The Irish Lover (11 page)

It was barely five o’clock, but when he reached
the window-filled hall connecting the east wing to the main castle
it felt like 3 A.M. as rain sheeted down the glass from a black
sky. There was no way he was going outside, as nice as a walk
sounded, so he’d settle for touring the castle. He really liked
castles. He’d even booked himself a room in a castle-looking
B&B later in the week. As Tim emerged into the foyer, he
wondered if there was any hope of finding Caera and begging her for
a tour.

The foyer was empty except for the blonde who’d
checked him in.

“Good evening, Mr. Wilcox, is there anything I
can help you with?”

“Is Caera, uh…” Tim’s brain took a moment to
come up with her last name, which he’d seen on her emails,
“…Cassidy around?”

The blonde frowned. “I’m sorry, she’s busy
preparing for the concert. Is there something you need for your
performance?”

Tim considered making up something so he could
talk to her, but that was a shit thing to do. He shook his head.
“No, I just wanted to say hi. I think I’m going to go for a tour.
Maybe just find someplace to sit.”

“I’d take you on a tour myself, but I’m afraid
I’m the only one here. If you’re looking for quiet, I’d recommend
the Rose Room or the formal front room. You can access them through
that door.”

She directed him to another old,
expensive-looking door, almost directly opposite the one he’d just
come through.

With a nod of thanks, he opened the door.
Rather than more wood, he found himself in a carpeted hall with
fancy wallpaper and several white doors. The first one had a small
plaque, labeling it the formal front room. The need to explore the
castle—Tim didn’t care that it wasn’t technically a castle, it was
called castle and that was enough for him—was on him, so he
bypassed that room and examined each of the other doors. He found
one marked Staff, a billiards room, the Rose Room and the door that
led to the other covered hallway and the west wing.

He stepped out of the main castle building,
into the covered hallway. The rain on the windows made it hard to
see anything, but the air that seeped through the stones was
vibrant with cold and atmosphere. Feeling like a great explorer,
which he knew was stupid since Sorcha had said the TV crew was in
the west wing, Tim entered the third building of the
castle.

Disappointingly, the first floor of the west
wing was a generic hotel hallway. Nondescript patterned carpet
traversed the length of the hall, all the way to a window in the
far wall, which was stone. The interior walls were beige, the doors
white. A few of the doors had Do Not Disturb signs up, so he
guessed those were the TV crew. Feeling more than a little stupid,
Tim walked the hall, counting nine rooms and an elevator and stairs
in the space by the door where a tenth room wasn’t. The only
interesting things about it were the large gold keyholes and real
handles on the doors, rather than the key-card mechanisms Tim was
used to.

“Worst explorer ever,” Tim muttered to
himself.

Either the aspirin or the fake exploring had
lifted some of his jet lag exhaustion. Deciding to go back to the
main building and check out the billiards room, he put his hand on
the door handle.

And stopped.

He looked at the stairs.

He needed to check the second floor.

Heart beating fast, for no reason he could
name, Tim took the stairs two at a time. At first glance, the
second floor was just another level of hotel rooms—the same paint
on the walls, same carpet on the floor. But it wasn’t the same.
There was something wrong. Tim knew it the way he knew when a song
was right.

Unlike downstairs, the hall didn’t end in a
stone wall, but rather in more of the same beige paint. The light
from the sconces between each door seemed dimmer, making the paint
a sickly yellow at the windowless end of the hall.

Tim took a step, then another, wondering what
the hell he was doing. The hair on his arms was standing on end, he
was breathing fast and his hands were fisted and ready—for what, he
didn’t know.

Either his system had gone completely haywire
or there was a something up here that he could feel but not
name.

Tim had grown up on a steady diet of folk
music, the kind of songs that made a boy believe in love that
transcended death. He’d grown into a man who sang about the
cynic-less longings and hopes that people like to pretend they
didn’t feel or believe.

He would never deny a feeling, even if he
couldn’t name it. Even if it frightened him.

Tim crept forward, pausing between each step to
take a breath.

This level had only five rooms, the hall about
half the length of the one on the lower floor. The hall ended in a
smooth wall, with no apparent access to what Tim guessed was about
fifty percent of the second floor. He checked the castle map. There
was nothing on this section—half the second floor of the west wing
was simply blank. There was no room name or numbers, no
explanation.

Tim stopped in front of the wall, staring at
the expanse of beige paint. The closer he looked, the more certain
he became that there was a darker patch visible in the paint—a
large rectangular patch. A door.

It was cold, so cold that for a moment Tim was
sure he could see his breath.

He raised his hand, fingers reaching for the
darker patch on the wall.

“Tim? Mr. Wilcox?” A lilting voice called his
name, the voice seeming to echo, as if the speaker had shouted
through a pipe.

Tim pulled his hand back, curling it into a
fist. His heart was beating so hard he could taste his heartbeat.
The cold was seeping up the legs of his pants and down his
collar.

This was bad. He needed to leave.

No longer feeling like the open-minded
explorer, Tim turned and ran. He braced his hands on the banisters
and took the first set of stairs in one leap. He nearly crashed
into Sorcha, who stood on the landing.

“Mr. Wilcox.” Sorcha’s eyes widened. She
touched the back of one finger to his cheek, quickly pulling her
hand away. “You’re freezing.”

“There’s something going on up there, you need
to go up there and—” Tim’s words tumbled out.

“Mr. Wilcox, we don’t use the second floor of
the west wing.”

Tim blinked. Was she not hearing him? “There’s
something up there, it’s cold, really cold at the end of the hall,
and I think maybe you walled over the door. I could see, like, an
outline in the paint.”

“You could see it?”

“You know about it?”

“I should have warned you. No one goes up
there.”

“You know what it is? Is it haunted? Was that a
ghost?” Tim was secretly thrilled with the idea of a ghost
encounter, but that had felt almost…dangerous.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts. That’s a
terrible thing to think, souls wandering lost.” Sorcha took his
arm, drawing him down the second set of steps.

“Fine, it’s not a ghost. It’s something. Do you
know what it is?”

“It’s an old building, there are places you’ll
find that are—”

“No, there’s a door behind that wall. I think
you accidentally walled it up when you remodeled or something.
There’s something back there.”

They were standing at the head of the hallway
on the lower floor. Tim glanced down it, expecting a twinge, but
there was nothing. It was only the second floor. Sorcha too looked
over her shoulder, then drew him out into the covered
hallway.

“Mr. Wilcox, I’ll ask you not to alarm the
other guests.”

“Then tell me what it was I just had a run in
with.”

Sorcha shook her head. With a backdrop of
sheeting rain through the windows, her red hair catching the hall
lights, she looked like a sorceress, a keeper of
secrets.

“I don’t know what, and if you want answers so
specific, you’ll be disappointed. As for the door…” She turned to
look out, into the rain. “When you cannot open a door for fear of
what’s on the other side, you wall it up.”

Tim whistled between his teeth. It was nice to
know he wasn’t losing his mind—there was a door outline in the
paint. Being told that there was something so crazy up there that
they’d walled in the door rather than deal with it blew his
mind.

“You just…walled it up?” Tim rubbed his hand on
the back of his head. His mind was going a million miles a minute.
She must have been lying when she said she didn’t know what it was.
People didn’t wall up access to half a floor of a castle because
they suspected there might be something bad. They must know it was
bad, therefore they had to know what it was.

“I did nothing.”

“What’s back there? You must know, otherwise
you wouldn’t have walled it up.”

“You act like I did this, but I did not. Nor
did anyone here, or even the O’Muircheartaigh family. That door was
sealed shut with brick and mortar over one hundred years
ago.”

Tim rocked back on his heels, eyes
widening.

“So what you felt,” Sorcha continued, “must
have been a draft, coming through a crack. That room, that whole
part of the building, is not in the best shape. Your friend Paddy
is looking for you, hoping you’ll join him in the pub for
dinner.”

Tim looked over his shoulder, through the
windows at the massive west wing, then let Sorcha lead him
away.

****

And don’t miss Sorcha’s story,
The Fire and
the Earth
, coming May 2013!

~~~~

About the Author

Lila Dubois is a tech writer by day and a
romance writer by night. She’s living her own version of a romance
novel with her Irish Farm Boy, who she imported to Los Angeles.
Having spent extensive time in France, Egypt, Turkey, Ireland and
England, Lila speaks five languages, none of them—including
English—fluently.

You can visit Lila on the web at
http://liladubois.net
.

###