Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Iwashed my breakfast dishes and took a shortbread for the road before heading upstairs, where I heard raised voices.
We had been getting visitors early, trying for a glimpse of the chief or me as word spread to clan members far and wide that another paranormal event had happened.
And while we hadn’t formally announced the news, word of our extraordinary wedding was also spreading, and felicitations were starting to trickle in.
However well-intentioned the congratulatory visits, Marion and Flora had no tolerance for non-paying lookie-loos.
If visitors couldn’t connect their family tree to Marion and Flora’s satisfaction, then admittance was cash or credit.
The castle’s crumbling foundation wasn’t going to fix itself.
Dusting the last shortbread crumbs off my chest while I was still making my way around the back of the main staircase, past the old books and glass curios that held artifacts, I finally saw Marion and then Flora arguing and pointing up the main stairs.
They were beautiful stairs, regal, wide, and carpeted in the red of the MacLaoch formal tartan.
And recently redecorated with stained glass from the blown-out windows.
But that was not what they were arguing about.
“You go up there and tell her tae git out.”
“I already ’ave!”
I interrupted. “Who’s up there I have to shoo out? Clan member?”
“Oh, my lady—”
I squelched the desire to snort at that. Marion and Flora liked the old-school way of things, and calling me “lady” was one thing they strictly adhered to, but it also made my tomboy American brain crack right in half.
“She’s gone up there. We told her not to tae, but she did it anyway. We’re so sorry but—”
Flora cut in, “She’s lost her faculties.”
“Who has?”
“That conniving—”
“Ms. Chevalier tae us.” Marion’s lips puckered as if she’d had something sour cross her tongue.
It took me a moment to get past the déjà vu; Charmaine had been up in that room before, and I’d needed to get her down then too.
“Like a damn cat in a tree,” I mumbled.
“What’s that, m’lady?”
“Nothing. Rowan knows she’s here?”
They shook their heads.
“He’d skin ’er alive if he caught her here. She’s supposed tae be back down in Glasgow or the London offices, but she’s not been. Says she has papers for him tae sign about the loan and will wait until he returns.”
Flora piped in. “Saw her skulking about the other day, but the laird was in the hospital, and ye were blue with worry for him, so we didn’t tell ye. You’d think she’d be here fretting about his health, but instead she’s been mumbling to herself and assessing castle assets.”
My brow pinched with worry. I started up the stairs as Holly came around from the basement staircase and hall as I had done. She looked so rough I stopped in my tracks. Dark circles creased under her eyes as if she’d stopped sleeping, and her expression looked as if she’d seen a ghost repeatedly.
I asked her, “Are you all right?”
Seeing us, she dropped an emotional mask over her features and brightened her eyes. “Aye! There ye are. Been looking all over.”
Holly’s arrival didn’t divert Flora, and she was back at me: “Yer brother is one tae get up early and wander.” She made eyes up the stairs as if it was urgent that the twain should not meet lest he be scratched when he used his Southern manners to try and pet that particular kitty.
Holly asked, “Who’s up there?”
“Charmaine,” we said in unison.
“Ah.” Holly adjusted her sweater cuffs. “Saw her the other day, wandering about. She was stuck in the Circle Garden tidying up.”
That made no sense. “Why is she still here?”
“Dunno, but she was picking up after the helicopter visit. She was taking flower petals—one by one—of the thousands that got blown around and tossing them back into the garden beds.”
Our collective looks were: “Why?”
Holly’s tone was matter-of-fact: “She’s nutso.”
“Aye, trying to control nature is now on her CV. She’s gonna break.”
“If she hasn’t already.”
“I think she saw”—and I pointed to my face—“him. She was probably the one who triggered him, actually.”
Holly leaned close, her keen brown eyes searching my face. “Sorry I missed him. He…comes back other times at all?”
Marion genuflected as Flora gasped, clutching her necklace. Ormr was not far enough in the past to joke about.
“No.”
“Not even a little bit?”
I crossed my eyes and stuck my tongue out.
“There he is!” she exclaimed and tried to grab my tongue.
“Ack!”
“Shall we?” she asked and nodded up the stairs.
“No worries, Holl, I got this.”
“Ye mean to say I can’t come? Yer brother is wandering around helpless upstairs, and you’ve got a missus who’s one split end from going completely horizontal off the plane of reality; what’s one more?”
“Fine, OK,” I said, starting up the stairs, “let’s run Charmaine out of Dodge once and for all. Then we’ll get back to work.” As I plodded up the stairs, I muttered, “She makes the most basic things feel herculean.”
A few steps up, Holly asked, “But Dodge, where’s that, and how do we run her out of there?”
I whispered back to her like we were the Ghostbusters entering a warehouse to meet a wild paranormal monster. And it might eat us if we didn’t get the moment of surprise 100 percent right.
“Dodge City, Kansas. Rough-and-tumble town in the Old West—I think it’s from a TV show. Criminals are run out of town, or Dodge.”
“Gotcha. Bless ye Yanks and yer cowboy shows.” Then: “Remind me tae show you my pink cowgirl boots.”
“You have cowgirl boots?”
“Kinda.”
“Kinda…” I murmured and let that sink in as we made our way up. “I don’t want to know why they’re ‘kinda’ cowboy boots, do I?”
“Probably not.”
A night out at the pub earlier in the summer came to mind. “Are they those pink stiletto boots?”
Holly scoffed, confirming yes despite her “No…”
It was quiet as we got to the top of the steps. I looked right down the hall to the fairy tower rooms where Rowan’s old studio was and where TJ was currently staying before looking left down the hallway where the anterior rooms were.
“They’re still considered cowgirl boots, aye? I mean, not all of them have to be worn doing cow stuffs?” Holly whispered.
Over my shoulder: “No, Holl, sorry, those aren’t cowgirl boots. Those are stripper boots, cowgirl style.”
“Shit,” she said and clarified why she was swearing. “Not about the boots, but he’s in there.”
The door to Rowan’s office was ajar. In the sliver of visibility, my brother was scrutinizing his desk, an apple in hand, before he looked up in the direction of the adjoining conference room.
“What’s he doing?” I said to myself.
“He looks like he’s investigating. Digging for dirt.”
“Proof we’re a cult so he can take me back to South Carolina.”
“Well…”
“He should be out helping Reggie.” I took a deep breath, hating what I had to do.
Plants gave me zero trouble; humans did, though, all the time.
“No time like the present.” I came off the top stair and made a beeline to the conference room, where Charmaine likely was, to head TJ off.
I gave the unlatched door a good thump with my boot toe.
The door swung open, hitting against the wall with a bang.
Too late, TJ had meandered through the doorway that connected the conference room to the office. At our door screaming open, he froze with the apple halfway to his mouth, staring at us.
Charmaine was also there, pretending she hadn’t been startled out of her skin.
I stopped the door as it swung back. As she had been rumored to be, she was unusually unkempt; even the silver hair clip she usually wore had been replaced with a regular rubber band.
I winced for her. She had curly hair like I did.
I knew she’d need a surgeon to remove it.
“Oye, I see it now,” Holly mumbled. “She needs a hug. Then, after a beat, she added, “Or an exorcism.”
“What are you doing?” I aimed at Charmaine, then gestured for my brother to get out. This had the opposite effect: It made him come stand at my opposite shoulder. He gave Holly a wink across me.
She responded to him under her breath behind me, “Want to see an exorcism?”
He leaned back and whispered, “Absolutely.”
“You’re about to.”
Tee looked at me, eyebrows raised.
Charmaine pushed back the hand-carved Chippendale chair from the long, solid wood table with the air of a person she no longer was.
Her mascara was smudged thickly below her eyes as if she’d applied it a week ago, forgot it existed, and then reapplied it every morning.
Something had fallen onto her skirt and been wiped away, but not enough to eliminate the mustard mark on the soft gray of her couture skirt suit.
She gestured to a chair beside her, saying, “Please have a seat.”
I didn’t.
“Charmaine,” I started, “Rowan’s instructions were clear, but since you’ve taken to giving him the bird by staying here, let me try another way. Get. The fuck. Out.”
Holly hissed with joy under her breath, a sound like yes.
“Ms. Baker—”
There was a crunch of the apple from TJ, like a crack off the back wall. Charmaine eyed him, then me.
“As I was saying—”
Another crunch.
Mentally, I groaned; TJ had never met an argument he didn’t thoroughly enjoy.
At him, I said, “Tee, no. That wasn’t an invite—”
“Who’s getting the fuck out of where?” he asked, homing in on my single curse word like a laser pointer. “Isn’t fuck a verb? So, technically, you can’t get the fuck out of something, but rather fuck the fuck out of something?”
“Tee, no one is—”
Charmaine’s tone was like acid on a wound as she said, “And who are you?”
“Who are you?” he mimicked, then threw a casual hand over my shoulder. The Baker kids—including Holly—united.
“Ah, yes. I see now. I know who you are. Let me educate you on who I am. I’m Ms. Charmaine Chevalier, esquire, agent, and clan representative.”
I let some air out of her balloon. “Ex. Rowan fired you days ago. And you are here why?”
“And yet,” she continued, “as things stand, I’ve not been replaced; therefore, I must do my duty—”
“Doody.” TJ reinserted himself into the argument and set to put the final nails in the “I’m going to ram this entire confrontation into the ground” coffin.
Holly strangled down her chortle, putting her fingertips to her lips to cover a smirk. Charmaine was ill-equipped to play any game, much less the one TJ had set in motion, and was possibly going to lose her head.
“Du-tee,” I said, playing my part, “not doo-doo doody.”
TJ nodded. “Right. Doody, as in poop.”
“Stop. You both are the vision of idiocy.”
TJ took another bite of his apple and moved to the end of the table and rested a hip on the edge, effectively putting himself between Charmaine and me. “I don’t mind being called an idiot, but were you calling my sister an idiot?”
She put her pen down with great care and looked at him with a self-satisfied smile: “If the shoe fits…Tiberius Jerome Baker.”
He and I both flinched at his ostentatious name, which no one but our mother called him, and only when he was in deep dog doody.
“It’s TJ,” he said around a bite, “unless you’re aiming to spank me.”
Her eyes narrowed. TJ was used to entertaining all humans—except his commanding officers—with his charm, albeit childlike. They could be in a deadlock for days. Charmaine would try to prove to him that she was the most powerful human on earth, and TJ would try to make her laugh.
“I see you have an overinflated sense of self, like your sister. Do you also take things that don’t belong to you, Tiberius?”
He gave her a long, analyzing look, one that, to someone unfamiliar with it, might suggest that he had been bested.
I groaned. “Pick one, TJ. You can’t have a rebuttal to the ‘overinflated self’ comment and squeeze in a ‘You called me Tiberius, so now you have to spank me’ joke too.”
“I can try,” he said around a bit of apple.
Charmaine let out an exasperated sigh.
“You used Tiberius again; now you have to spank me.”
Holly murmured, “Aw, he picked one. I was hoping he’d do both.”
“To keep my ego in check—and because Pavlov demands it—I’m programmed to receive punishment when I hear that name. Spank me.” He stood, putting his apple in his mouth, his hands going to his belt buckle. Holly threaded her fingers together in prayer or to keep from clapping in glee, I didn’t know.
Around his apple, he said, “Here? Or do you have somewhere more private that you’d like to do it?”
“Tee…” I halfheartedly pleaded. A serious part of me was done with her soap opera antics and was fine with a new kind of tact to get her to leave. I couldn’t get her to leave, Rowan couldn’t, maybe Tee could. It would be a scientific experiment to see which option got her to respect our request.
“Mr. Baker, you cannot be serious!” Charmaine’s eyes were wide, yet her anticipatory gaze was glued to my brother’s hands.
I pointed at the door. “You can always leave, Charmaine. In fact, I urge you to.”
He got his belt loose. “Here is fine, I suppose. I tend to be a shy man, but it must be done,” he said, looking down at his hands, making slow work of it, giving her time to run from the room.
Holly looked at me, then him, then back to me. “Is he gonna…”
“Oh, he’s gonna. Unless Charmaine leaves.”
Charmaine, though, didn’t hear us. Her own hands were frozen on the arms of her chair, her chest sucking in air with an expression on her face that was a mixture of high astonishment and a strong desire not to look away. “Is this happening?” she asked no one in particular.
I shrugged. “It’s your decision to stay.
You’re actively participating in this charade, Charmaine, because you didn’t do as he requested.
You haven’t done what any of us have requested of you.
TJ, you should know, is a man of his word.
Now, you can get your things and leave like you’ve been asked to—”
TJ’s pants hit the floor.
Charmaine squeaked.