Reckoning (Book 4 of Lost Highlander series) (12 page)

If she could have known all along that she was supposed to inherit a cursed castle, she might have been better prepared. Everything clattered around in her mind, and it seemed enemies were everywhere.

Evie went to the refrigerator without her noticing, and pressed a glass of ice water into her hand. The cold soothed the heat coursing through her. Things fell back into place and she remembered where she was, and who she was with. The battle raging in her bones settled into the background and she sat down, forcing her tense muscles to go slack.

“We’ll just have to get to the bottom of it somehow,” Evie said, as she sat down across from her.

Piper pulled her phone from her pocket. “Oh, I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

She glanced at the clock, quickly calculating that it was indeed a respectable time in Texas, and called her mother. After a torturous amount of small talk, she finally, ever so casually asked if her mother still had contact information for grandma Rose’s husband.

“Edgar?” her mother asked curiously. “Maybe. Let me look in my old books. You know with the cellular phones now, I don’t even use a phone book anymore. Crazy, right?”

“Yeah, crazy,” Piper agreed, trying not to chew her nails to the quick.

Evie had turned statue still when she realized who she was calling. Piper didn’t think she could hold her breath much longer, and sure enough, Evie blew out a gust before quickly holding it again.

“Why do you need it, honey?” her mother asked her.

“Oh, estate stuff. It turns out there was this provision and a clause … I just need to get in touch with him about it.”

“Hmmph, well.”

“It’s nothing, mom. Do you have his number or not?” Piper wished she had just tried to search for his information on the internet, but her mother finally found an old phone book that had a number for him. She had to talk for another painstakingly long ten minutes, until her mom’s dog mercifully wanted to go for a walk.

“This number could be twenty years old,” Piper said. “The deceitful old buzzard might not be alive anymore.”

“Are you really going to call him?” Evie asked.

Piper huffed. “Hell, yes, I’m going to call him. He’s got answers and I want them. He’ll either think I’m nuts or that I know something. Either way it’s going to scare the crap out of him, so hopefully he’ll talk.”

She refused to look up at Evie as she punched the number into her phone. It was clearly a land line and rang seven times without going to a message machine. She was about to end the call when the next ring got cut in half and she heard a scratchy voice say hello. She quickly put it on speaker and waved wildly for Evie to lean in.

“Listen, Edgar,” she said. “You never met me, but you were married to my grandmother, Rose.” She nodded forcefully at the phone, daring him to lie some more and pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Is this Piper?” he asked, his old man voice cracking. “I did meet you once, but you were tiny, not even walking, so you wouldn’t remember it.”

Damn it, he sounded delightful, not at all like a diabolical old miscreant bent on destroying her happiness. He sounded grandfatherly. There was nothing for her to do but carry on with her plan.

“I need to know the truth,” she demanded.

“The truth?” His voice wavered across the miles.

Piper took a long silent breath. “I know my grandmother didn’t die.”

She closed her eyes against Evie’s shocked look and prayed he wouldn’t drop from heart failure. The silence lasted long enough for Piper to consider calling the Las Vegas authorities to check on him.

“Well,” he finally said. “We have much to discuss, don’t we?”

Evie gasped and Piper quickly pressed the mute button. “Holy crap, he admitted it,” she said.

Evie squeezed her hand, nodding excitedly. “Get back on before he has second thoughts,” she squealed.

Her heartbeat tried to crack her ribs, and her hand shook as she unmuted the phone. She felt like she stood at the end of a long tunnel, finally seeing light and feeling fresh air.

He began his story, starting from the part that Piper already knew. Her grandmother moved to Las Vegas shortly after her mother got married. Rose rarely visited them and sent only occasional holiday or birthday cards. Piper had no memories of her, and only knew anything about her at all from her mother’s complaints.

When Finley was little, Rose had been distant and secretive, only telling her that her father had been killed in an accident before she was born, refusing to speak of him except to say he was a wonderful man. It was as if she was counting the days until her daughter was on her own, so she could leave again, like she ran away from her first home in Scotland.

By the time Piper was old enough to ask questions, her mom answered them the best she could, but Piper could always see how irritated she was with how Rose had abandoned them.

Edgar went on to explain how he was a musician, and used to play piano in a jazz bar on the outskirts of town. Every night he saw the beautiful, sad woman sit alone at a back table, staring at nothing while she nursed one single drink. When his set was over, she would leave.

“I got to thinking she liked me, and I was intrigued by her,” he said. “She was mysterious, like a character from a movie.”

Piper and Evie rolled their eyes at one another. Eventually Edgar worked up the nerve to follow her out to the street, where he struck up a conversation, and got her to agree to go out to dinner with him.

“The women I dated before your grandmother were brash and optimistic, no matter if it was real or not. Most of them wanted to be performers and thought I could help them somehow, which was laughable. Rose was a delicate flower. She never tried to hide her sadness under a fake smile. I wanted to be the one to try and erase all that sadness.”

Piper frowned. He’d tried, but Rose’s love for her eighteenth century husband would have been too strong to overcome, especially if she nurtured the hope she could get back to him someday.

“But you couldn’t,” she said, feeling bad for the sweet old man.

“No, dear, I couldn’t. But we had our own sort of happiness, for a few years anyway.”

He fell silent and Piper sat quietly thinking everything over until Evie nudged her, her eyes wide with impatience.

“Then what happened?” she asked, wishing she were there in person with him, and hoping he wasn’t getting too upset having to relive everything.

“She started acting distant, reading, writing in her journal. I thought she was writing her memoirs, because she talked a lot about when she was a girl. Some of the stories didn’t make sense, it was more like she was giving me a history lesson, and I thought maybe it was early dementia.” He stopped abruptly. “Do you know?” he asked.

“Where she went?” Piper asked. “Yes, I know.”

He let out a huge sigh of relief. “Of course at first I could hardly believe it, and thought I’d have to have her committed, but she showed me proof.”

“What proof?” Piper asked eagerly.

“She muttered something in a foreign language, over some dried up plants. When she cut her arm, my heart nearly broke, thinking she’d gone off the deep end, but then she disappeared before my very eyes. She came back an hour later with a different dress on. It was old fashioned, handmade. It was no costume. She was crazed at that point to be gone for good and made me promise to … do the things I did.” He paused and she heard him blow his nose. “I hated lying to your mother, but I did love Rose, and I pitied her. If this was her chance to finally be happy, how could I stand in the way?”

“You couldn’t,” Piper said. She was relieved to hear that her grandmother used Lachlan’s less violent means of time travel, instead of Daria’s grisly human bone method. “Her journal, do you still have it? Or any of her writing? Lists or anything?”

There was a long silence. “Uh, no, it’s all gone, she took it with her. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”

“You’ve been very helpful, believe me,” Piper assured him.

“For a time I thought I imagined everything, even Rose. I thought maybe I was the one who needed to be committed. How could any of it be real?”

Piper’s heart ached for the old man, he sounded so lost. She talked to him for a few more minutes before disentangling herself from the conversation.

She and Evie stared at one another before Piper shook her head, not sure what to do with all the new information. Her anger was gone, replaced with her old friend, confusion. Of course, nothing could ever be straightforward. None of her ancestors could ever just leave clear instructions.

“Could you do it?” she asked Evie.

“Leave Magnus?” She shuddered and grabbed her phone, turning it on so that a little picture of him filled the screen. “No.”

“Well, he’s a baby now. He still needs you,” Piper said, wanting to find some justification for her grandmother’s actions. “What if he was grown and had a wife and kid of his own?”

Evie shook her head. “That actually seems like it would make it harder to leave. I imagine I would love a grandbaby as much as my own child?” She sounded apologetic, like she didn’t want to argue with Piper.

“But, for Sam? I mean, if you were still together. If you hadn’t seen him all those years, but knew he was alive somewhere, waiting for you?”

“I don’t know,” she said, still looking down at her phone. “It’s too hard to think about. I hope I’d never have to make such a choice.”

Piper felt a new rush of compassion for Rose. It must have been a devastating decision to make. “I think I’m going to read over her diary some more,” she said, standing up. “Go on home. Hug Mags for me, I can tell you’re itching to hold him.”

“Are you sure you’re okay with all this new info?” Evie asked. “I can get Magnus and come back, spend the night over here.”

Piper waved her away, trying not to let her see how badly she wanted to be alone with her thoughts. If she acted too manic, Evie would worry and never leave. In fact, she’d probably call Sam and make him come over, suffocating her with their infernal caring. She squashed her guilt as she all but threw Evie’s coat at her, blithely telling her she’d see her the next day, and not to worry.

Evie couldn’t help her anymore. It was all on her now, to decipher what Rose wanted. If anything. If it wasn’t just a dead end waste of time. She could feel the dark presence surrounding her and hear far off whispers in her head as she closed the door behind Evie.

“What?” she asked out loud, heading to the back to search for Hoover. Fear prickled all over her as the whispers turned to bleak laughter. “If you’ve got something to say, just say it.”

She’d been ignoring, repressing and actively fighting the things she heard in the last few weeks, but now she stood there with her head tipped back, inviting the presence for the first time. Maybe it had some clear answers. If nothing else, she could do the opposite of whatever it said. Strangely, everything went quiet. She still felt the lingering oppression all around her, but the noises in her head ceased.

“Completely useless,” she said. “At least now I know how to get you to shut the hell up.”

Resigned, and feeling foolish for talking to her evil spirit, she let the dog in and went upstairs to scour the diary for any clues she might have missed.

***

The next few days passed in hurried succession. Evie wasn’t available to help her much due to Sam accidentally forgetting to tell her about the baby’s christening. Evie called her in a panicked fit of rage, and Piper felt bad, because he had mentioned it to her a few weeks earlier.

Knowing Sam, he probably thought she would tell Evie, since at the time he and Evie were barely speaking to one another. Piper apologized for her part in it, but that just made Evie angrier, saying it was Sam’s responsibility to tell her when his entire family was coming into town, and keeping her apprised of important rituals in their child’s life.

Piper let her ramble on about how stupid Sam was, absently agreeing with her until she was calm, and suggested she not come by until after the christening. Piper promised to see her then, and assured her she was over the moon about being a godmother. Not being Scottish, Catholic, or a Maclean, Piper didn’t see what all the ruckus was about, but apparently it was a mighty big deal to them.

She hoped Evie would survive it and it wouldn’t set Sam back too far in his quest to get them together again. Everything she heard from Evie since she moved out of the castle hadn’t been exactly glowing.

For the third time in a row, she closed Rose’s diary. If there were clues or answers hidden in the entries, she wasn’t getting them. She found it difficult to believe she had been tormented by dreams to find it, only to have so many conflicting feelings about it.

She was delighted to know the truth about her grandmother, confused about how that information pertained to her, disappointed that it didn’t seem to give her any ideas on how to rid herself of Daria’s spirit, and all topped with a heaping dollop of distrust and fear every time she opened it.

It was worse than ever opening Daria’s cursed grimoire. At least that evil tome had given her a fevered rush of power and insight into her magical abilities. She had to admit she sometimes missed the thing.

Shortly after Piper came back from rescuing Magnus, and had been in her deep depression, Evie had found it wrapped up in a wad of old linen in her wardrobe. Piper had argued to keep it, in case there were answers she hadn’t found yet, but really because she liked looking at it, in a shameful, hateful way.