Page 13 of A Scot in the Storm
“Good. Don’t go wandering down to the beach chasing folklore.”
“I’m a professional historian, Arthur.”
“That means yes, doesn’t it?”
“It means good night.”
He laughed and tipped two fingers from his scarf in salute before turning back toward town.
Abigail stood alone in the lane for a moment after he left.
Behind her, Fraserburgh glowed faintly with bonfire light. Ahead, the museum and Kinnaird Head crouched against the dark. The sea breathed steadily below the cliffs, patient and black.
She told herself she had imagined the woman, likely induced by the whisky and the folklore.
Perfectly ordinary. Perfectly explainable.
A raven called once from somewhere near the rocks as Abigail walked faster.
That night she fell asleep to distant laughter and fiddle music drifting faintly up from the harbor while bonfires burned for Samhain below the cliffs. Somewhere in the dark, the sea kept crashing against the stone.
Chapter 5
Abigail
It was Thursday morning, and she was crouching beside a tide pool watching a hermit crab navigate around a clump of pink anemones, when the wind stopped.
Not a lull. It just ceased, as if someone had flipped a switch. The gulls went silent. The surf kept its rhythm, but the air above the waterline went dead still, and the haar thickened until she couldn’t see the cliffs above her.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up.
“The ink is dry, but the page is turning.”
Abigail spun around. A woman stood on the rocks ten feet away, rocks that three seconds ago had been empty.
She was old but not frail. Weathered. Silver hair loose around her shoulders, a cloak of dark wool that didn’t move in the stillness. Her eyes were the color of deep water, and they regarded Abigail with an expression that was patient in a way that had nothing to do with kindness. Patient the way stone is patient.
The same woman she’d seen on the cemetery bench at Bronmuir Keep.
“I’m sorry?” Abigail said. Her voice came out louder than she meant it to.
“Ye’ve come looking for something.” The woman’s accent was Scottish but different, the vowels pulled long, consonants soft.
“Ye dinna ken what it is yet.”
“I’m watching a hermit crab.”
The woman didn’t smile. She looked out at the sea.
“Go back to the castle, lass. Look in the chest they brought up from the cellar. The one with the brass fittings.”
A chill ran down Abigail’s spine that had nothing to do with the weather. “How do you know about?—”
“Ye’ve written to him before, lass.”
“Whoareyou?”
“I’m what stands between the stones.” The woman’s eyes lifted to the sky. “A storm is coming. The storm is the door. Ye need only step through.”
