The Blue Hackle by Lillian Stewart Carl

cherry.
    Scott drank deeply. After a tentative sip
over her protruding lower lip, Heather allowed, “It’s good,” and
retracted the pout.
    Reminding herself that the drink was full of
alcohol and her stomach was full of air, Jean let one swallow of
insidious sweetness slide down her throat. Then she cradled the
warm cup between her cool hands and pushed aside any comparison of
the crimson drink to crimson blood. Nor did she ask if Thomson or
Portree had taken Fergie up on his offer of sandwiches in the staff
sitting room . . . no, wait, was that a door opening far down the
hall and a couple of male voices?
    “What’s that burning in the fireplace?” asked
Dakota.
    “Peat,” Fergie answered, and launched a
soliloquy about peat bogs, and wood as a precious resource, and the
Yule log in the Great Hall among other observances planned for
tomorrow night—his smile was that of a child anticipating Santa
Claus—and how the Log represented the Yule bonfire, which was a
major observance along the outer rim of Scotland and its islands,
the areas heavily influenced by the Norse, as evidenced by the fire
festival Up-Helly-Aa in the Shetlands every January.
    None of the Krums blinked. Jean edged closer
to the door. Yes, her internal sonar detected Alasdair’s voice.
    “This is the time of year,” Fergie went on,
“when trows or trolls come out from the underworld and carry
mortals away. Not to worry, though, we’re protected here at
Dunasheen by our Green Lady.”
    Not necessarily, Jean thought.
    “The Green Lady’s our resident ghost or
fairy, a glaistig, green being the fairy color. The story
goes that you can hear her singing, in a fashion, when something
either bad or good is going to happen. Or you can see her gliding
silently toward the house . . .”
    The glass wobbled in Dakota’s hand and her
eyes expanded to fill half her face. Heather reached out a
protective hand, but her slice of a gaze turned toward Fergie.
“You’re scaring the kid, Mr. MacDonald.”
    “Fergus, please,” he replied, and, “Oh. I’m
sorry. Mind you, it’s just a story.”
    That wasn’t what he said a little while ago,
but Jean had learned with her nieces and nephews to soften the
edges a bit. Storyteller discretion advised.
    Fergie added, “I’ve never seen or heard a
thing.”
    Oh. With slightest of prickles between
her shoulder blades, like invisible fingertips tracing her spine,
Jean realized that she had heard a thing. That low murmuring wail
in the drawing room hadn’t been Tina’s voice carried over the moor.
The Green Lady had been announcing Greg’s death.
    “I’m not scared,” Dakota said. “I saw a ghost
while we were driving up to the house, a ghost closing the gate in
that tall wall.”
    “Did you now? In the garden, was she?” Fergie
caught himself. “Erm, likely you saw our manager making a round of
the premises.”
    Jean doubted that. Pritchard hadn’t been on
the premises.
    “Dakota,” said Scott, “what did we tell you
about saying things like that?”
    “I don’t know whether it was a man or a
woman,” she insisted. “But it was a ghost. I saw it in the light of
the headlights.”
    Jean had to bite her tongue to keep from
blurting questions. Did the child see someone in a yellow raincoat
or even a reflective coat like those worn by the police? Had she
seen the man in mottled black, whose jacket had had some sort of
shiny, water-repellant coating? Or was the poor child, like Jean
and Alasdair, allergic to ghosts? She’d have been better off
allergic to the dogs. Her parents would have sympathized with
that.
    Standing up, Heather seized the girl’s arm
and pulled her toward a corner of the room, Scott following.
“Dakota, we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. This is your
grade school graduation trip, remember?” Her sotto voce hiss
wasn’t sotto enough, and carried over the jazzed-up, dumbed-down
version of “Silent Night” that jangled from the speakers.
    Dakota’s lower lip,