Fisher

by L. L. Muir

  Fisher

  The Ghosts of Culloden Moor Book 49

  L.L. Muir

  Green Toed Fairy

  Contents

  About the series…

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  A note from the author

  GET MORE BOOKS written by L.L. Muir

  GHOST SERIES LIST

  About the Author

  License notes…

  About the series…

  The Ghosts of Culloden Moor stories can be read in almost any order, but they will make much more sense if you first read the set up, THE GATHERING.

  The next book, THE RECKONING, will change everything, so catching up on the rest of the ghosts, to this point, will help avoid confusion later.

  Chapter One

  Cremation is a gruesome thing.

  You’re not allowed to watch the body go up in flames, but sitting outside the chamber, Martine couldn’t help but imagine what’s going on inside. On the plum wallpaper in front of her hung a disproportionately small painting of green fields and blue clouds framed in gaudy gold. It was meant to distract waiting families, no doubt, but it didn’t work.

  Though she’d felt numb all morning, what might be happening to her sister’s body turned her stomach into a hard, hot knot.

  Did flesh melt or just catch on fire? Was the temperature so insanely high that everything just exploded into ash? Did a person’s spirit have to wait for the doors to open before it could get away? Or was Invisible Julia hovering over one of the empty chairs, forced to sit vigil until her own remains were settled?

  Martine figured it would have been less traumatic if she’d put her sister on a funeral pyre, dowsed it with gasoline, and shot a flaming arrow at it. It certainly would have seemed more dignified. More…Viking.

  Julia May Platte was wiped off the face of the earth in an afternoon—a ceremony sandwiched between their great-aunt’s doctor’s appointment and a meeting with her tax man. So good of her to fit it in.

  Aunt Penny had balked from the beginning, insisting that only immediate family attended a cremation. But what did immediate family matter when you’re the only family?

  It had been a mistake, though, to guilt the woman into coming. Already, they’d spent two horrible hours grimacing at each other while they waited for the deed to be done and for the ashes to cool. It would have been better to have come alone, to only wish Aunt Penny was there, and get mad that she wasn’t. Anger would have helped pass the time.

  Martine checked her purse again, knowing it was in vain. What a stupid day to leave her phone charger home.

  She had chewed her nails down to raw edges while she summoned movies in her mind. No matter what she tried, scenes from Young Frankenstein kept popping up. Soon, she recalled the scene where the dopey assistant drops the genius brain on the floor and has to take the abnormal one instead, which resulted in the monster being out of control.

  It was too close to home.

  Julia had been the smart one, the pretty one—God’s gift to the world. Martine had been a sloppy second all her life, though Julia would have never seen her that way. Her sister had been carefree and beautiful in a way that didn’t make jealous. Envious? Sure. Only two semesters away from graduating with her doctorate in microbiology, Julia’s plan had been to cure diseases that hadn’t even been discovered yet.

  And she would have…

  Yep. God’s gift. God’s compensation for creating so many mediocre people like Martine. And soon Julia would be just a jar full of ashes. As useful as that genius brain that had been dropped on the floor, destroyed by a little gravity and the shattering of her container.

  Destroyed. Incomplete.

  What worried Martine most was wondering how soon Julia might be forgotten? Only remembered now and again by the guys she dated, by her former classmates when they looked back on their college days.

  Aunt Penny would remember her now and then. But it was up to Martine really, to keep Julia from disappearing completely. She had to think of a way to make sure no one wiped away the brief mark her sister had left on the world.

  Aunt Penny cleared her throat, a strangled sound that interrupted the maddening harp music set so low you wondered if it was real or imagined. “I suppose you could dedicate something to her?”

  Martine had to clear her throat too, to get it moving after disuse. “What? A book? A park bench? A hospital wing? Got a few million dollars you could pass on before you…die?”

  Aunt Penny’s scowl came with a pucker of lines radiating out from her pursed lips. When she made that face, it was the only time she ever looked like Martine’s mother. “Julia lived a good life, even if it was brief. At least she’ll never have to worry about growing old and ending up in diapers again.”

  Martine couldn’t keep her eyes from dropping to her aunt’s crotch, or from looking into the older woman’s face to see if she was trying to tell her something.

  Penny rolled her eyes. “Not yet. I was just trying to make a point.”

  Martine started calculating how much more she would need on her paychecks in order to hire someone else to change Penny’s diapers when she got old enough to lose all control. The words “the only family left” repeated half a dozen times in her head.

  The side door opened, but it wasn’t the secretary offering refreshments for the hundredth time. It was the guy in the blue suit and shiny tie, holding an urn. He held a long black cloth around it, like an oven mit, to prevent his hands from touching the metal. The urn was either still too hot to handle, or he didn’t want to get his fingerprints on it. Maybe both.

  Martine couldn’t hear what he said for the loud waves crashing in her ears. Reluctantly, she held out her hands. The man didn’t offer her the cloth, but the metal was cool, almost cold.

  Just a fingerprint thing, then.

  He pulled a clip board out from under his arm and offered it to Aunt Penny. She glanced over the document and signed it, accepted a copy, then stuck it in her purse.

  Martine had a sudden change of heart. She wasn’t in such a hurry to leave after all. Once they stepped outside, she’d be responsible for her…for the urn. Where would she put it? She certainly didn’t want it on her mantel. Hell, she didn’t even have a mantel!

  Penny led her to the door and held it open so Martine could limp through, with a cane in one hand and the urn in the other. The change of air pressure brought Martine’s hearing back. Her aunt nodded at the container in her hands as she passed. “What do you plan to do with them?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, she always said she wanted her ashes to be scattered at a cathedral in Paris—you know how obsessed she was with Paris, how much traveling she planned to do—but I’ll never be able to afford that kind of thing. Maybe I should bury it somewhere…meaningful.” Her head started shaking on its own. “I can’t do it. I can’t keep them around. It’s just not…me.”

  “I’ll do it,” Penny said, then opened the car door and climbed in. “If she wants to be laid to rest in Paris, she should be laid to rest in Paris.”

  The urn suddenly felt lighter as Martine lowered herself onto the seat and pulled her door shut. She couldn’t help looking at her aunt and w
ondering who had replaced her. This couldn’t be the same woman who had held her nieces at arm’s length since their mother died.

  “You’ll go to Paris? For Julia?”

  “No. I’ll pay for your airfare. You should do this. For both of you.” Penny’s hand paused on ignition. “Unless you’d rather dedicate a bench. It would probably cost the same.”

  “No, but… You should probably think about it—”

  “I don’t need to think about it. When I meet with my tax man, I’ll know how much I can manage for your other expenses, but I think your mother would have done it, if she were still alive. I know I haven’t been the second mother you two deserved, but I’m happy to throw money at a problem. Some people have empathy. Some people have money. Some people have nothing to offer at all. So I could be worse.”

  “You’re Penny. All you have to be is Penny.” It was something Julia would say, right after their aunt had disappointed them in some way—like not answering their calls for weeks on end, then offering some excuse that couldn’t possibly be believed. Martine wasn’t nearly as forgiving as her sister, but she decided she’d try. The woman was all the real family she had left.

  Chapter Two

  Two months later, on the battlefield at Culloden Moor…

  James, one of the head keepers of the battlefield at Culloden, stood on the freshly frozen moor between two security guards and scanned the field for late-night intruders. For the most part, the end of December brought temperatures that put an end to midnight antics, but this year was different. The place had been plagued by unwanted visitors, at odd hours, for the past month. And tonight, with it being Hogmanay, those visitors were sure to be back.

  Hogmanay always brought trouble—all the world had bigger bollocks on New Year’s Eve.

  A resolute mist hovered above the left flank of the Jacobite line where so many of Keppoch’s Regiment were cut down. The thick white stuff swirled, then seconds later and less than ten paces away, it swirled again.

  Disturbed by a tall Highlander’s spirit? Or just a breeze shifting directions? Either way, nothing mortal blocked the view.

  Fisher Rankine ceased his pacing and glowered at the three men standing halfway between him and the Visitor’s Center. He willed himself across the grasses to take a closer look, but found it was only James and some security lads interrupting his own guard duty. An instant later, he was back to pacing over his deathbed and keeping the living—and the dead—from disturbing the ground.

  His ground.

  “An auto approaches. It could be the lass.”

  Fisher turned to find Wyndham hovering far too close, which the man often did just to get a rise out of him. “Perhaps she’ll take ye, ye devil, so I might find some peace.”

  Wyndham laughed. “Or perhaps it’ll be yer turn, and there will no longer be a need for us to step around yer precious plot.”

  The truth of the other man’s words froze Fisher where he stood. There was no telling who was next. The odds of the witch taking him away were the same as her taking Wyndham or any of the others that still remained. The 79 were more than half gone now, after half a year of culling. Another half a year, and there would be none, save James and the other keepers, to remember they’d haunted the place at all.

  “Make me a promise, Wyndham. If my turn comes before yers, ye must promise that ye’ll protect my land from the unworthy.”

  “The unworthy? Ye assume everyone who comes here is unworthy. But who are ye to judge, eh?”

  “For my land, aye, I’ll be the judge. With all the world to choose from, there is no need to lay any other man to rest here, on the ground I paid for with my blood.”

  The other man scoffed. “See here, Number 4. I saw the last man ye sent packing, after his ashes spilled onto yer wee plot. A Cameron captain in full regalia. Died with honor. Can ye say that ye were as honorable and worthy as he? Perhaps he should have frightened ye away.”

  Fisher ignored the implication. “My land. My blood. My judgment.”

  “Just so. And I’ll make no such adjudications in yer stead. Exact yer promise from someone…more worthy…to judge as blindly as yerself.”

  Luckily for Fisher, Soni did not come that night, and his deathbed remained off limits to any other spirit, just as he preferred it.

  “You said to go a little lighter…” Candice, the worried hairstylist pulled at the sides of Martine’s blond hair as if she could darken it a little with a tug here and there.

  “I did. I did. It’s just a shock, that’s all. I’ve never tried it before.” But the shock wasn’t the change in the shade of blond. The jolt came from her dead sister’s face staring back at her in the mirror. The glass itself was so clean it was easy to imagine it not there at all, and that Julia was just a few steps away, looking like the ghost she now was.

  She even imagined Julia’s wink.

  “It’s not all Macadamia,” the stylist continued. “It’s just a few highlights. They take some getting used to—”

  “It’s just what I asked for.” Martine dragged the cape off her shoulders, then pushed it into the woman’s arms and stood. She had to get away from that mirror.

  For the rest of the afternoon, she forced herself to keep shopping, though she avoided looking at her own face when trying on clothes. It just seemed wrong to travel in her own sober wardrobe. If Julia were there, she would have prodded her to get some fun things in summer colors.

  At the mall, Martine was tempted to buy a red purse just to prove she could do it. It had loud rainbow fringe around the edges and looked like something Julia would have gravitated towards.

  “Take me,” it screamed. But since it would also scream out to pick-pockets and thieves, she walked away from it with a clear conscience.

  Julia had also been a hat girl, and when Martine walked past a window filled with bright-colored berets, she didn’t get off as easy. Julia was practically screaming in her head until she ducked into the store and took a hat from the display. A white one. After all, she couldn’t let the memory of her sister dictate everything or she’d be spending her meager savings on thigh-high boots, retro shirts, and fringed red purses…

  “That’s it, Julia,” she muttered as the sales clerk slipped the hat into a tiny sack. She called it a day and headed for the exit, but she had to stop at the sound of a woman shouting.

  “Julia!”

  She didn’t dare turn around. The hair was a step too far, she’d known it the second she’d seen it in the mirror. And now someone was mistaking her for her sister. Only…in those few seconds, while she stood there holding her breath, it felt like her sister was alive again. She might be standing right there next to her. It might have all just been a bad dream.

  To someone, Julia was alive. And the immeasurable relief she felt in those same few seconds quenched the painful fire that had burned in her chest for the past two months.

  A young woman caught up to her and was slow to realize she’d been mistaken. She was an old classmate of Julia’s from the university, as it turned out. She hadn’t heard the news.

  The burning in her chest returned, and in pain once more, Martine almost enjoyed delivering the blow. “My sister died in October. Hit by a drunk driver while she was running.”

  The mouth drop. The pause. The scrambling for the appropriate reaction.

  “You’re kidding! Well, of course you’re not kidding. But I just can’t believe it. So young! She had so much promise. What a horrible loss for you, for the university, for us all. Imagine what she might have accomplished!”

  Same song. Different singer.

  Martine didn’t bother with niceties. She just stepped around the woman and walked on, leaving her to deal with the shock alone. No tears. No commiserating. She was done with that. What she wanted, what she desperately needed, was for Julia to be alive again. Even for a little while. Just to help her get through the rough part. Why was that so much to ask?

  Chapter Three

  Martine arrived in Paris a week af
ter buying that hat, and what a difference a week made. She was even able to look in the mirror again, if only to talk to her sister. It was probably going to send her over the edge, and she’d end up in a psych ward, but the pain in her chest had eased enough to let her breathe.

  Most of the time.

  From the airport, she took a taxi. It was something she’d never done, and the extravagance made her feel like she was living someone else’s life. It took her to the boutique hotel where she’d made reservations, L’hôtel Maria, not far from the Arch of Triumph. Taxi, boutique, l’hôtel. All new to her midwestern way of life.

  In heavily accented English, the sober hotel clerk asked how many would be staying in the room. When she said she’d be staying alone, the man’s face changed. He was no longer the impatient Frenchman forced to speak her language. He was the creepy man who thought his sly glances were somehow sexy.

  Julia would have shown him some pity. The kindest thing Martine could do was to ignore him. As she climbed the thinly carpeted stairs, however, she noticed the foyer and the man reflected in a mirror with an antique frame. Even as he watched her, his grin never faded. The last thing he needed was pity.

  She had to remember to get some pepper spray in the morning…

  Culloden

  A woman was singing.

  Fisher Rankine paused in his pacing to listen closer, and though his boots made no sound, even to his own ears, the moor fell quieter still as if honoring the tune. It came to him as clearly as a voice from a passing ship across a calm sea. The melody enchanted him in a way he couldn’t describe.