Prologue

Prologue

A Cry in the Night

At first, Moira Hawkins thought she might be imagining the sound. It was so soft at first, like a sigh on the wind or a whisper through the trees.

Except she wasn’t in the woods. She was lying in bed in the private wing of Castle Darien, her family’s nearly ancient stronghold.

But the windows were open. That had to be it. The temperature was cool but pleasant, and she didn’t need to use the heat or air-conditioning systems. Which was good since they would never be great in such an old stone fortress.

Moira had promised her grandmother she wouldn’t let the castle, built at the end of the thirteenth century, go to ruin. She said she would do everything needed to bring it up to the standards so many others used to save the structure and turn it into a hotel.

She was partway there. While she worked on getting the necessary loans and finding contractors to undertake such an epic restructuring, she hired a tour company to bring visitors through. There were even a few Haunted Ireland tours put on by historians, who talked about some of the dire events of the Emerald Isle’s bloody past.

She figured anything around for over eight-hundred years must have some nightmarish events to relay.

And her ancestral home was in the Republic of Ireland, which had suffered a great deal of bloodshed to get where it was today.

Yet…

It occurred to her that she had heard—or at least imagined—the soft, mournful sobs before.

The night Granny had died.

Imagination. Had to be.

But she’d heard the sound the night before they found the old man drowned in the river that ran alongside the castle’s western wall, too.

And the time the would-be thief fell to his death from the wall.

They’d learned the elderly gentleman, visiting family in the area, had been suffering from cancer. Moira wondered if he had chosen his end.

And while the thief shouldn’t have been trying to climb the wall, he hadn’t deserved death.

As she thought back, she realized the sound had preceded all those events.

She shook her head. She had to be imagining it. She might have spent the last few years of Granny’s illness working in the States, but she’d grown up with all the tales of leprechauns, pixies, fairies, and banshees. Granny had been so good at telling them, holding her cousins and her spellbound as she wove her magical tales.

The crying grew louder. She wasn’t imagining it. She could definitely hear it.

It wasn’t a frightened cry. It was mournful, heartfelt. Yet Moira was afraid.

Where is it coming from?

She glanced at the clock on her bedside table—just past midnight.

The last ghost tour had ended by now, but she wasn’t alone in the castle. Stewart McKenna, her grandmother’s longtime castle steward, slept down the hall with his wife. Their son’s bedroom was next door to theirs. Nellie Antrim, the head housekeeper, was on this floor, as well. And while the tour of the two unoccupied towers had just ended, Mark Meadows, the tour agency’s director, often stayed behind to answer any questions the guests might have regarding the castle or Ireland’s history. Because, of course, Mark wasn’t just a businessman, though he was a good one. He truly loved history and didn’t mind working late. He was…wonderful.

The sobbing continued.

Moira’s mind went to something her granny had told her.

Banshee. Banshees are the remains of the Tuatha dé Danann, the gods of Ireland, driven underground when the Milesians arrived—Gaels who traveled the Earth, seeking a home. And there, in éire, they claimed the land while the Tuatha dé Danann settled the underworld. Once, keeners had been on hand at funerals, sobbing mournfully for those who had left the earthly world. The banshees fulfilled that tradition now, warning of someone’s death…

Get a grip! she told herself. Seriously, she’d spent enough time in the United States to learn all about all kinds of myths and legends from around the world.

There are no such things as banshees.

Still…

She leapt out of bed, determined to dress quickly and find out what was happening. Stewart was only rooms away, and if she ran across the great hall that separated her from the Great Tower, she was sure she’d find Mark lingering.

She was being ridiculous. Of course, she’d never expected to come home to Ireland, only to sit by her beloved Granny’s side until her departure, then be charged with saving their ancestral home. She hadn’t thought of herself as an extreme coward, but then again…

She wasn’t a cop or an enforcer of the law. She’d been an actress, for God’s sake.

Act brave! she told herself.

But bravery fled quickly.

About as fast as she ran out of her room.

The other doors in the occupied Darien Tower were closed. Neither Stewart nor any of the others seemed to have heard the wailing.

She tore across the expansive hallway, lined with crests and paintings of the great Darien family members from the last eight-hundred-plus years, to the Great Tower. She sped down the ancient stone staircase to the ground floor and the massive audience hall, to find that Mark was still there, chatting with a group of five people. Americans, she thought: two young couples, one with a teenager.

“Moira,” Mark said, curious but smiling as he greeted her. “Friends, this is a special occasion, indeed. Moira Hawkins is the castle’s owner.”

“It’s amazing,” a young woman said.

“Magnificent,” echoed her husband.

“So, so, cool!” exclaimed the teenage boy at their side.

Moira smiled weakly. “Thank you so much. The castle has survived much, but you’ve been with one of the most amazing historians I know.”

Mark Meadows was relatively young. He’d been born in Chicago, Illinois, to Irish immigrants who continually returned to Dublin to visit family. He had attended Trinity College and then opened his tour company soon after graduating with a history degree. He was thirty now, she knew, having investigated him before they drew up their contract. And he had a stellar reputation for telling straight history and the legends and myths surrounding it. Tall, fit, dark-haired, and blue-eyed, he was a handsome and charming man who was great at his chosen work. He had other guides working for him, but she was glad he was the one here tonight.

Someone she knew. Someone with whom she was…close.

And yet…

The way he smiled told her he hadn’t heard the sobbing. He likely wondered why the hell she was still up when she usually went to bed by eleven and was up by seven or eight to begin work on the renovations.

“Lovely to have you here,” she told the group. She shrugged as if merely curious or perhaps amused, then said, “I thought I heard someone crying. It must have been the wind. But I just wanted to make sure everything was all right.”

Mark looked at her curiously. “We’re just waiting for one of our group members to return from the facilities,” he told her. “And these lovely people had a few questions. We had quite a group tonight. Almost thirty. The others have departed, but we’re waiting on Mrs. Robertson to rejoin us. Once she returns, I will, of course, lock the tower for the night.”

Mark never failed to lock up, and he and his employees checked in and out with the officer at the gatehouse for every tour. Naturally, he wouldn’t deny a guest in need, but neither would he leave the premises without ensuring every member of his tour group was out of the castle.

Moira suddenly heard the loud sobbing again as if coming from above—or the air around her.

Yet no one else seemed to hear it.

She smiled and looked at the others. Nothing. No reaction from them at all.

“Mrs. Robertson has been gone a while now,” Mark murmured. “I, uh—”

“I’ll run up and check on her,” Moira assured him.

Was she hearing things? She remembered how she had listened wide-eyed to Granny as she talked about the leprechauns, their gold, the way they loved to play practical jokes…and, of course, the banshees, keening and wailing in warning or to take some of the pain from those the deceased left behind.

Moira smiled and hurried up the old stone stairs. They’d managed to put in a lift to adhere to ADA regulations, but she just wanted to get upstairs to the modern—well, almost modern—restroom Granny had put in about twenty years ago to make the tower accommodating to tourists.

“Mrs. Robertson?” Moira called as she opened the restroom door.

She really hoped she wouldn’t need to look in the three stalls.

She didn’t need to. The keening burst into a loud sob, and Moira saw the woman on the floor by the sinks.

Loud. So very loud.

“Mrs. Robertson!” Moira cried, sinking down next to the woman.

Her eyes were closed. Moira sought a pulse and found none. The woman wasn’t breathing.

She yelled for help, but there was no help for this, and she knew it.

The woman was dead.

And the banshee had tried her best to warn Moira.