The Curse of Clan Ross (6 page)

It surprised Jilly not to be in the throes of a panic attack in such cramped quarters. Perhaps it was the excitement of the moment, or the renewed hope that she may well be able to save the star-crossed lovers, that kept her from freaking out. If they did find remnants of a skeleton in there, however, all bets were off.

“Ye’ll not be takin’ it out of this tomb, ladies.” His jaw was set as he stared at Lorraine over the one beam of light he shined on the ceiling.

“Agreed,” said the sisters, in stereo.

Jilly knew this was no time to request a history lesson, but she couldn’t help it. “Why did Isobelle not suffocate, Mr. Ross?” she asked.

“The mortar and things have settled a bit since it was built, aye?  Sealed it a bit tighter than it was when the stones were set. Montgomery could only leave a crevice or two what with The Kirk’s men watchin’ o’er his shoulder.” He paused, looking down at the hole until his frown softened into something akin to pity. His voice softened also. “They’d let her have no water, no food, no light. Not even a blanket. So for a while he did wonder if his sister would survive long enough for the others to carve their way through. They couldn’t very well walk into the hall and be takin’ measurements, could they?  So there was a chance they would be diggin’ up right beneath the bastards’s feet. It was a long wait, aye?”

He didn’t look up for confirmation. While he paused, the vibrations of his Scot’s burr settled around them like dust too heavy or lethargic to be stirred much by their intrusion.

“When she could hear them diggin’, she’d cry out to cover the sound. And Montgomery would cry out with her. To be sure the others wouldn’t feel the poundin’, he would throw fits of madness and push the churchmen as far away from the tomb as they’d go.”

Quinn looked up into Jilly’s face, his eyes black and shiny in the combination of flashlight and ancient shadows, his smile strained.

“I suppose it was no act after all.” He shrugged. “If their plan was discovered, his sister would die a horrible death...of his own design. Can you imagine it?”

Jilly could imagine it all too well. When they’d learned tonight of Isobelle’s escape, she had been vastly relieved, happy Isobelle had not died such in such a gruesome manner, and grateful she no longer needed to hate the man whose likeness so closely resembled this Scotsman’s. Actually, after she’d heard the first telling of the old laird’s hare-brained idea to bury his sister alive instead of letting her burn as a witch, she’d wanted to reach back through history and knock him on his butt. Now she just hated the clergy for putting them all in such a situation. What kind of priest would agree to such cruelty?

“My grandda was told, as was his grandda before him, that by the time they got to Isobelle, she was near dead with thirst, but she lived. One man whisked her away in the night, never allowing her to bid her sister, Morna, godspeed.

“She had her brother’s promise that the torque would stay put, for Morna’s sake. And so it has. Montgomery sealed the floor and it has been the duty of each leader of Clan Ross to see the cursed thing stays here for all time. The small room below also kept Montgomery’s friends from being discovered while they dug and pounded, and the passages twist and turn so oft, it was easy enough to point to the ceiling down the way a bit and call it the floor of the tomb. In a way, keeping the abomination guarded is likely one of the reasons this castle has stood firm against time, ye ken?”

“Where is it?” Jilly blurted. Her heart was breaking for these people that lived and suffered so long ago. If her presence here could bring Ivar and Morna together again, she was anxious to get the ball rolling.

Or maybe the quickest way out of the nightmare was at the bottom of the delusion pool and she only needed to dive in.

Quinn turned his back and fumbled around against the wall. A muffled clank and a curse built the tension from Jilly’s toes up to her shoulders. When he turned back to them, he held what looked like a dusty metal tennis visor without the elastic. He held it close to his body as if he feared the women would snatch it and run, which strangely enough, Jilly felt the urge to do.

The necklace closely resembled its replicas for sale in the souvenir shop except for two chunks of white held to it with prongs, like diamonds on a ring. Bones. Pieces of them, anyway. They had to be. Around the outer edge were the familiar Celtic symbols.

“One from a Ross and the other from a MacKay, I would think,” said Loretta or Lorraine. Jilly could not pull her eyes away from the morbid jewels long enough to study hands.

She no longer felt the urge to touch the thing but she kept open the option to jump through the hole in the floor and run away; there was a sinister pressure in the stagnant air around her. Waving at her from the back of her mind was her grandmother’s conspiracy.

Had it only been two weeks since she’d walked through the doors of the genealogical library in Salt Lake City?  Had she known the sisters for only days and not years?

Just as they might have done for any other visitor, the Muirs had listened to what leads Jilly had on her grandmother’s family, had patiently written down the dates and names she knew, and ordered microfiche to dig deeper into her ancestry. She’d been immediately comforted by their gentle words and kind encouragement. With these two as her champions, she’d felt nothing was impossible, that other relatives could be found.

Little did she know.

It was only after she told them her birth father’s name of Ross that Lorraine and Loretta revealed the animated, obsessive sides to their natures. At first, Jilly had been charmed by their stories of mysterious curses and star-crossed lovers. Compared to her own unhappy grandmother, the Muirs showed an unrepentant zeal for life, an optimism to which Jilly had never before been exposed and she’d been caught up in the wrinkly whirlwind.

When they took her under their fragile wings, a lonely orphan from a lonelier state was powerless to turn away from them. When they had insisted she accompany them on their last tour of Scotland before they were too old to travel, her first reaction was suspicion. After all, hadn’t she been warned away from Scotland all her life? Too bad she hadn’t taken it more seriously.

There was one secret, however, that Jillian kept to herself—every warning about the country and its people drove Jillian crazy with curiosity until Scotland became a mysterious gift she was dying to open. And now, it was all hers with no one left to forbid her from ripping off the paper.

The sisters had immediately played the “pity” card and convinced her they’d feel ever so much safer if there were an able-bodied young woman along, just in case. If ever Jillian MacKay had an Achilles Heel, it was her need to be needed. And that need, combined with the bright bow tied around the country, had made her such an easy recruit.

Until now, though, it had all been a game. It was easy to come to love these women while she worked out just who was patronizing whom. Looking back, Jilly chided herself for never imagining the game could turn dangerous.

“Jillian.”

She turned to find Lorraine looking as disturbed as she felt.

“Don’t touch the necklace, dear. I’ve changed my mind.”

Laird Ross looked at the necklace curiously, then up at Lorraine. “Do ye sense something, then?”

“I do,” both sisters volunteered.

“Must be a woman’s ken. What say ye, Miss MacKay?  Have ye changed yer mind as well?” Quinn bit his lip.

He looked like a child who suspected he was about to be turned away at the gates to the amusement park. Perhaps he was a romantic after all.

“I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, honey,” Loretta said. “Enchanting this necklace was clearly not The Lord’s work.”

The Devil’s then?  Well, that was a cheery thought.

Then it struck Jilly funny and she began to laugh. The theme music from Disney’s Peter Pan echoed in her head and she nearly broke out singing, “Think of a wonderful thought…”

They’d come that far. They were trying something not tried before. The necklace had lain inside its stone box all these centuries, hidden from the very people who might allow two souls to rest in peace together, and it seemed a pity to not at least try. Her laughter had driven away the creepy feeling and the fact that four somewhat reasonable adults were standing inside said box, hovering over the beam from a flashlight, divining whether or not one of them should try on a necklace that may or may not be a dangerous fashion statement. It was the silliest thing in the world.

The Muirs were not amused.

Laird Ross was grinning. Apparently his vision was good enough to see the silliness too.

“Nope. I’m going to try this.” Jilly put her hands behind her, not yet ready to touch the thing. “But before I do, I need to know your best guesses for what will happen. Do you think their souls will just be reunited?  Or do you think it will change the past in some way?  You don’t suppose they’ll be…”

“Teleported?” Laird Ross answered. Lorraine’s eyes widened. “We did get Star Trek in the UK, aye?” he added.

Loretta smiled her wrinkliest smile and patted his hand.

Lorraine frowned. “If they’re brought through time, there won’t be enough room for all of us in here.” She wasn’t kidding. The woman was shuffling around examining the floor space. “Loretta and I should wait below.”

Yellow streaks did not look good on periwinkle sweaters, but Jilly could hardly blame her. Besides, standing alone in a small space with Quinn, who looked a bit more like his ancestor in those shadows, sounded more pleasant than anything so far. When she glanced up at him, he was smirking as if he’d read her mind. He reached up and pulled a thick web of dust from her hair and it was all she could do not to sigh like a teenager.

Just as Jilly had decided to spend a good hour’s worth of the flashlight batteries studying the color of his eyes, he handed her the light, maneuvered the necklace around his forearm and bent to lower Lorraine through the hole.

“I think you should concentrate on Ivar and Morna as you put on the necklace, Jillian dear,” came a suggestion from beneath the floor. After both sisters were safely out of the tomb, she faced Quinn over the hole. She was about to suggest a kiss for luck, but all thoughts of flirting were swept from her head when the light flashed on the torque held steady once again in the Scotsman’s hands. She took a deep breath, pushed aside that creepy feeling hovering in the plethora of shadows, and nodded.

The man took the flashlight from her and held out The Curse of Clan Ross. The moments pulsed by while she repeatedly told her hand to lift.

Take it. It won’t bite...surely.

Suddenly, a calm came over her, a feeling of rightness. The torque was meant for her; she suddenly knew it. And whatever might happen, after she put it on, was meant for her as well.

The half-moon of tarnished silver seemed to meet her half way. Quinn hesitated for a second before he released it.

Jilly looked back and forth between the mounted bones, wondering which belonged to which family, imagining that if she concentrated, she just may know. She turned it in her hands and raised it toward her neck.

Quinn stepped back against the wall with the light once again trained on the ceiling, providing the most illumination possible. She only noticed from the corner of her eye; she couldn’t take her gaze from the...thing...in her hands.

The metal ran cool between her fingertips, like barely restrained liquid, thrumming against the tiny ridges that created her fingerprints.

Was it testing her? Should she say something aloud? Assure the thing she was indeed of Immediate Blood?

Put it on. I need to put it on.

She raised the living, breathing crescent to her neck and pushed it past her skin. The second the cold metal fell against her collar bone, the flashlight died.

“Shake it,” Jilly suggested.

There was no response. The torque seemed to have lost its animation in the darkness, so she let her hands drop away.

“Here. Hand it to me,” she said as she reached forward, careful not to step in the hole. “I’m right here,” she said in frustration when she couldn’t connect with Quinn’s searching arms.

At least they’d better be searching.

“This is not funny, Quinn Ross. Lorraine!” she hollered down the hole, but her voice was incredibly loud in her own ears.

She squatted down and steadied herself with one hand on the floor while she felt for the panel that covered the hole. It had been tipped against the wall just to her right. She could feel nothing but the wall.

“You know, after all this crap I can’t believe you guys would play such a stupid joke. I know you’re there.”

And suddenly she knew nothing of the sort.

Very carefully she got down on her knees and felt the floor, trying not to panic while she searched the dusty stone for the hole. She found nothing but a rough ring cut in the stone, in the center of which was...stone.

Someone had put the freaking hole back in the donut!

The floor was not nearly as dusty as she’d expected. Holding her hands out to the sides she felt the rough walls she feared would still be surrounding her.

Calmly, surprisingly calmly in fact, she stood and pointed her toe, and using it like a blind man’s cane, she swept the entire floor to be sure it was solid. When her hands found the small alcove, she lifted the necklace from her skin and set it back where it belonged, but nothing happened.

Her holy crap moment had arrived.

Sitting down might be a sign she was giving up, so she paced. It was a pathetically small path around that donut hole, but it was a comfort to do something.

She clicked her heals and repeated, “There’s no place like home.” Three times. She didn’t try another set of three for fear of sounding foolish, in spite of there being no one to hear her. In her need to be calm, cool, and collected, being cool seemed doable, for the moment.

She wished she had something other than her fists with which to pound on the wall and suddenly remembered the crowbar from Lorraine’s pants. If she didn’t have anything that might move that stone out of the floor, she was at the mercy of whomever knew she was inside.