Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Johnathan de Lohr was awoken from his blank torpor by the sound of a delicate sneeze.
It was time again. The solstice maybe, when the sun flared and tugged at the planet in such a way the tides became wilder. The storms became more violent. The creatures of the earth more feral.
Untamed.
And those dead like himself, cursed to still inhabit this plane, were called to be restless.
Reminded what it was to be human.
Only to have it ruthlessly taken from them again.
He materialized—for lack of a better word—by Carrie’s old bed in time to have a dust sheet snatched right through his middle by a large, apple-cheeked woman in a matronly apron.
He didn’t recognize her at all.
“We’ve a water heater but no piping to the rooms, far as we are from civilized Blighty,” she said, snatching the last of the covers off a tall wardrobe as a portly man with wild tufts of greying hair dumped an empty metal basin on the floor with a derisive clang.
Ah, there was Balthazar, or at least one of his kin. John had known generations of them to come and go, but this iteration he’d seen when the man was younger. Much younger.
The innkeeper stomped out with nary a word and was replaced by a lad of maybe fifteen with longish unkempt dark hair and a cauldron of steaming water, which he poured into the tub.
Wait, they’d let the room? His room? This was not to be tolerated.
He could make himself visible, of course, on a night like tonight, could take to wailing and thundering and all manner of ghostly things.
He might even be able to summon the energy to touch or move something.
To breathe on or even grab at someone with icy fingers, terrorizing them away so he could regain his own tranquility.
It took so much from him, though, exerting his will in the realm of the living.
Waking always discombobulated John. For a moment, the chaos of the round woman’s tidying, the noise of a full inn and the water crashing into the metallic basin, along with the press of three or more bodies in such a small chamber overwhelmed him.
A storm screamed and battered at the ancient window, the snow knocking like the very fist of a demon in gusts and surges.
The blasted woman—whom he assumed was the current Balthazar’s wife—had tossed the dust covers out the door and was now rushing toward where John stood in front of the bed, with a fresh pile of sheets and new pillows.
He didn’t like the odd sensation of people walking through him; it rankled like that odd tickle one felt when bashing their elbow, but without the pain.
Unable to easily avoid the rotund woman in the cramped space, he retreated a few steps until he found himself standing inside the wardrobe, his vision hindered by the closed doors and the darkness inside them.
Much better. Was this piece new? He tried to remember if he’d seen it the last time he’d lingered here.
They’d no doubt procured it to cover the door that led to—
Another small sneeze interrupted his thoughts.
“Forgive me,” begged a British female voice before a delicate sniff.
“Dust always makes me sneeze.” She cleared her throat.
“It is kind of Dougal and Mr. Pitagowan to draw a bath. I feel it is the only way I’ll ever be warm again.
And the room is really so charming, I’m certain I’ll be comfortable here.
I might not have survived a march to the Cairngorm Tavern. ”
John closed his eyes as a strange, incandescent vibration shimmered through him.
The new feminine voice was husky and smooth, like smoke exhaled over the most expensive brandy. It slid between his ribs like a smooth assassins’ blade, nicking at a heart that hadn’t ticked for at least a century. It both stirred and soothed him in equal measure.
“Like I said earlier, miss, this isna kindness, it’s a service. One ye paid generously for, so enjoy it with our blessing and warm yer wee bones before ye shiver right out of them.”
John had always been an appreciator of the Scottish brogue, but this woman’s pitch could likely offend sensitive dogs. It was especially jarring after the crisp, clear notes of British gentility.
He poked his head back through the wardrobe doors to find who belonged to such a sound, and realized immediately why he’d missed her before.
Dressed in the most peculiar plain grey wool cloak that’d been soaked through, the slip of a woman had flattened herself against the grey stone wall just inside the door, her skirts protecting an oddly shaped brown case on the floor beneath her.
A plain, dark felt hat shadowed her features in the room only lit by two dim lanterns, but he could tell it had obviously not kept her ebony curls dry.
The impression of a sharp jaw and shapely lips above a thick black scarf drew the rest of him from the wardrobe to investigate.
She’d been out in that bastard of a storm? This waifish girl? No wonder the Pitagowans had interrupted his peace to prepare the room for her. The laws of Highland hospitality—if there still was such a thing—would not have allowed them to deny anyone sanctuary.
“You have my gratitude all the same, Mrs. Pitagowan,” the woman said.
God, how he had missed the dulcet pronunciations of the gently bred ladies of his homeland. It’d been so long. He wanted to bid her to speak, to never stop.
“I told ye, call us Bess and Balthazar, everyone else does.” The innkeeper trundled over to the door and accepted a tray of tea, which she set on the small stand next to the bed.
After, she squeezed around her husband, who’d returned with yet another cauldron of water, to the small brick fireplace on the far wall.
Rolling up her sleeves, she squatted to arrange a fire.
“You must call me Vanessa, then.”
Vanessa. John tested the name on his tongue, and he thought he saw the woman tense beneath her layers.
Could she hear him already? The sun hadn’t gone down yet.
“Where are ye from, lass?” Bess asked, carrying on the conversation.
John found himself equally curious.
“My family resides in London, mostly,” Vanessa answered. “Though I am compelled to spend most of the time at our country estate in Derbyshire.”
John thought her reply rather curious, not only the phrase but the bleak note lurking beneath the false cheer she’d injected into her voice. Compelled. An interesting word.
If Bess thought it odd, she didn’t mention. “Where were ye headed in such a storm, if ye doona mind me asking?”
“Not at all.” Bending to drag the case with her, Vanessa rested it by the tea-laden table, out of the way of Balthazar’s and Dougal’s stomping feet. “I was on the road to Fort Augustus on Loch Ness when the blizzard overtook us.” She poured herself a cup of the steaming brew as she answered.
“Is yer family there?” Bess turned to cast a queer look at her. “Will they be fretting after ye?”
The lady didn’t bother to sweeten the tea; she simply lifted it to her soft mouth and puckered her lips to blow across the surface before taking a sip.
A strange, hollow longing overtook John as he watched her shiver with delight as she swallowed the warm liquid and let out an almost imperceptible sigh.
Christ he’d give his soul to taste tea again.
“My family is in Paris for Christmas this year,” she answered vaguely after the silence had stretched for too long.
“And ye’re not with them?” Bess prodded, catching flame to a bit of peat she’d laid beneath the kindling.
“No. No, I am not invited to—that is, I don’t travel with them, generally. I am more often occupied by my own adventures.”
An awkward silence fell over the room like the batting of a moist blanket. The lady sipped at her tea, retreating deeper into her cloak and her thoughts as the tub was filled.
Once Bess had built the fire to a crackling height, she added one more extra-large, dry log from the grate next to the fireplace, and stood with a grunt. She reached in to test the water and flicked it off, wiping her hand with her apron.
“A strange trunk, that.” She nodded to the ungainly square case. “Not quite a trunk, I suppose, and not a satchel either.”
“It’s a camera.” Vanessa abandoned her empty teacup to the tray to stand over it. “I was to be on a winter photography expedition at Loch Ness before the storm hit. I left my trunk with my belongings on the abandoned coach.”
A camera? John squinted at the case. He’d never heard of such a thing.
Bess clapped her hands together in delight.
“Och, aye? Now’s the time to find Nessie, if there ever is one!
No doubt ye caught wind of the Northern Lights this year.
We could see them snapping across the sky afore the clouds covered them.
’Tis, no doubt, the reason this storm is so powerful.
All things are intensified during the Na Fir Chlis.
And during the solstice, and Christmas after that…
” She let the words linger, winking conspiratorially.
“All things are possible, are they not?”
“That was my hope.” Vanessa smiled broadly, and John felt a catch in his throat, as if the very sight of that smile had stolen something from him.
“Well, here’s ye a toweling and some soap. Though perhaps not as fragrant and fancy as ye’re used to.”
“It’ll do perfectly,” Vanessa assured her with a kind smile.
John had always appreciated a woman who was kind to those beneath her in rank, stature, or wealth. It had been one of his greatest irritations when a shrewish lady was demanding or unfeeling to the help.
“I’ll leave ye, lass,” Bess said with a smile. “I’ll see if I canna find ye something to sleep in. Get warm and dry and then come to the common room for some supper.”
The moment the door latched, the woman, Vanessa, locked it and immediately grappled with the knot on her scarf. Unraveling that, she hung it close to the fire, pulled the pin from her hat, and discarded it, also.
John was stunned into stillness at the unfettered sight of her face.