“Oh?” We’d all spent our fair share of time trying to think of ways we could help Isobel—it came as no surprise to me that Cooper had done the same. “Perhaps, there is a way we could get her some pain relief of some sort, but we can’t do anything for her until the snow melts. You know that, right?”
“That’s not what I’m talking about, Aunt Jane. Have you seen the ghosts?”
A chill shot through me, making every inch of me cold and shaky. Even in the twenty-first century, there’d been whisperings of the hauntings at Cagair Castle, but I was sure I’d never mentioned them to Cooper. The day Kathleen and I had started work on the place, the man who gave us the keys warned us of the spirits that supposedly roamed the castle’s stairways and corridors. It had frightened me so much at the time that I all but begged Kathleen to allow me to sell my half of the deed. She’d managed to talk me down, however, and after spending the first week in the castle without incident, I’d decided to dismiss the castle’s ghostly reputation as a baseless rumor. Still, even the mere mention of the supernatural made me uncomfortable.
I believed in ghosts. How could I not believe in almost anything after being born in a time centuries ahead of that in which I lived now? But even so, the supernatural terrified me. Ghosts, witches, time travel—all of it made me more uncomfortable than the thought of having my who-ha waxed in public. And although I’d never seen a ghost, I’d been in places on more than one occasion where I thought I felt one’s presence. I expected the only reason I’d never seen one was because they could somehow sense my terror and knew that if they stepped out of the shadows, I’d most likely pee my pants and then die.
“No, Coop. I definitely have not. What ghosts? Why? Have you seen any?”
He shook his head, disappointed. “No, I wish though, but I heard Adwen and Orick talking about them in front of me, but you see, they said something very strange.”
“What’s that?” I tried to keep the fear hidden from my voice.
“They were talking about the ghosts’ clothes, and it sounded like the stuff you used to wear. I don’t think they’re ghosts.”
That’s all I needed to hear to take a grateful breath as some of the tension left me. Not that it was good that anything uninvited or quite possibly un-alive was wondering around the castle, but as long as it wasn’t ghosts, I was fine.
“If they’re not ghosts, then what are they?”
“Real people, of course. Just from our time. I think maybe there’s a portal.”
Immediately, I knew what he would say—what Cooper would suggest. If there was such an inexplicably magical portal inside the castle, Cooper would want to go through it to find help. I couldn’t do the time travel thing again. The last time, I was pretty sure everyone around me had grown dangerously close to having me committed. It had frightened me so terribly, and made me that mad. The impossibility of it was something I still had a difficult time wrapping my head around. I thought it best not to encourage where I knew the conversation led.
“I don’t think there’s a portal, Cooper. If there was, someone would have found it by now.”
He stood, suddenly angry with me for being so dismissive. I knew it was the reaction he’d learned to expect from many people around him, but never from me.
“They wouldn’t have found it if it was hidden well. Haven’t you learned from Morna that that’s the way those witches do things?”
His persistence, mingled with my own fear, quickly escalated my own anger causing me to lose my temper.
“What is it with Morna? I really don’t understand why everyone likes her so much. She meddles, and controls, and sends people to times and places they have no business being. If we were meant to be in this time Cooper, we would have been born here. Even if there is some sort of bewitched portal in this castle, we are not going through it.”
His lower lip trembled, but I knew he wouldn’t allow himself to cry in front of me.
“Even…even if it would help Isobel?”
“Yes.” Everything within me knew the wrongness in my response. It was based on fear and concern over Cooper’s safety. Each travel took its toll, and Cooper had been back and forth many times for someone so young. I didn’t wish to be the one responsible for any harm to come to him. “Even for Isobel. She wouldn’t want us putting ourselves at such a risk for her.”
A single tear fell. He turned from me so I wouldn’t see it.
“You’re wrong, Aunt Jane. About everything. There’s no risk in good magic, and we are supposed to be here, in this time. What if the whole reason we are is to help Isobel?”
He ran out of the tower before I could say another word. As I watched him leave, I prayed with the sound of his every footstep that no such portal lay hidden within the castle. If there was, I knew Cooper would find it.
CHAPTER 23