Olde Pagan Times, the thing was an EMF reader.
Designed to pick up fluctuations in electromagnetic fields where ghosts were believed to gather, the EMF meter had all the bells and whistles. It included a shrill alarm tone that sounded if the registered paranormal activity proved to be especially strong.
The only reason Mindy hadn’t pitched it at Newark was that Margo had it on loan from Patience Peasgood. After Mindy’s trip, it had to be returned to the shop.
So Mindy had done the only reasonable thing and removed the batteries.
Thankfully, no one in security had found the EMF meter, demanding answers to questions that would only make her look goofy.
If Margo came to Barra, she’d be weighted down with several more such devices. Not to mention infrared thermometers and cameras and whatever else practicing ghost hunters carried around with them.
People would notice.
And Mindy wouldn’t be just embarrassed.
She’d be mortified.
“I know what you meant.” The hurt in Margo’s voice brought back Mindy’s stab of guilt. “I won’t bring any equipment except my diggy camera. You already have a good EMF reader there. That’ll be enough.
“And don’t worry.” Margo laughed again. “I won’t do an EVP session or anything.”
Mindy closed her eyes. She was sure trying to catch ghostly voices on a tape recorder would be one of her sister’s first attempts to attract Highland spirits.
“I’ll hold you to that.” Mindy’s plaid throw slipped and she reached to tuck it around her knees again. “No woo-woo weirdness and I’ll be glad to see you.”
That, at least, was true.
She did love Margo, despite her penchant for the strange and unexplained.
But having Margo underfoot, mooning around and waxing poetic about the Scottish Highlands, just so wasn’t on Mindy’s agenda for this trip.
Everyone knew the Scots thought Americans were a bit overly dotty about Scotland. Just as it was well-known that the Highland telegraph was alive and working better than ever, even in these age-of-the-Internet times.
Margo would have everyone in the Isles thinking they’d both gone around the bend. The verdict would spread like a fire on the moor. They’d be branded as certifiable, which might even leak back to Global, hurting Mindy’s chances of returning to her old flying job.
Airlines took a narrow view of anything that even fringed on unbalanced.
“Madame Zelda did a reading for me,” Margo gushed on. “She’s certain I’m fated to make this trip. But if you’d rather I didn’t . . .”
“No, no!” Mindy bit her tongue to keep from reminding Margo that if she’d revealed her dreams to the fortune-teller, of course, Madame Zelda would say they’d come true.
Hoping to change the subject, Mindy glanced around the dimly lit room. Her gaze fell on a large gift bag bearing the tartan-ribboned thistle design of One Cairn Village. The package sat on an old-fashioned trunk at the foot of the bed. Mindy hurried there now, snatching up the bag and pulling out a gorgeous length of tweed, purchased for Margo in Innes’s tea and gift shop.
“Of course, you must come.” Mindy hugged the tweed to her, wishing Margo could see it now. “I picked up some stunning tweed for you this afternoon. It’s—”
“Tweed?” Margo’s voice rose with excitement. Her Highland vacation plans took a backseat to style. “You bought genuine Scottish tweed for me?”
“I did.” Mindy smiled, glad she’d splurged. “It was made right here at Ravenscraig Castle, where I’m staying. It’s called Kiss o’ Heather and is all purply mauve with a touch of pink. You’ll love it.”
“I already do.” Margo paused. “Is there enough to make a skirt?”
“There is.” Mindy returned to the sofa. “That’s what I thought you could do with it.”
“O-o-oh!” Margo sounded like she might jump through the phone. “I can’t wait to see it. Thank you and—oh, here come more customers.
“Gotta go!” She hung up just as Ye Olde Pagan Times’ wind chime began to tinkle.
Mindy stared at the dead phone. She rubbed her eyes, feeling as if she’d been caught up by a cyclone. Margo on a Scotland roll could exhaust anyone. Mindy just wished she hadn’t gone on about the woo-woo stuff.
Especially with the wind shrieking round the eaves and making weird
whoosh
ing noises in the chimney. It didn’t help that the night sky—what little of it she could see through the window—no longer looked cold and gray, but was now cold and black.
Pitch-black.
The kind of darkness she was sure couldn’t be found on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
And thanks to her sister, she now imagined that inky emptiness teeming with all kinds of dangers. If ghosts existed—even back home in New Hope—then who knew what creatures roamed Scotland’s hills after nightfall?
She’d already seen a dog that could have been a werewolf!
Shivering, she puffed her bangs off her forehead and snatched another book off the side table. Better to read about someone’s ancestral beanstalk than worry about Celtic beasties that might—or might not—be prowling through the woods beneath her window.
Determined to bore herself with Wee Hughie’s genealogical wanderings, she glanced down at the book in her hand. It
was
another volume of the author’s
A Highlander’s
series. But this one was titled
Hearthside Tales: A Highlander’s Look at Scottish Myth and Legend
.
A bad artist’s rendering of Nessie graced the cover.
“Ack!” Mindy dropped the book as if it’d been a hot potato.
She was not going to read about the very creatures she was trying to put from her mind. What she needed was a good hot shower or a long soak in the luxurious marble whirlpool. There was nothing better than modern-day niceties to banish things that went bump in the night.
