Riley winced. Reminders that her real life was someone else’s sideshow circus could make a girl feel cheap, if she let them.
Accustomed to using people’s drink order as a bellwether for their character, out of habit, her eyes fell to check what they were drinking. Riley groaned.
“Not mojitos.” Far and away the most tedious cocktail to prepare. She revised her previous analysis of their threat level. To make matters worse, their table held the remnants of several rounds.
“All that muddling.” She rubbed phantom pain from her wrist.
Eilean barked out a laugh. “You’ve spent some time behind a bar, then?”
“More than I’d care to admit.”
They shared a commiserating sigh.
“Do you get a lot of gawkers?”
“Not enough,” Eilean pursed her lips. “The Loch Ness monster is obviously a big draw for bringing supernatural enthusiasts to the Highlands, but unfortunately for us, the curse on Arden Castle scares off more tourists than it brings in.” She grabbed a rag to wipe down the bar where a bit of beer had splashed. “The latest landlords have promised to make a big investment in turning the castle into a vacation destination that will ‘revitalize the whole village,’ but we’ve heard that promise enough that we try not to get our hopes up anymore.”
“Maybe these guys will surprise you.” Riley pulled a card out of her wallet and extended it to Eilean. No one really used business cards anymore. Even though she’d gotten them on sale, they’d been an irresponsible purchase. But they added an air of legitimacy that her unconventional offering still required.
“At the very least, they hired me.” Based on what Riley could tell from their website, her new employer, Cornerstone Investments, was a land developer based in London. The latest in a long list of investors both public and private who had inked their name on Arden’s deed, they were a relatively young company with eager, if green, staff.
“A curse breaker?” Eilean arched a finely crafted eyebrow. “No wonder that weedy project manager looked right pleased with himself last time he came in here.”
Considering how frazzled and desperate he’d been when they spoke on the phone a week ago, Riley took that as a vote of confidence in her abilities.
“Still.” As Eilean handed back the card, her voice took on a new note of gravity. “Arden Castle is no place for the faint of heart.”
Riley’s ears perked up at the first hint of a lead.
“You believe in the curse, then?” Not always a guarantee, even among locals.
“Oh, aye”—Eilean laughed humorlessly—“and anyone who thinks I’ve had a choice in the matter hasn’t been here long. I’ve seen enough people broken by that curse over the course of my life-time to know that land doesn’t want to be owned and the curse ensures it won’t.”
When a guest at the other end of the bar held up two fingers, the bartender nodded and began pulling a pair of fresh pints while simultaneously finishing her warning. “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“I’m a professional,” Riley assured her firmly as she slipped the card back into the pocket of her jeans. Part of the gig was projecting confidence in the face of the unknown. Gumption, as Gran called it, was an essential trait for curse breakers. “But the more I can learn about the curse, and quickly,” she said with a meaningful head tilt, “the better my odds.”
The little time she’d had to research in the short period between receiving the assignment and arriving in Scotland had left her with more questions than answers. Arden Castle didn’t attract the same obsessive analysis and “eyewitness account” forum fodder as other Highland supernatural stories. A cursory Internet search hadn’t turned up many hits.
Maybe it was like Eilean said, that the close proximity of Loch Ness, or even the standing stones at Clava Cairns, simply drew interest. Or maybe it was because castles, cursed or not, were a dime a dozen in the UK. Whatever the reason, Riley knew she would have to tap into the firsthand experiences and folklore of locals like Eilean—people who had grown up in the castle’s backyard—to get this job done.
“Very well.” Eilean’s mouth pulled to the side. “I suppose it’s better you hear from me than the sensationalized tales of these hooligans.” She raised her chin toward the armchair crowd from earlier.
Riley eagerly pulled out a pocket notebook and pen from her purse. “Start at the beginning, please.”
It was curse breaking 101: pin down the origin.
In their most basic form, curses were uncontrollable energy. And power stabilized when you completed a circuit back to the source. Riley’s first task was always uncovering specific details: who, when, why, and how.
“Now, I’m not a historian, mind you.” Eilean popped open a jar of olives and began to spear them in pairs while she spoke. “But based on what I’ve always heard, the curse started roughly three hundred years ago.”
Riley leaned forward. An origin date somewhere in the eighteenth century was a broad window, but it gave her something to start with in terms of timeline.
“A land war had broken out in Torridon between the Campbells, the clan who held the castle at the time, and the Graphms, who controlled the region to the east.” Eilean kept one eye on her customers as she spoke and patiently spelled out the Gaelic version of “Graphm” when Riley jotted down the names.
“The fighting was so bitter and so deadly that it nearly wiped out both clans.”
Already the set pieces were starting to make sense. Gran had taught Riley that curses came from people, born out of their most extreme emotions—suffering, longing, desperation—feelings so raw, so heavy, that they poured out and drew consequences from the universe.
A blood feud made the perfect catalyst. All that burning hatred, the sheer magnitude of anguish from so many lost loved ones.
“The tale goes that when both clans’ numbers had dwindled so far that it looked like the castle might soon belong to no one,” Eilean said, her low, lilting voice weaving the story like a tapestry, “one desperate soul went into the mountains, seeking the fae that lived beyond the yew trees, determined to make a terrible deal.”
Ah, the infamous Highland fae. Riley loved a good fairy tale, especially when they were real.
“But which side did the person come from?” By the sounds of it, a member from either clan would have enough they stood to win or lose.
“The name is lost to legend, I’m afraid.” Eilean frowned. “Whoever it was, they made a bad bargain, because the last lines of both clans fell, and the castle lay dormant for years before a lieutenant from the Twenty-First Light Dragoons purchased the place in 1789.”
The bartender paused to hold up the bottle of scotch from before.
With a smile, Riley tapped the bar next to the glass, accepting the offer of a refill.
“Whatever that sorry soul was promised by the fae remains unfulfilled”—Eilean delivered a generous pour—“and the curse persists as a consequence, driving any-and everyone away from that castle.”
Riley bit the inside of her cheek while the bartender went to help another customer. She knew there were tons of regional nuances to curses, but even though popular lore cast the fae as tricksters and mischief-makers eager to make deals with desperate humans, Gran’s journal didn’t say anything specifically about their influence.