“That portion of the kirk is no longer open to the public and the tomb has been sealed once again. But how do you explain those things? Mackenzie was such a vile, horrible, evil man his spirit still maintains so much energy that he is capable of harming living people more than three-hundred years after his own death.”
“Alright,” nodded Joseph, “what do we do? How do we stop this man? There has to be something we can do to ensure that his spirit, evil or not, is no longer on this earth and causing harm to others.”
“If I knew that, I’d have done it,” she said shaking her head. “Short of giving him what he wants, I don’t know what to offer the man.”
“We can’t give him what he wants. It doesn’t exist, or I don’t think it does,” said Joseph. “We have to find out what made him think this was real. That there was someone out there that could make him live for all eternity.”
“Did he have great wealth?” asked Julia.
“I believe so,” nodded Rose. “You saw the ruins. Imagine what it must have looked like at it’s prime. There are paintings and drawings of it. It was incredibly impressive. Just the fact that he had hundreds of men at his disposal to hunt these people, to find new ones when he ran out of victims, was impressive.
“He owned ships that sailed all over Europe trading goods and carrying dignitaries and regular passengers, even carrying British troops when necessary.”
“That must have made him unpopular to the masses,” frowned Rory. He looked at Conor. “What about your ancestors? Did they have any encounters with this man?”
“It’s a great question,” he frowned. “We’ve got hundreds of books in the library of guests who were here, things that were traded, land bought, that sort of thing.”
“Do you know which ones?” asked Liffey.
“In that Michael was right,” he frowned. “I don’t like to read, especially my own family history. Some of it shames me.”
“Gotta face that shit, brother,” smirked Rory. “You’ve done enough good that it should outweigh the bad.”
“We need to find the books that are from that period of time,” said Julia. “Rose? Would you be willing to help me look through them? I know you’re probably incredibly busy, but do you mind?”
“I’m not busy at’tall,” she said smiling at the younger woman. Although, she wondered if she wasn’t the same age as her. There was something very mature about her but her face and body said she was in her thirties. “I’d be happy to help if it’s alright with Conor.” She blushed looking at Conor and he blushed back.
“O’course. I mean, of course,” he said clearing his throat. “Let’s put this business aside for now and enjoy this amazing meal. We’ll speak more after dinner.”
Julia gave a sly grin to Joseph who only shook his head, knowing exactly what his beautiful wife had just done.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Rose and Julia decided to meet after a morning walk through the gardens and along the lake of Conor’s property. Unfortunately, a rain storm, possibly predictive of the outcome of their search, drenched them.
Racing toward the house, they shook off their rain gear and entered the ancient library.
It felt as though the rain followed them in from their walk, a fine silver mist that clung to the hems of their skirts and dampened the old leather covers stacked across the library table.
Rose stood at the head of it all like a woman greeting old adversaries, one hand resting on a cracked family Bible, the other on a tower of diaries tied with fraying ribbon. Old books were her friend and the only tool that often allowed her to help the ghosts in the region.
Julia watched the fire struggle in the hearth and listened to the wind move through the stones of the castle, a low sound like breath drawn through teeth. Somewhere high above them, unseen in the dark rafters, something tapped three times and then went still.
Julia just smiled at Rose, both women nodding.
“My grandmother said the stones here remember more than the people do,” Rose murmured, opening the Bible with the care one might use on a bird with a broken wing. Her voice was low and warm, but it carried an edge Julia had learned not to dismiss. “That is why the old families kept journals. Not merely for births and deaths, but for warnings.
“A field gone wrong. A child who wandered too close to a fairy fort. A light seen where no lamp should be.” She turned a page browned at the edges. “And when folk vanished, they were written down too, if only so the house itself could not pretend innocence.”
Julia drew nearer, folding her arms against the draft that slid under the doors. The books smelled of peat smoke, salt, and the sweet rot of paper left too long to remember daylight.
They had come searching for names—three cousins lost over two generations that she was never able to connect to. Before them two sisters whose disappearances had beensoftened by their family into silence and Rose always wondered why. But Rose, as always, seemed to believe that names alone were not enough.
“You cannot hunt the missing with ink and dates only,” she said. “You must also know what kind of tales a family fears enough to bury.”
She untied the first bundle and opened a narrow diary written in a hand so fine it seemed stitched rather than penned.
“The fair folk are not little winged darlings,” Rose said, glancing at Julia over the page. “Not in Ireland. They are the old crowd, the hidden ones, proud and touchy and dangerous if crossed.”
