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“I should have before. Sorry.”

“It’s probably nothing.” And it probably was. Still, the whole thing made her squirrelly.

Kris rested her video camera in her lap. They sat side by side, watching the loch, waiting for something that wasn’t going to come. Usually she was no good at waiting; she’d forever been impatient. Always on the go to anywhere but here, always searching for the next story or more information about this one.

Which reminded her …

“In your museum, you have an unfinished section.”

Dougal nodded, still staring at the loch. “‘Supernatural Myths of Scotland.’ I’ve studied a lot of legends from all over the world, but they’re my favorite.”

“But you don’t believe in the supernatural.”

“Doesn’t matter what I believe. It matters what I can sell to those who do.”

His cynical attitude should be grating; however, considering it mirrored her own, Kris couldn’t throw stones. Besides, his being a skeptic didn’t keep him from being the best-informed source of legendary info on Scotland—now that Edward was gone. Dougal was using the public’s gullibility to make a buck; he wouldn’t mind Kris picking his brain for the same reason.

“Why don’t you sell me?” Kris murmured.

His lips quirked—he knew she couldn’t be sold; still, he humored her. “One of the most interesting tales I’ve found is the wulver—a Scottish werewolf.”

Kris straightened. Nearly everything she’d read about Mandenauer involved werewolves.

“Body of a man covered in brown hair, head of a wolf.”

Kris resisted the urge to say Ew!, because really, it went without saying.

“How do you kill it?” she asked.

“Kill it?” Dougal repeated, expression mystified. “Why? The wulver is benign.”

“The wulver isn’t real,” Kris pointed out. “But if it were, I doubt any werewolf is benign.”

Dougal shrugged. “In the legends, wulvers kept to themselves. Except when they were leaving fish on the windowsills of the poor.”

A Robin Hood werewolf? Right.

“What else you got?” Kris wanted to hear about the Scottish legends that might have led to the tale of Nessie. She’d discovered that hoaxers often followed local legends. Perhaps to more easily convince the residents that the hoax was the truth or perhaps because they had no imaginations of their own.

“The Ceirean. Sea monster so large it ate seven whales.”

That had possibilities.

“The Fear Liath,” he continued. “An unseen presence that causes feelings of unease.”

Kris glanced over her shoulder, suddenly doused with an increasingly familiar sense of unease.

Dougal laughed. “Not real, remember? Besides, the Fear Liath haunts the mountains, not the seas.”

“What are those?” Kris indicated the towering hills.

“Good point. I’d considered leaving that one out of the display, but maybe I won’t. One of the main sections will be myths and legends that could actually be Nessie.”

Bingo! Kris thought, and leaned in.

“The kelpie has always been a front-runner,” Dougal continued, warming to his subject. “Here they call it Each-Uisge, a supernatural water horse. Transforms into a human and walks upon the earth. Lures the unsuspecting into the water, where they drown.”

“Nessie’s not a horse.” Although there had been several reports of the monster with a mane.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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