Page 62 of How I Met Your Murderer

We made it halfway down the corridor before Raff stopped short. I nearly walked through him, quite literally, before I saw what he was staring at through the narrow window overlooking the courtyard.

A fox lay motionless in the grass below, watched over by Caoimhe’s well-dressed scarecrows and plastic black cats. Scarlet streaked the creature’s belly.

Raff’s jaw tightened, his eyes fixed on the grim sight. “Guess we found Gary,” he muttered, reaching out to pull me instinctively closer, like he thought the entity might appear and snatch me away if he didn’t hold on. “You know . . . I haven’t seen the courtyard poltergeist in a while. All those decorations have stayed right where Basil staked them for at least three days running, and that’s some kind of record.”

“Fuck. You’re right. You think that means Gary absorbed another spirit right under our noses? One we wouldn’t miss like the others,” I said quietly. And even though the poltergeist had been kind of a nuisance, that meant it could be any of us next.

Raff nodded, his mind clearly already racing ahead. “We need to ask the spirits something different tonight,” he said, pushing away from the window. “Not just what they’ve seen or what they’re afraid of. I want to know what they’ve seen die here in all their years.”

“You think . . . what, centuries of deaths are all connected to Gary?”

What I couldn’t bring myself to ask was: my death?

Raff considered that for a moment with his head tilted, like he was listening for something. “Maybe. I’m not sure. We know Síofra was poisoned, so we can’t pin everything on the Awful Ruinous Yoke, but . . . I do think everything here is connected somehow. Seems to me like we just don’t have the full picture yet.”

His eyes found mine, and the worry there softened when I gave him my bravest smile. Of course, it was easy to have courage when I was looking at him—not the fox, or the otherwise empty courtyard that had been free of poltergeist mischief for many nights now.

“Come on, a stór,” he said quietly. “We have to talk to them. And maybe you take the lead again—they like you. They only tolerate me.”

“They might be uneasy lately, but they still adore you—almost as much as I do, but it is a competition, and I’m going for the gold.” I took his hand again, because I needed to. Because I wanted to. Because the night felt darker now, and he was the only light in it. “Let’s go.”

And together, we stepped into the cold heart of the castle.

Brother Fintan’s high tower room was lit by a few pillar candles, one in each window, that never burned down. They were LED candles Raff had bought him in the village, because even though the dead monk didn’t need light to read by, he enjoyed it out of habit. A small creature comfort Raff had been happy to provide.

Brother Fintan sat on a stone ledge in the sparsely furnished room, translucent robes pooling around him, his shaved head bowed over the romance novel Raff had given him a few nights ago—a bright pink paperback with a swooning heroine on the cover.

He looked up as I cracked the door open and breezed in, followed closely by Raff, and the monk’s weathered face brightened. We’d picked one of the friendliest spirits to start with on purpose. “Ah! Raff, a chara—my friends, how are you this evening? Have ye come to read the next chapter with me? Lady Arabella was just about to confess her love—”

Raff cracked a grin as he kicked the door shut behind us. “Not tonight, Brother. We’ve got a question for you, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Fintan blinked and set the book aside, thrown by this turn of events. “A question? And not about Lady Arabella’s stable lad and his secret past?”

Raff knelt beside him and, putting a hand over his heart, said, “Next time, I swear.”

Fintan sighed rather theatrically for an ancient monk. “Very well. Ask away.”

I settled on the stone floor beside Raff. The Dolans hadn’t paid to heat these more remote parts of the castle yet, but the cold didn’t bother me, of course. Raff darted a glance at me, putting a casual hand on my knee—though it felt anything but, in the presence of someone else. He had suggested that I take the lead with our questioning earlier, and was maybe inviting me to do so now, but I subtly shook my head. He could do this. I smiled and let him see that I was at ease, because I believed in him.

“Right,” Raff said a moment later, returning his focus to the monk. “You’ve been here a long time, a chara.”

“Since the year of Our Lord 697,” Fintan confirmed proudly.

“So . . . have you ever seen anyone die here?”

The monk’s expression shifted—not frightened, but thoughtful. “Aye. Many souls. This place has known its share of bloodshed and sorrows.” He began counting on his thick fingers. “There was the chieftain stabbed during a wedding feast. The queen poisoned by her own sister. A lad who fell from the battlements while trying to impress a sweetheart. A plague that swept through in the late 1200s like fire from the Heavens. A duel gone wrong in the courtyard. A man who choked on a goose bone in the 1400s. Or maybe it was the 1500s. Anyway, there was a servant trampled by a runaway horse. A cook who slipped in lard and broke his neck. A mason crushed by falling stone, and . . .” He paused, the flickering of the LED candle casting dramatic shadows across his face. “. . . poor Máirtín, who, as you know, is no longer with us in any sense.”

Raff sat a little taller, more attentive. “Máirtín?”

“What happened to him?” I asked, a sense of foreboding settling in. “He told us he died in a kitchen fire.”

Brother Fintan folded his hands. “More or less. But that’s not the whole story. He was making one of his . . . concoctions. A stew with lamb, onion, barley, and a powder that he said was from the ninth century. It smelled like the devil’s armpit, if you ask me.”

Raff huffed a laugh, rich and musical. “That sounds like him, all right.”

His hand was still on my knee, and I laid my own overtop it, drawing his gaze. I smiled when he looked my way. “Remember the eel pie?”

Raff groaned. “Oh, I wish I didn’t. A recipe from 1373.”