Falling for Angels - Hazel Hunter Page 0,20
minutes later he was just a trampled pile of goo, and the other calpa had shifted into horse form and were trying to escape. That was when my real husband and his patrol arrived to deal with them.
Gill still wouldn’t let me out of his sight for the rest of the day, and that night I sat on his lap by the fire and told him about what the calpa had said to Velvet.
“How could you ken ’twasnae me?” he asked.
“I saw that he had horse hooves instead of boots.” I kissed him. “And if I was wrong, I knew you’d survive the fall.”
“My wise, beautiful lady.” He kissed me back.
Chapter 17
Haunted
“Hey, Mother of Dragons, get your butt over here and help us,” I heard Deb call to Reggie as she and some other girls started unloading a wood cart.
The tumbler scowled as she stalked past me. “Keep shading me, Sparkles, and you’ll get your bonfire night way early.”
For the first time since the crash I wanted to laugh. I’d spent weeks watching these twenty-first century cheerleaders developing super powers while learning to live in a medieval castle with a clan of immortal Scottish warriors. No one knew I was there, of course. As for me, when I wasn’t in the dark place I could see, hear, and walk (well, float) through anything solid, but that was all.
Being a ghost haunting Dun Dorchas wasn’t bad. Even if I hadn’t taken that standby seat on their plane, I’d be dead by now anyway.
I learned how to be a ghost pretty fast: don’t wander into the clan’s chambers after dark (the girls and their guys loved having sex), stay away from the druids (going anywhere near the one the girls called K-pop kicked me right back to the dark place) and avoid the stables (I actually spooked animals.) The worst thing were these water shape-shifter things called calpa that had been attacking their island; they not only saw me but chased me. The only place I seemed to be safe was inside the castle or the ring of stones in the oak grove where I rested.
I felt tired, so I floated off to the grove to take a nap. As I drew closer I saw that one of the guards, Pherson, had beaten me to it. He came here often to stare at the ground while he muttered to himself. I’d always figured he’d been praying to one of the god figures carved on the stones. This time he’d brought K-pop with him, which made me hover at a safe distance.
“I dinnae sense any presence here, lad,” Kendric was saying to the guard. “Mayhap the sound, ’twas made by the wind.”
“’Twasnae,” Pherson told him. “I’ve druid blood. ’Tis a spirit.”
As they talked I admired my afterlife crush, his tall, lanky body and the sun-streaked brown hair he wore braided back. He had different color eyes—green on the left, gray on the right—and on his handsome face a tat of a circle intersected by two parallel lines. I haunted Pherson the most; when he wasn’t on duty he’d walk through the woods gathering herbs for the cook. He sang when he was alone, too, in a beautiful voice that made me shiver.
Okay, I’d completely fallen for him. What else did I have to do?
When the men left I finally slipped inside the stone circle, and stretched out in the center. My afterlife might be boring, but that had been the story of my life, too—until I’d lost my job and came home to find out my husband had run off with my best friend after emptying our accounts and selling our house. I’d pawned my wedding ring to pay for the plane ticket and give me a week in Scotland, which I’d always wanted to see before I died. Once my money ran out, I’d planned to find a nice high bridge to jump off and put an end to my ridiculous life.
For the first time since I’d died I realized how stupid I’d been, wanting to kill myself when I might have met someone like Pherson.
A rustling sound made me turn my head, and I saw three very wet horses circling the grove. I hated the calpa, and the way they looked at me like I was a big cheeseburger, but they couldn’t touch me here. They weren’t looking at me, though, and when I followed the direction of their gazes I saw Pherson walking back across the glen toward me, alone