After the Gloaming #3
She looked up at him through her curtain of hair and gasped.
Tears glittered like diamonds on her translucent cheeks.
She was even more beautiful than he had first thought.
He’d already noticed her kiss-worthy lips, but now he noticed her ample, round breasts which were almost disproportionately large on her petite, slender frame.
He tried to touch her shoulder again but his hand moved through her as if she were made of vapour.
She dashed the tears from her cheeks and stood, the top of her head coming to his chin.
“You can see me?”
“Yes.”
“And hear me?”
“Obviously.” Caden’s thoughts spun around in his brain. He feebly grappled with the clues, trying to construct a logical explanation for the illogical situation before him. “Who are you? What are you?”
The ridiculousness of the situation struck him.
He remembered the time he had been sick in bed with the flu and had channel surfed to an impossibly idiotic show called Ghost Hunters and how he’d snorted when the host had walked into an empty room of an old insane asylum and announced, “If there’s anyone here, please make your presence known.
” Now here he was attempting to have a conversation with a transparent woman with banging curves and kissable lips.
“Five hundred years ago, I lived in a village near Caerlaverock. My name was Deidre Monreith.”
Caden thought he detected a hysterical note in his chuckle. “Are you telling me you have travelled through time?”
She shook her head and the moonlight streamed off her hair like liquid silver.
“I am not a human from another time nor am I merely a ghost of what I once was. I am something far more tragic. I am a bean shìth.”
“I don’t understand,” Caden grudgingly confessed. “What is a bean sheath?”
“A bean shìth,” she corrected. “One who has been condemned to spend eternity as a messenger of death.”
“Messenger of death?”
“Aye.”
Her story was too outrageous and he began to wonder if he had unwittingly become a dupe in one of those television prank shows.
“So you’re sort of like Santa Claus? You fly around at night but instead of bringing presents you bring death.” Caden crossed his arms over his chest. “With six billion people on the planet, you must be awfully busy.”
“You do not believe me, Caden Maxwell?”
Caden uncrossed his arms and motioned for Hades to come to him.
“Okay, who are you and how do you know my name?”
“I told you, I am a bean shìth.”
Caden ignored her bizarre statement and repeated his second question. “How do you know my name?”
“I have known your name since it was given to you.”
Hades trotted up and stood by Caden’s side. The dog did not growl, shake or bark, but appeared strangely calm.
“You’re a banshee?”
Deidre nodded.
“And you came to Blackstone House to let James Maxwell know that he is about to die?”
“Aye.”
“You did that, so now what? Will you evaporate? Hop on a broom and fly over to France to scare the wits out of some other dying soul?”
Her eyes shimmered like the sea and for a moment she looked sad and weary.
“You do not understand.”
“Enlighten me.”
“I cannot leave this land.” She looked at him in a raw, vulnerable way that made his heart ache. “Though it is not my wish, I am a bean shìth for the Maxwell Clan. Mine is a wretched existence, tied to the misery and sorrow of the descendants of a man who once caused me misery and sorrow.”
He could not look away from her bewitching, green-eyed gaze. And the longer he looked in her eyes, the more he believed her story.
“You said you were once human. How did you become a banshee?”
Birds began chirping and weak, watery sunlight filtered through the black, silhouetted trees as dawn approached.
“I once loved a man named Robert Maxwell and I thought he loved me, too,” she brushed past him and he thought he could almost feel the hem of her gown pass over his boots. “But I was mistaken. He was a wicked man.”
He joined her and together they walked along the shore towards Caerlaverock Castle, towering over the trees in the distance. Hades followed.
“On the eve he was to ask my father for my hand, he told me that he intended to marry another. He was terribly cruel,” her voice trembled.
Apparently, caught in a web of sticky memories, she fell silent. Caden did not press her. He waited patiently until she resumed her tale.
She told him about her quarrel with Robert Maxwell on the roof of the derelict tower, candidly describing his callousness and her heartbreak, and Caden found himself wondering if there was something written into the Maxwell DNA that caused them to treat women with cruel disregard.
He hoped not. He didn’t think he would able to live with himself if he ever acted in such a way.
As she described her death at the hands of his ancestor, Caden felt a blend of emotions. Fortunately, the loathing he felt for Robert Maxwell – a man he’d never met, a man who had lived five hundred years before Caden’s birth – was surpassed by his sympathy for Deirdre Monreith.
Without thinking, he reached for her hand and was shocked when he felt her warm, slender fingers intertwine with his.
They stopped walking and turned to look at each other. Deidre’s form no longer shimmered. She was not a vapourous, amorphous shape but a solid, well-proportioned woman with real, smooth skin that glowed in the orange rays of dawn.
“I don’t understand!” She blushed and pulled her hand away. “You touched me and I felt it! How can that be?”
Caden shrugged.
“Beats me. I am still trying to figure out how you became a banshee.”
“I don’t know, but I believe someone must have uttered a curse over my dying body.
Ever since my death, I have spent my days and nights in an unearthly limbo, able to see and hear the world around me but unable to interact with the people in it.
Until you, the only people who could see or hear me were the dying descendants of Robert Maxwell. ”
Deidre wrapped her arms around her waist and let out a sigh that nearly broke Caden’s heart. There was a vulnerability about her that aroused primitive, protective instincts in him.
“I have spent five hundred years silently observing the Maxwells; a mute and reluctant witness to the lives of people Fate determined I should abhor.” Deidre looked deep into his eyes in a way that both excited and unnerved him.
“I’ve watched with anticipation the birth of each Maxwell heir, hoping he would be the one to unlock the secret of my curse, for there must be some reason I am tethered to this family by supernatural ties. ”
“Wait a minute!” Caden raked his fingers through his hair. “Are you saying you were present at my birth?”
“Aye … yes.”
The breath left Caden’s body in one violent exhalation, as if he had been tackled by a two-hundred and ninety pound defensive tackle.
He took a seat on a boulder near the mudflats that joined the Solway Firth.
Deidre joined him but did not press him to speak.
He watched a gaggle of whooper swans gliding gracefully through the water while he tried to absorb her mind-blowing confession.
He had spent the last five years working as a day trader in the futures market, a challenging profession that required brains and balls.
The most successful day traders possessed strong analytical skills, nerves of steel, and the ability to make a quick, shrewd decision despite shifting data.
The most successful day traders were open-minded and unflappable. And he was definitely successful.
He believed he had made millions – for his clients and himself – because he possessed the ability to quickly process information.
And yet, his mind reeled from all he had learned.
He was trying to put it all in order, to find reason amid confusion, to alter long-held beliefs to adapt to the current trend.
But accepting the downward movement of a particular stock was a lot easier than embracing the notion that a hot woman was really a banshee who had been haunting his father’s family for generations.
He looked at Deidre.
“What did you see? The day I was born?”
Sadness altered her lovely features and she turned away.
“Sometimes it is better to leave the past buried lest you unearth more than you ever hoped to find.”
“Really? Does that mean you don’t want me to try to learn more about the circumstances surrounding your death and the curse that made you a banshee?”
She caught her lower lip between her pearly front teeth and nibbled on it.
“I will make you a bargain, Caden Maxwell. If you help me discover more about the curse, I will tell you what you wish to know about your birth.”
Caden wanted to tell her that there was no need for her to bargain with him; he would have helped her anyway.
“It’s a deal.”
He held out his hand and she shook it.
“If you are bound to the Maxwells and a Maxwell caused your death, weren’t you there to witness the charm?”
“Curse! It was a curse, not a charm.”
“Right, curse.”
“I do not remember the curse but I suspect Agnes is the one who cast it.”
“Agnes?”
“Aye.” She bent over and snatched a rock, rubbing the smooth, water-worn surface with her fingers. “Agnes Bowquat was a white witch who lived in a hut in the woods bordering Caerlaverock.”
“White witch?”
His mind was spinning again. He thought white witches were villains who fed naughty boys Turkish Delight and turned fauns into statues, like in The Chronicles of Narnia.
“A white witch was someone who practised the ancient arts of healing and acted as a mediator between the earthly world and the spiritual worlds.”
“I’m trying to wrap my head around all of this, but it’s not easy.”
Her eyes widened and she gasped.
“I’m sorry,” he said, suddenly realizing his faux pas. “Poor choice of words. It’s a saying – meaning I’m trying to comprehend everything you’ve told me.”