A Very Highland Holiday - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,30
chaotic scullery.
“Call me Bess, everyone else does,” the lady sang.
Vanessa jumped out of the way when Bess’s grumpy husband threw open an adjoining door and stomped past them carrying an empty cauldron and muttering in a language she’d never heard before.
“Bess, then. I appreciate your generosity—”
Turning in the doorway, Bess narrowly missed smashing the case against the frame, causing Vanessa to blanch. “Doona get the idea I’m being charitable, lass. I heard ye offer thrice the room rates. And I’ll be needing payment afore I ready the room.”
Right. Vanessa sighed, digging into the pocket of her cloak for her coin purse. “How much?”
“I’ll take half a crown what with the bath and stew.”
Vanessa counted out the coin, fully aware she’d pay half as much at any reputable establishment in London, but she was beyond caring, what with a bath and a hot meal so close at hand. “You called this Carrie’s room before,” she mentioned, more to make conversation than anything. “Is Carrie the name of the apparition who will be keeping me company?”
A dark, almost sympathetic expression softened Bess’s moon-round face as she used a free hand to tuck a pale lock of hair back into her matronly cap. “Oh—well—that’s just a bit of local superstition, isn’it? Nothing to worry about. A lady like ye’ll be perfectly safe.”
Local superstition was exactly what drew her to the Highlands for Christmas, but Vanessa thought it best not to disclose that to Bess just now.
What had the woman meant, a lady like her? Someone wealthy, perhaps? English? Or female?
Either way, fate had left her little choice but to find out.
Chapter Two
Johnathan de Lohr was awoken from his blank torpor by the sound of a delicate sneeze.
It was time again. The solstice maybe, when the sun flared and tugged at the planet in such a way the tides became wilder. The storms became more violent. The creatures of the earth more feral.
Untamed.
And those dead like himself, cursed to still inhabit this plane, were called to be restless.
Reminded what it was to be human.
Only to have it ruthlessly taken from them again.
He materialized—for lack of a better word—by Carrie’s old bed in time to have a dust sheet snatched right through his middle by a large, apple-cheeked woman in a matronly apron.
He didn’t recognize her at all.
“We’ve a water heater but no piping to the rooms, far as we are from civilized Blighty,” she said, snatching the last of the covers off a tall wardrobe as a portly man with wild tufts of greying hair dumped an empty metal basin on the floor with a derisive clang.
Ah, there was Balthazar, or at least one of his kin. John had known generations of them to come and go, but this iteration he’d seen when the man was younger. Much younger.
The innkeeper stomped out with nary a word and was replaced by a lad of maybe fifteen with longish unkempt dark hair and a cauldron of steaming water, which he poured into the tub.
Wait, they’d let the room? His room? This was not to be tolerated.
He could make himself visible, of course, on a night like tonight, could take to wailing and thundering and all manner of ghostly things. He might even be able to summon the energy to touch or move something. To breathe on or even grab at someone with icy fingers, terrorizing them away so he could regain his own tranquility.
It took so much from him, though, exerting his will in the realm of the living.
Waking always discombobulated John. For a moment, the chaos of the round woman’s tidying, the noise of a full inn and the water crashing into the metallic basin, along with the press of three or more bodies in such a small chamber overwhelmed him. A storm screamed and battered at the ancient window, the snow knocking like the very fist of a demon in gusts and surges.
The blasted woman—whom he assumed was the current Balthazar’s wife—had tossed the dust covers out the door and was now rushing toward where John stood in front of the bed, with a fresh pile of sheets and new pillows.
He didn’t like the odd sensation of people walking through him; it rankled like that odd tickle one felt when bashing their elbow, but without the pain.
Unable to easily avoid the rotund woman in the cramped space, he retreated a few steps until he found himself standing inside the wardrobe, his vision hindered by the closed doors and the darkness inside them. Much better.