“’Wicked cool?’” Brendan asked.
“Aye, brother!” Seamus said, nodding. “They must be from New England. It’s an expression used there. Ask me niece, Devin there!” he said, lifting his coffee cup to her. “She’s a wicked lovely creature, she is!”
“That’s kind, Uncle Seamus. Thank you,” Devin said.
“Wicked cool,” Brendan repeated. “Wicked lovely. I like it!”
“But do you believe it?” Rocky asked him quietly.
“That Devin is a wicked lovely creature? Indeed, I do!” Brendan said lightly.
“Thank you, again Brendan, but that’s not what he means,” Devin said, smiling gently.
Brendan was still and thoughtful for a minute and then he looked at Rocky. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “The sound came the night before the morning the housekeeper found Collum dead.”
Kelly reached out a hand to cover her uncle’s.
“It is the wind tearing against the cliffs, Uncle. I know it,” Kelly said. She didn’t believe it at all, Devin knew. She just wanted her father and her uncle to believe that she wasn’t unnerved or frightened.
“Either that,” Rocky said, “or someone’s mechanical idea of a prank.”
“Mechanical?” Seamus asked.
Seamus, like Brendan—and as Collum had been—was a big man, broad-shouldered, tall, and with a full head of snow-white hair. They had been built ruggedly, Seamus had told Devin once, because rugged was their heritage. Maybe because they hadn’t come from the city, but they’d all been born at Castle Karney, a place as wild as the jagged cliffs that led to the tempest of the Irish Sea.
They’d come from a long line of warriors, he’d once told her proudly—except that now, of course, he prayed for nothing but peace around him, in Ireland, and about the whole of the world.
“I’ve been thinking about the sound all night,” Rocky told them. “I got up and took a look around the tower—it really might be some kind of mechanism.”
“Looking around the tower,” Brendan said. “So that’s what you were doing after you and Devin came to my room and you left Devin there to guard me through the night ’til you returned!”
“I just kept you company,” Devin said.
“And nothing happened, thank the good Lord!” Seamus said, crossing himself.
“And had the banshee been real…” Devin murmured.
“Bizarre that the sound came directly at midnight. Nature isn’t good at planning noises at a precise time. Anyway—it remains to be seen,” Rocky said.
Brendan looked at Rocky and nodded sagely. “Ye’re here to investigate, and that’s a fact. Honeymoon, my arse!” he added, looking reproachfully at Seamus.
“Ach, now, brother. ’Twas Kelly who called on the two of them now,” Seamus protested.
“It is our honeymoon. Really,” Devin told him. “But, of course, it’s true. What we do is investigate.”
“There’s nothing like meeting the family,” Rocky said politely, causing them all to laugh.
“Ah, yes, meet the family!” Brendan said.
“I mean it; it’s wonderful to be here,” Rocky said.
“You’re a good niece!” Seamus told Devin. “And you,” he added, nodding to Rocky, “you seem to be a fine man for my niece.”
“Thank you,” Rocky said.
“Investigate with my sincere blessing!” Brendan said. “I knew my brother well. I never saw such a look on his face. Something odd is definitely afoot, and not even Gary the Ghost really believes in the tales he tells. We love them all, we do. We love our ghosts—and our pixies and leprechauns and so on. But…something is afoot.” He offered them a grim smile. “Wickedly afoot! Collum, just in ground not quite a full two weeks, visitors a-flooding the place, and the festival on the way. We’ve got to know. It would be a hard enough thing, losing m’brother, as it were. But, to wonder like this…’tis painful.”
“I’m so, so sorry, Brendan!” Devin said.
She noticed the way he looked over at Kelly—as if seeing her there pained him as well.
And then she realized that he was worried about her.
“You and Kelly and Uncle Seamus are going to be fine,” Devin said, determined.
He quickly glanced her way, looked down and nodded.
“Uncle Brendan tried to get me to go home,” Kelly said. “He called us for the funeral and to come—and since, he’s tried to make me go back to the States.”
“I shouldn’t have had you here,” Brendan told Kelly and Seamus.
“Collum was my brother, too, Brendan,” Seamus said. “Just because I’m an American now, doesn’t mean he wasn’t my brother. Or,” he added softly, “that I’m not still Irish or that Kelly escapes that, either.”