Page 9 of How I Met Your Murderer

If only Colm could see me now.

I reached the stairs to the next floor by hugging the wall all the way around the room rather than crossing under the chandelier. My gaze stayed fixed on each step before me as I ascended, and if there were shadows darting about in the corners of my eyes, I paid them no mind. Not yet. We were going to do things on my terms tonight, unlike earlier.

Jordy had left several lights blazing on each of the four levels after completing his routine sweep of the building to make sure all the workers had gone home for the evening. Either he’d forgotten to turn them off, or, more likely, they were for me. Either way, I was grateful for the extra light as I climbed, pausing on the landing halfway up to shrug into my jacket as a deeper cold settled over the castle in the absence of other people.

Finally at the top of the enormous grand staircase, wide enough that half of my hurling team could stand shoulder to shoulder on a single step, I glanced to my right between the two bedrooms that had the most activity, and decided to start the night where I’d had my experience. A faint tapping noise issued from downstairs, almost rhythmic, but my knee and I were not going back down there right now unless it was an emergency. And the sound sounded kind of ordinary. Surely, a place of this size had its own nightly soundtrack whether it was haunted or not.

Flicking the light switch just inside the bedroom door, two antique brass lamps on either side of the room blinked on, creating warm orange halos that, at least for now, held their own against the gathering dark.

The furniture in this room was still covered in protective painters’ dropcloths since Caoimhe had put the brakes on plans in here for now, but I could make out the shape of each piece in the ruddy lamplight. Settling into a cozy armchair by the cold, empty hearth was probably a little too optimistic, but I did it anyway, pulling out my novel and a brownie-flavored bar while I waited for something more than the odd shadow to make itself known.

On the wide arm of the chair, I set my smaller pieces of equipment to help me keep watch. The EMF meter blinked but didn’t register any spikes of ghostly energy, and I left the voice recorder idly running, just in case something from the other side wanted to leave me a little message.

Quickly immersing myself in the book, I began to wonder how long it would take these rival bards to realize their feelings and stop writing goading songs about one another right as the soft tapping downstairs—which might have been a mouse, the wind, anything—suddenly became a cacophony of bangs, rattles, and thuds.

Tossing the book aside, I leapt up as the EMF meter displayed an urgent rainbow of colored lights. It was another piece of equipment ExorSquad had barely touched on in training, and every time it told me there was spirit activity nearby, I was already very much aware. At least the ghost-zapping weapons offered me a promise of security, however flimsy.

I dashed out of the room with a hand on the holster of the PolterPulse, gazing over the hallway railing into the foyer just in time to see a bottle of whiskey gently roll to a stop against the base of a potted tree.

Then an assortment of stainless-steel pots and pans started knocking together in the kitchen—I didn’t need to go down there to recognize the distinct sound, like my mam making weekend breakfast on the odd occasion she felt domestic. Cupboard doors started thudding open and slamming shut to an unfamiliar rhythm, one that reverberated through my bones and set my teeth on edge. I was on the verge of dashing down there just to make the fecking noise stop when every light in the castle started flashing on and off in time with the cupboards banging.

Standing here at the top of the staircase, I gazed down at the ground floor below while the castle filled with strobe lights as nauseating as some of the clubs my teammates used to drag me to when we had a match in Dublin.

Boots stomped heavily up another set of stairs elsewhere in the building, the sound a distant echo under the chorus of noises from the kitchen. Or maybe they were stomping down a servant’s staircase I had yet to find. I was so disoriented that I couldn’t be sure, and then I lost the scuffing of phantom footsteps altogether as a piece of furniture flew across the bedroom I’d just been reading in and crashed into the opposite wall. Judging by the magnitude of the collision and the slight tremor in the floor, it was probably one of the couches. It was a relief I’d gotten up when I had.

Nestling deep into my jacket, because it was also freezing in here and getting colder by the minute, I scowled at whatever spirit was having a laugh at my expense. Some kind of liquid trickled down the hall into the foyer, a strange pinkish color in the brilliant flares of light. Wine, maybe. Too pale to be blood, at least.

Behind me, in the reading room, the dresser scraped across the hardwood. And then came a thunderous CRASH accompanied by the tinkling of shattering glass downstairs in the dining room—the beating heart of the rebranded Céad Míle Fáilte falling down on my watch. There was far too much activity happening at once for me to have any hope of documenting it all, and my temper was near to boiling.

The castle spirit was making a mockery out of me already, and unlike the monks at the abbey, this ghost was clearly doing it on purpose. And enjoying the result. Shivers of disembodied laughter echoed around me in the upstairs hall, making my stomach flip every time an icy burst of dead breath ruffled my hair.

Cheeks flushing scarlet, I gripped the PolterPulse in one hand with a finger ready on the trigger, and clutched the stair railing with the other. The crash in the dining room had determined my course: I was going to protect the Dolans’ investment, or what was left of it by the time I got there. That had to have been another chandelier that fell—a threat I didn’t take lightly.

I descended carefully, as quick as I dared on my knee, which probably should have been in the brace I had left back in the van.

Later, after I’d zapped this hair-pulling, pin-stealing gobshite of a ghost who was too cowardly to even show themselves, I’d play back the voice recorder in the van to see if it offered any clues as to how one spirit was able to do so much damage in so many places all at the same time. This had to be a Level Five, a Big One like they talked about during our training—the most powerful classification of spirit recorded to date.

And if it was, I had to be owed a raise.

As I reached the landing halfway down, a stranger stepped out of the long shadow cast by an antique clock hulking against the wall. A living, breathing man, here in this madhouse with me. A man whose intense, expressive hazel eyes were fixed on me in every flash of light, not nearly as disoriented as I was.

I reeled back, startled, as he swept a hand toward the mess in the foyer and warned, “I wouldn’t go down there if I were you. Not yet.”

That accent—he was clearly American. But who had let a Yank loose in here when they weren’t even selling tickets yet?

five

Seven Years’ Bad Luck

Raff

Quickly taking in the stranger’s striped rugby polo and designer jeans, the terracotta glow of his flawless skin, his slicked-back raven hair that fell past his shoulders in a way that could only be described as class, I decided he had to be on the crew. One of the decorators, most likely, seeing as he was dead pretty and had a taste for the finer things. Someone Jordy had missed in his nightly sweep, the poor lad probably immersed in a project or stuck in the jacks when the activity had started up. He had to be half out of his mind with fright, even if he didn’t look it.

My focus was already shifting to protecting him rather than investigating the dining room. I raised the weapon in my hand a little to show he would be safe with me. It wasn’t as if he’d have any idea that these things only worked when they felt like it. But for some reason, seeing the PolterPulse up close made him look ill at ease.

There was a small pink scar near his temple, shaped like a crescent moon. Maybe he’d seen his share of violence, and didn’t know the PolterPulse was bloodless.

“You’ll be all right. I’ve got you,” I told him, hoping I sounded reassuring. Around us the wails and screeches and minor explosions echoed from all parts of the castle, so I could hardly hear myself speak, let alone think with the lights still flashing on and off like mad. But trying to help this man was somehow keeping me calm, the heat having already receded from my face. “I’m Rafferty O’Meara. I’m with the ExorSquad. I’m a spirit extraction expert, and I’m going to get you out of here.”