Page 12 of Wild Scottish Fortune

Which was a direct contradiction to the nerves that kicked up when thinking about joining the Order. My need for belonging warred with my fear of never belonging anywhere at all.

By the time I showered and had crawled into bed, I hadn’t landed on which direction I wanted to go with Sophie’s invitation to join the Order. I was just picking up my crochet project when movement caught my eye.

He’s handsome.

A woman in a green dress settled at the foot of my bed. I knew, if I bent forward and looked at where her dress ended, I would see goat-like hooves sticking out from the bottom of her dress.

The Green Lady.

A glaistig.

Stories abounded about her, in hundreds of variations across Scotland, and I wouldn’t be the least surprised if there were more than one of these “Green Ladies” perpetuating these myths. But, from all accounts, she’d attached herself to me. She was the first ghost I’d ever seen, but certainly not the last, and the only one that had traveled with me as I’d moved across Scotland.

“Who is handsome?”

You know who. The one who got stuck in the cottage.

“Finlay Thompson. He’s my new boss. Of sorts. What happened in the cottage?” I settled back against my pillows, comfortable with the Green Lady, as she’d been having these bedside “chats” with me for years. At first, it had been terrifying. Now I took comfort in herpresence. She’d shown, time and again, that for some reason she felt protective over me.

The first time I’d seen her, she’d saved me from a mugging by scaring the shite out of the man who’d grabbed my arm as I walked the streets, not having a place to go home to that night. I’d been just as scared as my attacker, but when she’d ranged herself in front of me, protecting me while she terrorized him, I’d come to realize she was looking out for me. We hadn’t spoken, not that first night, but I’d thanked her before running away.

Through the years, she’d grown more confident with visiting me and we’d developed a friendship of sorts, an affinity, you could say. She wandered the world, lost and alone, and I supposed I could identify with that feeling. Two lost souls we were, finding companionship with each other, and I had come to have an odd sort of affection for this woman who never told me about herself no matter how much I prodded.

Bad energy there. A woman unfairly tried and executed.

“So, like a poltergeist?”

The Green Lady just shrugged a shoulder. I’d learned that she didn’t know the explanations that humans had come up with for ghostly or mythological apparitions. I’d been dying to ask about her goat legs for years, but any gentle nudges in that direction had resulted in her disappearance.

“And she went after Finlay, didn’t she? He was terrified.”

She made the building an ice cave and attacked him with icicles. The door was locked when I found him, but I let him out.

“So that was why he fell out of the door. He’d been locked inside. That’s strong magick for a ghost, isn’t it?”

Blood magick. She was very hurt.

“Och. That doesn’t sound great. Any suggestions to help her?”

Take your time with it. You won’t free her from there easily. You need to join the Order.

At that, I straightened.

“You know about the Order of Caledonia?”

Of course.

“Sophie thinks I’m a house witch. I don’t know how I feel about that.”

Witch is a powerful word. A blessing for some. A curse for others. You’re lucky that you get a choice in which way that path unfolds for you these days.

“And if I join this Order? She says I’ll get magick.”

You already have magick. Joining the Order just makes you stronger.

“I do?” This was news to me. Seeing ghosts had never felt very magickal to me, but maybe I needed to expand my definition.

“What if I fail them?”

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