“A residual image of a past event. Some traumatic events burn images of themselves into a place. Like a holographic sequence. When triggered, the sequence replays. Any ghost or necromancer, and some sensitive humans, can trigger them.” He paused. “You have seen these before, haven’t you?”

I thought of the crying woman in Paige and Lucas’s home.

“Er, right. I just…didn’t know they were called that.”

Trisel grinned. “You thought they were ghosts?”

“Of course not. I—”

He threw back his head and laughed. “What did you do? Try to talk to them? Entreat them to go into the light?”

I glared and stalked past him up the stairs.

After two rooms of being ignored, Trsiel offered an olive branch by way of a story, one about the woman I’d just seen. The White Lady. Ghost hunters can be the most ingenious breed when it comes to inventing ghastly tales, but ask them to think up a name for the ghost of a woman dressed in white, and they give you “the White Lady.”

She was Janet Douglas, widow of the sixth Lord Glamis. She’d been burned at the stake for witchcraft, accused of conspiring to poison King James V. Her true “crime” was being the sister of Archibald Douglas, who’d expelled the young king’s mother from Scotland years before. Political revenge—with a pretty, popular young widow for a pawn.

Last stop: the crypt.

I expected to descend into some dark, dank basement. Instead, Trsiel led me back to the main entrance at the foot of the clock tower, through a door to a set of narrow stairs that led up. We climbed the stairs into a long narrow room with a rounded ceiling.

“What’s at the other end?” I asked.

“The dining room.”

“Oooh, a dining room just off the crypt. Now, that’s a feature you don’t see very often these days.” I looked around. “Okay, where are the stiffs? I really hope they didn’t stick them in those suits of armor.”

“This is actually the servants’ hall. Where they originally ate and slept.”

“And they called it the crypt? That can’t be good.”

Trsiel shook his head and prodded me forward.

“What? I’m not moving fast enough?”

I stopped. If I were a cat, my fur would have stood on end. I looked around, but all I saw was a mishmash of antiques, and two small windows at the end of the half-tunnel room.

“It’s strong here, isn’t it?” Trsiel said. “The strongest point, though, is in there.” He pointed to the wall. “There’s a room on the other side. Legend has it that Lord Glamis walled up a group of Scottish clansmen inside, sealed it, and left them to starve to death.”

“Is it true?”

He nodded. “That one, I’m afraid, is more than a tall tale.”