Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Back up at the front of the castle I stood, flanked by the Whisky Boys, Rowan, and Tee. The clan milled about behind us, waiting. Grief and sadness mixed with the sweet joy of having the MacLaoch heart restored.
Dick Murdoch, Lou Gillian, and cohorts sat shoulder to shoulder in the back of the police van, sullen looks upon their faces, some with bloody noses, with their hands cuffed together in the front.
The constable had called for backup when a “pushy lass” told him he should.
I assumed that was Charmaine. Blue-and-white lights strobed in the dark, bouncing off the castle stones that had me looking at it repeatedly to make sure it wasn’t suddenly going to crumble again.
Dick shouted that he’d done it, he’d done what no other Murdoch had done, and for that, he’d get a medal.
The officer helping to load them into the rear of the police wagon piped up, “Oye, keep yer head, man! I’m a Murdoch, and none of what you’ve confessed to is legal or loyal to the clan honors.
” He slammed the door shut. With an exasperated look that seemed to be the trademark expression for any who spent time in Dick Murdoch’s presence, he said, maybe to us, maybe just to the night air, “I know I need to be unbiased about the accused, but he’s a one. ”
Rowan responded with a short nod and agreed, “He’s a one.”
The small living room of our cottage filled with clan members, while many more milled around outside. I sat curled up on Rowan’s lap while Tee sat on the couch opposite us.
“We were just getting to know her…” I said of Ethel.
We’d finished the police reports, and the sun still did its job even as it set, lightening the calm and clear horizon. A structural engineer from the Fund would be coming in the morning to review the castle.
I shook my head, still feeling Ethel’s hand in mine vanish.
Holly meandered over between the Whisky Boys to deliver me a dram of whisky in a mug. “I’m good,” I said to her proffered cup.
“Ye don’t look good.”
“My guts say I missed something. That somewhere in this whole thing was a piece I missed that could have prevented all of this.”
Rowan’s hand ran slow, soothing circles on my back.
“Oh, ye mean that you should have known that a nutter banker was a greedy sod susceptible to the MacLaoch curse and played the part that would always need to be played, by somebody?”
“When you put it like that,” I said and took the proffered cup.
I looked at the liquid within and whispered, “Slàinte,” before throwing back the contents.
I choked and sucked air through clenched teeth; it held the hellfire of ethanol with some teasing sweetness on the backside. “What the heck is this? Firewater?”
“Heehee, firewater. That’s appropriate. Grandda makes it with Bernie.”
“Ooh,” I said, feeling Rowan’s laugh beneath me.
“Mac Mead,” he said.
I coughed. “Pure moonshine.” The fire was still sweeping up my throat and out my nose. “Hell, pure rocket fuel.” I coughed again as the fumes burned my throat and nose.
In the silence that followed, I muttered, “I want to know how he did it and why. I mean, we already know he was a little on the edge and maybe a bit curse-touched—”
“A bit?” TJ interjected. “Try full-blown. No one loses their marbles like that without social conditioning.”
I beamed at my brother who was bantering about the minutia of curse logic with me. “Not too long ago, you stepped into my life up here and told me I was full of baloney; now listen to you.”
TJ nodded. “Yup, went full cult. I’m in.”
Rowan said, “Good. Blood sacrifice in the morn—see you there?”
TJ looked at his watch. “Gonna be busy. I’ll catch the next one.”
They grinned at each other, and I couldn’t help but feel the lightness in my heart at their connection.
Their original meet-cute was dark as hell, but now their bond was tight, as if they’d had it as long as Rowan and Eli.
Eli now knew he was the original Minory for Rowan and wore it like a badge of honor.
“Charmaine is managing the charges being leveled at the banker and his gang?” I asked Tee.
Rowan had rested his head on the back of the couch; his eyes were getting heavy post–adrenaline rush and within the calm comfort of home.
Still, he spoke up. “Yup, and I’ve already gotten a warm message from the Murdoch clan chief, who is doing his own investigating.
He sent his apologies that a man was doing harm in the name of the clan. ”
“That was kind of him.”
“Aye, what we do, this seat that we keep, he and I, is rare in modern times; we’re here to keep traditions alive and celebrate our history by being good stewards. Making trouble is precarious to the position.”
“You should send a message to the MacLaochs, then. I don’t think we got the memo. Since I got here, we’ve had nothing but trouble.”
TJ had gotten a text message and read it before laughing. “Speaking of trouble. Mother just texted.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
“Flight number?”
“You know it.”
“Ugh.”
“You know,” TJ said, “trouble follows you wherever you go. I don’t think it’s the MacLaochs’ fault.” He raised his phone with the text message from Mother, making his point.
I squinted at him. “Who are you?”
He waved, playing along: “Hi, I’m TJ. I’m your older brother. I invited myself here, like I always do.”
“Right…”
He looked over his shoulder at the door. “Should I see myself out?”
“Man, you are one smart dude.”
Holly stood and stretched. “Sounds like nothing more can be done right now.” To the room: “Come on, fam, let’s let the lord and lady of the house have their home back.”
We said our goodnights, gave hugs, and promised a full Scottish brekkie in the castle in the morning. After the structural inspection.
Rowan held me in our empty living room, my arms around his middle and my ear resting on his chest. I listened to his heartbeat and found my own, matching his beat for beat.
“I’m sorry about Ethel,” he said before giving me a soft kiss on the top of my head.
“Me too. That kind of sacrifice… I wasn’t prepared for it.
I understand on some level that she’s always been a supernatural being and now is part of the stones of the castle, but there’s also another part of me that is grief-stricken to have lost a friend, a woman I was growing to love as a grandmother here.
I wish there was some other way to accomplish what we did… ”
“I know, mo ghràdh. We all wish that she hadn’t gone.”
I gave a long, loud, heart-wrenching sigh.
“I know too tha’ we also need to respect her decision. She was much older and wiser than all of us combined.”
I nodded; there was comfort in that. “You’re right. I hate it—the loss feels sad—but you’re right.”
I looked up at him, and he took the opportunity to kiss my lips. “I like hearing tha’: ‘You’re right.’”
I was about to respond when I thought of something pertinent to Ethel. “How’d she live so damn long?”
“Human sacrifice?”
“Is that the same body or a new body a spirit inhabits?”
“What, like Dick Murdoch? Possessed by the spirit of the curse?”
“Maybe…that sounds too ghostly. That doesn’t exist, right?”
Rowan’s eyes illuminated before his smile broke hearing my sarcasm. “Those reanimated skeletons on the cairn knoll were ghosts.”
“Were they?”
He added ignoring my sarcasm, “Mo ghràdh, tonight you held the power of your ancestor Ormr and wielded magic like I have never seen before. Ghosts are just one paradigm shift away.”
The next morning, I brought thermoses of hot coffee up to the castle and passed out mugs of it.
Marion and Flora, with the help from Clive, passed out hot breakfast sandwiches.
Rowan and I walked the castle with the Fund’s castle architect, structural engineer, and fire recovery expert.
There was almost no damage, not even from smoke.
It was as if Ethel simply pressed rewind on the event.
With the OK from the structural engineer to resume regular activities, the looted artifacts were being loaded into the main ballroom.
Canvas was laid down over the hardwoods, and one by one, chairs, paintings, silver hairbrushes, dishes, and sgain-dubhs were being delicately placed for review and restoration from their time being jumbled about, dropped into boats, or doused with gasoline.
Surprisingly, the charges in the foundation’s corners were still intact, another thing that seemed to suggest Ethel had sacrificed her life to rewind time. The police got usable fingerprints from the explosives, a smoking gun of evidence to put away the entirety of Dick Murdoch’s accomplices.
We were heading up the stairs to the main dining room from the lower ballroom when Rowan grasped my hand.
“What is it, hon?” I asked as he came up to the stair I was on and gently laid his hands on my cheeks; his gaze was amorous.
“I was thinking…how many times have ye saved me? Yesterday, the year before… Thank ye. I’m grateful to you every day, and I have to tell ye, if I haven’t said it before, thank you for all you’ve done, for me, the clan.
” He looked at the soaring ceiling of the castle’s entry that we were walking up into.
“The castle. I went to my knees, felt my breath collapse at the explosion. It killed me, the rubble of it was my broken body, and ye…you drove us forward, pulled power from tha’ cave—how you even thought of it in that moment, I’m in awe—grasped hands, and led us, me, here.
You and Ethel put it right. She has my gratitude, but you… ”
Sparks of light flickered in the air around us.
“Luaidh mo chèile, I’ve fallen in love with you all over again.
You hold my heart and my soul in your hands, and I hope in the rest of our lives together I can return the favor, that I can show you with the whole of my body and my actions how much I love, adore, and…
” He swallowed down the emotions that his words were pulling from him.
He took a deep breath and, with a shimmering gaze, continued, “I”—he kissed my lips softly and lingered there, letting our breaths mingle before picking up my ring hand and speaking into the gold filigree—“give you all of me, again, body, soul and in every plane of existence. Tha mo ghion ort.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled myself up onto my tiptoes, glowing now with the honesty of his words. “I love you with all my heart too. Now and forever.”
“Aye, forever.”