Moon Cursed (2 page)

The village was also tourist central, with a wealth of Nessie museums, shops, and tours by both land and sea. Kris would check them out eventually. They’d make another excellent setting for her show. The charm of the village would highlight the archaic myth, illuminating how backward was a belief in fairy tales. The excessive glitter of tourism would underline why the locals still pretended to believe.

Kris had once adored fairy tales, listening avidly as her mother read them to her and her brother. In those tales, bad things happened, but eventually everything worked out.

In real life, not so much.

Her driver, an elderly, stoic Scot who’d said nothing beyond an extremely low-voiced, “Aye,” when she’d asked if he often drove to Drumnadrochit, continued through the village without stopping. For an instant Kris became uneasy. What if the man had decided to take her into the countryside, bash her on the head, and toss her into the loch, making off with her laptop, video camera, and anything else she might possess? Sure, Lola would miss her eventually, but by then Kris would be monster bait.

A hysterical bubble of laughter caught in her throat. She didn’t believe in monsters—unless they were human.

She lifted her gaze to the rearview mirror and caught the driver watching her. He looked like anyone’s favorite grampa—blue-eyed, red cheeked, innocent.

And wasn’t that what everyone said about the local serial killer?

The vehicle jolted to a stop, and Kris nearly tumbled off the shiny leather seat and onto the floor. Before she recovered, her driver leaped out, opened her door, and retreated to the trunk to retrieve her bag.

Kris peered through the window. They’d arrived at Loch Side Cottage, which, while not exactly
loch
side, was damn close. Kris would have to cross the road to reach the water, but she’d be able to see it from the house. The village of Drumnadrochit lay out of sight around a bend in the road.

“Idiot.” Kris blew her bangs upward in a huff. “No one’s going to bash you over the head. This isn’t the South Side of Chicago.”

She stepped out of the car, then stood frozen like Dorothy opening the door on a new and colorful world. The grass was a river of green, the trees several shades darker against mountains the hue of the ocean at dawn. The air was chill, but it smelled like freshwater and—

“Biscuit?”

A short, cherubic woman with fluffy white hair and emerald eyes stood in the doorway of the cottage. For an instant Kris thought she was a Munchkin. She certainly had the voice for it.

“I made a batch of Empires to welcome ye.” She held out a platter full of what appeared to be iced shortbread rounds, each topped with a cherry.

Kris hadn’t eaten since the flight to Heathrow, so despite her belief that a biscuit should only be served warm, dripping with butter and honey, she took one.

At the first bite, her mouth watered painfully. The Empires were crisp and sweet—was that jelly in the middle?—and she couldn’t remember eating anything so fabulous in a very long time.

“It’s a cookie,” she managed after she swallowed the first and reached for a second.

The woman smiled, the expression causing her cheeks to round like apples beneath her sparkling eyes. “Call it whatever ye like, dearie.” She lifted the platter. “Then take another.”

Kris had to listen very hard to distinguish the English beneath the heavy brogue. She felt as if she were hearing everything through a time warp, one that allowed the meaning of the words to penetrate several seconds after they were said. She hoped that the longer she stayed, the easier it would get.

“Thanks.” Kris took two cookies in each hand. “I’m Kris Daniels.”

“Well, and don’t I know that.” The plump, cheery woman giggled. The sound resembled the Munchkin titters that had welcomed Dorothy to Oz. Kris glanced uneasily at the nearby shrubbery, expecting it to shake and burp out several more little people.

Then she heard what the woman had said and caught her breath. If they already knew her here, knew what she did, who she was, her cover was blown and her story was crap before it had even begun. Why hadn’t she used a false name?

Because she hadn’t thought anyone in the Scottish Highlands would have seen a cable TV show filmed in Chicago. And how, exactly, would she present herself as Susie Smith when her credit cards and passport read “Kristin Daniels”?

“You know me?” Kris repeated faintly.

“I spoke with ye on the phone. Rented ye the cottage. Who else would be arriving today bag and baggage?”

Kris let out the breath she’d taken. She was no good at cloak-and-dagger. She liked lying about as much as she liked liars and was therefore pretty bad at it. She needed to get better and quick.

“You’re Ms. Cameron,” Kris said.

“Euphemia,” the woman agreed. “Everyone calls me Effy.”

Effy’s brilliant eyes cut to the driver, who was as thin and tall as she was short and round. “Ye’ll be bringing that suitcase inside now, Rob, and be quicker about it than a slow-witted tortoise.”

Kris glanced at the old man to see if he was offended, but he merely nodded and did as he’d been told.

Very slowly.

Kris’s lips twitched. She’d have been tempted to do the same if Effy had ordered her around.

Rob came out of the cottage, and Effy shoved the plate in front of him. “Better eat a few, ye great lummox, or ye’ll be starvin’ long before supper.”

He took several. “If ye didnae cook like me sainted mother, woman, I’d have drowned ye and yer devil’s tongue in the loch years ago.”

Looming over the diminutive Effy, deep voice rumbling like the growl of a vicious bear, Rob should have been intimidating. But there was no heat to his words, no anger on his face. He just stated his opinion as if he’d stated the same a hundred and one times before. Perhaps he had. The two did seem well acquainted.

Effy snorted and shoved the entire plate of biscuits into his huge, worn hands with a sharp, “Dinnae drop that, ye old fool”; then she reached into the pocket of her voluminous gray skirt and pulled out a key, which she presented to Kris. “Here ye are, dearie. And what is it ye’ll be doing in Drumnadrochit?”

“I’m … uh…” Kris glanced away from Effy’s curious gaze, past Rob, whose cheeks had gone chipmunk with cookies, toward the rolling, gray expanse of the loch. “Writing.”

“Letters?” Rob mumbled.

“Why would she need to travel all this way to write a letter?” Effy scoffed.

“Some do.”

“I’m writing a book,” Kris blurted.

There. That had even sounded like the truth. Maybe the key to lying was thinking less and talking fast. No wonder men were so good at it.

“A children’s book?” Effy asked.

Kris said the first thing that popped into her head: “Sure.”

Silence greeted the word.
That
hadn’t sounded very truthful.

“Mmm.” Rob gave a throaty Scottish murmur, drawing Kris’s attention away from the loch and back to him. Luckily for her, it also caught Effy’s attention.

“Ye ate them all?” She snatched the empty plate from his hands.

“Ye said not to drop them. Ye didnae say not to eat them.”

“And if I didnae tell ye
not
to drive into the water would I find ye swimming with Nessie of an afternoon?”

Rob didn’t answer. Really, what could he say?

“Nessie,” Kris repeated, anxious to keep their attention off her inability to lie. “Have you seen her?”

“Mmm,” Rob murmured again, this time the sound not one of skepticism but assent.

“If ye live in Drumnadrochit,” Effy said, “ye’ve seen her.”

Kris laughed. She couldn’t help it. “
Everyone’s
seen her?”

Effy lifted her chin to indicate the loch. “Ye have but to look.”

Kris spun about. All she saw was waves and shadows and rocks.

*   *   *

Not long afterward, Effy climbed into Rob’s car, admonishing him all the while: “I need to get home, but dinnae drive too fast. Ye give me a headache. And—”

Rob shut the door on the rest of her comment. “Ye give
me
a headache,” he muttered, moving around the rear bumper toward the driver’s side.

“Effy lives close to you?” Kris asked.

Rob lifted sad eyes. “The woman lives
with
me.”

Kris’s eyes widened. “You’re—”

“Cursed,” he muttered, and opened the driver’s side door.

Effy’s voice came tumbling out: “Ye can walk anywhere ye like, dearie, but stay away from the castle.”

“There’s a castle?” Kris forgot all about Rob and Effy’s living arrangements—were they were married or living in sin? What did it matter? There was a
castle.

“Urquhart Castle. Ye must have heard of it.”

Kris had read about it. The structure overlooked Urquhart Bay, where many Nessie sightings occurred, and had figured prominently in the history of the Highlands, with many famous names like Robert the Bruce, Andrew Moray, and Bonnie Prince Charlie sprinkled through the tales.

“Is it dangerous?” Kris asked.

Effy’s Munchkins-in-the-shrubbery laugh flowed free. “Ach no. But they charge a fee, and the place is naught but a ruin. If ye want to know about Urquhart or the loch or even Nessie come to me.”

“Why not me?” Rob climbed into the car. “I’ve seen her more than you have. I drive this road every day.”

“I’ve seen her twice as many times as you, ye old goat.”

Thankfully Rob shut the door on the rest of the argument, then drove away.

The sun was setting, though it was hard to tell considering the gray, gloomy sky and incipient threat of rain. Still, by her calculations, Kris had an hour of daylight left. She didn’t want to waste it.

She hurried inside, casting a quick glance around the cottage as she moved to the bathroom to throw cold water on her face and smooth back her wildly curling hair. The damp air in Scotland was going to ruin any prayer she had of keeping it smooth.

The house possessed a living area that shared space with a small kitchen, a bedroom complete with a decent-sized bed, a chest of drawers, a night table, and a teeny-tiny closet. Luckily she didn’t need, and she hadn’t brought, very many clothes.

The place was warm—Effy must have turned on the heat—and it smelled of cookies.

“Biscuits,” Kris murmured, and her stomach growled. Thankfully Effy had also been kind enough to stock the small refrigerator with a few staples to tide Kris over until she could get to the market.

Kris made a quick jam sandwich, slugged a glass of milk, then, armed with her video camera, a
Loyola University
sweatshirt, and her best pair of walking shoes, set out.

The western horizon glowed a muted pink and orange, the tourist boats that had bobbed in the distance now disappeared. Nevertheless, Kris filmed a bit of the loch. She had to start somewhere.

The water slid past, dingy in the fading light and pockmarked by several bits of wood. Kris could see how someone with an active imagination might invent a lake monster, especially when everyone else was doing so.

Just as Kris lowered her camera, something splashed. She froze, squinting into the gloom, but she could see nothing beyond the first several feet of flowing, murky water.

“They grow the fish big here,” she muttered.

From the sound of the splash and the suddenly larger swell of the waves, they grew them as big as a tank.

Kris was tempted to return to the cottage. Not because she was afraid, but because she hadn’t brought the proper equipment needed to film in the fast-approaching night.

Kris cursed her lack of foresight. She wasn’t used to being her own cameraman, and she hadn’t thought she’d find anything so soon. But if she wanted to have clear, perfect footage of whatever—make that
who
ever—had made that noise, she’d need the light she’d left in her backpack.

Then she heard another splash, nearer the shore, just past that next grove of trees, and before she could think any more about it Kris plunged into the gloom.

The ground was slick beneath the cover of the branches, and she slid a bit, had to slow down. But it wasn’t even a minute before she popped out on the shore of Loch Ness.

She looked left, right, across. The far side was hazy—too far away to really see, and she’d forgotten her binoculars along with the light. But still she was pretty certain she saw—

“Nada.” Either the culprit was track-star fast or there really was a fish the size of Cleveland in the loch.

Which would explain a few things.

Kris frowned. One of the theories about Nessie was that an unknown creature lived in the depths. Current cryptozoological speculation set the amount of undiscovered species between half a million and ten million—no one really knew. Which meant—

“There could be damn near anything out there.”

And that was fine. That was good. Proving that Nessie was a big, toothy, prehistoric fish would debunk the lake monster theory, too.