Of Midnight Born

by Lisa Cach

  Beth rolled her eyes, shaking her head at his obtuseness. “You have only to take a look around you, my darling, to see the truth.”

  Alex and Rhys both raised their eyebrows, their twin expressions forcing Beth to elaborate. “It’s a castle,” she said, as if speaking to simpletons. “A medieval castle atop a mountain, pennants waving, portcullis raised as if awaiting the return of its lord from the Crusades.” She sighed, moving a little closer to the edge and looking out over the body of the fortress. “If Serena does still haunt this hill, I am certain she is glad to see her home occupied again, especially after the Briggs family abandoned her so abruptly. There were rumors that Mr. Briggs did not like sharing his home with a ghost. You wouldn’t mind though, would you, Alex? Not a man with your kind sensibilities.”

  Alex raised a single eyebrow at his cousin, who responded to his wife’s words with a shrug and a helpless expression. Beth could find romance in a pigsty; a castle held a host of wonderful imaginings, even one with a murderous ghost for a caretaker.

  “I took the place only for the view,” Alex said. “It’s the perfect spot from which to study the night sky. And you already know it was Mr. Briggs who rebuilt Maiden Castle, so I can’t take credit for that bit of your fancy. I would have been content with the tower and a one-room cottage.”

  Beth wrinkled her nose at him. “Pish.”

  He smothered a smile. Ah, well. Let her think him a dashing, romantic figure in his castle on the hill if it pleased her. No doubt she would slowly drive Rhys up a wall with her thoughts.

  “Uncle Alex?” a small voice asked, and he turned to see his niece Louisa, age nine, poking her blond head above the hatchway. “Uncle Alex, Mummy is looking for you. She said to come right this minute,” the little girl said imperiously.

  “Did she?” He raised his eyebrows at her.

  “She did. She said to tell you she is waiting in the library.” Louisa frowned at him. “I shouldn’t keep her waiting, if I were you,” she said, and then ducked back down the hatchway, her message delivered.

  Alex turned a wry smile on Rhys and Beth. “Duty calls.”

  Serena stood amid the spring flowers in the garden, staring up at the new stone walls of the castle as if their solidity were a personal challenge. She would rip them down with her bare hands if she could. God knew she had done her best to keep them from going up.

  She’d worked hard to chase out the new occupants, too. For all the good it did her. The Briggses and their staff had moved out, but now someone else was moving in, and she’d have to start all over.

  Didn’t anyone understand that this place belonged to her now, and that she wanted to be left alone? She had been at the fortress for nearly five hundred years. She had earned it with her own blood and determination. It was hers, and she was not inclined to share.

  Living people. How she loathed them.

  She jerked her chin up and flicked back a long tress of pale blond hair with the back of her hand. As her father had once said, the first step to defeating an enemy was to know him. It was time to reconnoiter.

  She walked through the flowers to the stone path, and followed it the length of the garden to the new iron gate at the end. The only thing she could thank Briggs for was having the garden replanted and cleaned up. She had grown used to it being wild, and had not known how lovely cultivated flowers could be. There were many growing here now that she had never seen before, their hues brilliant, their blossoms huge and exotic to her eyes.

  She walked through the iron gate, wincing as it shivered through her. The folktales about iron holding in a spirit were not true, but the metal was unpleasant to encounter nonetheless.

  The courtyard she stepped into was filled with wagons and people moving about, unloading furniture and supplies and shouting orders at one another. The noise they made had her cringing back, the voices a vibrating, ringing assault on her head.

  She had forgotten how loud they were, living people. The six-month respite since Briggs had left had allowed her to forget, and she had luxuriated in the quiet of a vacant building.

  She clenched her teeth and wove her way through the milling servants, careful to avoid being stepped through. No one turned to look, no one commented that she was dressed oddly, and no one made way for her, for no one could see her. She paused to drag her fingers across the nape of a man’s neck, and was rewarded by his startled jump. He turned around, but, seeing no one, could only rub at his neck and wonder.

  She could have floated above the servants had she wished, like thistledown on the wind. She could have gone from the garden straight through the castle walls, and avoided them altogether. Thomas would have said it was stubbornness that had her walking among them, stubbornness and her own peculiar form of defiance against the obvious truth that she was no longer completely human.

  In part he would have been right.

  The rectangular courtyard formed the center for the long, U-shaped castle that surrounded it, the open end leading to a drive that, through a modern, ingenious bit of engineering, wound down like a tunneling spiral staircase before opening out below at the gatehouse on the side of the steep hill. That dark passage had made an excellent place in which to spook horses and terrorize Briggs and his coach and footmen.

  Serena climbed the stairs to a pair of the castle’s doors, held open by wooden wedges. She paused to the side, waiting for workers to pass through with their crated burden. She felt something brush against her leg.

  “Beezely!”

  The orange cat meowed, staring up at her unconcerned as a workman put a boot through him.

  “Beezely, silly kitty, you’re in the way.” Serena squatted down and picked up the phantom cat. She pressed her nose to the space between Beezely’s ragged ears, hugging the animal close, protective even though she knew the cat was past all harm. The feline, her first and only pet, had been her one true companion through the centuries. Twenty years into her ghosthood, the cat had dragged himself into her garden, wounded from battle with some unknown animal. He had died a few hours later, but his spirit had stayed with her. “I don’t know how you can be so unconcerned, with all this disturbance all around us,” she said to him.

  Beezely purred and kneaded her sleeve, his sharp claws pricking her skin. Being a ghost like her, the cat always seemed solid to her touch—more so than “real” things, which she could pass through at will. It usually took an intentional effort on her part to touch or move solid objects, or to make herself visible or heard.

  The doorway now empty, Serena went through and into the ancestral hall. It was an empty room with a big fireplace, but on the walls were painted the twining, twisted branches of a family tree, with spaces for portraits and names among the leaves. Men were on the north wall, women on the south. Briggs hadn’t had time to finish, so it was just his own red face peering out from the leaves on the men’s wall. Mrs. Briggs, opposite, looked wan and frightened. Spineless wench.

  The next room was the king’s hall, with a marble diamond-patterned floor and a gilded, royal blue groined ceiling that made the display of ancient, blackened weapons on one wall look as out of place as a dead rat on a banquet table. Briggs and his wife had taste that even she could recognize as showy.

  Serena could hear voices coming from the library at the other end of the king’s hall: the enemy. She went toward the sound.

  Beezely tensed in her arms. An enormous hound had appeared in the doorway to the library, head raised, eyes staring straight at them. Beezely hissed and clawed his way loose from Serena’s arms, dropping to the floor with his back arched, hair on end.

  The hound’s ears lowered uncertainly as he looked at Serena, the beginning of a whine starting in his throat, but then Beezely trotted away from her. The hound gave a tremendous bark, and the animals were off, Beezely an orange streak heading for the door. The hound’s claws scrabbled for purchase as he gave chase on the polished floor, nails clicking and clattering as he galloped after the cat.

  Serena had seen it
before: dogs had a natural fear of ghosts, but their instinct to chase and kill animals smaller than themselves often overrode it. Especially where Beezely was concerned. Either that, or the cat somehow taunted the beasts into going after him. Serena had thought that was the case more than once over the years.

  “Otto! What in God’s name—” The speaker came into the hall in time to see the rear end of his dog disappear through the door to the ancestral hall. The man halted, staring straight through Serena for a long moment, then gave a facial shrug, as if to say the mind of a hound could not be fathomed.

  He was a tall man, perhaps even an inch taller than Serena herself, with broad shoulders and a sturdy frame. He was neither thin nor fat, having instead that solidness of form that bespoke a man past the first gangly flush of youth. He had dark hair with a white streak, dark blue eyes, and a shadowed jaw that spoke of a heavy beard if left unshaven. He was dressed in a jacket of dark forest green, the collar of his white shirt coming only halfway up his neck, his cravat tied without flamboyance.

  She had often spied on Briggs as he dressed with the help of his valet, and had grown familiar with this modern mode of dress. Briggs’s clothes had been much brighter, however, and his collar points had reached halfway up his cheeks. She’d marveled that he didn’t put an eye out on one of them.

  This man looked much more competent than had the castle’s last intruder. There was intelligence in his eyes, and a relaxed confidence. He was a great deal better-looking, too.

  A faint sense of familiarity floated through her, coupled with a distant, long-suppressed yearning. The confusing, unexpected combination brought a sudden panic welling up inside her.

  He had to be gotten rid of, as quickly as possible.

  A female voice with all the melody of a crow’s suddenly rang out at him from behind, and Serena watched him close his eyes briefly, lips tightening as he summoned patience.

  “It’s foolish, Alex. Foolish and irresponsible,” the woman said, coming into the hall. She looked older than him by a handful of years, and there were deep lines from the sides of her sharp nose to the corners of her sour mouth. “How can you trust others to run the mills for you? We shall be robbed blind, while you sit up here and play at being an astronomer. Do you think you will discover a planet, like your hero, Mr. Herschel?” She had her hands on her hips, looking at the man as though he were a recalcitrant child. “This is just another of your childish fantasies, like the time you tried to run away and join the navy.”

  “I am no longer twelve years old, Philippa,” he said, turning to her. He spoke softly, calmly, yet there was a sure strength in his words. “And you know, as well as do Amelia, Constance, and Sophie, that I would never make a decision that would result in a reduction in your or their incomes. Your well-being has always been my primary concern.”

  Philippa looked as if she wanted to say more, her lips pursed tight with discontent, but apparently his words rang true. “Well. You have shown more business sense than Father ever did, I will grant you that. But it’s a good thing you only leased this monstrosity, instead of buying it outright. We should surely have all been in the poorhouse then, with the upkeep.”

  Alex gave a half smile. “Mr. Briggs wasn’t quite ready to give up the idea of being lord of the manor. I think he likes to tell his friends that he owns a castle. He claims to be descended from a line of German princes.”

  The comment coaxed a twitch of a smile from Philippa’s lips.

  Serena studied the man, her eyes narrowed. There must be something wrong with him. He was placating this woman who cast doubt upon his good sense, when he should instead be telling her to hold her tongue. From what they’d said the woman must be his sister, but that should mean nothing. Thomas had never lacked the backbone to argue with her when he disagreed, even though she usually had been right.

  She had been mistaken to think it was strength she heard in this man’s voice. He was obviously some form of coward, weak and trembly as jelly.

  Square shoulders and a strong jaw did not make a warrior. She would have him out of here within a week. The fluttering panic in her chest quieted, and she buried that faint, painful sense of yearning.

  He surely would be no more difficult to evict than Briggs had been. Easier, as he had nothing but a lease to hold him, unlike Briggs, who had invested huge sums of money in building this “monstrosity,” as the Philippa woman so aptly called it. Briggs’s weak-willed wife had at first pleaded to stay, but when her husband had started reporting to her each of his ghostly encounters, she’d become a sniveling, nervous mess, more eager than he to leave the place.

  What a pair of cowards they had been.

  Philippa gave a sudden shiver. “’Tis a drafty home you’ve chosen, Alex,” Philippa said, rubbing her arms. “I shouldn’t like to be here in winter, if August is so chilly. Why anyone would build on top of a mountain, exposed to the wind, is beyond me.”

  Alex began to move toward the open door to the ancestral hall, where two workmen were fumbling with a crate. “I find it quite warm, myself,” he said, and then to the workmen, “Careful there! Get that to the tower in one piece, and there’s a shilling in it for each of you.”

  Philippa hissed out a note of disgust, barely waiting until the men were out of earshot before addressing her brother. “You spoil them. Why pay them extra for doing their job? You are too soft, Alex. Too soft by half.”

  “As you’ve said before,” he replied calmly. “Have you any notion where Sophie may have gone off to?”

  Serena came close to Alex, until she was right beside him and could stare into his eyes. Was there any anger there at all for this overbearing sister? A flicker, perhaps. Or was it cunning she saw? Or perhaps he was deaf to her insults, and there was no flicker of emotion in him at all.

  He turned his head suddenly, his eyes meeting hers, boring into her. She started, letting out a small yelp of surprise.

  “She’s probably taken Louisa into some dreary cellar, to fill her head with superstitious nonsense,” the one called Philippa was saying. “I’d best find them, else that child will be screaming of monsters and goblins into the wee hours yet again. Why either of them take such delight in scaring themselves silly I shall never understand.”

  Alex turned back to his sister, the faint crease of a frown visible between his dark brows. “They behave more like sisters than aunt and niece,” he said, but sounded distracted.

  Serena, feeling slightly shaken herself by meeting his eyes, let herself fade away into the unconscious oblivion that was her only form of rest. He couldn’t have seen her, but some people seemed able to sense her—as he had. She would have to think on this peculiar man, and on how she could most easily be rid of him.

  Chapter Five

  “No moon, clear skies, and nary a female voice to be heard. A man could ask for no more,” Alex said to his Great Dane Otto as he set down the small, red-shielded lantern on the portable desk. He went to the crenelated wall of the tower and looked out over the dark countryside. There were few lights visible, much of the populace having gone to bed with the setting of the sun. They had work to do at dawn.

  He, on the other hand, had but recently awoken, and only the rising of the sun would signal the end of his work for the night.

  “Would they think me mad, Otto, if they knew what I was about?”

  Otto looked at him, jowls hanging, then turned his shoulder to his master and went to go lie down on his favorite horse blanket.

  “As if you are one to talk,” Alex said to the animal, who tucked his nose into his paws and gave a great sigh. “At least I have not been chasing shadows all week, barking at nothing.”

  He pushed away from the parapet and went to the table, arranging the star charts and clock within easy reach from the reclining chair he’d had brought up when it became apparent there would be no rain or clouds tonight. A sense of delight, mingled with a trace of guilt, tickled at his chest. It was the same feeling he had known as a child, abandoning schoolw
ork for games.

  “Perhaps Philippa was right about me,” he said aloud. “Not that it matters.” The wool mills were in capable hands; Sophie was at last engaged and presently living under the watchful eye of Philippa; Amelia and Constance had their own households to concern them; and he was finally free to do as he wished. There was no reason he shouldn’t sit and count stars until he was ninety.

  He made himself comfortable in the chair, lying almost supine upon its lowered back, and turned his eyes to the sky. He felt as if he had been waiting twenty-three years to do this, here in this place where he had first been struck by the wonder and mystery of falling stars.

  His hand went to the scar above his temple, his fingertips running along it in unconscious habit. Little memory of which he could be certain remained from that night. The falling stars, yes. Rhys and his damnable ghost story, yes. But what had caused him to fall—of that he could not be certain.

  There had been something he’d seen, some other light, but whether it was only a brighter star or Rhys’s ghost Serena, he could not say. Logic demanded that it all had been his own imagination upon waking from the fall, that there had been no light, but there was a part of him that wanted this place to hold a mystery, a bit of the unknown that had touched his life on that extraordinary night.

  It had touched his life, cracked his skull, and broken his arm. It might be better for him, he reflected, if it were a certain thing that ghosts did not exist—and Serena most particularly.

  Serena roamed the quiet corridors and rooms of the castle, many of which had not been touched since the Briggs family left. What type of life was this Alex Woding trying to lead here?

  Woding. The name made her smile. Did he know it meant “the mad one”? He would understand by the time she was through with him.

  His was a most peculiar household. It was composed completely of men and boys. Where were the women? Her own home had been predominately male, but even so there had been a fair complement of females, for everyone knew they were needed.