Ashes of the Wise

Chapter One

I stood at the foot of two hospital beds. On my right lay Jasher, his face pale and thin, his lashes dark against his cheek. He snored quietly, his hands resting on the covers, an IV sending fluids into his body. To the left lay Evelyn, and though she was no longer in a coma, she still looked malnourished and dehydrated. I had hoped to return her home after the events of twenty-four hours ago, but the potion had only wakened her, not healed her.

I glanced at the clock. It was six-fifteen in the morning and well before visiting hours began, but the receptionist had let me in anyway. She had given me a look that wasn’t easy to unpack, but I thought I knew what it meant. She was a little bit afraid of me, but also reverent, in a way. I had promised I wouldn’t wake my friends, but told her I’d had a bad dream and needed to see them for my own peace of mind. And she’d let me pass.

Lachlan had told me how shocked the medics and receptionist had been when he had arrived at emergency with Evelyn and Jasher, both awake but in bad shape. They were further confused when Lachlan didn’t stay with his friends. At some point, someone must have informed the police.

I heard a soft sound behind me and turned to see Lachlan standing in the doorway.

“I got worried when I looked in your room this morning and you weren’t there,” he whispered. His hair was sleep-mussed and he wore a hoodie with jeans and a pair of white tennis shoes. A five o’clock shadow times two darkened his jawline. When he saw my face, his own expression creased with worry.

I waved him out of the room and joined him in the hall, closing the door quietly behind me. As we walked to a seating area a few yards away, Lachlan put an arm around my shoulders.

“Why so upset? They’re going to be fine. Doc says they’ll both recover in a matter of days.”

I looked at him, struggling for words.

He kissed my forehead and squeezed me against his side. “It’s all over, Georjie. You did it. Despite the questions we both answered yesterday, and I’m sure there will be more, I can promise you no one will press charges. Evelyn is no longer in a coma. Her parents are over the moon.” He looked at his watch. “They’ll be here in an hour.”

He thought I was worried about the cops. I didn’t know how to begin to tell him what the problem really was.

“Interesting that the receptionist let us both in.” Lachlan chuckled as we settled on one of the couches. “I think she’s a little afraid of us now.”

I couldn’t find a smile for him. My lower lip trembled and I put my face in my hands. “Lachlan—”

“Hey.” Alarmed, he put a hand on my back. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s not over, Lachlan.” The words spilled out along with the tears sitting in my eyes. I wiped furiously at my cheeks. Anger at myself boiled to the surface. “I did exactly the wrong thing.”

“What do you mean?” He rubbed circles over my back. “You saved Evie, you saved us all.”

“You remember that I told you how I can see events from the past when I pick up a handful of soil? Whatever happened on that ground appears before me in black and white, like an old movie on a TV with poor reception and no sound.”

“Of course, I’ll never forget it.” Lachlan tucked a stray hair behind my ear. “I hate seeing you like this.”

“I think, maybe, if I was a stronger Wise, I would be able to hear the residuals too. Laec told me how to see the events that happened on paved ground. I’d never been able to do that before and I never would have figured it out on my own.” I looked up at him, wiping away another tear. I was irritated with my own emotions, and truly more angry than anything else. “Laec woke me up early this morning.”

Lachlan’s head recoiled with surprise. “He was in my house?”

I nodded. “I woke up to find him sitting on the footboard and looking at me like…” I rubbed a hand over my eyes, wishing I could erase the memory of his expression. “Like I was a total failure.”

“Georjie…”

“He did something to me, knocked me back into the same residual, the one where I watched that couple entomb Daracha in the wall, only this time it had sound. I could hear everything.” My voice trembled and I gave up trying to stop tears from falling down my face. They were there whether I liked it or not.

Lachlan wiped my cheek with the back of his hand.

“I know why they put her in that wall, Lachlan.”

“Why, was she a Wise, too? Is that what’s got you so upset? They had an agenda against people like you?”

I shook my head. “No, she’s not a Wise. She’s like the opposite of a Wise. I felt her power. The ground where she stood felt cold and dead. Impenetrable. Like concrete. Whatever magic she has, it’s nothing like mine. Mine comes from the earth, and hers…I don’t know where it comes from. She’s like a black hole.”

“Like the ithe,” Lachlan injected. “It reminded me of a black hole, too.”

I nodded. “It’s like that thing is a manifestation of Daracha’s powers, something she created to do her bidding. I don’t get why it didn’t just release her from the wall after she was entombed, but I do understand why they didn’t bury her.” I looked Lachlan in the face and squeezed his hand. “The couple implied that if Daracha was buried, she could come back to life. The only way they could keep her from resurrecting was to keep her out of the ground.”

The pink in Lachlan’s cheeks drained away as he stared at me. His mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. “Oh, crap.”

I nodded. “Yeah, oh crap.”

“So, she’s not dead.”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“She’ll come back to life.”

“Yep.”

“When?”

“No idea.”

We stared at the floor in silence for a bit, before Lachlan perked up, hopeful.

“Maybe this time she’ll stay dead,” he said. “Or if she does come back, she’ll go away, go somewhere else.”

“You’re dreaming, Lachlan, and anyway can we really take that chance? I’m the one who killed her, and there was something she wanted from me. She knows what I am. She’ll come after me. Maybe she’ll come for all of us.”

Lachlan’s face hardened. “Then we have to use whatever time we have to get ready for her.”

“How do we do that?”

“Forewarned is forearmed.” Lachlan got off the couch and began to pace, chewing his bottom lip. His eyes looked far away. “We found a little bit about Daracha in the public record, and if there’s a little, there might be more. If we can understand who she is and what she wants, then we can better prepare to face her.”

“We?” I stood and eyeballed him, this sweet man who had come to mean so much to me since I’d arrived in the highlands. His insistence we do everything together, or at least not to allow me to do this alone, warmed me all over. But I couldn’t let more people put themselves in danger for me. “I’ll face her alone, Lachlan. There’s no way I’ll let her get to anyone else.”

“She’s seen us, Georjie. She knows what we all look like, the four of us. You might want to face her alone, but if she decides to come after us, you won’t have a choice.” He stopped pacing and an enlightened look came over his face. “We need to go to where she’s from.”

“Dundee?”

“Aye. She’s a Guthrie, one of the larger clans of that area. They’re bound to have some record of her. Maybe we can figure out how she came to be…whatever it is that she is.”

“A witch.”

“Yes, and maybe your fae friends can help you. They helped once before.”

“The only problem is that I have no idea how to reach them. When I go looking for them, I never find them. They don’t seem to have a problem popping up whenever they feel like it,” I snarked. But I liked his idea of tracing Daracha’s roots. Maybe we could unearth something from her past that would help me to beat her, or at least understand her end game.

“There’s a reason she left Dundee in the first place,” Lachlan said. “Like I said, women at that time didn’t have much reason to travel, except for on the rare occasion that they were married off to a faraway clan. But Daracha did leave. Maybe something happened in Dundee to scare her away.”

I nodded. “Or she got run out of town. How soon can you get away?”

“We can go today, Georjie.” Lachlan took me by the elbows. “If you’re right and that creature is going to come back for us, then there’s nothing more important than this. It’s three-and-a-half-hour drive to Dundee from here. Like all the bigger clans, they’ll have an ancestral home and private family records. We can ask them if they’re willing to share.”

My heart picked up its pace at the idea of rooting out Daracha’s origins, finding out what made her tick. “Just how receptive are highland families to opening their doors to strangers?”

“To a historian, very receptive.” He glanced toward the room where Jasher and Evelyn slept. “We’ll leave these two a note and pop by tomorrow when we’re back. We can book a couple of rooms in Dundee for tonight.”

“What if we find nothing?”

Lachlan dimpled. “Don’t underestimate the pride these highland clans have. A more appropriate question would be: what if we find a mountain of stuff and can’t possibly get through it all in one day?”

“And if that’s the case?” I was on my own schedule; it was Lachlan who had employers to answer to.

Lachlan shrugged and his dimple deepened. “In that case, I call in for a couple of mental health days, and we make a weekend of it.”

I hid my smile and reached for my bag to find a pen and paper. Sitting on the couch, I scrawled a note to Jasher and Evelyn. I left it sitting on the dresser between them and met Lachlan in the hall.

“Mind if we stop for a cup of coffee on our way?” I asked as I pulled on my jacket. We nodded to the receptionist as we passed through the lobby. She watched us go with quiet contemplation.

Lachlan winked as we walked through the sliding doors into a misty highland morning. “Make it a trough of coffee and we have a deal.”

Chapter Two

As we crested a winding hill, the Guthrie estate came into view. While we were en-route, I had booked us two rooms at a B&B in Dundee, thankful that Bonnie and Ainslie thought I was staying at Lachlan’s for a few days to be closer to the clinic for Jasher. I’d also been surprised it only took two calls to track down the correct Guthries after finding literally hundreds of phone numbers. The first person I spoke with had given me the number of the Guthries who still occupied the ancestral home of the Goithras. Calling that number reached an older sounding lady who seemed eager for company and invited us to visit. The home was twenty minutes outside of Dundee, nestled in a verdant green valley dotted with white sheep and red cows with long shaggy hair over their eyes. Lachlan called these ‘hairy coos.’

A three-story stately home with a steep roofline and batches of chimneys sat at the end of the glen. The roof’s dark gray shingles almost blended fully into the sky, and the clouds were a smooth smear across the horizon, like someone had used a butter knife on them. An antique car that looked like it hadn’t moved since the Second World War sat in front of the house like an ornament.

We drove through the gate at the end of the drive, which stood open, its iron rails leaning off-kilter, its hinges rusted to red. It too looked as though it hadn’t moved in a long time. Gravel popped beneath our tires as Lachlan drove his car down the lane and brought it to a stop behind the antique car. After turning off the engine, we got out and craned our necks up at the old building.

Ivy crusted the north side of the house like a blanket, nearly swallowing up the windows. Where the structure showed through the curtain of green, stout gray stones were revealed. Small vertical windows peeked from the turrets on both sides of the house.

The air smelled vaguely of manure. The bleating of distant sheep and the bawl of calves echoed through the valley, probably complaining about the cold. Couldn’t blame them, I thought as I shivered inside my parka and hitched my scarf up to cover my mouth and chin.

Lachlan took my hand as we headed for the front steps. They were crumbling at the edges and worn in the middle. I wondered how much it cost to keep a manor like this warm and sturdy. Having stayed in a castle myself now, I knew enough to expect that some rooms would be as hot as an incubator, while in others you’d be able to see your breath.

The door swung open before we even had a chance to bang the brass horse-head knocker.

“Och, ye’ve made it.” A woman stood in the doorway, her gray hair was done up in an honest-to-goodness Gibson girl bun, silvery tendrils framing her lined face and revealing tiny seed pearls in her earlobes.

“Don’t just stand there, come in and leave the cold outside where it belongs. We’ve a devil of a time keeping this place warm.” She pulled her plaid wool shawl more tightly around her as she loosed a long, windy laugh and beckoned us inside.

Lachlan and I shared a smile. This lady was like everybody’s favorite grandmother—adorable.

“I’m the Guthrie you spoke to on the phone and the only one here until teatime. I’ve three sons, three daughters-in-law, and a gaggle of grandchildren. All visiting at the same time, but they’ve all gone out for the day. It’s not raining for the first time in six days and t’would be a shame for them to miss the fair.”

“You’ve stayed home just for us?” Lachlan shot me a guilty look. “That was kind.”

He pushed the twelve-foot oak slab doors closed and bolted them. Gloom swept around us, the space lit by a few dim, scattered lights.

“Nonsense. The Guthries would never turn away a chance to share our story with the world.” She waved with her beringed hands, indicating she wanted our coats. We handed them over and she proceeded to attempt to hang them on the hooks lining the wall, only she couldn’t reach.

“Let me.” Lachlan took the coats and hooked them.

“Thank you, laddie. We dinna see much of the likes of ye these days. Seems most historians prefer to use the interwebs over getting off their bottoms and going straight to the source.” She placed the glasses hanging from a chain of pearls around her neck onto her nose and peered through the bifocal lenses up at me, then at Lachlan.

“Not everything is on the interwebs,” I said with a smile.

“Goodness, ye’re a bonny couple. Are ye sure you’re researchers and not actors from that popular time travel show?” She laughed at her own joke and added proudly, “We’ve been scouted for television many times before. This manor has been used in no less than three productions.” She trilled the ‘r’ heavily on the ‘three’ while holding up three fingers, the jewels in her rings flashing.

I laughed, pulling my cardigan close around me and trying not to make my shivering too visible. She saw it anyway and frowned.

“Perhaps I shouldna have taken yer coats. Keep them if ye wish. Where we’re going, ye risk a chance of frostbite.”

Lachlan and I grabbed our coats back and followed her as she waddled across the expansive foyer, headed for the broad staircase. I noticed fuzzy pink socks bulged above her soft leather loafers as we trailed her up two levels of carpeted stairs at a surprisingly brisk pace.

“On cold winter days I walk every step in the house,” she was saying as she led us down a long hallway lined with warped mirrors and a lot of dog paintings. At the end of the hall. we entered a narrow wooden stairway. ‘Servants stairs,’ she called them, and the temperature dropped significantly.

“That’s a lot of stairs,” Lachlan said, slightly out of breath.

“Aye. Gives me an opportunity to plug the leaks, stop up the drafts, and get me exercise. If you stop climbing stairs at my age, then one day you’ll find you won’t be able to.” Pulling a set of keys from the pocket of her circa nineteen-fifty-something dress—straight out of Housemaid’s Weekly catalog—Mrs. Guthrie unlocked a low wooden door with a dented and tarnished handle.

“We keep this room locked so the grandchildren aren’t tempted to muddle things up or––God forbid––play with matches in here.” She loosed that dry laugh. “Samuel is a real terror, the bane of his mother’s life, but I love the little laddie. Even if he is a pyromaniac. Here we are.”

The room was dim and dusty but appealing nonetheless. Three worn leather chairs made a semicircle around an old fire grate. A black mantel, carved with running horses and hunting dogs, stood high over the fireplace. Cupboards and bookshelves took up every available inch of wall space. Several filing cabinets were crushed between the shelves, labeled with handwritten stickers.

“Looks pretty organized,” Lachlan observed, sweeping his gaze around the room. “Is this all your work?”

“Goodness, no.” She flapped a hand. “My son Thomas’s wife, Irene. She’s frighteningly orderly, a paralegal for a big-time lawyer in London. She unleashed her skills on the contents of this room back in the eighties and it’s hardly been touched since. I have to admit, I’m not certain I can point you in the right direction, but we’re happy to give you access for the day. As long as you promise to leave everything the way it was found.”

“Of course, we’re grateful for your generosity, Mrs. Guthrie,” said Lachlan, his hat in his hand. He realized he was still holding it and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

“Please.” She made that hand flapping gesture again, rings flashing. “Call me Daracha.”

Lachlan and I shared a look of astonishment.

“Your name is Daracha?” I croaked.

“Aye.” Her eyes crinkled. “It’s a verra old family name. I hated it as a little girl, but I came to accept it, as we do when we are older. We fight while we’re young, only to learn that it’s much smarter to pick your battles. Changing my name was out of the question, so.” She shrugged, fluttering the Peter Pan collar made of lace that graced her throat.

“Are you acquainted with the history of your name?” I asked. “Within your family, I mean.”

“Somewhat. To my knowledge, there have been four other Daracha Guthries in our history, although if you go back far enough, they would have been known as Goithra, not Guthrie. Our family history goes further back than the witch trials, but our records get a little thin prior to the fourteenth century.”

Lachlan and I shared simultaneous grins. “Genius,” I mouthed at him.

He pretended to flick lint off his shoulder, looking smug.

“If you’re looking for more on the history of the name, you’ll find that filing cabinet,” she pointed at a tall black one to the right of the fireplace, “has documents alphabetized, while that one,” she pointed to a silver one on the other side of the grate, “has documents organized by date. They contain copies of the same, mind you, with a few exceptions. One day Irene swears she’ll transition everything into digital, but I’ve yet to see her have time to even think about tackling such a job. More than likely the task will fall to one of my grandchildren, when they are older. The younger generation seems to understand technology so much better than the rest of us.”

“It’s an important thing to do,” said Lachlan. “Otherwise the records risk becoming lost or too degraded to read properly.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I think you are right. I can barely read me own wedding certificate anymore.”

“So those two cabinets have the exact same records, only organized in a different way?” I asked, just so I understood.

“That’s right, but there will be some anomalies. You’ll also find many of the files will reference items that can’t fit in the filing cabinets. Those will have a number attached, which should correspond to the shelves.” She pointed at the numerous cabinets, each labeled with a sticker underneath the handle. “Where you should be able to find the item in question.”

“Brilliant,” remarked Lachlan. “I might have to chat with Irene. My collection continues to grow and becomes more disorganized every year.”

“Ye’re not likely to get much of her time, she’s a very busy woman, but she’d be flattered if I told her you plan to replicate her system. Now, I think I’ll leave you for the time being. If you need me, you can press the bell just there.” Mrs. Guthrie gestured to a small black metal button beside the trim. “I’ll check in on you later.”

We thanked her again, but before she left I thought it would be silly not to ask if she knew anything about her namesake. “Do you happen to remember a Daracha Guthrie who moved up north to the Inverness area? A small town called Blackmouth, specifically. We’re told she was accused of witchcraft and was put in jail in Blackmouth to await trial. The records there say that she either escaped or was let out before her sentencing. Does it ring a bell?”

Mrs. Guthrie’s white eyebrows twitched. “I do know a little about that story, yes. But it’s a good thing you’ve come to the horse’s mouth, so to speak, as you’ve got your facts wrong. The Daracha that left Dundee for Blackmouth was not accused of witchcraft herself; she accused someone else of witchcraft. A woman named Gilbarta, if I’m not mistaken, who was eventually burned at the stake.” She shuddered. “Awful time in our history, simply terrible. What foolishness our people have suffered.”

Lachlan and I shared another look. “Daracha accused someone of witchcraft down here, you mean?” Lachlan asked.

“Aye, Gilbarta was burned in Dundee. The first ever to burn in this area, if my memory serves.”

“Then why couldn’t both be true?” I asked. “Daracha accuses Gilbarta of witchcraft while she’s still living in Dundee, Gilbarta burns. Daracha leaves Dundee and ends up in Blackmouth where she gets accused herself.”

“There’s some poetic kind of irony in that, if that’s the case.” Mrs. Guthrie crossed her arms over her bosom and peered at us through her bifocals. “You’ve come across evidence that Daracha was accused while up north?”

Lachlan nodded. “You didn’t know?”

“It’s news to me, but there is a lot I don’t know about my own family history,” she admitted. “I know the glamorous things, like one of my great-uncles was knighted, and one of my mother’s great-great-uncles invented a special gun. One of the Guthries was awarded a purple heart.” She sighed. “There is too much to keep in one’s brain, especially an old brain like mine. I think most people more easily remember the miserable things of their past, but I’ve never been like that. I try to remember the good.”

“We know that Daracha ended up in prison in Blackmouth; we have seen the records,” I explained. “We also know that she was either freed or she escaped. A body was discovered stoned up in the wall of a building a few weeks ago. We think it’s Daracha, but the authorities need more proof before they’ll put a name on the Jane Doe.”

“Well.” Mrs. Guthrie looked impressed. “That’s quite a tale. And you think you might find something in our records that will help you piece the story together?”

“Exactly.”

“I’ll leave you to it then.” She moved toward the door.

“One last question,” Lachlan said, getting to the door before her and opening it. “If we find something useful, may we take a photo of it?”

“Certainly. Just be aware that some items Irene has wrapped in plastic, in which case just ask me for a pair of gloves before you handle them.” She touched a finger to her lips. “In fact, I think…” She went to one of the cupboards and pulled open a drawer. Retrieving a pair of thin, velvet gloves, she handed them to me. “Here you go. These won’t fit the lad, but they’ll fit you just fine.”

We thanked her and she left the room to us.

“Where to start?” Lachlan asked, scanning the cabinets.

“You take the alphabetical files, and I’ll start with the chronological ones. I don’t know about you, but I’m curious about Daracha’s conflict with this other woman.” I moved toward the filing cabinet with the dated labels.

“Aye. Gilbarta. Maybe we’ll learn why Daracha left Dundee in the first place.”

“Up until recently,” I said as I slid open a drawer and began to walk my fingers through the files, looking for anything labeled with early seventeenth century dates, “I thought the witchcraft trials were all bogus, that the women—”

“And some men, too,” Lachlan injected.

“—And men, were innocent victims of a religious hysteria. Now that I’ve actually met a witch, it makes me wonder how many of the accused might actually have had powers.”

“After what you told me about Daracha, it’s easy to think that some of them definitely had power.” Lachlan opened his filing cabinet and began to peruse the contents. “Right, let’s see what we can find.”