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  For all the old teams. Thank you for your stories.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I didn’t get to experience in person a few of the places I included in this book, but I did look up pictures. Apologies for my inaccuracies, and though the University of Edinburgh library probably doesn’t have a bunch of sub-basements, that would be a pretty cool feature.

  Thanks to:

  Cathy Cole, Denis Barlow, and Lisa Shafer for not tiring of answering questions about Scotland. You all make me feel like I have my very own personal Google. Your patience is much appreciated.

  The lovely folks with the Doune Castle who answered all my questions and gave me some wonderful details. It’s a beautiful place. If at all possible, everyone should visit.

  My agent, Jessica Faust, and my editor, Hannah Braaten, for their continued and tireless support, input, patience, and brilliance.

  Charlie and Tyler, for making me laugh when I most need to but think I can’t. I adore you both.

  A special thanks to everyone who so willingly read and helped spread the word about this series when The Cracked Spine published. I am gobsmacked by your support.

  Sláinte!

  PROLOGUE

  He took a drag on the cigarette as he watched the bookshop. The tip blazed and then sizzled as a drop of rain hit it. He glanced up at the dark clouds, grumbled a quiet complaint, and then dropped the cigarette into a puddle next to the curb.

  He pulled his coat collar up tighter just as the redhead got off the bus. He’d heard her American accent, but he still didn’t know exactly where she was from. The older woman would be no problem. Edwin MacAlister would be no problem either. But the young guy who looked like an artist and the redhead might both be problems.

  He’d worked the angles well on one end, but this end might be troublesome; too many variables. He’d think it all through some more.

  He smiled to himself as he silently acknowledged that any other time, any other place, he’d like to get to know the redhead. He watched her hurry out of the rain and into the bookshop. He liked redheads, always had.

  He reached for the pack of cigarettes in his jacket but remembered the rain so he stuck his hands in his pockets instead.

  A few minutes later, having seen all he needed to for now, he turned away from the corner and headed up Candlemaker Row.

  But then he remembered something. The pub. He stopped and turned around again. That’s right. The redhead and the guy from the pub. Delaney’s Wee Pub was closed right now, lights off, but it would open later. Yes, he might be able to do something there, something that might make this angle easier.

  He’d check it out, he thought as he set off again, with a somewhat satisfied pep in his step.

  ONE

  A WEEK LATER

  “Wow!” I said as I stepped out of the cab and looked over its top toward the castle. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Aye, ’tis,” Elias said grudgingly. “We’ve our fair share of these sorts of places around ’ere, I s’pose.”

  “We aren’t very far out of Edinburgh. I thought we’d have to go farther to see something like this,” I said.

  “No, not far at all.”

  “The Edinburgh Castle is stunning, but this one’s different. This one is much more … primitive.” I stepped around the cab and moved next to Elias.

  “Aye,” he said after a brief pause.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Just wondering where everyone is. This is usually a popular place for the tourists; I’ve driven one or two oot here myself. Not raining and not too cold right now either.” He looked around the small parking lot, empty except for us and his cab. “More on the weekends, I s’pose.” He lifted the cap from his head and then replaced it. His eyes scanned again, this time peering up at the castle and then into the surrounding trees.

  I didn’t think it was the lack of other visitors that bothered him. He was uncomfortable about the reason we were there. He and his wife, Aggie, had made their concerns perfectly clear. The empty parking lot and the lack of other visitors bothered him more today than they would have under different circumstances.

  “Well, it’s not as cold as it has been, but it’s still pretty cold, and it’s bound to rain sometime soon,” I said too cheerily as I looked up at the dark, cloudy sky and the old castle.

  Elias grumbled.

  Elias and Aggie had been the perfect landlords as well as a kind and loving surrogate family, but sometimes they were a wee bit overprotective. They hadn’t had children of their own. They’d never gone through the process of watching a child grow and become independent. As a result they sometimes forgot that I was an adult. In fact, I was close to thirty, but to them, I was “their Delaney, their lass from Kansas in America” who’d only come into their lives a few months earlier. Most of the time this was ideal; I welcomed their care and concern, and though I’d made the move across the world to prove to myself that I could be brave and bold, I’d had a few moments when the comfort from parents, even surrogate ones, had been appreciated.

  But I still had a job to do. I’d known my boss, Edwin MacAlister, was mysterious and eccentric from the first moment I’d walked into his bookshop, The Cracked Spine, so this newly assigned task hadn’t seemed too strange. But this morning when I told Elias and Aggie the bare bones of the assignment—that I was going to meet someone on the top of the Castle Doune, just outside of Edinburgh, to pick up a comic book for Edwin—they’d first been intrigued, then curious, then wide-eyed with worry. They’d already decided that Elias would take me in his cab long before I could ask him for the ride.

  Edwin had asked me to meet someone at the castle who would bring with him an item that Edwin had purchased, or at least acquired in some sort of transaction. Edwin, seemingly on purpose, had avoided sharing more specific details about said transaction. However, I would know the person who was to hand over the item by their clothing. We would share some secret words to confirm that we’d been successful in finding each other, and the hand-off would follow. It was all very cloak-and-dagger but Edwin had assured me I would be completely safe. I suspected he thought the whole notion of clandestine meetings was something I enjoyed. He was correct. I liked the secretive nature of his world. I liked that he’d been slowly letting me in on his many secrets. I thought that this assignment was doled out in the manner that was “just his way.” Elias and Aggie knew Edwin but not as well as I did, so though I was working very hard to look unconcerned for Elias’s sake, I did feel a tiny tug of a smile because Edwin would be pleased with the dark clouds adding to the atmosphere.

  My contact atop the roof would be wearing tights and a long tunic with a belt, similar to an outfit I remember wearing when I was in junior high school. He would be dressed as a famous Scottish historical figure who had lived and fought during the thirteenth century, a good three hundred years before kilts became a component of Scottish men’s wardrobes. Ac
cording to Edwin, back then men, particularly fighting men, wore whatever they had. They were poor, didn’t even wear military garb as they fought for their independence or to defend their property. They were rarely without their longswords though, their wicked and heavy instruments of battle and bloodshed. Edwin made sure to tell me that my contact was not going to bring his sword.

  My contact was an actor, a reenactor actually. He spent much of his time near a castle in Stirling, in a clearing next to a nearby William Wallace monument. He acted a role in a playacted battle that, when it was real back in the thirteenth century, had ultimately taken the Stirling Castle away from England and put it back into Scotland’s possession. It had been a big win for the Scottish.

  My contact wasn’t the only William Wallace reenactor in Stirling, but I got the impression from Edwin that he took his role and his contribution to teaching Scottish history very seriously. I didn’t quite understand the depth of what was truly behind Edwin’s proud tone of voice, but I knew that the history of William Wallace was particularly meaningful to him and, evidently, the man I was to meet.

  Edwin was a man of his country; the history of Scotland was infused into his consciousness and bloodstream.

  When I’d once had a conversation with Elias and Aggie about William Wallace, they’d both puffed up a little, their faces becoming stern and serious, their reverence showing, though neither had become quite as emotional as Edwin had.

  I moved closer to Elias and hooked his arm with mine as he scowled at the castle. I said, “It’s okay. It’s just a comic book. It’s not worth as much as some of Edwin’s treasures.”

  The comic book was a collectors’ item, though it wasn’t like the thin, flimsy comic books I knew from back home. This one was a much more solid book, an annual, a collection of two years’ worth of Oor Wullie comics, a popular strip that has been a part of The Sunday Post in Scotland since 1937. A new annual had been published every other year except during World War II. The annual I was to gather was from 1948, the first one published after the war. It was, apparently, in mint condition and probably worth a few thousand dollars, which was not much when compared to some of Edwin’s other acquisitions and collections.

  “Aye, ye’re probably correct,” Elias said. “It’s probably not worth as much as some things. I just dinnae understand why we had tae come oot here tae pick it up. It seems like someone is trying tae hide something. Why not just deliver it tae the bookshop, or mail it, special messenger even?”

  “That wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.”

  Though mysterious and eclectic, my boss was also a caring man. He and Elias were a lot alike when it came to what my grandmother called the meat and potatoes of a person, even if they had come from completely different places. Edwin had been born into and raised around money. Elias had come from no money—less than no money according to some stories that Aggie had shared with me. Both of them were good men, all the way to their cores, kind people who cared for and put others first. They were much more alike than different and they both saw that. A friendship had formed.

  As caring and kind as they were, though, they both had their fair share of secrets and they knew how to keep things lively and interesting, like with adventures such as this one. My time in Scotland hadn’t been boring, and considering the friends I’d made and my vast array of duties at The Cracked Spine, boredom wasn’t in my near future.

  “Maybe Edwin thought I’d like the adventure of it all,” I continued. “I do. It’s fun. He probably knew I’d get you to bring me out and thought I’d like to see the castle with you.”

  “Meebe,” Elias said.

  I laughed, pulled my arm from his, rubbed my gloved hands together, and gathered my coat collar up around my neck. “Come on. Let’s wait inside for the guy in some tights with a comic book. We’re early and we’ll let him find us.”

  Surreptitiously, I looked toward the parking lot entrance, but no one else was coming this direction.

  “I suppose ye’re right,” Elias said unconvincingly.

  It had been drizzling first thing that morning in Edinburgh. Clear blue skies had followed for about ten minutes, and then the clouds had come back, darker and promising more than just a drizzle. Blue skies and shining suns were rare things in Scotland, even more so in late November. My parents had e-mailed me a picture of their farm’s front yard after a recent winter storm. Mom’s green sewing yardstick had been stuck into the snow just off the front porch, illustrating that there were already twelve inches of the white stuff over their patch of Kansas farmland. The highlands of Scotland had snow, but those of us around Edinburgh hadn’t seen any yet. I was told we might not, that it usually didn’t snow much in that part of the country, maybe a couple of inches around December and January. If we didn’t, it would be the first snow-free winter of my life, as well as the darkest one. The sun set around midafternoon this time of year in Scotland. For the most part my internal clock had adjusted, but during the rare moments when I wasn’t busy, afternoon naps had become more tempting than ever.

  Castle Doune was located about an hour away from Edinburgh, off the Glasgow Road motorway, and at the end of a short trip down a curvy two-lane road. From the parking lot and the walking path to the castle, it was impossible to know that we were close to a small town—Dunblane, Elias had said—and still close to the motorway. The traffic noise didn’t reach us, and Dunblane was in the other direction, past some rolling hills.

  I’d never been on those roads before, and for the first time I had noticed that the road signs were in miles, not kilometers. Elias hadn’t had a good explanation as to why; he’d shrugged and said that’s just the way it was.

  As we walked up the path we still didn’t see or hear any other visitors. We were in a hidden pocket of the countryside and I didn’t want Elias to sense I was spooked at all, but I was glad he was with me.

  Castle Doune wasn’t like the Edinburgh Castle. There were no ticket booths outside, no tour guides or docents to move us from one spot to the next, no fancy decorations. It was simply what remained of an old stone castle. It was smaller than the castle in Edinburgh, but almost as well preserved. It was made with simple straight lines and corners, intimidating high walls with only a few spots cut for windows and arrow loops, slits that real arrows had been fired through back in the day.

  “’Tis a courtyard castle,” Elias said. “Once we’re through that doorway, ye’ll see the courtyard. Up there,” he pointed to the roof, “we’ll be able tae see the countryside and the River Teith.”

  “Are those the battlements?” I looked up at the ragged border along the top. Time had given the castle a worn charm and had taken away a few stones that made up the original and onetime straight and even roofline.

  “Aye.”

  “That’s where we’re supposed to meet him.”

  “Aye.”

  “We’ll be careful,” I said with a reassuring smile. I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled upward, “Hello! Anyone there?”

  No one answered.

  Elias grumbled again.

  As he had said it would, the doorway we went through led us directly into a courtyard, an open square-shaped patch of land enclosed by more castle walls. A tall stairway was attached to the courtyard wall to our right and would take us up to the living spaces.

  “I’ll lead the way. Stick close tae me,” Elias said.

  I was still prone to moments of awe because of the authenticity of Scotland. We were at the edge of a courtyard of an old castle that had been built a long time ago; a place where real people had lived and fought and died. It wasn’t some ride at an amusement park or a place to simulate a bygone experience. I’d spent many a moment in Scotland simply soaking in the atmosphere, letting my crazy imagination move back in time and run amok.

  “Lass?” Elias said from the top of the stairway. “Close tae me.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  I hurried up the stairs and followed him inside the living quarters.

&n
bsp; “Shall we go directly up tae the battlements?” he said.

  “We’re early,” I said again as I looked at my watch. “I bet it will be even colder on the roof. How do we get up there?”

  Elias pointed to a narrow opening where I spotted part of a circular stairway. The walls around the steps were tight and claustrophobic. We’d only want to go up once.

  “Give me a quick tour down here and then we’ll go,” I said.

  We still hadn’t come upon other visitors, but Elias wasn’t in much of a mood to play tour guide. We moved very quickly, and I didn’t ask the questions I wanted to ask about the Great Hall, the large kitchen, and the other rooms that made up the living spaces. I made mental notes for later.

  A long worn wooden table with thick round legs had been placed in the Great Hall, but there was no other furniture on the faded stone floors, no throw rugs, no tapestries on the walls. I sensed the history and was strangely, briefly, and unreasonably saddened that it was no longer anyone’s home.

  Living inside old castles wouldn’t make much sense. Stone walls and floors, no insulation, no modern heating or cooling systems, no plumbing, at least in the sense we twenty-first-century folks were accustomed to. They were not designed for modern comfort. Still, castles had once been homes, places that were fought fiercely for.

  I hadn’t yet encountered my first Scottish ghost, at least one that I was sure of. I’d had unusual moments that included breathy tickles on the back of my neck or a flash of something out of the corner of my eye. I’d had similar moments back in Kansas but here, in Scotland, those moments had seemed somehow stretched longer, both more solid and more made of vapor too. Real but fleeting.

  As I stood still and let myself just “be” in the kitchen with its gaping wide stone fireplace, as tall as me and still darkened with soot, I wished for a spectral visit.

  Unfortunately, Elias wasn’t on the same page. My moment of silence wasn’t given a full moment.