“Let’s hope the protection spell works, and these little buggers don’t drain the power from it before we have a chance to see what they’re up to.” Euann powered up the drone and navigated it to Lydia’s bedroom, through the mirror portal, and into Erik’s mansion bedroom. Dark wood accented the lightly colored walls of the room, and at first glance, everything appeared normal.
“What’s that? Something is hanging from Erik’s ceiling.” Rory reached to take the drone controls.
Euann elbowed Rory away from him in annoyance and kept flying. The camera angle zoomed past what had been a large painting of Erik in full MacGregor plaid surrounded by the Scottish countryside. Someone, or something, had ripped the canvas down the middle.
“Oh, Erik’s not going to like that.” Cait shook her head in disappointment. “Such disrespect of our cultural heritage.”
Malina wasn’t worried about their cultural heritage at the moment. She watched the screen carefully, trying to catch a glimpse of something that would explain why this was happening.
“Why don’t we have sound?” Euann asked. “Rory, did ya check it?”
“Aye, I checked it,” Rory said, his tone defensive. “Maybe ya have the setting wrong.”
Euann reached to punch a few keys on the keyboard. “What power source did ya try to use? They’re fried.”
The drone turned to show the ceiling. The metal had been speared into the plaster next to the light fixture. “I think that’s my drive shaft.”
“How the hell did it get up there?” Rory again tried to take the controls and received a hard hand slap in return. “And why?”
“Worry about it later. I need ya go get my cauldron and supplies out of the den, and if ya can’t reach those then the spare cauldron in the kitchen,” Cait ordered.
Euann used the drone’s extendable arm to pull open the door and flew it out of Erik’s room.
“Hey, ya started without me,” Raibeart complained, joining them.
“How’s the future wife?” Rory asked.
“Cait chased her away.” Raibeart gave Cait an irritated glare. Cait was unmoved.
“What’s happening in the main part of the house? Are they still there?” Malina stared at the silent screen, looking for a glimpse of Dar. Part of her wanted to see him again, even though it would be torture. Another part of her hoped he remained buried. The pain he brought her was unbearable.
Spirits swept past the drone as Euann steered it over the stair rail and then lowered it to the floor of the front hall.
“Aye,” Euann answered, stating the obvious. “They’re still there.”
It was impossible to tell which song the ghosts moved to as they ballroom danced around the MacGregor home. Translucent feet glided in ways that would have been unlikely in their lives. The camera caught a glimpse of the two creepy girls as they stood above the others on the steps, swaying as they watched the performance.
“There, something went into the bathroom,” Raibeart pointed at the screen, pushing his finger into the monitor. Whatever he’d been eating left a fine cheesy dust on the display. “Turn the toy. I saw something that wasn’t a ghost.”
Euann slapped at his uncle’s hand before brushing the cheese dust off the monitor. “Hold on. I’m going.”
The drone turned sharply, nearly running into the front grill from Euann’s dismantled vehicle. He dodged it and started to give Malina a droll look when the screen revealed a rolling tire. Euann jerked up in his seat and moved the controls in an effort to avoid a collision. The drone knocked the tire over, much to the dismay of the three gremians who’d been moving it. One of the knobby creatures became trapped under the rubber edge and flailed his limbs. The remaining two didn’t bother to help their cohort as they jumped on the drone.
Euann growled and began an animated display of trying to throw off the attackers like a couch-side warrior armed with his video game controller.
“Left, ladies, left!” Raibeart exclaimed, giving a little jump. “We need sound.”
“I’m not the one who apparently power surged the internal speakers because he doesn’t know how to hook up a computer,” Euann returned.
“Damn it. Fine.” Rory leaned forward to dig through the computer magazines. He found a picture of laptop speakers and handed it to Malina. She touched the picture and, faster than any 3D printer, the speakers materialized before them.
Rory grabbed the device from the floor and plugged them in. The reverberations of gremian screeches were an odd contrast to the dance music the ghosts were playing. Malina stiffened. She reached for Euann’s chair back as she wavered on her feet.
“What are they listening to?” Rory frowned. “What’s his name? The guy from the Rat Pack.”
“Oh, yeah,” Euann said, jerking right and then left. He managed to throw one of his passengers off the drone into the stair rail. “Frank—”
“Dean Martin,” Malina corrected. She stared at the screen. The ghosts continued to dance in time with the song. Smoke curled out of the computer, and she couldn’t move. “‘Sway’.”
“That’s right,” Rory stated. “Didn’t ya hang out with those guys?”
“No,” she lied. “Never met them.”
“But ya saw them perform, right?” Rory insisted.
“Once. An impromptu performance at a small club,” she said, still lying as she added, “It was nothing special.”
“I think it would have been cool to see the Rat Pack in all its glory.” Rory twisted his hand in the air, and began shouting commands at Euann, “Hit it against the railing!”
“I’m not crashing my drone,” Euann rebuffed. He stood from his chair as if the animated movements of his body would somehow help the drone survive. The creepy girls seemed to be the only ghosts watching the drone fly. The dancers were unaware of what was happening beyond their party.
Some of the ghosts stopped dancing and moved to sit at invisible tables to sip imaginary drinks. There was something familiar to the ghost’s configuration on the front hall floor.
Malina glanced over her shoulder toward the kitchen. A chill worked up her spine. She half expected to see Gramma Annabelle’s spirit lingering in the entryway. Instead, a light mist drew forward over the floor. The living room began to fade as the past again crept in on the present.
“Confess,” a voice from the past whispered. The sound came from the mist.
“Right,” Raibeart yelled, jerking Malina’s attention back to the screen. “No the other right!”
“Left!” Cait instructed.
The drone flew a dizzying path, creating haphazard patterns in the air. Ghosts became desperate in their haunting, moving feverishly with anger—like atoms colliding in a chaotic universe. The music became a chilling rendition, akin to the soundtrack for a horror movie.
“Confess,” the past whispered again so only Malina could hear. The others’ eyes were fixed on the screen. She turned back toward the kitchen where the voice seemed to radiate from.
“Confess what?” Malina mouthed, as a tear threatened.
“Confess,” it whispered again, this time from the stairs. She understood that the memory was trying to show her something, but she didn’t want to know.
Malina shook her head in denial. She didn’t want to go back to that night, to that time. She wanted to keep Las Vegas buried deep inside her subconscious.
Malina’s body jerked, and she felt herself being pulled toward the stairs. The others didn’t appear to notice her departure as she climbed her way toward Lydia and Erik’s bedroom and to the gateway mirror.
“Confess,” the voice said again, louder than before. The music came from downstairs, punctuated by her family’s shouts as they tried to fight off the gremians. The mist became smoke, and it curled around her feet, encouraging her forward. A hand reached out from the mirror holding a martini, and she leaned forward to take it.
There was no city as vibrant as Las Vegas in the 1960s—the lights, the loud noises, the chaos of a party that neve
r ended. Music and liquor flowed from every bar and club. Malina recalled the details with vivid clarity—the smell of bourbon, the sound of ice in a glass, laughter from a nearby table, the drunken rhythm of tipsy feet as they moved past her in the crowd. The smoke unfurled from around her feet and moved through the air to meet the end of a cigar.
Malina smiled as she took the glass the bartender placed in front of her. She never paid for drinks. As a beautiful woman in an expensive club, she never had to.
“Confess.”
An excitement filled her. She enjoyed a good game. “Confess what?”
The man turned her, spilling her martini. It dotted the skirt of her dark dress, only to hide within the sheen of sparkling overlay material. It didn’t matter. She’d been drinking all night, and the world spun in fantastic circles around her. Magick flowed through her veins, and she feared nothing. Why should a warlock fear a room full of mortals, even if some of those mortals were reportedly associated with the mob?
Brown eyes met hers, filling her with excitement. She felt his touch on her arm all the way through her body. His words were light and flirtatious as he said, “Confess that you know in this very moment you’re in love with me.”
A lady would have protested. When her Scottish parents abandoned her as an infant, English nobility had raised Malina to be a lady. They claimed it was for protection during the witch trials, but that didn’t make learning her powers in isolation any easier, and she had a lot to prove. Her wild ancestors’ blood flowed wickedly inside her. On a good day that wildness was barely tempered by the antiquated notions of what it meant to be a lady of breeding. Now that madness overrode all else.
She should have slapped him for touching her arm. She should have run. Instead, she kissed him. The pressure on her mouth sent a warm tingle over her flesh. Sexual passion fueled magick, yet this was only a kiss. It shouldn’t have made her body swell to life the way it did.
Cigar smoke curled around them from a nearby group. The large red chairs and circular tables were all angled around a stage and dance floor. The club was small and intimate, not like some of the larger hotels. The party became a loud crescendo of laughter and clapping as someone new took the stage. Within seconds musicians played the first chords of, ‘Sway’.
“I knew tonight as my lucky night,” the stranger said against her lips.
“I don’t believe in luck,” Malina answered coyly.
“That’s a dangerous thing to say in the luckiest city in the world. The Lord of Luck might hear you and take offense.” He grinned, an incredibly devilish expression, and she let him lead her through the tables toward the dance floor.
The singer’s voice had started before they made it, and the man began dancing her through the aisle as they took the final steps toward their destination.
“Haven’t you heard?” Malina flirted. “Luck’s a lady, not a man.”
His eyes roamed down, and his voice lowered with sexual response. “She sure is. I’m feeling luckier already.”
The song was a mere backdrop to the moment. Their bodies spoke on a primal level, anticipating each other’s dance moves. Eyes locked. Feet glided. Touches lingered. Onlookers applauded, but she couldn’t tell if it was for their dancing or the singer’s talent. It didn’t matter. Her soul was adrift in time, in a place where nothing mattered. In her hundreds of years, she had never felt anything like it.
The fleeting thought that this was a trick, a spell of some sort, did filter through her mind. She ignored it, not caring. What was the point of anything else now that she had found this second, this feeling, and this dance?
The man said many charming things, gave many tempting looks. He made her laugh with his sharp wit and amusing observations. And by the end of the song, she knew everything in her world had altered. She was in love with a man, and she didn’t even know his name. Life would never be the same again.
“Confess,” the voice whispered.
Malina blinked rapidly as the fog of the past cleared. It had been so real that she’d forgotten herself. Her feet stumbled to a stop. Her arms were lifted as if to hold a dance partner who wasn’t there. She took an unsteady breath as she studied her surroundings.
Las Vegas had disappeared. She was in Green Vallis, Wisconsin, in the mansion’s front hall, surrounded by ghosts. The spirits acted out the past for her, an image straight out of her memories. She dropped her arms, seeing the transparent image of someone walking away from her as if leading her past self by the hand out of the club into the Las Vegas night. The music had faded to just a few faint chords of a partial melody.
Escape through the front door would take her through the thickest part of the haunting. Ghostly eyes were beginning to take note of her presence. Two gremians sat at the bottom of the stairs tearing apart Euann’s drone. They growled at her as they furiously yanked wires and tossed screws behind them.
“You can hide. You can seek. We won’t even try to peek,” came an eerie taunt. Malina turned her attention to the two ghost girls looking down at her from over the banister. The children continued, “Naughty girl had her fun. You’ll soon regret when he is done.”
She ran toward the closest room, a downstairs guest bathroom. There would be a small window she could squeeze through to escape the house. The second she opened the door she was met with a terrible creature. His skin appeared to be red-black char as if he’d just crawled from fire through the bathroom floor. Since he only seemed about halfway through his journey, she wasn’t eager to see where the other side of his floor portal led. He opened his mouth to let out a garbled yell as he banged his tarry hand on a fuel tank. Black sludge stuck to the metal, fusing his flesh to Euann’s car part.
Malina slammed the door on the bog-man creature and faced the ghosts beginning to crowd in on her. She ran through them, swinging her arms through the cold spots of their bodies to no avail. With each blast against her skin, she felt them taking her energy. She stumbled into the doorframe, weak as she entered the dining room. The goblin had taken up residence on the table, and she gagged as she passed by the stinky den he had built atop the once-beautiful wood. Her shoulder pressed along the wall to help her remain upright.
As she made it into the destroyed kitchen, it was all she could do to open the cabinet to grab Cait’s spare cauldron. She rolled the heavy pot out of the doorway onto the back path and tried to drag it over cobblestones toward the garden.
The area surrounding the back gardens looked like a pocket of spring in winter. Dew covered plants that should have been dormant. She fell to her knees, weakly crawling the quickest route out of the English gardens toward Lydia’s house. The path was warm but damp from a recent rain.
The bushes rustled seconds before hard thuds sounded. “Me gold. Me gold. She takes me lucky gold!”
Malina gasped as someone jerked the cauldron from her. Two leprechauns tried to drag the pot into the bushes they’d leaped out of while two more ran into the garden to gather golden nuggets littering the ground like rocks. Their brown tunics hung on their thin frames as if they spent more time caressing rocks than bothering to eat. Curly red hair sprouted over their heads in tangled messes growing around to create equally matted beards.
A heavy thud sounded and then another. She flinched thinking they were throwing stones at her. She grabbed a rock and moved to return fire when something struck her shoulder from above. It forced her to drop the rock. She looked up to see a long rainbow overhead raining chunks of gold nuggets.
The sky was literally raining gold.
“What in the ever loving inferno is going on here?” Niall growled, swatting his hands to bat away the falling gold as he approached Malina.
“Bloody hell!” she gasped as another nugget pelted her back. She tried to move, but the ghosts had weakened her body and her magick when she passed through them.
“Me gold,” a leprechaun screeched, hopping on her back to get the one that had hit her. He tried to bite her through her shirt. Niall kicked her attacker and
sent him flying.
“Stop whining and get up,” Niall ordered. He pulled at her arm. Malina wobbled to her feet, the irritation giving her enough strength to glare at him. “That’s better. For a second I thought all the fight was gone, and ya wanted me to leave ya here to die.”
Her brother looked worn as if he’d been up for days hunting supernatural threats. The threadbare tartan of his kilt and the hole in his t-shirt attested to his usual lack of priority in the fashion department, though today was even worse. Normally, he was at least clean. Now there were smudges of suspicious goo and dirt covering his torso. She opened her mouth, but no quip came out as her mind drew a blank.
For a second it looked as if he might try to make her run. Instead, he kneeled and pressed his shoulder into her stomach, lifting her up in one swift movement. Niall braced her with one arm as he pulled a handheld crossbow from the other. He shot at a greedy leprechaun who tried to stop them. The arrow lodged in the creature’s chest, and she saw the bouncy vision of the leprechaun leaning back over to scoop up gold before disappearing in a puff of green ash.
Her body jolted as Niall adjusted her weight. He brought her to the edge of the spring weather. She was too weak to protest. Niall leaned to dodge a projectile fired at them. As her vision shifted, she thought to see a figure standing leisurely by a shrub.
Dar watched them. His dark suit jacket carelessly tossed over his shoulder. The tingling warning came back to her arm. Was this the beginning of another heart attack? The glimpse of him was so brief she couldn’t be sure. When she pushed up for a better look, Niall headed into snowy winter toward the front of the house. Flakes obscured her vision as they traveled into a storm.
Chapter 8
Leprechauns? Well, that was a new one, even for him. Dar’s magick had never summoned leprechauns before. Then again, he’d never stored so much luck and set it out to attack anyone with it either.
Dar had been seconds away from rushing the foul, greedy creatures before Niall appeared. The idea of Malina dying at the hands of leprechauns, or stoned to death by falling gold, brought him no pleasure. This was not one of the many ways he’d pictured his revenge.
Cauldrons and Confessions (Warlocks MacGregor Book 4) Page 6
