Moon Cursed

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A thousand thank-yous to Jody Allen at Scottish Scribbles for reading the manuscript and making sure I got it right. Jody has a great blog at http://scottishscribbles.blogspot.com/

  Any mistakes are always my own.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Teaser

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Lori Handeland

  Praise for Lori Handeland’s Nightcreature Novels

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  The first recorded sighting of the Loch Ness Monster was by Saint Columba in A.D. 565. The most recent occurred just last year.

  “There’ll be a sighting every year,” Kristin Daniels muttered as she peered at her laptop. “Wouldn’t want to screw with a multi-million-dollar tourist industry.”

  Unless, of course, you were the host of the public television show Hoax Hunters. Kris planned to screw with it a lot.

  In fact, she planned to end it.

  Kris scribbled more notes on her already-scribbled-upon yellow legal pad. This was going to be her biggest and best project to date. The debunking of the Loch Ness Monster would not only put Hoax Hunters on the national radar—hell, she’d probably get picked up for syndication—but also would make her a star.

  “Kris?”

  She glanced up. Her boss, Theo Murdoch, stood in the doorway of her office. He didn’t look happy. Theo rarely did.

  Public television was a crapshoot. Sometimes you won; sometimes you lost. But you were always, always on the verge of disaster.

  “Hey, Theo,” she said brightly. “I was just planning our premier show for next year. You’re gonna love it and so—”

  “Hoax Hunters is done.”

  Kris realized her mouth was still half-open and shut it. Then she opened it again and began to babble. She did that when she panicked. “For the season, sure. But next year is going to be great. It’ll be our year, Theo. You’ll see.”

  “There is no next year, Kris. You’re canceled.”

  “Why?”

  “Ratings, kid. You don’t have ’em.”

  Fury, with a tinge of dread, made Kris snap, “It’s not like we were ever going to compete with Friday Night SmackDown.”

  “And we don’t want to.” Theo’s thin chest barely moved despite the deep breath he drew. The man was cadaverous, yet he ate like a teenaged truck driver. Were there teenaged truck drivers? “Cable’s killing me.”

  Or maybe it was just his high stress and two-packs-a-day diet.

  In Theo’s youth, back when he still had hair, PBS had been the place for the intelligent, discriminating viewer. Now those viewers had eight hundred channels to choose from and some of them even produced a show or two worth watching.

  In the glory days Planet Earth would have been a PBS hit. Instead it had played on the Discovery Channel. Once The Tudors—sans excessive nudity of course—would have been a Masterpiece Theatre staple. Now it was Showtime’s version of MTV history.

  “Who would have thought that public radio would do better than us?” Theo mumbled.

  To everyone’s amazement, NPR was rocking even as PBS sank like a stone.

  “Not me,” Kris agreed. And too bad, too. Not that she could ever have done Hoax Hunters for the radio even if she had possessed a crystal ball. The show’s strength lay in the visual revelation that what so many believed the truth was in fact a lie.

  Hoax Hunters, which Kris had originally called Hoax Haters, had come about after a tipsy night with her best friend and roommate, Lola Kablonsky. Kris had always loathed liars—she had her reasons—and she’d been very good at spotting them. One could say she had a sixth sense, if a sixth sense weren’t as much of a lie as all the rest.

  Why not make your obsession with truth and lies into a show? Lola had asked.

  And full of margaritas and a haunting ambition, Kris had thought, Why not?

  She’d used her savings to fund a pilot, and she’d gotten that pilot onto the screen through sheer guts and brutal determination. She wasn’t going to let something as erratic as ratings get her down.

  If she debunked the Loch Ness Monster, every station in America—no, in the world—would want that film.

  Talk about a dream come true.

  *

  “Scotland,” Lola said. “Does anyone really go to Scotland on purpose?”

  Kris tossed a few more sweaters into her suitcase. “Just me.”

  September was cold in the Highlands, or so she’d heard. Not that she wasn’t used to the cold. She was from Chicago. Cold moved in about October and hung around until June. There’d even been a few July days when the breeze off the lake was reminiscent of the chill that drifted out of her freezer when she went searching for double chocolate brownie yogurt in the middle of the night.

  “Are you sure, Kris?” Worry tightened Lola’s voice. “You’ll be all alone over there.”

  Alone. Kris gave a mental eye roll. Horrors! Like that would be anything new.

  Her mother had died of leukemia when Kris was fifteen, insisting to the very end that she was fine. Kris’s brother had left for college when she was seventeen, swearing he’d visit often. If “often” was once the following year and then never again, he hadn’t been lying. Her father hung around until she turned eighteen. Then he’d taken a job in China—no lie. He hadn’t been back, either.

  So Kris was used to alone, and she could take care of herself. “I’ll be okay.” She zipped her suitcase.

  “I’d go with you—”

  Kris snorted. Lola in Scotland? That would be like taking Paris Hilton to … well, Scotland. Kris could probably shoot a documentary about it. The film would no doubt receive better ratings than Hoax Hunters.

  And wasn’t that depressing?

  “Aren’t you getting ready for the season?” Kris asked.

  Lola was a ballet dancer, and she looked like one. Tall and slim, with graceful arms and never-ending legs, her long, black, straight hair would fall to the middle of her well-defined back if she ever wore it down. However, Lola believed that style made her already-oval face appear too oval. As if that could happen.

  Kris didn’t consider herself bland or average until she stood next to Lola. She also wasn’t a washed-out, freckle-nosed, frizzy-headed blonde unless compared with Lola and her porcelain complexion surrounded by smooth ebony locks. The only thing they had in common was their brown eyes. However, Lola’s were pale, with flecks of gold and green, while Kris’s were just brown, the exact shade of mud, or so she’d been told by a man who’d said he was a poet.

  The two women were still friends because Lola was as beautiful inside as out, as honest as a politician was not, and loved Kris nearly as much as Kris loved her. In all her life, Kris had never trusted anyone the way she trusted Lola Kablonsky.

  Lola set her long-fingered smooth, elegant hand on Kris’s arm. “If you needed me, I’d go. Screw the season.”

  Kris blinked back the sudden sting in her eyes. “Thanks.”

&n
bsp; They had met while living in the same cheap apartment building—Kris attending Loyola University and Lola attending ballet classes on the way to her current stint with the Joffrey Ballet. On the basis of a few good conversations and a shared desire to get out of their crappy abode, the two had found a better one and become roommates.

  Kris hugged Lola; Lola hugged back, but she clung. Kris felt a little guilty for leaving her—Lola wasn’t used to being alone—but she didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t start over again with another show. She believed in Hoax Hunters.

  She also believed that the Loch Ness Monster was ripe for debunking and she was just the woman to do it.

  Kris gathered the backpack that contained her laptop, video camera, mini-binoculars, and purse. “I’ll be okay,” she assured her friend for the second time. “It’s not like I’m going to Iraq or Colombia or even the Congo. It’s Scotland. What could happen?”

  *

  Though it felt like a week, Kris arrived in Drumnadrochit, on the west shore of Loch Ness, a day later.

  She’d been able to fly directly from Chicago to Heathrow; however, unlike the rest of the people on the plane, she hadn’t been able to sleep. Instead, she’d read the books she’d picked up on both Scotland and Loch Ness.

  Loch Ness was pretty interesting, even without the monster. The lake itself was a ten-thousand-year-old crack in the Earth’s surface. Because of its extreme depth—nearly eight hundred feet—the loch contained more freshwater than all the other lakes in Britain and Wales combined and never froze over, even during the coldest of Highland winters.

  There had been over four thousand reported sightings of Nessie, which no doubt fueled the $40 million attributed to her by the Scottish tourism industry. With that kind of income at stake, it wasn’t going to be easy to debunk this myth. Kris certainly wasn’t going to get any help from the locals.

  By the time London loomed below, Kris’s eyes burned from too much reading and not enough sleeping. However, she couldn’t drag her gaze from the view. She wished she had the money to tour the Tower and Buckingham Palace; she’d always dreamed of walking the same streets as Shakespeare. Unfortunately, she was traveling on her own dime and she had precious few of them.

  The city sped by the window of the bus taking her to Gatwick Airport, where she boarded a flight to Inverness. A few hours later, she got her first glimpse of the city. Why Kris had thought Inverness would be full of castles she had no idea. According to her guidebook, it had over sixty thousand people and fewer than half a dozen castles. Still she was disappointed. Quaint would play very well on film.

  She got what she was hoping for on the road south. The countryside was quaint squared, as was Drumnadrochit. White buildings framed by rolling green hills, the place should have been on a postcard—hell, it probably was—along with the wide, gray expanse of Loch Ness.

  The village was also tourist central, with a wealth of Nessie museums, shops, and tours by both land and sea. Kris would check them out eventually. They’d make another excellent setting for her show. The charm of the village would highlight the archaic myth, illuminating how backward was a belief in fairy tales. The excessive glitter of tourism would underline why the locals still pretended to believe.

  Kris had once adored fairy tales, listening avidly as her mother read them to her and her brother. In those tales, bad things happened, but eventually everything worked out.

  In real life, not so much.

  Her driver, an elderly, stoic Scot who’d said nothing beyond an extremely low-voiced, “Aye,” when she’d asked if he often drove to Drumnadrochit, continued through the village without stopping. For an instant Kris became uneasy. What if the man had decided to take her into the countryside, bash her on the head, and toss her into the loch, making off with her laptop, video camera, and anything else she might possess? Sure, Lola would miss her eventually, but by then Kris would be monster bait.

  A hysterical bubble of laughter caught in her throat. She didn’t believe in monsters—unless they were human.

  She lifted her gaze to the rearview mirror and caught the driver watching her. He looked like anyone’s favorite grampa—blue-eyed, red cheeked, innocent.

  And wasn’t that what everyone said about the local serial killer?

  The vehicle jolted to a stop, and Kris nearly tumbled off the shiny leather seat and onto the floor. Before she recovered, her driver leaped out, opened her door, and retreated to the trunk to retrieve her bag.

  Kris peered through the window. They’d arrived at Loch Side Cottage, which, while not exactly loch side, was damn close. Kris would have to cross the road to reach the water, but she’d be able to see it from the house. The village of Drumnadrochit lay out of sight around a bend in the road.

  “Idiot.” Kris blew her bangs upward in a huff. “No one’s going to bash you over the head. This isn’t the South Side of Chicago.”

  She stepped out of the car, then stood frozen like Dorothy opening the door on a new and colorful world. The grass was a river of green, the trees several shades darker against mountains the hue of the ocean at dawn. The air was chill, but it smelled like freshwater and—

  “Biscuit?”

  A short, cherubic woman with fluffy white hair and emerald eyes stood in the doorway of the cottage. For an instant Kris thought she was a Munchkin. She certainly had the voice for it.

  “I made a batch of Empires to welcome ye.” She held out a platter full of what appeared to be iced shortbread rounds, each topped with a cherry.

  Kris hadn’t eaten since the flight to Heathrow, so despite her belief that a biscuit should only be served warm, dripping with butter and honey, she took one.

  At the first bite, her mouth watered painfully. The Empires were crisp and sweet—was that jelly in the middle?—and she couldn’t remember eating anything so fabulous in a very long time.

  “It’s a cookie,” she managed after she swallowed the first and reached for a second.

  The woman smiled, the expression causing her cheeks to round like apples beneath her sparkling eyes. “Call it whatever ye like, dearie.” She lifted the platter. “Then take another.”

  Kris had to listen very hard to distinguish the English beneath the heavy brogue. She felt as if she were hearing everything through a time warp, one that allowed the meaning of the words to penetrate several seconds after they were said. She hoped that the longer she stayed, the easier it would get.

  “Thanks.” Kris took two cookies in each hand. “I’m Kris Daniels.”

  “Well, and don’t I know that.” The plump, cheery woman giggled. The sound resembled the Munchkin titters that had welcomed Dorothy to Oz. Kris glanced uneasily at the nearby shrubbery, expecting it to shake and burp out several more little people.

  Then she heard what the woman had said and caught her breath. If they already knew her here, knew what she did, who she was, her cover was blown and her story was crap before it had even begun. Why hadn’t she used a false name?

  Because she hadn’t thought anyone in the Scottish Highlands would have seen a cable TV show filmed in Chicago. And how, exactly, would she present herself as Susie Smith when her credit cards and passport read “Kristin Daniels”?

  “You know me?” Kris repeated faintly.

  “I spoke with ye on the phone. Rented ye the cottage. Who else would be arriving today bag and baggage?”

  Kris let out the breath she’d taken. She was no good at cloak-and-dagger. She liked lying about as much as she liked liars and was therefore pretty bad at it. She needed to get better and quick.

  “You’re Ms. Cameron,” Kris said.

  “Euphemia,” the woman agreed. “Everyone calls me Effy.”

  Effy’s brilliant eyes cut to the driver, who was as thin and tall as she was short and round. “Ye’ll be bringing that suitcase inside now, Rob, and be quicker about it than a slow-witted tortoise.”

  Kris glanced at the old man to see if he was offended, but he merely nodded and did as he’d been told.
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  Very slowly.

  Kris’s lips twitched. She’d have been tempted to do the same if Effy had ordered her around.

  Rob came out of the cottage, and Effy shoved the plate in front of him. “Better eat a few, ye great lummox, or ye’ll be starvin’ long before supper.”

  He took several. “If ye didnae cook like me sainted mother, woman, I’d have drowned ye and yer devil’s tongue in the loch years ago.”

  Looming over the diminutive Effy, deep voice rumbling like the growl of a vicious bear, Rob should have been intimidating. But there was no heat to his words, no anger on his face. He just stated his opinion as if he’d stated the same a hundred and one times before. Perhaps he had. The two did seem well acquainted.

  Effy snorted and shoved the entire plate of biscuits into his huge, worn hands with a sharp, “Dinnae drop that, ye old fool”; then she reached into the pocket of her voluminous gray skirt and pulled out a key, which she presented to Kris. “Here ye are, dearie. And what is it ye’ll be doing in Drumnadrochit?”

  “I’m … uh…” Kris glanced away from Effy’s curious gaze, past Rob, whose cheeks had gone chipmunk with cookies, toward the rolling, gray expanse of the loch. “Writing.”

  “Letters?” Rob mumbled.

  “Why would she need to travel all this way to write a letter?” Effy scoffed.

  “Some do.”

  “I’m writing a book,” Kris blurted.

  There. That had even sounded like the truth. Maybe the key to lying was thinking less and talking fast. No wonder men were so good at it.

  “A children’s book?” Effy asked.

  Kris said the first thing that popped into her head: “Sure.”

  Silence greeted the word. That hadn’t sounded very truthful.