“Well!” Mrs. Truman shrieked. “She should know better! Cash’s Nan! You get Abigail and Cash off that parapet! Right now!” When no one immediately acquiesced to her demand, she finished on a bellow. “Don’t make me come up there!”
Cash let Abby go, leaned over the edge and yelled, “Kieran, I don’t care if you have to stake her to the turf, do not let her come up here.”
“You got it, gov,” Kieran shouted back.
At Kieran’s response, Abby glanced at Cash and saw his eyes roll to the heavens.
“And who’s that?” Lorna asked, peering over the edge again.
“Kieran, my best friend’s husband,” Abby replied. “My best friend is the redhead. Her name is Jenny.”
“Her gown is lovely,” Lorna commented, narrowing her eyes to look closer.
“I’ll tell her you said that,” Abby promised on a smile.
Lorna looked at Abby. “Your gown is lovely too.”
Abby put her hands out at her sides, tilted her chin down, her eyes skimming her dress then she glanced back at Lorna. “It’s my great-grandmother’s.”
“It’s extraordinary,” Lorna remarked.
“If I can interrupt your little chat,” Cash bit out and Abby and Lorna looked at him as he continued, “perhaps, Gran, you can tell us what the fuck is going on?”
That’s when they heard another ghostly voice say, “Conner, don’t speak to your grandmother that way.”
They all turned to see Cash’s father not hovering but standing on the roof like he had real feet even though he was see-through.
“Holy crap,” Abby breathed again, eyes staring at Anthony Beaumaris, “you just told Cash what to do.”
Anthony looked at Abby and replied, “He’s my son.”
Abby kept staring, her night so bizarre, her mouth somewhere along the line became disconnected from her brain so she blathered on, “I know but still, he’s a big guy and he’s scary. I’d never tell him what to do.”
Anthony gave her a look that stated, quite clearly, even in its supernatural weirdness, that he thought maybe she was a little touched.
Then his gaze moved to his son. “Bodes well for your future, son.”
“As pleased as I am to see you both,” Cash clipped, sounding anything but pleased, shrugging off his dinner jacket and settling its voluminous warmth on Abby’s shoulders before he continued, “on the top of a tower in the freezing, fucking cold at midnight when Abby doesn’t have a coat and her life hangs in the balance, I’d prefer it if someone would tell me what in the fuck is going on,” Cash clipped.
Abby leaned toward Lorna and muttered, “He has a short fuse.”
Lorna’s disembodied voice muttered back, “They all do, dear.”
Abby decided to explain Cash’s behaviour. “He says the f-word a lot when he’s angry.” Lorna looked at her. “And other times besides,” Abby finished, feeling the need to be truthful (it was Cash’s grandma).
At that, Cash lost what little patience he had left and snapped, “We’re going.”
“You’re not going,” Anthony returned.
“We’re going,” Cash shot back.
“You can’t go,” Lorna put in.
“Why the hell not?” Cash retorted.
“You have to save Abby and you’re the only one who can do it.”
They all turned at the new voice drifting through the air.
Ben’s voice.
Abby saw he stood in the opposite corner, also see-through, his phantom feet on the roof’s floor. Zee was sitting by Ben’s feet, his tail sweeping casually from side-to-side as if he stood beside his dead master a thousand times.
“Ben,” Abby whispered, her heart leaping into her throat making her voice sound suffocated.
“Not now, Abby,” Ben returned tersely, his eyes on the door in the floor and at that moment, it flew open.
Abby jumped, Cash positioned himself in front of her and took two steps back, guiding Abby to the middle of the tower, his hands behind him, fingers curled into Abby’s sides.
Angus emerged from the door, grunting and straining, pulling the golden rope.
He came fully into view and kept tugging. Vivianna came after him, still fighting frantically against the rope at her waist. Cassandra was last through, her wand pointed at Vivianna, a pale, slim thread of gossamer gold coming from the wand and hitting Vivianna in the back, its purpose, Abby suspected, aiding in binding the ghost.
“Jesus,” Cash murmured.
“We got her, laddie,” Angus proclaimed stoutly.
“Jesus,” Cash repeated.
Abby wasn’t paying attention.
She was watching Ben, Anthony and Lorna position themselves in a circle around Angus, Cassandra and Vivianna. Zee had started prowling the edges of the roof, his yellow cat eyes turned to the restrained ghost.
“Not gon’ get away now, are you beastie?” Angus taunted.
Abby examined Vivianna who had stopped fighting against the rope and her head was whipping this way and that taking in her fellow phantoms, Cash and Zee.
It dawned on Abby that the spectre actually looked scared.
“If you’d paid attention this morning, son, not only would Abby not have wrecked your car but I would have guided you to Vivianna’s Book of Shadows,” Anthony noted mysteriously, his words causing Cash’s body to grow still, his eyes never leaving Vivianna.
“It’s hidden behind a secret panel in one of the bookshelves of the library,” Lorna put in. She, too, didn’t take her eyes from Vivianna and stayed close to the bound ghost.
“Vivianna’s invincible… almost,” Anthony noted. “Only her Book of Shadows holds the secret to her demise.”
“And that would be?” Cash, his eyes also locked on Vivianna, asked.
“Her death has to be re-enacted,” Ben answered.
Cash replied instantly, “She committed suicide.”
Cash and Abby were moving round in a slow half-circle watching as Angus and Cassandra positioned Vivianna to the edge of the tower closest to the tor. Once there the three other ghosts and Zee moved in.
“She didn’t commit suicide,” Lorna said quietly.
“She didn’t?” Abby whispered.
“She poisoned her ex-lover’s wife. Killed her,” Anthony picked up the story. “In order to commence her plan to rain terror on Penmort throughout eternity, she drew him up here and confessed to the crime. In a rage, he threw her over the side,” Anthony told them and Abby gasped.
Then Abby gasped again as Angus whipped the lasso over Vivianna’s head, freeing her, and Cassandra dropped her wand, the gossamer thread disappearing.
They both stepped away.
“Cash!” Abby cried even as she felt and saw Cash’s body get tense.
But Vivianna was going nowhere. She was pinned to the spot, hovering several feet off the ground with Ben, Anthony and Lorna’s hands extended to her somehow, though Abby had no clue how, they were imprisoning her.
“You’re safe, love,” Anthony’s voice was gentle and it reminded her exactly of Cash’s (except, of course, with an English accent rather than a Scottish one) as it slid through the air all around her. Anthony went on. “There’s a reason Vivianna didn’t appear before any of the masters of this castle.”
“Because they can touch her,” Abby guessed.
“Yes, dear,” Lorna affirmed, “they can touch her. She’s only vulnerable to a master of Penmort.”
“You have to push her over the side,” Ben informed Cash and Abby’s hands came up to clutch Cash’s waist.
Ben’s eyes dropped to her hands and she pulled them quickly away.
Then Abby heard, “She doesn’t love you.”
Abby’s head shot up and she stared at Vivianna. The spirit’s eyes were pained and afraid and they were staring beseechingly at Cash.
“She’ll never love you,” Vivianna’s voice, strangely pleasant and warm, filled the air. Even so, Abby felt a cold chill slide across her skin that had nothing to do with the frosty night. “She’ll always love him.” Her head moved to motion to Ben and Abby felt her chest grow tight.