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niece.”
    “Thank you,” Rocky said.
    “Investigate with my sincere blessing!” Brendan said. “I knew my brother well. I never saw such a look on his face. Something odd is definitely afoot, and not even Gary the Ghost really believes in the tales he tells. We love them all, we do. We love our ghosts—and our pixies and leprechauns and so on. But…something is afoot.” He offered them a grim smile. “ Wickedly afoot! Collum, just in ground not quite a full two weeks, visitors a-flooding the place, and the festival on the way. We’ve got to know. It would be a hard enough thing, losing m’brother, as it were. But, to wonder like this…’tis painful.”
    “I’m so, so sorry, Brendan!” Devin said.
    She noticed the way he looked over at Kelly—as if seeing her there pained him as well.
    And then she realized that he was worried about her.
    “You and Kelly and Uncle Seamus are going to be fine,” Devin said, determined.
    He quickly glanced her way, looked down and nodded.
    “Uncle Brendan tried to get me to go home,” Kelly said. “He called us for the funeral and to come—and since, he’s tried to make me go back to the States.”
    “I shouldn’t have had you here,” Brendan told Kelly and Seamus.
    “Collum was my brother, too, Brendan,” Seamus said. “Just because I’m an American now, doesn’t mean he wasn’t my brother. Or,” he added softly, “that I’m not still Irish or that Kelly escapes that, either.”
    “Kelly escapes that?” Rocky said, looking perplexed. “I’ve some Irish in my background—and I love it,” he said.
    Devin shook her head. “You’re talking about the prophecy—which does not say that something will happen to every Karney. Stop it. We’ll find out if something is or isn’t going on. If it is, I don’t believe it’s the banshee. Is there anyone who held a grudge against Collum or the family?”
    “Something is going on,” Kelly said flatly, looking hard at Devin. “You heard the banshee wail.”
    “We heard something,” Rocky said firmly. “A banshee? That’s questionable.”
    “You don’t have any belief in our myths, legends, and ways?” Brendan asked.
    “Oh, I do. I just don’t believe that what we heard was a banshee,” Rocky said.
    “You found something?” Seamus asked him.
    Rocky shook his head. “No, but I didn’t go banging on anyone’s doors and I can’t say that I know the castle well enough to really explore.”
    “We can fix that!” Kelly said excitedly. “I mean, sounds bizarre, but it is our castle—you can go wherever you choose!”
    “Thank you. I’d like to make a few calls this morning, and then I’d very much enjoy a private tour by one of the masters—or the mistress—of the castle,” Rocky said.
    “What will you do first?” Seamus asked, looking at Rocky. Devin lowered her head, not offended that Rocky would be their go-to man—and not her. Her mother had always told her that Ireland was now racing toward a world beyond discrimination with all haste, but when her mom had been young, there had been separate rooms in most pubs for women.
    Sexual discrimination died hard in many a place—even in the States, she knew. But, in the Republic of Ireland, divorce had only been legal since 1997, which, of course, wasn’t really discriminate on either side—just hell for people who discovered they simply couldn’t live together. Old ways died hard, especially in a small village like Karney.
    “We’re going to see your doctor and coroner,” Rocky said. “And talk to him about Collum’s death.”
    Brendan sniffed. “He acts all big shot—he’s a country doctor, and that’s a fact—I don’t care about all his high-falutin’ medical degrees. He’s a doctor, a fair one, but it’s just that we’re small here, and so, he’s the coroner, too.”
    “But, he has a solid medical degree, right?” Rocky asked.
    “He has medical degrees,” Brendan said. “Went to school in Dublin—and over at Oxford.