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had died. When the phone rang an hour later and she learned my grandma had died, she screamed and then watched me close from then on. I started to see a lot of shadows and images out of the corner of my eye, and I always felt like I was being watched.”
    Maddy cleared her throat. “When I was eight we moved to an apartment in downtown Glasgow. There this little girl would come out of the closet at night and talk to me. She said she lived in the building years before when a fire destroyed it. She didn’t make it out.”
    “That’s bloody horrible,” Cait said, glancing over her shoulder, like she expected the girl to show up at any second.
    “She became my friend,” Maddy said absently. “I ran home from school every single day to play with her. Then one day my mum said we were moving. I was so sad. I couldn’t imagine not seeing Emma any longer. I never saw her again.”
    What Maddy didn’t say, but I could feel, was that Emma had been her best friend, and she’d lost that best friend and it had left its mark on her.
    “Shortly after, my mum dropped me off here and I met Hanway.” She hugged her knees to her chest. “It might seem weird to everyone else because he’s a man.”
    “No one thinks it’s weird, Maddy,” Cait said reassuringly. “Some things happen for a reason.” She leaned forward and ruffled Maddy’s hair. “He’s your friend and you’re lucky to have him.”
    Maddy smiled at Cait. “I am lucky.”
    “Maybe Hanway is why you came to Braemar to begin with,” Cait added.
    Maddy shrugged. “I doubt my mom’s drug addiction has anything to do with a spirit needing me, but thanks for trying to make me feel better.”
    Cait and I locked eyes and we cracked up. Leave it to Maddy to take a sincere moment and call ‘bullshit.’
    She frowned at both of us. I felt for Maddy, for being abandoned by both parents, for living in fear of the moment her mother might come knocking on the castle door to take her away to a life of instability and moving from one place to the next. Leaving Hanway and the MacKinnons would be devastating for her, and I hoped more than anything that day never came.
    “So do you think Hanway could point toward the burial spot?” I asked, wanting and needing to validate what I had seen in my dream.
    Maddy glanced toward Hanway. “He said yes, but we have to go up to the battlements to see.”
    I followed them out of the room and up the tower steps, my mind racing. What would happen if I did find Laria’s grave? Would she get over her anger and frustration toward me and the MacKinnons or would things just continue to escalate?
    We headed up another staircase, and then out onto the battlements. “Show me,” Maddy said, going up on her tiptoes and looking out over the stone wall.
    “He says that it looks a lot different now than it did back then. That tree is in the way,” she said motioning to a group of trees. “See the stump off to the right of the tallest oak there?”
    I nodded.
    “There’s a very crude pathway that leads deep into the woods and toward the top of the hill.”
    My pulse skittered.
    “Hanway said the pathway forks off in several different directions when you get about midway up the hillside. Stay to the right, and it will lead you to the very top of the hill.”
    Cait frowned. “She’s buried at the top of the hill?”
    Maddy chewed her lower lip and frowned. “Just on the other side of the hill. No one wanted the grave to be found…ever.”
    “I dreamt about the grave last night,” I blurted, and both Cait and Maddy looked at me. “Where Hanway is saying it is, is what I had seen in my dream. In my dream I stood at the top of the hill and looked down at the castle.”
    Cait turned to me and smiled. “Then that means we’re on the right track.” She patted Maddy on the back. “Good job, Maddy. Tell Hanway thanks.”
    Maddy beamed. “You just told him yourself.”
    “Nice.” Cait looked at me, and lifted a brow. “So, when are we