All of which, Noelle thought to herself, were pure fabrication and imagination. She ought to know; her mother was perfectly capable of calling forth a spirit, had any lived in the family home.
Miles refused to be soothed. “The west wing is intact. No ghost in his right mind would stay there. I’ve told you before, woman, spirits love ruins, and it is in the ruined wing that we must look for them. The demonic presence in the hall excepted, all of our contact has been made in the ruined wing.”
Noelle thought of pointing out the fact that Miles’s idea of contact wasn’t exactly especially valid but decided to leave the handling of the star to Teresa.
“We’ll try the west wing tonight, and if we have no luck, we’ll go back to the east side, all right?”
Miles harrumphed. “It will be an utter and complete waste of my time.”
Teresa uttered a few more balms to his wounded pride before hurrying down the unlit hallway toward the inhabitable side of the house.
“Maybe I should bow out of being your temporary assistant,” Noelle said as they passed the music room that presently served as a communal sleeping quarters, where, at Miles’s insistence, they had all set up sleeping bags and air mattresses. Miles claimed it was to minimize their impact on the ghostly beings in the house, but Noelle couldn’t help but feel he had a less noble reason for wanting to avoid sleeping alone.
“Not on your life! Just ignore Miles when he gets that way. He’s rather protective of his role as ghostly expert. Now, let’s see, what room looks good to you?”
The two women spent some time poking their heads into the various rooms on the ground and upper floors of the wing that remained mostly intact. Noelle kept a wary eye out for imps and other denizens of the Otherworld that she didn’t wish brought to the attention of the general public, making note of which hallways and rooms showed signs of recent occupation by the little troublemakers.
Luckily, the imps had seemed to confine themselves to the first and second floors, not venturing farther upstairs to the servants’ quarters. Noelle, dutifully trying to find the spookiest room possible, finally settled on a small attic room, once belonging to a housemaid and now containing nothing but a broken-down metal bedstead, a cracked washstand, and two partially broken wooden chairs.
“This is it,” Noelle announced after having examined the heavy layer of dust for any signs of tracks. There were none, not even from four-legged rodents.
“This?” Teresa frowned as she looked around the dark, small room. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. This room is haunted right up to my armp—” Noelle had been in the act of raising her hand to gesture, when a man suddenly appeared out of nothing, grabbed her hand, and pressed a smacking kiss to it.
“Ah, me beauty, ye’ve found me at last, have ye?” the man said.
Noelle stared in shock at him, while Teresa, after freezing for a second, ran screaming from the room.
“Good Lord. There really are ghosts here,” Noelle said, blinking in surprise at the somewhat transparent man. He was clad in a kilt and ruffled shirt, a broadsword strapped to his hip. Despite his ghostly state, there was a distinct roguish twinkle in his eye that left Noelle with the impression that he was greatly enjoying himself.
Teresa reappeared in the doorway, her eyes huge. “That’s a… that’s a… he’s a… holy Mary, mother of God! That’s a ghost!”
“We’re preferrin’ the term ‘spirit,’ ye ken, lass,” the ghostly man said in a heavy Scottish accent. He waggled his eyebrows at Teresa, then made her a courtly bow, losing his translucence as he shifted to a solid form. It took him only a second to sweep up Teresa into a passionate embrace.
“Erm…” Noelle didn’t know if it was polite to interrupt a ghost when he was kissing someone, but she knew this had to be a shock to Teresa. “Excuse me, but who are you?”
The man finished his kiss, setting Teresa upright on her feet again before saying, “Ah, but ye’re a bonnie lass, too. I’m Jock, Jock McTorgeld. What be yer names, me beauties?”
“A ghost!” Teresa whispered, her eyes never leaving the man as she waved toward the door behind her. “I should film… Raleigh should be here… Miles… holy Mary, a real live ghost! Noelle! Can you see him, too? I’m not going insane, am I?”
“I can see him, too. That’s Teresa,” she told the ghost, “and I’m Noelle.” It struck her that for a Scotsman, his accent was awfully broad, almost exaggerated in its rolling of Rs and gargling of vowels. “Do you… er… live in this room?”
“Here?” He looked around with a curl of his lip. “Nay, lassie. ’Tis but a servant’s room, this. Jock McTorgeld roams where he pleases, when he pleases, and that’s always where the bonnie lasses are.” He leered at her, no doubt trying to drive home his point.
“Teresa,” Noelle said slowly, having taken full measure of their new acquaintance. “Why don’t you go get Raleigh and Miles so they can meet our friend from Scotland?”
“Yes,” Teresa agreed, her eyes huge as she nodded quickly. “Yes, Raleigh, Miles. We should film Jock. A real ghost. We have a real ghost. Holy mother…”
Noelle closed the door as Teresa drifted off muttering to herself. She eyed the ghost, who was striding toward her with a devilish glint in his eye. “All right, she’s gone. Now, who are you?”
“I’ve told ye me name, my heart. Now ye’ll be thankin’ me, as is the way of me people, and if ye’re as sweet as ye taste, I may be lettin’ ye see what I’ve got on under me kilt.”
Noelle had a hard time not rolling her eyes, but by dint of an almost superhuman effort, she managed it. “You can stop with the phony Scottish bit, too. I’m British, not Czech, and I know what a real Scot sounds like, and you aren’t it.”
The ghost came to an abrupt stop, his eyes narrowing on her. “Ye’re daft, lass. I’m as Scottish as the wild thistle that grows above the burn.”
“You’re about as Scottish as my ass, and I’m not Scottish at all. Now, who are you, and what are you doing here?”
“Me name is Jock—”
“Right,” Noelle interrupted, rolling up her sleeves. Before the ghost—who was in corporeal form and thus bound to the same laws as any other living being—could do so much as roll another R at her, she had a binding ward drawn and slapped over him. “Now, let’s have the truth, shall we?”
“What the… Christos, you’re a Guardian, aren’t you?” the ghost said in a completely different voice, one that was slightly French. His form shivered and morphed into that of a tonsured young man in a faded grayish tunic, scapula, and cowl. He remained bound to the spot, held firmly by the ward despite his attempt to move out of it. “Just my luck, a couple of toothsome wenches finally show up, and you’re Guardians.”
“I am, but my friend is perfectly normal and doesn’t know what a Guardian is, let alone what we do, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention that. Why were you pretending to be a Scot?”
The ghost sighed and shifted to his noncorporeal state, which left him partially translucent. “Women love a man in a kilt. I learned that… oh, must have been twenty, twenty-five years ago, when a group of women on a historical tour took the house for a week. They loved old Jock and his dashing accent. Tumbled more ladies that week than I did when I was alive.”
Noelle couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re a monk, aren’t you?”
“I was,” he said, sighing. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy a lusty wench when I saw her.”
“I think we’ll just let that go. What’s your real name?”
“Michel,” he admitted. “Michel de Nostredame.”
“Nostredame?” Noelle couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’re Nostradamus? I thought he died an old man?”
“He did. He was my cousin. I could have been famous like him, too, you know,” Michel answered with an annoyed twitch of his head. “I had visions all the bloody time, but I never wrote the blasted things down like he did. If I knew then what I know now, I’d have been just as rich and famous as he was. More, because my visions were better than a bunch of vague mumble-jumble. I had visions of beauteous women performing many and varied acts of much interest. Much interest!”
“I just bet you did.” Noelle considered the now-agitated ghost. “What are you doing in the Czech Republic, Michel?”
He grimaced, sat on the edge of the bed, sank through it to the floor, and got up, returning to corporeal form before sitting again. “Don’t call me that, please. Michel is my cousin’s name. You can call me Nosty. It’s what all the dairymaids in Provence called me. As to your question, I was on a pilgrimage.”
“In the Czech Republic?”
He shrugged. “I got sidetracked by a widow with the biggest—” He made a gesture that Noelle had no difficulty recognizing. “Somehow I ended up here with her. And then it turned out she wasn’t a widow at all, and her husband found us in bed, and as it happens, he took me by surprise and gutted me before I could so much as explain that I was simply giving his wife a… er… blessing.”
“Uh-huh,” Noelle said, giving him a knowing look. “Well, it sounds like you brought that on yourself, but regardless, I hope you didn’t suffer much. To be honest, I’m surprised we didn’t see you two days ago, when we arrived and started filming.”
“Filming? You’re doing a movie?”
“You know what a movie is?”
“Of course. I’m dead, not an idiot,” he answered with an irritated sniff. “There was a film crew here a few decades back. I learned a lot from them. And the young starlets.”
Noelle ignored his lascivious grin and explained about the reality TV show and asked if he kept himself to the upper floors of the house.
