Hope Everlastin' Book 4 (21 page)

"Pity, because I believe
something is trying to call both items home."

A chill had clamped onto
Taryn's spine. "Home?"

He'd smiled ruefully, and
his eyes had taken on a disconcerting look of foreboding. "Why else
would our paths have crossed?

"Passage key," he murmured.
"Most curious. A passage into what, I wonder."

Stoughton's last words
continued to haunt Taryn. She'd left his home unshakably convinced
of two facts: the dirk was a key, and the secret it held had
something to do with the Callanish Standing Stones. Never had an
obsession with a story been more deeply rooted in her gut. Whatever
it took, she would return to the stones, with the dirk, and learn
the secret Ciarda had feared.

As she rummaged through the
trunks in the attic, the ache in her back made it feel as though
she'd already spent hours bent over them, when in fact not even a
half hour had gone by. She kept herself focused and worked as fast
as she could move her hands. After the ninth trunk she began to
lose heart, and slowed her search until she came across one with
the brass initials CM.

Now her heart began to race
again. A rush of adrenaline restored her energy.

The trunk was locked, but
that didn't concern her. Removing one of the bobby pins from her
hair, she bit off the cushioning tip and deftly inserted the blunt
metal end into the keyhole. Three seconds was all it took for the
tumblers to click.

Taryn opened the trunk and
positioned the flashlight on the left rear corner, at the crook of
the top and bottom. Like a child cut loose in a candy store, she
fished through tablecloths and doilies, lace handkerchiefs with CM
embroidered in red and blue thread, books and papers. There was a
large jewelry box with a stunning collection of necklaces, rings,
and bracelets with various precious stones. The pieces were old, in
gold or silver, all detailed with Celtic designs, but none of them
interested her. She closed the lid and replaced the box inside the
trunk, then started glancing through the papers.

Receipts and letters from
family and friends. Again, nothing that caught her interest. Most
of the books were poetry collections, one was titled Plato's Notes,
and one she discovered was a Bible. She skimmed through the pages
of each, saving the Bible for last.

It was a thick and very old
book, the thin leather binding hand-sewn with cords of darker
leather, and the contents written in Gaelic. Getting more
discouraged by the moment, she carelessly flipped through the pages
until she glimpsed a glint of metal in the corner of her right eye.
She placed the Bible next to her on the floor and reached into the
trunk. Between the folds of one of the handkerchiefs was a gold
chain with a locket. The front border was intricately carved with a
circle of Celt knots. In the center was CM in Old English
letters.

Taryn gingerly ran a thumb
over the surface then opened the locket. Inside were two tiny oval
portraits, one of a boy of about three-years-old, the other of
possibly the same boy at about age ten.

"Lachlan," she murmured,
then tilted his images into the light for a better look. "You were
a cute devil, even then." She chuckled. "What secret was your
mother hiding, huh? Come on, Lachlan, you can tell me."

With a resigned sigh she
peered into the trunk. She placed the locket in her left hand,
using the right to prod and squeeze the various other fabric items.
Finally, in the front right corner at the bottom, her fingers came
across a semi-stiff article. She pulled out a pouch no larger than
her palm and closely inspected it.

An icy sensation began in
the pit of her stomach and spread through her veins. She couldn't
be sure, but the texture felt like coarse hair, black and
masterfully woven, the knotted tie cord made from the same
material. There was something inside the pouch, but she couldn't
bring herself to open it right away. An abysmal sense of foreboding
cloaked her, a feeling similar to what she'd experienced when
seeing the gargoylian faces on the spearhead, beneath Stoughton's
magnifying glass.

Her lips tightly compressed
and breathing sparingly through her nostrils, she opened the pouch.
She leveled her left palm and tipped the pouch over atop it. A
necklace fell out. It wasn't like anything in the jewelry box or
anything she'd seen, with two exceptions. The knotted cord was made
from what appeared to be the same hair as the pouch, and was
attached to the loop of a tear-shaped pendant made of cobalt blue
stone. The second similarity was in the tiny carvings in the rock.
She didn't need a magnifying glass this time. Gargoyle faces and
runes.

A violent shiver coursed
through her. She told herself to replace the necklace in the pouch,
toss it in the trunk, and forget she had ever seen it. But it was a
vital part of the mystery, and she could no more let it go than she
could join a convent. Both went against her nature.

Hastily, she crammed the
pouch into one cup of her bra, wincing at the feel of the coarse
weave against her skin. She righted her V-neck sweater, patted and
smoothed the area concealing the pouch to make sure it wouldn't
stand out if she encountered someone on her way back to her room,
then picked up the Bible and tossed it inside the trunk. She took
the flashlight in hand and was about to close the lid when she
noticed a corner of paper sticking out from between the front pages
of the Bible.

Anticipation quivered
through her. She nervously moistened her lower lip by sucking it
in, and angled the full beam of light on the intriguing piece. The
scalloped edges told her it wasn't one of the pages that had come
loose. This was something someone had tucked inside the
book.

A letter? From Ciarda? To
Lachlan?

She eased the paper from
between the pages. It was folded in half with such care, the edges
were perfectly aligned. She tucked the flashlight between her legs,
beam upward, and gingerly unfolded the letter. The handwriting was
small and graceful, but to her dismay, the words were in
Gaelic.

"Dammit," Taryn muttered.
"Fine, I'll just-ah, find someone to translate it after I leave.
Shit. Gaelic. Good ol' English beneath you, Ciarda? Oh, but don't
worry your pretty little skeletal head. It'll take far more than a
damn language to discourage me."

Taryn closed the trunk and
stood. Again placing the flashlight between her thighs, she
carefully tucked the letter into the front of her tailored, brown
tweed slacks and took the light into a hand.

She went rigid at the sound
of footsteps on the stairs. Then she heard Roan call, "Taryn, you
in the attic?"

Sucking in a deep breath,
she went to the top of the staircase and saw him paused halfway up,
a questioning eyebrow cocked in her direction. She forced a smile
and said lightheartedly, "It's cool up here. Have you ever gone
through any of the trunks or boxes?"

"You didn’t get into any o'
tha' stuff, did you?"

"I peeked in a couple of
the trunks," she said merrily, and started down the stairs. He
descended ahead of her and waited in the hall. While he closed the
door, she looked down at her clothing and jerked in surprise. "That
has to be the cleanest attic I've ever been in. Do you have a
housekeeper?"

He issued her an impatient
look before shaking his head.

She laughed mockingly.
"Don't tell me you do housework!"

"The house takes care o'
itself."

A blank expression fell
over Taryn's face. "You're kidding."

"No. The stuff in the attic
belongs to Lannie."

"Okay." She gave an airy
shrug. "There's two trunks with some great old clothes up
there."

"Aye. Some o' it belonged
to his mither."

"What about the
rest?"

"Tessa and Robert's
children were only allowed to remove their personal belongin’s when
they moved ou'. Everythin’ else remained, includin’ their parents'
things."

"What right did Lachlan
have to keep their stuff?" she asked with a hint of
bitterness.

"By right tha' it was his
money they lived on. He could have prevented their children from
takin’ anythin’ but wha' they had on their backs, but he didn’t,
did he?"

"Magnanimous sonofabitch,
isn't he," she said flippantly.

"He's tha' and mair. I
would appreciate it if you spoke o' him wi' the respect due him,
especially when in his home."

His scolding brought a
crimson color to her cheeks, and she couldn't stop her immediate
response. "Why don't you just sacrifice a frigging lamb to him!
Jeee-sus, better yet, one of those goddamn peacocks!"

"I'll see you in the morn,"
he said stiffly. "Good night."

She glanced at her watch.
"It's not even nine o'clock."

"Everyone else has turned
in."

She watched him stroll down
the hall and disappear down the staircase, then grumbled, "Life in
the fast lane, it ain’t. But what else can one expect from a house
that favors the dead?"

* * *

It was the dampness and
chill of the night making him so jittery. At least, that's what
Stephan Miles kept telling himself. His horn-rimmed glasses kept
fogging up. He'd swiped the moisture off with his fingers so many
times that the lenses were smudgy and getting more difficult to see
through. Without them, though, he was blinder than a bat on a sunny
day.

He sat on the cellar
bulkhead like a man whose legs had turned to rubber. His
three-quarter length black raincoat tented his lean body, making
him appear thinner than he actually was. He was twenty-six, but
knew he could pass for forty. His dark hair was short-cropped, worn
that way because of its tendency to form ringlets when even an inch
long. Mediocre blue eyes. High cheekbones, and a chin too pointed
for his liking.

Basically, he was a
miserable man who detested his job but didn't believe himself
suited for anything else—at least, nothing that would pay the
bills. His ex-wife remained a nag, and his dog disliked him. He had
no real friends, and his boss was on the verge of firing him. And
his mother—

He didn't want to think
about her.

Life in the nineties. What
a bitch.

The only other time he'd
set foot on this estate was last July, when he'd told the American
woman he was interested in buying the place. Right, like he would
ever be able to afford anything more than his dinky little flat in
London. The fib had gotten him through the doors, although not for
long. Something had happened to him while he was talking to the
American woman. Something vile had seeped into him and made him
vomit green ooze for the rest of that day. It had shaken him up
enough to make him terrified of returning, even when he was told
about the impending Christmas Eve miracle the ghostly laird had
promised the media and people of Crossmichael. His boss had
demanded he be there for the story. At the time, Miles hadn't
thought any piece of news was worth chancing another attack of
green slime.

"So what the bloody hell am
I doing here?" he asked himself, glancing apprehensively around at
the varying shades of darkness.

He knew the
answer.

Unless he came up with a
sizzling story by the end of the week, he could kiss his job
goodbye. Any reporter could be here now and accomplish the same
job, probably better. He didn't have any hang-ups about being a
so-so journalist. Some men were born for literary greatness,
others, so-so-dom.

Good ole Whitney Melcamp.
Sonofabitch
. He was the editor from hell.
What kind of man sent another man on a mission like
this?

Had Melcamp barfed green
slime?
No!

Had Melcamp watched his
pathetic life flash before his eyes until the throes of the
whatever it was had spent itself?
Hell
no.

He laughed at me!
Belly-laughed until tears streamed down his flaccid
cheeks!

Well, let me tell you,
Melcamp, ole boy, if the "whatever" gets inside me this time, I'll
be sure to puke the green slime right in your face for my
troubles!

The mental image of that
happening brought a wan smile to his sickly pallor, but did little
to heighten his willingness to venture into the house.

Nonetheless, he would have
to. He needed his next paycheck. He'd already recycled his boxers
by wearing them inside out. Another round of use and a story would
smell him coming.

Releasing a burst of
breath, he rose to his feet and hastily opened one side of the
bulkhead doors. The fathomless darkness that peered up at him made
him shudder. He repeatedly told himself that if old Viola Cooke
could use this method to listen in and move about the house, he
should be able to get past his fears.

One step at a time,
he counseled himself then finally turned on his
flashlight and headed down the steep stone steps.

He closed the door and
paused momentarily as if afraid he had sealed himself in a tomb,
then puffed up his cheeks and moved the light around the
room.