Last Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 3)

by Stephen Penner

  Then twelve pairs of glowing hands reached up from the grave and pulled her in.

  She screamed as they pushed her to the bottom of the grave. The cold mud squelched up around her neck and back and limbs. The women weren’t beautiful anymore. They weren’t spirits; they were zombies again. Dead and rotten and decaying—strong as iron and stinking of death.

  She tried to use the magic to push them off of her, but it didn’t work. The magic fizzled and failed, like the raindrops on the burning plain. The magic was gone. She was helpless.

  Then the roots came.

  Roots from the tree snaked out of the earthen walls. Dozens of them. They undulated toward her like snakes, worms. But rather than wrap around her wrists like she might have expected, the tips of the roots rested on her skin—at her hands and feet, arms and legs, stomach and shoulders. Then they drove into, and through, her flesh, pinning her body into the grave.

  She screamed as the roots continued to extend, snaking through her limbs and torso, fixing her to the spot and spilling her blood and guts into the earth.

  “Why don’t you heal yourself?” a voice taunted from above.

  The zombies were gone, their duties completed by the roots.

  “Heal yourself, healer,” came another taunt.

  The same voice. Maggie recognized it.

  She looked up. The sky was black. She looked to the side. The grave was black. She looked down. The blood oozed black from her body. A new root wound its way over to her and pressed its tip against her forehead.

  “You can’t heal yourself, can you, healer?”

  Maggie struggled to answer against the pain consuming her body. She couldn’t see the face peering down at her. She could never see the goddamned face. But she knew the voice.

  “No, mama,” she answered. “I can’t.”

  Then the root drove itself through her skull and everything went dark.

  It was finally over. She’d failed.

  42. Half-Baked Explanations

  Maggie woke after the nightmare, but couldn’t find the energy to get up. Instead, she passed out again, hopeful that the single dream had been sufficient penance for using the magic. When she woke next it was to a pounding on her door and the sound of another familiar voice: Ellen’s.

  “Maggie! Maggie! Are you in there? Are you okay? Open up!”

  Maggie forced herself into a sitting position and looked around. The place was trashed. Books and baubles littered the floor and furniture. Shards of broken glass and wisps of burnt paper mixed with fallen pictures and thrown-open books. She looked down and saw that she was still holding Brìghde’s journal.

  Knock! Knock! Knock! “Maggie?!”

  She put a hand on her coffee table and pushed herself to her feet. “Hold on,” she croaked. “I’m coming.”

  Her head was throbbing and her whole body ached. But worse was the sharp pain she felt in her hands and feet, legs and arms, stomach and shoulders. And especially her forehead. All the places where the roots had pierced her body. It was as if they were still there, impaling her to the bottom of the grave. She shuffled painfully across the floor and unlocked the door.

  “Maggie?!”

  Ellen was aghast, and it occurred to Maggie that she might look almost as bad as she felt. Maybe she should have checked the mirror before opening the door. And in case it wasn’t mortifying enough looking like hell in front of her friend, Ellen had brought along Stuart and some other guy Maggie had never seen but whose identity she was vaguely aware she ought to be able to deduce. But forget that. Her brain was busy trying to convince her stomach not to vomit.

  She didn’t say anything to her guests. Instead, she turned and walked back into her apartment. She shoved just enough stuff out of the way to be able to sit on her couch. She didn’t try to clear space for the others.

  Ellen and Stuart stepped in, but remained standing, mouths agape at the carnage. The other guy had no trouble following Maggie’s example, though. He not only cleared off a chair, but slid half the crap off of the coffee table so he could set down a laptop. Her laptop. He turned it on and cracked his knuckles.

  Ah, she thought. Computer guy. She didn’t bother trying to remember his name. The label was adequate.

  Ellen’s head surveyed the wreckage like it was on a swivel. “What happened, Mags?”

  Maggie looked around too. “Tornado,” she said. “Or earthquake. I haven’t decided yet.”

  “We don’t have tornadoes here,” Ellen replied.

  “Then earthquake,” Maggie said. “Definitely earthquake.

  “We don’t have those either.”

  “Oh really?” Maggie waved at the carnage. “Then how do you explain all this?”

  Ellen just shook her head. “There’s no talking to you sometimes.”

  Maggie decided to change the subject. “Why are you here?”

  “Philip called me,” Ellen answered. “He was worried about you.”

  “Aw.” Maggie smiled. “That’s nice.

  “And we made some progress on your computer,” said Computer Guy. “I’m Dougie,” he reminded her.

  “Ah.” Maggie nodded. More good news. Philip, worried. Computer, progress. Now if she could just get that tree root out of her brain… “What did you find out?”

  “Well, I haven’t finished yet,” Dougie said, his fingers dashing across the keyboard. “I still don’t know exactly who is sending you those emails, but I did find something very interesting about them.”

  Maggie wondered whether it was really all that interesting, or just interesting to a computer nerd. But it turned out to be interesting to a Gaelic studies nerd too.

  Dougie turned the laptop so Maggie could see the screen as well. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve managed to access the sender’s account. The first thing that’s interesting is that there are no other email contacts except for you. The second thing is that it was opened just before the first email was sent to you.”

  During The Lost Weeks. Maggie nodded.

  “But the really interesting part,” Dougie went on, “is that all of the emails were drafted at the same time and then queued for later delivery.”

  Maggie frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” Dougie explained, “that whoever is sending you these emails is doing it on auto-pilot. They sat down, weeks ago, and wrote all of the emails at once. Then they scheduled them to be sent out, one at a time, in a very specific order, at very specific dates and times.”

  Maggie wasn’t sure what to make of the information. Was it good or bad? It meant someone was trying to trick her, which was never good. On the other hand, it appeared no one was actually stalking her every move.

  “Why would they do that?” she asked.

  “Why?” Dougie repeated with a shrug. “I dunno. That’s human stuff. I’m computers. I can tell you what someone’s doing on, but I can’t say why.”

  Maggie thought for a moment. Whoever it was must have known she would come looking for them. “Is it so they can just delete them all at once and erase their tracks?”

  “Well, first of all,” Dougie raised a finger, “you can’t ever completely erase your tracks. Everything is stored somewhere. Even when you delete something on your laptop, it’s still there.”

  Maggie grimaced. “Like my browsing history?”

  Dougie nodded and grinned. “Exactly.”

  Maggie shook her head. Which hurt. So she stopped. Damned root…

  “Deleting something doesn’t actually get rid of it,” Dougie went on. “It just makes those bytes available for new data to be written over it. But if the computer never puts anything over those bytes, all that supposedly deleted data is still there. And that’s even more true for things online, like email. Everything important is still there, invisible, but just waiting to get pulled out again.”

  “Oh.” Maggie found herself disappointed to hear that. She kind of liked to hide stuff. She certainly didn’t want someone to see all the things she’d tried to keep se
cret.

  “But here’s the really exciting part.” Dougie tapped the screen.

  Maggie noticed they’d graduated from interesting to exciting. She leaned forward and tried to focus on the screen.

  “These,” said Dougie pointing a folder labeled ‘SENT’, “are the emails that have already been sent.”

  Maggie nodded. She knew how to use email.

  But then Dougie tapped another folder, labeled ‘DRAFTS.’ “And these are the ones that have been written, but haven’t been sent yet. There are two left.”

  Maggie’s eyes widened. Okay, yes. That was exciting. “Can we read them now? Before they’re sent?”

  “Yep.” Dougie smiled. “In fact, one’s scheduled for tomorrow, Halloween.”

  “Samhain,” Maggie corrected.

  “Uh, sure. If you say so,” Dougie replied uncertainly. But Maggie knew that was the important holiday. “And the other is scheduled for the next day, November first.”

  Maggie’s eyes were glued to the screen. “Open them up. The one for tomorrow first.”

  Dougie nodded. He clicked a couple of times and the email filled the screen. Maggie leaned forward and read it aloud.

  “Date: October 31. Subject: Last Chance. I’m watching you. You must stay home tonight. Bolt your door. Let no one in. Await further instructions.”

  “Well, that’s certainly friendly,” Ellen remarked.

  “And a lie,” Dougie pointed out. “Whoever wrote this, wrote it weeks ago. They’re not watching you.”

  Maggie nodded, understanding Dougie’s point, but not completely convinced. Just because it had been weeks since the sender said he’d be watching her didn’t mean he didn’t keep his appointment to do so. “Open the next one.”

  Dougie nodded and clicked. Maggie read.

  “Date: November 1. Subject: The Book. Well done. You have passed all my tests. The Dark Book can be yours again. You will find it where you found the diary, and you will know who I am and why I did this.”

  Maggie’s heart began pounding in her chest. The Book. Her Book. She was finally going to get the Dark Book back.

  “There’s that Dark Book again,” Ellen said. “And what diary?”

  Maggie forced herself not to look down. Brìghde’s diary was still in her hand.

  Ellen grinned. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  Maggie hesitated, then shook her head ever so slightly.

  “Are you staying in tomorrow night?” Ellen followed up. She looked to Stuart and Dougie. “Do you want us to stay with you?”

  “I’m not staying in,” Maggie replied, her eyes still on the computer screen.

  “Are you going to the conference at Callanish with Philip?” Ellen tried.

  “No.”

  “Are you going to tell me?” Ellen pressed.

  Maggie finally looked up at her friend. She smiled. “No.”

  Ellen sighed and shook her head. But she was smiling too. “Do you need a ride?”

  Maggie hesitated. She needed a way to get there, but she needed privacy too.

  Ellen reached into her purse and pulled out a set of keys. “How about a car?”

  Maggie didn’t know what to say. “Thanks, Ellen.”

  “Sure thing,” Ellen answered. She handed Maggie the keys. “Tell me afterward, okay? Some day, when it’s all over, tell me.”

  Maggie wrapped her hand around the keys and nodded. “I promise.”

  43. Recovered and Discovered

  Maggie wasted no time. Before she could do much more than grab her laptop and kick out her friends, she was on the road. She was halfway to her destination before she realized the message light was flashing on her phone. She figured it was Philip, calling about the conference. Nope.

  Beep! “Um, hi, Maggie. This is, uh, Iain. Iain Grant. Aye, well, you probably knew that part. Well, anyway, uh, I don’t really like leaving messages. I tend to ramble on a bit. I guess I’m doing that right now. So, uh, I’ll just get right to the point. I’m still in Aberdeen. And, um I was just wondering if, maybe, if you wanted to, well, maybe we could try to talk again. Um, all right then, I guess that’s it. So, aye, ring me up if you’re interested. ‘Bye.”

  She pressed the phone against her head as she sped down the motorway and sighed. What she wouldn’t give to talk to Iain. To straighten things out. To listen and have him listen. To be riding next to him right then. But she had to get her Book. Now that she finally knew where it was, she had to get it. And she knew he wouldn’t understand. Damn him.

  She pulled the phone away from her face, hesitated for a moment, then pressed ‘7’. “Your message has been deleted.”

  *

  The Castle of Park was actually a noble residence built as a home for the chieftains of the Clan Innes—Maggie’s clan. Maggie had first visited it the previous fall with her aunt and uncle, exploring the grounds and staying at the part of the castle which had been converted to a hotel. It was on that trip that she had discovered both the portrait and the grave of her ancestor, Brìghde Innes—the Healer. The grave was in the small kirkyard which surrounded the now-deconsecrated private kirk the Inneses used as their personal church. Also on the grounds, but just outside the iron fence around the kirkyard, was another grave. The grave of Brìghde’s daughter, Margaret NicInnes Wilkie—the Witch.

  Her second visit was with Iain (sigh) and it was on that visit that, guided by a dream rather than an email, Maggie had discovered Brìghde Innes’ private journal, hidden for centuries beneath a loose floorstone in the kirk.

  Now Maggie had returned for a third visit. Her goals were many. Primarily, she had come to fetch her Dark Book from the same secret vault from which she’d extracted Brìghde’s diary. But in addition, she had come to guard Brìghde’s and Margaret’s graves. Samhain was the next day. Catrìona’s grave had already been hit. That left two graves: Brìghde’s and Margaret’s. She’d been too late for Catrìona, but she’d get to Park just in time. She hoped.

  But as she drove Ellen’s car up the long drive to the castle-cum-hotel, the police car in the parking lot told her was she was too late again.

  She stepped into the lobby just as the officers were getting ready to leave.

  “Thank you for your help,” one of them was saying to the front desk woman.

  “The inspector will be around tomorrow,” said the other, “if she has any follow-up questions.”

  “All right then,” answered the woman. She was young—likely a local girl who’d scored a job at the tourist hotel—with straight black hair and a sharp white blouse.

  “Good day, miss,” said the first police officer as they stepped around Maggie and out to their car.

  The receptionist echoed the cops. “Good day, miss.” Then, “Can I help you?”

  Maggie watched after the departing police officers, then turned back. “Uh, yes. I called on my way here. I have a reservation for tonight. The name is Maggie Devereaux.”

  The receptionist typed a few entries into her computer. “Ah, yes. We’ve only one other guest right now so I gave you our best room: the Black Watch Suite. Have you stayed with us before?”

  The Black Watch Suite was the room she’d shared with Iain. She sighed. “Yes,” she answered. “A couple of times actually.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” the young woman replied. “Well, then, you know you’re free to follow the walking trails across the grounds. The only exception is on account of those police officers you just saw. We had a bit of mischief last night in the cemetery by the old kirk, so that area is off-limits for the time being, I’m afraid. You’ll see the police tape, so just stay on this side of it and you’ll be fine.”

  Maggie nodded. She expected that was true, even if she had no intention of staying on this side of it. She finished checking in and dropped her one bag in her room. Then she went for a walk. It was still early afternoon and if she hadn’t been sure whether she would wait until the cover of darkness to break into the kirk (again), the presence of the police had hel
ped settle it. All she could do was kill time and wait for nightfall.

  It was a long, thoughtful walk. There were miles of trails across the estate. She saw the orchard, the ponds, both waterfalls, and the rhododendron tunnel. She also saw the small, boarded-up church she’d be visiting that night, and the blue-and-white police tape in the adjoining graveyard. And when she got back to the castle, she saw a new rental car in the lot. Her heart raced for a moment, thinking Iain had somehow tracked her down—perhaps remembering their night in the Black Watch Suite—and come to find her to declare his love and embrace her for who she truly was.

  Then she realized he had his own car and didn’t need a rental. The only rental she’d ridden in was Philip’s. And, she realized as she stepped into the lobby, it was Philip who had tracked her down.

  “Maggie!” he jumped up from his seat in one of the lobby’s wingback chairs.

  It was then that she realized that Philip was actually a rather poor substitute for Iain. Iain had been a good sport—well, until the end—but he’d also given Maggie her space. Ayrsduff had been difficult enough. The last thing she needed right then was a pair of eyes watching her. What the hell was he doing there?

  “Philip?” she responded in what she tried to make sound like a pleasantly surprised tone. “What are you doing here?”

  “Ellen told me everything,” he said, his brow creased with worry. “The emails, your ransacked apartment, everything. I came to see if you were all right.”

  Maggie crossed her arms and fought off a frown. Ellen shouldn’t have ratted her out like that. She wasn’t the squealing type, but she was the talking type. No doubt he’d asked a simple question and Ellen had spilled the whole story. Still, there was something that bothered her about Philip’s explanation, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. “I’m all right,” she assured. “What about your conference?”

  “Oh, who cares,” he replied. “I’m sure I’ll get to the cairns sooner or later. The important thing is you. I came to protect you.”

  Ah, that must be what bothered her. She narrowed her eyes and glared at him. “I’m not some damsel in distress. I don’t need to be rescued.”