Moon Cursed Read online

  “Nessie?” He shook his head. “No one ever sees her at night.”

  Kris thought back on what she’d read. Certainly the majority of the sightings occurred in the middle of the day, but that only made sense. Midday meant the light was at its brightest, reflecting off the murky loch and creating mirages. It was also the time when the most people were out and about. The more humans in the area, the more tall tales would be told. Still—

  “I know there’ve been sightings at night,” she insisted.

  “Sure there are. Just look at the place.” Alan Mac waved a huge hand at the lapping waves. “Wouldn’t ye be seein’ things if ye were out there in the dark?”

  Kris narrowed her eyes. “I did see a man.”

  “I didnae say you didn’t,” he said calmly.

  Kris decided to let the whole question of the man she’d kissed in Urquhart Castle fade away. She’d seen him. Alan Mac hadn’t. End of story.

  For now.

  “Wait.” Kris stopped, and the constable did, too. “In 1999, Nessie was spotted on land for the first time since 1963. And it was at night!” she finished with a triumphant poke in the direction of his broad chest.

  He lifted his flashlight from the road ahead to a spot just above her belly button, then contemplated her in the upward spray of yellow light. “Ye seem to know a lot about the monster.”

  Whoops.

  For an instant her mind blanked. She had a lie in place for situations like this, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what it was. Such was the trouble with lies.

  “I … uh…”

  She needed practice. Lying had to get easier the more you did it. Which was probably why the best liars were always the biggest liars.

  Maybe by the time Kris came home from Scotland she, too, could stare a child in the face and say, I’ll never leave you, sweetheart. I promise.

  Kris winced as the last words her mother had ever said to her whispered through her mind.

  “Yer a Nessie hunter?”

  “No!” she said, much too loud. “I mean I don’t want to hunt. How could I hunt something that…” She paused before she blurted the truth.

  You can’t hunt what isn’t there.

  “I’m here to…” Why in God’s name was she here?

  “Oh, wait.” His confused—or had that been suspicious?—frown smoothed. “Yer the writer woman. I remember Effy talkin’ about ye now. Ye’ll be writing about Nessie?”

  Kris hadn’t said what she was going to write about, but that seemed as good a topic as any and would explain why she knew so damned much.

  “Sure.”

  “A children’s book?”

  Why did everyone think she was writing a children’s book?

  “Okay.”

  He nodded sagely. “I’ve heard how ye writer types don’t like to talk about yer work. Curses it, so to speak.”

  “Right.” Kris grasped at the excuse, even though she believed in curses as much as she believed in the fairy tales where they were found. “Wouldn’t want to do that.”

  They began to walk again. The lamp she’d left on inside the cottage seemed to flare like lightning against the night. Behind the house, hills that she knew to be sapphire in the sunlight loomed like the great black humps of a mythical beast.

  Kris sighed. One day in Drumnadrochit and she was being drawn into the group delusion.

  “Your last name’s Mac?” she asked, desperate for a normal conversation.

  “Mackenzie,” he said. “They call me Alan Mac because my father is Mac, ye see.”

  She didn’t but nodded anyway.

  “There are a lot of Mackenzies. ’Tis a Highland name.”

  “All the Mackenzies are related?”

  “Not by blood necessarily. Back in the auld days everyone had a leader. A clan chieftain. And all in that clan would take the chieftain’s name as a matter of loyalty. Started back in the eleventh century.”

  “Eleventh century,” Kris repeated. She couldn’t imagine. She had no idea when her ancestors had come to America or where they’d even come from. “You’ve always lived here?”

  “I have.” He lifted his big shoulders, then lowered them. “Where else would I go? Why would I want to?”

  The mind-set was so foreign to Kris, she wasn’t sure what to say. He could go anywhere. Do anything. The idea of staying in the same place as her parents and her parents’ parents and their parents for all of her days made her twitchy. Sure, she’d been in Chicago since she was twelve, but if she couldn’t travel, she’d go mad.

  “If you’ve always lived here, then you must know everyone.”

  “Everyone who lives in the area. But we get so many tourists or folks who stay awhile, then go.” He glanced at her. “Like you.”

  “What about a guy who’s my height, maybe one seventy-five? Long, black hair.” Kris indicated a length near shoulder level, then frowned.

  She couldn’t say if it had been curly or straight since it had been wet and slicked back from his stunning face. And why was that?

  She’d never asked. Her tongue had been occupied with better things.

  “Blue eyes,” she blurted. “Brogue. About twenty-five.”

  “That describes a good portion of the village.” Alan Mac laughed. “Ye’d best give up that ghost.”

  But Kris never gave up on anything once she set her mind to it. If she had, she wouldn’t be here.

  A heavy splash sounded from the loch.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Nessie.”

  “You said she was only seen in the daytime.”

  Alan Mac returned his gaze to the loch. “Just because ye cannae see her doesna mean she isnae there.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Liam watched from the trees, moving along slowly, silently, nearly parallel to their path.

  Though the moon was rising, it was still very dark. But the flare of Alan Mac’s trusty flashlight surrounded the two figures in an eerie yellow glow.

  Their voices carried in the still, chill night; Liam heard everything. Her name was Kris, and she was here to write about Nessie.

  He didn’t believe her.

  However, he didn’t think she was here to hunt the thing. He’d met hunters, and she wasn’t the type. For one thing, she was a terrible liar.

  She asked about the man in the ruins again. What did Liam expect when he’d kissed her like that? He knew better. His talent at kissing was second only to his talent for everything that came afterward.

  Liam had been born for seduction. Seduction was what had gotten him into trouble in the first place.

  Kris disappeared inside the cottage. Alan Mac turned and headed right for Liam, pausing a few yards away. “I didnae think she believed me when I said you were a ghost.”

  Liam didn’t think so, either.

  “You should stay away from her.”

  Liam should, but he wasn’t sure that he could.

  The constable walked on, leaving Liam to stand in the trees and watch the full moon rise over the loch.

  God, how he hated them. People behaved foolishly beneath the bright round moon.

  He certainly had.

  *

  Kris awoke to sunlight spilling in through her bedroom window. She’d been so tired the night before she hadn’t thought to draw the drapes.

  After a quick shower, Kris checked her e-mail. She’d promised to meet Lola for Skype sessions while she was here, but the way the Internet behaved—switching off and on at will, as well as crashing completely when she tried to access a large Web site—Kris doubted that would happen.

  Instead, she sent her friend a quick note telling her not to worry. She’d be in touch. Since the same thing had happened on other trips, in other places, Lola would deal. She didn’t have much choice.

  Effy had left tea in the cabinet, but in Kris’s opinion tea was for the sick. Coffee was for her right now. Or as soon as she could walk into Drumnadrochit and buy some.

  Once outside, Kris
glanced in the direction of Urquhart Castle, but she couldn’t see the ruins from here due to a bend in the road. She could, however, see the loch. Beneath the brilliant sun it should have been blue and clear. But this was Loch Ness. Due to the high peat content in the surrounding soil, the water was often the shade of wet sand.

  Therefore, while the area around the loch was a postcard of beauty—cobalt-tinged mountains, rolling emerald hills, and pine forests—the loch itself … eh. Nevertheless, several boats chugged along, most sporting signs that identified them as offering various Nessie tours.

  Kris turned in the opposite direction from the one she’d taken the night before and, after crossing a few fields, strolled into Drumnadrochit.

  Considering that the area’s main business was tourism, she found a coffee shop without any trouble. Americans needed their fix—witness the Starbucks on every other street corner—and the French and Italians were no doubt the same, though never suggest Starbucks to a Frenchman. Kris had learned that the hard way while filming Hoax Hunters in New Orleans. Of course when you had Cafe du Monde, what possible reason could there be for Starbucks?

  It appeared they had no need of one in Drumnadrochit, either, since the sign with the steaming cup of dark liquid was perched in the window of a place called Jamaica Blue.

  The woman behind the counter wore a purple tie-dyed T-shirt and ancient, ratty jeans. She sported sun-streaked light brown dreads, hazel eyes, skin the shade of the loch beneath the sun, and an accent that made Kris long for sand, coconut oil, and a Beach Boys sound track.

  “What can I get you?”

  “Do you have Blue Mountain?”

  “Have you looked outside?”

  “I meant in a cup.”

  “We have dat, too.”

  In seconds Kris did, along with a bag of ground beans to take back to the cottage.

  “You must be de writer woman stayin’ at Effy’s place.”

  “Word travels fast.”

  “Word is all we have here of a misty eve. I’m Jamaica.” She offered her hand. “Jamaica Blue.”

  “That’s really your name?”

  The woman just smiled.

  Over the intoxicating aroma wafting from her cup, Kris smelled a story. “Care to join me?” she asked.

  Jamaica’s exotic eyes flicked around the currently empty shop. “Don’t mind if I do.”

  She grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler. “I drink my share of coffee before seven A.M.,” she explained.

  They took a table by the window and watched the crowds stream by.

  “Is it always like this?” Kris asked.

  “Some days are busier dan others, but…” Jamaica took a large swig from the bottle. “Yes.”

  “Nessie’s good for business.”

  “Nessie is our bizness.”

  Kris took a sip of coffee. “Mmm,” she said, the sound a commentary on both the taste and Jamaica’s remark. “How long have you lived here?”

  “Ye dinnae think I’m a local?” Jamaica replied with a perfect Scottish brogue.

  Kris lifted a brow, and Jamaica laughed.

  “I opened dis place … oh, ’bout five years back.”

  “Have you seen Nessie?”

  “Of course.”

  “Really?”

  “You t’ink I’m lying?”

  Kris thought everyone was lying, but that was just Kris. “You said yourself, Nessie is your business.”

  “Mmm,” Jamaica murmured, the sound very Scottish.

  How long had Jamaica had to live here to acquire the talent for a murmur that said both everything and nothing? Perhaps it came with the ability to speak in a brogue.

  “You are right. Nessie is good bizness.” Jamaica gazed out the window in the direction of the loch. “But I have seen her.”

  “When? Where?”

  “De day I arrived I drove along A Eighty-two. Sun was shinin’ like today. Saw something move on de loch, and when I turned my head, dere she was. Plain as dat sun, swimming along right next to de road.”

  Kris opened her mouth, but nothing came out. What could she say? The word in her head—bullshit—just didn’t seem appropriate.

  “She welcomed me to my new life. Led me right into Drumnadrochit.”

  “Have you—uh—seen her since?”

  Jamaica shook her head, and her dreads flew. “I don’t need to. I know she’s dere.”

  “Mmm,” Kris said, the comment not Scottish at all.

  “You don’t believe?” Jamaica drank some water, but she kept a measuring gaze on Kris.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  “I met a man last night,” Kris blurted.

  Jamaica’s perfectly arched brows arched further. “Already? Good for you. What’s his name?”

  “I’m hoping you might know. He disappeared before I could ask.”

  “Disappeared? You sure he was dere?”

  Kris sighed. Questions like that always gave her a headache.

  “I’m sure.” Quickly she described her mystery man, ending with, “His hair was wet. Anyone like to swim in the loch?”

  Jamaica snorted. “De experts say de loch too cold to support a monster. Which makes it too damn cold for swimming.”

  “Monster, by definition, means something beyond anything we know. So how can the experts say the water’s too cold for a monster?”

  “Experts say a lot of t’ings,” Jamaica observed. “Most of it’s crap.”

  Kris laughed. She liked Jamaica more with each passing minute.

  “I t’ink in dis case dey talkin’ ’bout de plesiosaur principle. You know it?”

  “Sir Somebody theorized that the Loch Ness Monster was a plesiosaur, a long-necked reptile that swam through warm inland seas in the days of the dinosaurs.”

  “But Nessie would have to be a herd of plesiosaurs. Just because dey might not be extinct don’t mean dey be immortal.”

  “Right,” Kris agreed. “The shape and size of what people have seen is about right for a plesiosaur, or so this guy said.”

  “Sir Peter Scott,” Jamaica said. “British naturalist. Plenty famous. But a plesiosaur was a reptile and so cold-blooded. Which means it wouldn’t survive in de freezing cold of de loch.”

  “There goes that theory,” Kris muttered. “So how cold is the water?”

  “Average temperature around six degrees Celsius.”

  “English, please.”

  “Dat is English.” Jamaica shook her head. “Six Celsius is … oh,” she pursed her lips, “about forty-two degrees American. You know, besides de cold, you can only see five feet down, which means you’re swimming above a great black maw of nothing.”

  “Not only cold then, but creepy.”

  Jamaica lifted her nearly empty water bottle in a toast. “No one swims in de loch unless dey had ten too many local lagers. Maybe dat was de case with your mystery friend?”

  Kris shook her head. “He didn’t taste like Guinness.”

  The sudden silence made Kris glance up, then curse. She’d actually said that out loud.

  “You kissed him?” Jamaica asked.

  “He kissed me. It was—”

  Fabulous, she thought.

  “Weird,” she said.

  Jamaica remained silent, in her eyes an expression Kris couldn’t read. She seemed both concerned and annoyed, with a bit of afraid thrown in. But none of that made any sense. Unless—

  “You know who he is now?” Kris asked.

  “Why would now be any different dan before?” Jamaica returned.

  Two customers burst in the door, and Jamaica hurried off with a “Nice talking to you” that held the distinct undertone of Get lost.

  Since Kris had just met the woman, she couldn’t say for sure what she’d seen in Jamaica’s eyes or heard in her voice. But Kris had done enough interviews to realize that answering a question with a question was almost always an attempt to hide a lie. Although why Jamaica would lie about somethi
ng so minor as knowing the identity of the man who’d kissed Kris in Urquhart Castle was anyone’s guess.

  Sufficiently caffeinated, Kris went in search of lunch. Along the way, she became enchanted by the wonder of Drumnadrochit.

  Lola owned a large collection of old Hollywood musicals, and Brigadoon was one of her favorites. Kris had probably watched the movie a dozen times, and parts of Drumnadrochit had her humming “Almost like Being in Love.” She half-expected to turn a corner and find Cyd Charisse twirling and jumping along the sidewalk.

  Other parts resembled every small tourist town in America—shops, museums, tours, hotels with catchy names like The Highlander, and restaurants that advertised a “Nessie-sized breakfast.” One place in particular caught her eye.

  “The Myth Motel,” Kris read. “Museum, gift shop, rooms, and eatery. Specialty—Nessie Nuggets.” How could she pass that up? Especially since she was by now hungry enough to eat Nessie.

  Kris paused with her hand on the door, wondering if Nessie Nuggets were shaped like Nessie, something to feed to Nessie, or made of Nessie.

  She snorted. There was no Nessie. Sheesh. If she wasn’t careful she’d be sharing the delusion of everyone in Drumnadrochit. Where would Hoax Hunters be then? Where would she be?

  “Out on my ass with no place to go,” Kris muttered, and yanked open the door.

  A tall, slim man in a kilt stood just inside. His close-cropped dark hair and goatee proved a stunning contrast to his light gray eyes. “Welcome to The Myth Motel.”

  “You’re American?” Kris blurted, both startled by the lack of an accent and thrilled by it. She hadn’t heard English without an accent since she got off the plane. Sure, it had only been a day, but she missed it.

  “Technically, no.”

  Kris tilted her head and waited.

  “Raised there, born here,” he explained. “I’m Dougal Scott.”

  Kris offered her hand. “Kris Daniels.”

  They shook. He had nice hands, a good handshake. Not too soft, not too hard, and he looked directly into her face with a smile. “The writer woman?”

  Kris rolled her eyes, and he laughed, the sound deeper than she would have expected and very engaging.