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Cursed
Lisa Childs


Her protector – or her greatest threat?Again and again, the people Maria cares about are turning up dead. She may be a witch but, in spite of her powers, Maria can’t seem to protect them.All she can do is keep away from her loved ones – and hope that the witch hunter doesn’t find them.The hunter could be anyone – even Seth Hughes, the brooding FBI agent investigating Maria for murder. From the moment they meet, the intense connection Maria feels tells her that their destinies are bound. And, as the hunter targets Maria, getting close to Seth becomes a dangerous but irresistible temptation…







“Protecting you is my job. You’re a material witness. I have to keep you alive.”

Maria nodded. “Yes. Of course,” she agreed. “I know that you’re only doing your job.”

Finding her had never been just a job to him. She was so much more than that … So much more than he had ever realized before meeting her. Was Maria really what everyone claimed she was? Was she really a witch?

“I could do my job more easily if you stopped lying to me and told me everything you know.” He touched her again, tipping up her chin to make her meet his gaze.

Her thick black lashes fluttered as she blinked—as if trying to shield her thoughts and feelings from him. Could she sense his feelings?

Could she feel his desire for her? His madness …


LISA CHILDS writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Mills & Boon. She lives on thirty acres in Michigan with her two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her website, lisachilds.com (http://lisachilds.com), or snail-mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.


Cursed

Lisa Childs




www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


With great appreciation to

Tara Gavin and Ann Leslie Tuttle

for letting me share Maria’s story

and revisit The Witch Hunt series.

Thank you!


Contents

Cover (#u73d07990-2a36-5e09-a659-5ba5dfbb263b)

Excerpt (#ue5bc42c9-1e89-5e83-b8cb-403527a8c708)

About the Author (#ud8708f6f-ebd8-55bf-9f0e-789332ba8a1b)

Title Page (#ufd557d0e-1259-5ca6-b15a-7255aef4012c)

Dedication (#ub795cc2c-9453-5aa4-94cc-25aca1356f99)

Prologue (#u94398e35-248e-516e-91f8-2f3e969786dc)

Chapter 1 (#ub27c1af6-6d74-5b09-9749-b165cafdc82d)

Chapter 2 (#uf1c8e28c-77c3-5e62-94d3-98fb4341b373)

Chapter 3 (#u1b7bc351-d23d-5762-89e6-4ce6c39d3889)

Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


Prologue (#ulink_76f0cb6d-09b3-577f-93d7-967f4ffd7ac5)

Europe, 1655

Strong hands closed over her shoulders, shaking her awake. Elena Durikken blinked her eyes open, but the darkness remained thick, impenetrable.

“Child, awaken. Quickly.”

“Mama?” She blinked again, bringing a shadow into focus. A shadow with long curly hair. “Mama.”

“Rise up. Hurry. You have to go.” Her mother’s hands dragged back the blankets, letting the cold air steal across Elena’s skin.

“Go? Where are we going?” She couldn’t remember being awake in such blackness before. Usually a fire flickered in the hearth, the dying embers casting a glow over their small home. Or her mother burned candles, chanting to herself as she fixed her potions from the dried herbs and flowers strung from the rafters.

“Only you, child. You must go alone.” Mama’s words, the final way she spoke, chilled Elena more than the cold night air.

“Mama...” Tears stung her eyes and ran down her face.

“There’s no time. They will come soon. For me. And if you are still here, they will take you, too.”

“Mama, you are scaring me.” It was not the first time. She had scared Elena many times before, with the things she saw, the things she knew were coming before they ever happened.

Like the fire.

“Is this...is this because of the fire, Mama?”

Mama didn’t answer, just pulled a cape over Elena’s head, lifting the hood over her hair. Then she slid Elena’s feet into her boots, lacing them up as if she were a small dependent child, not a thirteen-year-old girl she was sending alone into the night. Mama pressed the neck of a satchel against Elena’s palm. “Ration the food and water. Keep to the woods, child. Run. Keep running...”

“How can they blame you for the fire?” she cried. “You warned them.”

Even before the sky had darkened or the wind had picked up, her mother had told them the storm was coming. That the lightning would strike in the night, while the women slept. And that they would die in a horrible fire. Mama had seen it all happen...

Elena didn’t know how her mother’s visions worked, but she knew that Mama was always right. More tears fell from her eyes. “You asked them to leave.”

But the woman of the house, along with her sister-in-law, whose family was staying with her, had thought that with the men away for work, Mama was tricking them. That she, a desperate woman raising a child alone, would rob their deserted house. She’d been trying to save their lives.

Mama shook her head, her hair swirling around her shoulders. “The villagers think I cast a spell. That I brought the lightning.”

Elena had heard the frightened murmurs and seen the downward glances as her mother walked through the village. Everyone thought her a witch because of the potions she made. But when the townspeople were sick, they came to Mama for help even though they feared her. How could they think she would do them harm? “No, Mama...”

“No. The only spell cast is upon me, child. These visions I see, I have no control over them,” she said. “And I have no control over what will happen now. I need you to go. To run. And keep running, Elena. Never stop. Or they will catch you.”

Elena threw her arms around her mother’s neck, more scared than she had ever been. Even though she heard no one, saw no light in the blackness outside her window, she knew her mama was right. They were coming for her. The men who’d returned, who’d found their wives, sisters and daughters dead, burned.

“Come with me, Mama,” Elena beseeched her, holding tight.

“No, child. ’Tis too late for me to fight my fate, but you can. You can run.” She closed her arms around Elena, clutching her tight for just a moment before thrusting her away. “Now go!”

Tears blinded Elena as much as the darkness. She’d just turned toward the ladder leading down from the loft when Mama caught her hand, squeezing Elena’s fingers around the soft velvet satchel. “Do not lose the charms.”

Elena’s heart contracted. “You gave me the charms?”

“They will keep you safe.”

“How?” Elena asked in a breathless whisper.

“They hold great power, child.”

“You need them.” Elena did not know from where they had come, but Mama had never removed the three charms from the leather thong tied around her wrist. Until now.

Mama shook her head. “I cannot keep them. They are yours, to pass to your children. To remember who and what we are.”

Witches.

Mama did not say it, but Elena knew. She shivered.

“Go now, child,” Mama urged. “Go before it is too late for us both.” She expelled a ragged breath of air, then pleaded, “Do not forget...”

Elena hugged her mother again, pressing her face tight against her, breathing in the scent of lavender and sandalwood incense. The paradox that was her mama, the scent by which she would always remember her. “I will never forget. Never!”

“I know, child. You have it, too. The curse. The gift. Whatever it be.”

“No, Mama...” She didn’t want to be what her mother was; she didn’t want to be a witch.

“You have it, too,” Mama insisted. “I see the power you have, much stronger than any of mine. He would see it as well, and want to destroy you.” Before Elena could ask of whom her mother spoke, the woman pushed her away, her voice quavering with urgency as she shouted, “You have to go!”

Elena fumbled with the satchel as she scrambled down the ladder, running as much from her mother’s words as her warning. She didn’t want the curse, whatever the mystical power was. She didn’t want to flee, either. But her mama’s fear stole into her heart, forcing her to run.

Keep to the woods.

She did, cringing as twigs and underbrush snapped beneath the worn soles of her old boots. She ran for so long that her lungs burned and sweat dried on her skin, both heating and chilling her. She’d gone a long way before turning and looking back toward her house.

She knew she’d gone too far, too deep into the woods to see it clearly with her eyes. So, like Mama, she must have seen it with her mind. The fire.

Burning.

The woman in the middle of it, screaming, crying out for God to forgive them. Pain tore at Elena, burning, crippling. She dropped to her knees, wrapping her arms around her middle, trying to hold in the agony. Trying to shut out the image in her head. She crouched there for a long while, her mama’s screams ringing in her ears.

Behind her, brush rustled, the blackness shattered by the glow of a lantern. Oh, God, they’d found her already.

The glow fell across her face and that of the boy who held the lantern. Thomas McGregor. He wasn’t much older than she, but he’d gone to work with his father and uncles, leaving his mother, sisters, aunt and cousins behind...to burn alive.

As they’d burned her mother. “No...”

“I was sent to find you. To bring you back,” he said, his voice choked as tears ran down his face. Tears for his family or for her?

Her mother had seen this, had tried to fight this fate for her daughter, the same fate that had just taken her life.

“You hate me?” she asked.

He shook his head, and something flickered in his eyes with the lantern light. Something she had seen before when she’d caught him staring at her. “No, Elena.”

“But you wish me harm? I had nothing to do with your loss.” Nor did her mother, but they had killed her. Smoke swept into the woods, too far from the fire to be real, and in the middle of the haze hovered a woman. Elena’s mother.

“I have to bring you back,” Thomas said, his hand trembling as he reached for her, his fingers closing over her arm.

The charms will keep you safe.

Had her mother’s ghost spoken or was it only Elena’s memory? Regardless, she reached in the pocket of her cape and held the satchel tight. Heat emanated through the thick velvet, warming her palm. As if she’d stepped into Thomas’s mind, she read his thoughts and saw the daydreams he had had of the two of them. “Thomas, you do not wish me harm.”

“But Papa...”

Other memories played through Elena’s mind, her mother’s memories. She shuddered, reeling under the impact of knowledge she was too young to understand. “Your papa is a bad man,” she whispered. “Come with me, Thomas. We will run together.”

He shook his head. “He would find us. He would kill us both.”

Because of what she’d seen, she knew he spoke the truth. Eli McGregor would kill anyone who got between him and what he wanted.

“Thomas, please...”

His fingers tightened on her arm as if he were about to drag her off. Elena clutched the satchel so close the jagged little metal pieces cut her palm through the velvet.

He sighed as if a great battle waged inside him. “I cannot give you to him. Go, Elena. You are lost to me.” But when she turned to leave, he caught her hand as her mother had, shaking as he pressed something against her bloody palm. “Take my mother’s locket.”

To remember him? To remember what his family had done to hers? She would want no reminders. But her fingers closed over the metal, warm from the heat of his skin. She couldn’t refuse. Not when he had spared her life.

“Use it for barter, if need be, to get as far away from here as you can. My father has sworn vengeance on all your mother’s relatives and descendants. He says he will let no witch live.”

“I am not a witch.” She whispered the lie, closing her eyes to the luminous image of her mother’s ghost.

“He will kill you,” Thomas whispered back.

She knew he spoke the truth. Like her mother, she could now see her fate. But unlike her mother, she wouldn’t wait for Eli McGregor to come for her. She turned to leave again, then twirled back, moved closer to Thomas and pressed her lips against his cheek, cold and wet from his tears.

“Godspeed, Elena,” he said as she stepped out of the circle of light from his lantern, letting the darkness and smoke swallow her as she ran.

This time she wouldn’t stop... She wouldn’t stop until she’d gotten as far away as she could. And even then, she wouldn’t ever stop running...

From who and what she was.

Armaya, Michigan, 1986

The candlelight flickered as the wind danced through the open windows of the camper, carrying with it the scent of lavender and sandalwood incense. Myra Cooper dragged in the first breath she’d taken since she’d begun telling her family’s legend; it caught in her lungs, burning, as she studied her daughters’ beautiful faces.

Irina snuggled between her bigger sisters, her big dark eyes luminous in the candlelight. She heard everything but, at four, was too young to understand.

Elena, named for that long-ago ancestor, tightened her arm protectively around her sister’s narrow shoulders. Her hair was pale and straight, a contrast to Myra’s and Irina’s dark curls. Her eyes were a vivid icy blue that saw everything. But at twelve, she was too old to believe.

Ariel kept an arm around her sister, too, while her gaze was intent on Myra’s face as she waited for more of the story. The candlelight reflected in her auburn hair like flames, and her green eyes glowed. She listened. But Myra worried that she did not hear.

She worried that none of them understood that they were gifted with special abilities. The girls had never spoken of them to her or one another, but maybe that was better. Maybe they would be safer if they denied their heritage. Yet they couldn’t deny what they didn’t know; that was why she had shared the legend. She wanted them to know their fate so they could run from it before they were destroyed.

“We are Durikken women,” she told her daughters, “like that first Elena.”

“You named me after her,” her eldest said, not questioning. She already knew.

Myra nodded. “And I’m named for her mother.” And sometimes, when she believed in reincarnation, she was sure she was that woman, with her memories as well as her special abilities.

However, most of the time, Myra believed in nothing; it hurt too much to accept her reality. But tonight she had to be responsible. She had one last chance to protect her children; she’d already failed them in so many ways. They didn’t have to live the hardscrabble life she had. They didn’t have to be what she was—a woman whose fears had driven her to desperation.

“Our last name is Cooper,” Elena reminded her.

“Papa’s name,” she said, referring to her own father. None of their fathers had given his child his name, either because the man had refused or she hadn’t told him he was a father. “We are Durikken, and Durikken women are special. They know things are going to happen before they do.”

Pain lanced through Myra, stealing her breath as images rolled through her mind like a black-and-white movie. She couldn’t keep running and she couldn’t make them keep running, either.

She forced herself to continue. “They see things or people that no one else can see. This ability, like the charms on my bracelet—” she raised her arm, the silver jewelry absorbing the firelight as it dangled from her wrist “—has been passed from generation to generation.”

But Myra was more powerful than her sisters, had inherited more abilities as a woman and a witch. That was why she had been given the bracelet—because her mother had known she would be the only one of her three daughters to continue the Durikken legacy.

Myra’s fingers trembled as she unclasped the bracelet. She’d never taken it off, not once since her mother had put it on her wrist, until tonight. Her daughters had admired it many times, running their fingers over the crude pewter charms, and she knew which was each one’s favorite.

Elena had always admired the star, the sharp tips now dulled with age. Irina loved the crescent moon, easily transformed—like Irina’s moods—from a smile to a frown, depending on the angle from which it dangled. Ariel favored the sun, its rays circling a small smooth disk. Despite its age, this charm seemed to shine brighter than the others. Like Ariel.

Even now, in the dingy little camper, an aura surrounded the child, glowing around her head as spirits hovered close. Did Ariel know what her gift was? Did either of her sisters? Her daughters needed Myra’s guidance so they could understand and use their abilities. They were too young to be without their mother, but she couldn’t put them at risk. All Myra could hope was that the charms would keep them safe.

Myra knelt before her children where they huddled in their little makeshift bed in the back of the pickup camper, their home for their sporadic travels. This was all she’d been able to give them. Until now. Until she’d shared the legend.

Now she’d given them their heritage, and with the help of the charms, they would remember it always. No matter how much time passed. No matter how much they might want to forget or ignore it.

She reached for Elena’s hand first. It was nearly as big as hers, strong and capable, like the girl. She could handle anything...Myra hoped. She dropped the star into Elena’s palm and closed her fingers over the pewter charm. The girl’s blue gaze caught hers, held. No questions filled her eyes, only knowledge. She’d already seen too much in visions like her mother’s. The girl had never admitted it, but Myra knew.

She then reached for the smallest—and weakest—hand, Irina’s. Myra worried most about this child. She’d had so little time with her. She closed Irina’s hand around the moon. Hang on tight, child. She didn’t say it aloud. For Irina she didn’t need to—the child could hear unspoken thoughts.

Myra swallowed down a sob before reaching for Ariel. But the girl’s hand was outstretched already. She was open and trusting, and because of that might be hurt the worst.

“Don’t lose these,” she beseeched them. Without the protection of the little pewter charms, none of them would be strong enough to survive.

“We won’t, Mama,” Elena answered for herself and her younger sisters as she attached her charm to her bracelet and helped Irina with hers.

Despite her trembling fingers, Myra secured the sun charm on Ariel’s bracelet, but when she pulled back, the girl caught her hand. “Mama?”

“Yes, child?”

“You called it a curse...this special ability,” Ariel reminded her, her voice tremulous. She had been listening.

Myra nodded. “Yes, it is a curse, my sweetheart. People don’t understand. They thought our ancestors were witches who cast evil spells.”

And they had been witches, but ones who’d tried to help and heal. Her family had never been about evil; that was what had pursued them and persecuted them through the ages.

“But that was long ago,” Elena said, ever practical. “People don’t believe in witches anymore.”

Myra knew better than to warn them, to make them aware of the dangers. She’d shown them the locket earlier, the one nestled between her breasts, the metal cold against her skin. It was the one Thomas had pressed upon Elena all those years ago. Inside were faded pictures, drawn by Thomas’s young hand, of his sisters, who had died in the fire. Their deaths could have been prevented if only they’d listened and fought their fate. “Some still believe.”

“Mama, I’m cursed?” Ariel asked, her turquoise eyes wide with fear. Her hand shook as she clutched the sun.

No more than I. Myra had lost so much in her life. Her one great love—Elena’s father. And now...

“Mama, there are lights coming across the field!” Ariel whispered, as if thinking that if she spoke softly they wouldn’t find her. Maybe she didn’t hear as much as her sisters, but she understood.

Myra didn’t glance out the window. She’d already seen the lights coming, in a vision, and so she’d hidden the camper in the middle of a cornfield. But still they’d found her; they’d found them. She stared at her children, memorizing their faces, praying for their futures. Each would know a great love as she had, and all she could hope was that theirs lasted. That they fought against their fate, against the evil stalking them, as she would have fought had she been stronger.

She just stood there next to the camper, in the middle of the cornfield, as the child protective services, who’d already declared her unfit, took her children away. The girls screamed and reached for her, tears cascading down their beautiful faces like rain against windows.

This wasn’t Myra’s final fate; her death would come much later. But as her heart bled and her soul withered, this was the night she really died.

But the authorities didn’t take them all. Her hands clasped her swollen belly. Soon she would have another little girl. This child would need her even more than the others, for she would have more abilities than they had. She would be more powerful a witch even than Myra. But yet she would be even more cursed. The witch hunt would end for the others. But for her fourth child, whom she would call Maria, the witch hunt would never end...


Chapter 1 (#ulink_d90c7e01-d4b9-553c-8ef9-c35a6793484f)

Energy flowed from the cards up the tips of Maria Cooper’s tingling fingers. Warmth spread through her as the energy enveloped her. This will be a clear reading...

She had been blocking her special abilities for so long that she’d worried she might have lost them. But maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. In the past they had proved more destructive than special—more curse than gift.

“What do you see?” the young woman asked, her voice quavering with excitement.

“I haven’t turned the first card,” Maria pointed out. Only the Significator, the fair-haired Queen of Cups, lay faceup on the table between them. The card didn’t represent the young woman’s physical appearance—not since the girl had dyed her hair black, tattooed a crow on her face and renamed herself Raven. But the card represented the wistfulness of the young woman’s nature, so Maria had chosen it for her.

“But you see stuff—that’s what people say about you,” the girl continued. “That’s why I wanted to learn from you—how to read the cards and how to make the potions and amulets. I know that you have a real gift.”

A gift. Or a curse? She used to think it was the first and had grown up embracing her heritage. But then everything had gone so wrong, and she had begun to believe what others had—that she was cursed. That was why she had refused the girl’s previous requests to learn to read. Maria had taught her about the crystals and herbs she sold in her shop but she’d resisted the cards—afraid of what she herself might see.

“I have it, too,” Raven confided. “I get that sense of déjà vu all the time. I know I’ve already dreamed what’s happening. I saw it...like you see stuff.”

I hope you don’t see the stuff I’ve seen...

“That’s why I want to learn tarot,” the girl said. “Because I know I’ll be good at it.”

Raven had been saying the same thing ever since she had first started hanging around the Magik Shoppe. The twenty-two-year-old had spent so much time there that Maria had finally given her a job, and now she had given in on teaching her tarot. She hoped like hell that she didn’t come to regret caving in to the girl’s pleas.

Maybe Raven had a gift. Or maybe, like so many others, she only wished she did because she had glamorized the supernatural ability into something that it wasn’t. Into something powerful, when having these abilities actually made Maria feel powerless, helpless to stop what she might see.

“Thank you,” Raven said, “for helping me.”

I hope it helps and doesn’t hurt...

“To teach you how to read the cards, I have to show you how I do a reading,” Maria said. That was how her mother had taught her, having Maria watch her do readings for other people. But Mama hadn’t always told the truth of the cards. Instead of telling people what she saw, she had told them what they’d wanted to see.

The old gypsy proverb that her mother had always recited echoed in Maria’s head. There are such things as false truths and honest lies.

But there was no one but she and Raven in the old barn on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that Maria had converted into her shop. She had only the girl’s cards to read. And she had already told Raven the meaning of each card, so she wouldn’t be able to lie to her—even if it would be the kinder thing to do.

This is a mistake...

Her fingers stilled against the deck, which was the size of a paperback novel. She preferred the big cards because of the greater detail. She had always used them, ever since she had first started reading—at the age of four. She had read cards before she’d been able to read words.

“I’ve been working here almost since you opened a few months ago, but I’ve never seen you do a reading,” Raven remarked.

And she shouldn’t be doing one now. She shouldn’t risk it...but it had been so long. She had missed it. Surely it couldn’t happen again. The cards wouldn’t come up the way they had before...

“I haven’t done one in a while,” she admitted. But she hadn’t lost the ability. Energy continued to tingle up Maria’s fingertips, spreading into her arms and chest. Before the girl could ask her why she hadn’t, Maria shuffled the cards again and eased one off the top of the deck. “This first card will represent your environment.”

Maria turned over the card atop the Significator, and dread knotted her stomach as she stared down at it. The moon shone down upon snarling dogs and a deadly scorpion.

A gasp slipped through the girl’s painted black lips. “That’s not good.”

Maria’s temple throbbed, and her pulse beat heavily in her throat. “No. The moon represents hidden enemies. Danger.”

The girl’s eyes, heavily lined with black, widened with fear. “You’re saying I’m in danger.”

Not again...

“That’s what that means, right?” Raven persisted, her voice rising into hysteria.

Since Maria had already taught the girl the meaning of each card, she couldn’t deny what Raven already knew. So she nodded. “Danger. Deceit. A dark aura...”

Maria saw it now, enveloping Raven like a starless night sky—cold and eerie, untold dangers hiding in the darkness. Goose bumps lifted on her skin beneath her heavy knit sweater, and she shivered.

“Turn over the next card,” the girl urged. “That’s what’s coming up—that’s what’s going to be my obstacle, right?”

Maria shook her head. She wouldn’t do it; she wouldn’t turn that card. “No. We need to stop. We can’t continue.” She shouldn’t have even begun; she shouldn’t have risked the cards coming up the way they had before. But it had been more than a year...

She had thought that she might have reversed the curse, that her fortunes might have finally changed. She’d been using the crystals, herbs and incense that she used for healing to treat herself.

“Turn the card!” The girl’s voice had gone shrill, and her face flushed with anger despite her pale pancake makeup. “Turn it!”

“No.” Her heart beating fast, she could feel the girl’s panic and fear as if it were her own. But she also felt her desperation and determination.

“I have to know!” Raven shouted.

Maybe she did. Maybe they both needed to know. Maria’s fingers trembled as she fumbled with the next card. Then she flipped it over to reveal the skeleton knight.

Raven screamed. “That’s the death card.”

“It has other meanings,” Maria reminded her. “You’ve been studying the tarot with me. You know that it might just mean the end of something.”

“What is it the end of? You see more than the cards. You see the future.”

As Maria stared across the table at the young woman, an image flashed through her mind. The girl—her face pale not with makeup but with death—her fearful eyes closed forever.

Raven demanded, “What is my future?”

You won’t have one.

“I don’t see anything,” Maria claimed.

“You’re lying!”

Maybe the girl actually had a gift—because Maria was a very good liar. Like reading the cards, she had learned at a very young age how to lie from her mother. “Raven...”

“You were looking at me, but you weren’t really looking at me. You saw something. Tell me what you saw!”

“Raven...”

“Oh, God, it’s bad.” The girl’s breath shuddered out, and tears welled in her eyes. “It’s really bad.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Maria assured her. “We can stop it from happening. I’ll make you an amulet of special herbs and crystals...” And maybe this time it would work.

The girl shook her head, and her tears spilled over, running down her face in black streaks of eyeliner. “Even you can’t change the future!” She jumped up with such force she knocked over her chair.

Maria jumped up, too, and grabbed the girl’s arms. “Don’t panic.” But she felt it—the fear that had her heart hammering in her chest and her breathing coming fast and shallow in her lungs.

“Stay here,” she implored the girl. “Stay with me, and I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”

Blind with terror, Raven clawed at Maria’s hands and jerked free of her grasp. Then she shoved Maria away from her, sending her stumbling back from the table.

“No. It’s you,” the girl said, her eyes reflecting horror. “I’ve seen it—the dark aura around you.”

That was what Maria had been trying to remove. But she had failed. As Raven had said, even she couldn’t change the future—no matter how hard she tried.

“It’s you!” Raven shouted, her voice rising as she continued her accusation. “You’re the moon!”

She hurled the table at Maria, knocking it over like the chair. The cards scattered across the old brick pavers of the barn.

Raven was right: even she, with all the knowledge of her witch ancestor, could not change what she had seen of the future. Like that witch ancestor, who had burned at the stake centuries ago, Maria was helpless to fight the evil that followed her no matter how far and how fast she had tried to outrun it.

The girl turned now and ran for the door, leaving it gaping open behind her as she fled. Just like Maria, Raven wouldn’t be able to escape her fate: death.

* * *

The night breeze drifted through the bedroom window and across the bed, cooling Seth Hughes’s naked skin and rousing him from sleep. He didn’t know how long he’d been out. But it couldn’t have been long, because his heart pounded hard yet, his chest rising and falling with harsh breaths. The breeze stirred a scent from his tangled sheets, of sandalwood and lavender, sweat and sex.

He splayed his hands, reaching across the bed. But she was gone even though he could still feel her in his arms and how he’d felt buried deep inside her body. He could taste her yet on his lips and on his tongue.

With a ragged sigh, he opened his eyes and peered around the room. Moonlight, slanting through the blinds at the window, streaked across the bed and across the naked woman sitting on the foot of it, turned away from him. She leaned forward, and her long black curls skimmed over her shoulders, leaving her back completely bare but for a silver chain and the trio of tattoos a few inches below the chain that circled her neck. There was a sun, a star and a crescent moon.

“I thought you’d left,” he murmured, his voice rough with sleep and the desire that surged through him again. She was so damned beautiful with that sexy gypsy hair and all that honey-toned skin.

“I couldn’t just leave,” she replied as she rose from the bed.

Not after what they’d done? His pulse leaped as the desire surged harder, making him hard. Making love with her had been the most powerful experience of his life. And even though he wasn’t certain he could survive it, it was an experience he wanted again. And again...

“I’m glad,” he said.

She shook her head. “You won’t be.”

“Maria?” he asked, wondering about her ominous tone.

“You’re going to be dead.” Finally, she turned toward him, and the moonlight glinted off the barrel of the gun she held. He glanced toward the bedside table, where the small holster he clamped to the back of his belt lay empty. She held his gun.

“You don’t want to do this,” he said, holding his hand out for the weapon. But as he reached for it, it fired. The gunshot shattered the quiet of the night and...

* * *

The peal of his cell phone pulled him, fighting and kicking, from the grasp of the dark dream. Seth awoke clutching his heart, which pounded out a frantic rhythm. Pulling his hand away, he expected it to be covered with blood. His blood.

But his palm was dry. The room was too dark for him to see anything but the blinking light on his phone. No moonlight shone through the worn blinds at the window of the motel room. The only scent was dust and the grease from the burger and fries he’d brought back from the diner down the street.

“It was just a dream,” Seth said, but no relief eased the tension from his shoulders or loosened the knot in his gut. Nothing was ever just a dream with him.

Drawing a breath into his strained lungs, he reached for the persistently ringing phone. His holstered gun sat on the nightstand next to the cell. His fingers skimmed over the cold barrel before he grabbed up the phone.

Just a dream...

“Hughes,” he said gruffly into the phone.

“Agent Hughes?”

“Yes.”

“You were right!” The girl’s voice cracked with fear as it rose with hysteria. “It’s her! She’s here.”

“Maria Cooper?”

“I lied to you when you were here earlier. I didn’t believe what you said about her, but you’re right. You’re right about everything!” A sob rattled the phone. “I never should have trusted her. Now I’m in danger.”

“Where are you?” An image flashed into his mind of the young woman with the bird tattooed on her face. “Raven?”

“I’m at the Magik Shoppe,” she replied.

The old round red barn was hardly a store. But that was another reason he’d known it was her shop even though he hadn’t found her there, just the girl.

“Why?” he asked. He had no doubt that she was right; she was in danger. So why was she at the barn?

“I came back here to get you proof that she’s the one,” Raven said. “I found it. I have the evidence you need. But you have to come quickly!”

He kicked back the tangled sheets. “I’m coming.”

“How far away are you?”

“I stayed in town.” Although calling Copper Creek, Michigan, a town was stretching the description since it had only a gas station, a diner, a bar and this one ramshackle motel. Despite the girl’s denial, he had known the shop belonged to Maria Cooper. Finally, he’d come across one of her witchcraft stores before it—and she—was gone.

He’d stayed in Copper Creek with the intent to keep returning to the store until he caught her there. Hell, if not for the long drive up north having worn him out, he would have staked out the place until she came back. But if he had fallen asleep and she’d discovered him, the least she would have done was run again.

Maybe he should have risked staying; at least he would have been closer when Raven called and he wouldn’t have to traverse the winding, rutted gravel road in the dead of night. “I’ll be right there.”

“You’re going to be too late...”

Oh, shit. The girl must have warned her boss about him. Maria Cooper was already on the run again. “Stay there. And keep her there if you can.”

Another sob rattled the phone. “No. I don’t want her to find me. I don’t want her to kill me, too.”

Seth reached for his gun again. Maybe it would be fired tonight. “I’ll protect you,” he promised. “I won’t let her hurt you. Just wait for me.”

Her breath hitched, and he could almost see her nodding in acquiescence. “Please hurry. She read my cards. She told me I’m going to die.”

He shuddered. Every time Maria Cooper had read someone’s future, they had wound up not having one anymore. They’d wound up dead.

Just as he had in his dream...

* * *

“She’s dead,” Ariel Cooper-Koster said. Goose bumps of dread and cold lifted on her skin as she stood outside in the night breeze.

“You’ve seen her ghost, then,” Elena Cooper-Dolce replied, her pale blond hair glowing in the lights spilling out of the stately house in front of which they stood. There was no surprise in Elena’s voice. As she’d previously admitted to Ariel, she had already witnessed their youngest sister’s murder in a vision.

Ariel stared at the ghost of a woman with big brown eyes and long curly dark hair. Caught between two worlds, her image wavered in and out of a cloud of sandalwood-and-lavender-scented smoke.

“I haven’t seen her yet,” she admitted. “But Mama’s back...” And she hadn’t seen her in years. “She wouldn’t have left her if Maria were still alive.” After child protective services had taken Ariel, Elena and Irina from their mother, they had been separated and hadn’t been reunited until twenty years later. Once they had all found each other and saved themselves from the evil force stalking them, their mother’s ghost had left them. She had stayed with the daughter who’d needed her most—the one who’d been alone. Maria, whom her sisters hadn’t even known existed until those twenty years had passed. It was Irina who’d figured out that her roommate, at the time their mother had died, was actually their sister. But once they’d learned of her existence, they hadn’t been able to find her.

Elena shuddered. “I hope you’re wrong. For her sake and for Irina’s.”

“She can’t know,” Ariel agreed. Their younger sister was in a fragile state; eight months pregnant with twins, she had been confined to bed rest and absolutely no stress.

“She does,” a raspy male voice said as Ty McIntyre opened his front door to his sisters-in-law. He was a muscular man with dark hair, dark blue eyes and a jagged scar running through one eyebrow.

“Maria is not dead,” Ty said as he gestured them inside the two-story foyer of his grand house. “She knows what the two of you are thinking, though. She hears you.”

Ariel’s face heated, and Elena’s flushed bright red in the glow of the chandelier hanging over their heads. “Of course...” Irina could hear the thoughts of others—especially those with whom she was connected. “We can’t block her like she can...”

“Maria isn’t blocking her right now,” he said, and a muscle twitched along his clenched jaw.

“But you wish she was,” Elena said as she reached out and squeezed his arm, offering support and comfort.

“Maria can’t block her when she’s really upset,” he said. “When she’s really scared. Her emotions are so strong that Irina feels them, too.”

Ariel’s heart rate quickened. “Maria is upset and scared?”

Maybe that was why Mama had come back to her—to get her other children to help her youngest. While Ariel had always been able to see ghosts, she couldn’t always hear them. She had struggled the most with her mother’s ghost—probably because of all the emotions her mother’s appearance always summoned in Ariel. The pain and regret and resentment.

Ty grimly nodded. “That’s why I asked you both to come over tonight,” he said. “Irina wants me to go find Maria.”

“You’ve been looking for her for eight years,” Ariel said with frustration and resignation. “We all have.” And with the six of them working together, they had more resources than most—financially and supernaturally.

“So you’re giving up?” It wasn’t Ty asking; it was Irina, standing precariously at the top of the stairwell—her legs wobbling.

Ty vaulted up the steps and caught his wife up in his arms, lifting her as easily as if she were one of their seven-year-old twins. “You’re not supposed to be out of bed.”

“I could hear you all,” she said. But probably only in her mind, since they hadn’t awakened either one of the twins.

Ariel and Elena hurried up the stairs and followed Ty down the hall as he carried Irina back to their bedroom. “We didn’t mean to upset you,” Ariel said.

“We came to help,” Elena said, her usually soft voice heavy with guilt and regret.

Ty gently settled his wife back onto their king-size bed. Irina sat up against the pillows and stared at them all, her brown eyes even darker with hurt and accusation.

She looked so much like the ghost of their mother—so much like the picture she’d shown them of their sister Maria. The three of them looked like gypsies—like witches—while Ariel and Elena didn’t look related to any of them or even to each other. But their abilities united them—the Durikken blood that flowed in all their veins. Or had once flowed in their mother’s...

She hovered near Irina. Maybe she had come back because Irina needed her more than Maria did.

“We’re going to find her,” Irina insisted.

Or maybe Maria would find them—after she died.

“Ty will bring her back.”

It might not be possible. All they had found of their mother’s remains had been her ashes.

“She’s not dead,” Irina said. “I can sense her feelings. I can hear her thoughts. She’s anxious and scared. And very much alive.”

For now. But if she was anxious and scared, she must be in the danger that Elena kept envisioning. And none of those visions had ended well for Maria...

* * *

She was gone. Maria couldn’t even feel her anymore. There had been so much panic and fear and now...

Nothing. Maybe she was just too far away. Maybe she wasn’t dead...

The wipers swished the streaks of rain from Maria’s windshield, but still she could barely see—the headlamps of her old pickup truck were not strong enough to penetrate the thick black curtain of night in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The tires bounced over the ruts of the drive leading to Maria’s little round barn at the end of the gravel lane. No cars were parked next to the shop.

Maria should have known that the girl wouldn’t come back here. But she’d checked for Raven’s car at the motel in town where the girl had been staying since her move to Copper Creek. She had also checked at the house of the guy Raven sometimes dated. But his windows had been dark, the driveway empty of any cars—even his.

Maybe they’d left together. Maybe he could protect the girl since she didn’t trust Maria to do that.

I don’t blame her, though. I don’t trust myself.

That was why she rarely stayed anywhere for long—why she kept running, as Mama had always been running. It was why Maria tried to not get too close to anyone or let anyone get too close to her...

She never should have hired the young woman, and she definitely never should have agreed to teach Raven to read. Her fingertips tingling from the energy from the cards, Maria regretted ever touching them again. Why hadn’t she left them behind...as she had so much else in her life?

Like Raven, she needed to run now. The girl had been right about the aura of darkness hovering over Maria. But besides the cards, Maria had left something else behind in the shop—something that she couldn’t leave without. Her fingers trembled as she lifted her hand to her bare neck. During her scuffle with Raven, the chain must have broken.

Her lungs burned as she breathed hard, fighting the panic at the thought of what she’d lost. It had to be here. It couldn’t be gone...

The hinges of the old pickup truck squeaked in protest as she flung open the driver’s door. She jerked the keys from the ignition and tried to determine by touch which one would open the door to the shop. But as she stumbled in the dark, across the gravel, she noticed the faint glow spilling out of the barn—through the open door. She had locked it behind herself when she’d left to search for Raven. And the only other person with a key to it was her employee.

“Raven!” she called out as she hurried through the door. “I’m so glad you came back!”

She reached in her pocket for the amulet of dried alyssum, rosemary and ivy, and anise and caraway seeds, eucalyptus and huckleberry leaves, and a thistle blossom. She’d cinched the sachet with a leather thong on which she’d fastened a jet stone, a piece of obsidian and a tiger’s eye. “I made something for you—something to keep you safe.”

Then her eyes adjusted to the faint candlelight, which wavered back and forth—not because the flames flickered but because a shadow swung back and forth in front of them. Like the herbs, Raven hung from the rafters.

Maria was too late. Again.

Or was she? She glanced around, searching the shadows for another image—an orb or mist, some field of energy that indicated Raven’s ghost. But nothing manifested from the shadows.

And the girl’s body swung yet. “You’re still alive. Stay with me. I’ll help you.” But how?

Panic pressed on Maria’s lungs, stealing her breath. She righted a chair and clamored on top of it, but then jumped down again when she realized she had nothing to cut the rope that wound tight around the girl’s throat. She fumbled for a knife and scrambled onto the chair again. Summoning all her strength, she hacked at the rope until the girl fell, her body hitting the worn wood floor with a soft thud.

“Please be alive,” Maria murmured as she scrambled down beside her. She’d seen others do CPR on television, so she tried breathing into Raven’s mouth and pushing on her chest. But the girl didn’t breathe. She didn’t move. Probably because Maria didn’t know what she was doing. She knew how to heal with herbs and crystals, though. But she had never pulled anyone back from the brink of death before. What could she use? What would it take?

She ran back to the table where she cut herbs and grabbed up some dried hyssop and licorice. Both were used to treat asthma because of their anti-inflammatory powers. Maybe they could reduce the swelling in the girl’s throat. She added some tincture of arnica that was used for bruising. Her hands shook as she mixed it together. Then she hurried back to where the girl lay limply on the floor of the old barn.

She pressed the mixture to the girl’s swollen throat and slipped some between her open lips. Then she chanted a prayer, begging the higher power to heal the wounded, to reverse her cruel fate.

“Raven?” She leaned over the girl, listening for breathing. No air emanated from the girl’s black-painted lips as her mouth lay open. Maria looked to her chest to see if any breaths lifted it, but a shadow fell across the room—blocking the light from the candles.

“Don’t move!” a deep voice ordered.

Maria glanced up at the hulking shadow blocking the door. Only his eyes glinted in the dark—and the metal of the gun he held. Was he who had done this to Raven? Who had killed all of the other ones?

She tightened her grip on the handle of the knife and slid it beneath the folds of her long skirt. If he came close enough...

“What the hell,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble in his muscular chest. He glanced from her to the body on the floor. His brow furrowed in concern and confusion as he stared down at Raven. “What did you do to her?”

Maybe he wasn’t the one who had hurt the girl.

“I tried to help her,” she told him. But her herbs weren’t working. “Please, do something! Save her!”

The man knelt beside Raven, and his fingers probed her wrist. “She’s dead.”

“No, not yet.” If Raven were dead, Maria would have seen her ghost because she always saw the souls of the recently departed. And sometimes of the not-so-recently departed. “She needs a doctor.”

He shook his head.

“Why won’t you help her?” The answer was obvious. He had tried killing the girl; he had no intention of saving her. Or of letting Maria live...

If she had any hope of surviving—and getting help for Raven—she had to act. Just as she had swung the knife at the rope noose with all of her strength, she pulled it from beneath her skirt and swung it at the man leaning over Raven’s body. She didn’t want to kill him; she just wanted to hurt him badly enough that he dropped the gun.

But as she neared his body, her momentum slowed—and she hesitated before burying the blade. She closed her eyes and pushed the knife down, then gasped as strong fingers locked around her wrist. Something cold and shaped like a circle pressed against her chin.

She drew in an unsteady breath, and the gun barrel pinched her skin. Maybe she should have read her own cards. Maybe then she would have seen this—would have seen this man. She opened her eyes to study him because his was the last face she would probably ever see.

He stared at her, his grayish-blue eyes as cold and hard as his gun. The candlelight flickered, picking up red glints in his thick brown hair. Even kneeling on the floor, he towered over her, broad shouldered and square jawed.

She tugged at her wrist, but his grasp tightened. And the knife dropped from her numb fingers onto the floor. “Let go of me...”

His mouth curved into a faint grin. “I’ve spent too long tracking you down to let you get away now.”

Her heart slammed against her ribs. He was the one. The person who’d been hunting her for all these years and had taken all those other lives...

A gasp broke the eerie silence of the room. But it hadn’t slipped through her lips. Or his.

She glanced down at Raven as the girl’s eyes fluttered open and she stared up at them, her eyes wide with shock and horror. The girl had survived a hanging—maybe because of Maria’s healing, maybe because she was stronger than she looked. But Maria doubted Raven was strong enough to survive whatever else the man had planned for her. For them.

She should have driven the knife deep in his chest while she’d had the chance. So that she wouldn’t die as the others had—as Raven nearly had.

Like a witch...


Chapter 2 (#ulink_8151020c-b819-5fc6-877e-606a7ac3052d)

Red-and-blue lights flashed and sirens wailed as the ambulance pulled away from the Magik Shoppe. Rain streaked down Maria’s face and soaked her sweater and skirt as she stood in the gravel drive, watching the ambulance speed away with Raven. That gasp for breath had been her only one, and then the man had done CPR on her.

Except for opening her eyes once, the young woman hadn’t regained consciousness again. She hadn’t been able to tell them who had hung her from the rafters.

Had it been him?

Maria turned her head to where he stood with the Copper Creek sheriff near the police cruiser. Even though he talked to the older man, his gaze was fixed on her, his steely blue eyes just as hard and cold as they’d been when he had pressed the gun to her chin.

The sheriff jerked his balding head in a couple of quick nods, as if obeying the younger man’s orders. Tall and broad shouldered, the stranger held himself with a confidence and authority born of power.

Despite the water running down his leather jacket and darkening the denim of his jeans, he seemed oblivious to the rain—focused only on her. As it had from the cards, energy flowed from him and spread through Maria so that her skin tingled with awareness and fear. She had never felt such a connection to another human being.

He had to be the one.

His conversation with the sheriff ended with the lawman hurrying back inside the open doors of the barn. So he approached her alone.

Her heart pounded with the urge to run, but before her feet could move, he was in front of her, his long legs needing only a couple of strides before he stepped close to her. So close that Maria had to tip back her head to hold his gaze as her heart continued to pound out a frantic rhythm.

“Who are you?” she asked.

His hand slipped inside his leather jacket, and she tensed, expecting him to withdraw the gun he’d put there before he’d begun CPR on Raven. But instead he took out a wallet and flashed it open to an FBI badge.

She blinked back the raindrops clinging to her lashes and read his name. Seth Hughes. And he was a special agent. But it didn’t matter that he had an FBI badge; he could still be the one she’d run from in fear all these years. He could be the witch-hunter.

Anyone could be the witch-hunter.

“I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” he said.

Tracking her down, he’d said earlier. The ominous words turned her colder than the rain that seeped through her clothes to her skin, and she shivered. “Not me.” She shook her head. “You must have me confused with someone else.”

“No,” he said with absolute certainty. “You’re Maria Cooper.” He reached for her now, his big hand clasping her wrist as he turned her around.

That flow of energy between them grew more intense, her skin heating beneath his hand. Despite her empathetic gifts, she’d never reacted to anyone’s touch the way she did to his. It had to be a warning...

“I’ll scream,” she threatened him. “Sheriff Moore is just inside the barn. He’ll hear me. You won’t get away with it.”

“You’re the one who won’t get away,” he said as cold metal clamped around her wrists. “Maria Cooper, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent—”

“Under arrest?” She jerked around to face him. “What are the charges? Assault?” She grimaced over having almost stabbed him. “You never identified yourself. You just pulled that gun on me.”

A muscle twitched along his jaw. “I didn’t have a chance to identify myself. I had to assess the situation.”

“You can’t arrest me for trying to defend myself,” she pointed out.

“I’m not arresting you for trying to kill me.”

“I didn’t...” Until tonight she had never raised a hand, let alone a weapon, to another human being. She was all about healing—not hurting.

Had her potion or her prayer worked on Raven, bringing that gasp of breath to her lungs? Had she done enough for the girl to survive?

Agent Hughes ignored her denial and led her toward the dark SUV parked behind her pickup truck. After opening the back door, he put his hand over her head and guided her onto the seat.

Hating that even her hair tingled from his touch, she pushed against his hand. Then she twisted around on the seat, keeping her legs out so that he couldn’t lock her inside the vehicle. She was afraid to get into a SUV with him, afraid of where he might take her.

Of what he might do to her...

“If not for assault, why are you arresting me?” she asked. “What are the charges?”

“Murder.” That muscle twitched again along his jaw as he stared down at her.

“I didn’t hurt Raven,” she said. But it must not have looked like it when he walked into the barn and found her alone with the unconscious girl. “And she’s going to live.”

She has to...

“Your arrest has nothing to do with her,” Agent Hughes said. “Yet. You’re under arrest for multiple counts of first-degree murder.”

She would have laughed—had he not looked so deadly serious. So instead she shook her head. “I’m not a killer.”

“You’re not just a killer, Maria Cooper—you’re a serial killer. And while Michigan doesn’t have the death penalty, some of the other states where you’ve killed do have it. You won’t be able to hurt anyone else where you’re going.”

She didn’t need any special gifts to know he was talking about sending her straight to hell.

* * *

Seth had promised to call them when he found her. But breaking his promise would probably be a bigger favor to them than keeping it. Maria Cooper was a dangerous woman.

And he had locked himself inside the tiny interrogation room at the local jail—with her. Just the two of them. The table between them was so small that every time he moved, his knees bumped against hers. That contact, however slight, sent blood rushing through his veins, roaring in his ears. What the hell was wrong with him?

Over the years, he had connected with victims...through evidence left behind at the crime scenes. And he’d had those damn vivid dreams ever since he was a kid. But never before had he had such a reaction to a suspect, as if inexplicably drawn to her no matter the atrocities she’d committed.

He pushed back his chair, but it bumped up against the cement-block wall behind him. And she was still so close he could feel her. To slow his pulse, he drew in a deep breath, and her scent filled his lungs—that sweet, smoky mixture of lavender and sandalwood that had his stomach knotting with desire...and apprehension.

He closed his eyes, but then the images from that damn dream—that wasn’t a dream—flashed through his head. Her hair skimming across her slender shoulders. Her naked back, turned toward him, the moonlight playing across her honey skin and that trio of tattoos. She stood and faced him, the gun in her hand. The shot echoed inside his head, and he winced and opened his eyes.

“The caffeine’s giving you a headache,” she murmured, gesturing toward the paper cup of sludge sitting between them.

His stomach roiled at the thought of how long it had been sitting in the bottom of the pot in the sheriff’s office.

“You should drink herbal tea.”

“I need the caffeine.” To stay alert. To keep his wits about him. “You sure you don’t want some? It’s going to be a long night.”

“It already has been,” she remarked with a wince of her own. “You finished reading me my rights.” She gestured at the paper she’d signed acknowledging that he had. “Why haven’t you locked me in a cell yet?”

Because while he’d put her under arrest and read her the Miranda rights, she wasn’t really under arrest. He had a warrant only to bring her in to question as a material witness in all those murders—not for committing the actual murders. Seth really didn’t have enough to arrest her for murder yet, even though she was his prime—his only—suspect. He had enough only to question her involvement. Fortunately, she’d waived her right to legal representation during this interview, so whatever she said he would be able to use against her.

“I have some questions for you,” he said.

“About Raven?”

“About all of them.” He picked up the leather briefcase he’d taken from his car and laid it on the table between them. He unlocked it and withdrew a thick folder. “These are the people you were more successful at killing over the past eight years.”

He flipped open the folder and fanned out the crime scene photos across the surface of the table as she probably did her tarot cards. He didn’t need to look at the pictures. All he had to do was close his eyes, and like that dream, the images played through his mind. The first girl had been drowned. A young man had been crushed beneath a board weighted down with bricks. Another girl had been hung...as someone had tried to hang Raven tonight. And the worst, the fire...had left behind little of its victim.

Of her victim.

She didn’t look at the photos, either. Instead she held his gaze. The color drained from her face, making her wide almond-shaped eyes look even bigger and her high cheekbones and heart-shaped chin even more delicate. “I don’t know anything about any murders. I don’t even know why you keep calling me Maria Cooper.”

“Because that’s your name. That’s who you are.” Now that he had found her, he had a feeling that he would never be free of her...that this eerie connection that had haunted him would always bind him to her.

She shook her head, tumbling her glossy black hair around her shoulders as she had in his dream. “No. No. I’m not her.”

“Who are you, then?” he asked, humoring her. “You have no ID. No driver’s license. No birth certificate.”

“Is there a driver’s license or birth certificate on file—anywhere—for Maria Cooper?” she asked.

“You know there’s not. There is no evidence you ever existed.” He tapped the photos. “But these. You’re the one person every single victim had in common. You’re the last person every single victim saw...when you read their tarot cards.” In most of the crime scene photos, the cards were still strewn across the table.

She closed her eyes, as if trying to shut out the images before her. But was she like him? Did they live on inside her head, haunting her just as they—and she—haunted him? Then, closing her eyes would give her no reprieve. In fact, sometimes it only made the images more real for him, like those dreams that weren’t just dreams.

She opened her eyes, just a little, and studied him thoughtfully. “That’s why you took my fingerprints.”

He glanced down at her hands, which were slightly stained on the front and slightly scratched on the back. He’d already requested that the sheriff have Raven’s fingernails scraped—to see if DNA could be matched to the woman who denied she was Maria Cooper.

She narrowed her eyes more. “I may have read their cards, but that doesn’t mean I killed them. You have no evidence that I hurt any of them. There’s no way that a judge really issued a warrant for my arrest.”

“No,” he admitted.

She stood up. And so did he, reaching across the narrow table to grab her wrist again. Like every other time he’d touched her, his fingers tingled and images flashed through his mind like a slide show.

His hands cupped her shoulders, and he pulled her closer. Her chin tipped up, her lips parting on a gasp of desire. She dragged in a deep breath that lifted her breasts against his chest. His head lowered, closer and closer to hers...

He hesitated, his mouth just a breath away from her full lips. Hunger burned in his gut; he’d never wanted to kiss anyone more. Never needed to kiss anyone the way he needed to kiss her...

“Let me go!” she said, tugging at her wrist. “You have no right to keep me here.”

“I have every right to keep you here,” he said. Just no right—or reason—to want to kiss her. Hell, she was the last woman he should be tempted to kiss. He knew exactly how dangerous she was.

“You’re a person of interest,” he explained, “and I do have a warrant to pick you up for questioning.” Ignoring the desire that hardened his body, he slid his hand up her arm to her shoulder and gently but firmly shoved her back into her chair. “You’re going to stay here and answer all my questions.”

“You have the wrong person,” she said, stubbornly sticking with her lie. “I’m not Maria Cooper.”

“DNA would prove who you are.”

Fear widened her dark eyes. “You can’t take my DNA without my permission.”

“Unless I get a warrant for it,” he warned her. Since he’d finally found her, he would be able to ask for one—especially since the attack on Raven. But it would be faster than waking a judge in this godforsaken county in the Upper Peninsula if she freely offered it. “If you’re not her, why won’t you provide a sample of your DNA to prove it? To clear yourself?”

“You forget—it’s innocent until proved guilty,” she said, her lips lifting in a slight smile. But it was grim—not taunting.

He had been taunted by other killers, ones who had sat across the table from him, laughing at him during the interrogation. Proud of their crimes. She didn’t act that way. But then, nothing about her was completely what he had expected except for her beauty.

She was so damned beautiful.

But he reminded himself and her, “We both know you’re not innocent. Your name—your description—comes up in police reports across the country going back nearly two decades. Since you were ten years old, you helped your mother run cons on desperate, gullible people.”

And because of that, he doubted she was the real deal. Like so many other self-proclaimed psychics, she was nothing more than a con artist.

She shook her head. “You have the wrong person.”

For a con artist, she wasn’t a very good liar. Then again, most suspects had trouble lying to him. “So prove it.”

She shook her head again.

“You won’t give up your DNA, because you know it’s going to be at every one of these murder scenes.” He tapped the photos again as he settled back onto the chair across from her. He needed to look at those photos, to remind himself what happened to people who got too close to Maria Cooper.

The tip of her tongue slid out and flicked across her lower lip. Was she manipulating him? Did she know how that simple action had his guts constricting with desire? With need?

“Just—just because someone was at the crime scenes,” she stammered, “before the crimes happened, doesn’t mean they were involved in the crimes.”

“Once,” he allowed, “maybe even twice. But four times—five, including tonight? That’s more than coincidence. That’s means and opportunity. The only person who’d be at every one of these crime scenes is the killer.”

“And you,” she said. “You’ve been at every scene.”

First in his mind and then in person. He nodded. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time. Catching you has been my number one priority.”

She shivered—maybe it was because her clothes were wet from the rain. Maybe it was because his determination scared her.

“Number one priority?” she repeated. “Why? Nobody’s died in over a year.”

He cocked his head at her significant slip. “How would you know that unless...?”

“The dates on the pictures.” She pointed toward the corner of one of the photos. “The most recent one is over a year old.”

“Yes, no one’s died in over a year,” he admitted. Most of his colleagues had considered the case cold. That was why he had made the trek to the UP alone, on his own time. He’d been chasing down a lead no one else had considered worthwhile, working a case no one else cared about anymore. “Until tonight...”

She shuddered. “No. Not Raven...”

“It shouldn’t have been any of them, either,” he said. “No one should have died. Why? Why did you kill them?” Especially as gruesomely as she had. Was it because they’d had real gifts and she had resented them for it?

“I didn’t kill anyone,” she insisted. And maybe she was a better con artist than he’d thought, because she actually sounded sincere. “I would never hurt anyone.”

He snorted in derision of her claim—not because of the dream but because of the reality of her swinging that knife toward his back. If the flash of the blade hadn’t caught the candlelight and reflected it into his eyes... If he hadn’t stopped her...

“That’s not what Raven said when she called me tonight,” Seth informed her. “She was afraid of you.”

“She called you?” she asked, surprise flickering through her dark eyes. “Why—how—did she contact you?”

“I gave her my card when I stopped by your shop earlier today,” he said.

Her golden skin paled. “You were there earlier today? She never said...”

“That an FBI agent had tracked you down,” he finished for her. “She covered for you earlier—with me, denying that you are who you are.” Much as Maria herself was trying to deny her identity.

“That’s because you’re wrong about me,” she insisted.

Seth had never been more certain of anyone’s identity than he was of hers. He didn’t need DNA to prove she was Maria Cooper. But he did need her DNA to link her to those other crime scenes.

“I’m not wrong,” he replied. He could have added that he rarely was—because it was true and well-known in the agency. “And Raven realized I was right about you, too. She called me because you scared her.”

Color returned to her face as her skin flushed. “I—I didn’t mean to scare her. She shouldn’t have been afraid of me.”

“You threatened her,” he reminded her. “You told her she was going to die.”

Maria shook her head. “It wasn’t me. It was the cards. It was what I saw.”

“What you saw?” Did she really see things, the way he did, or was she like so many other psychics, a crackpot looking for money and attention? Those old police reports from people who had given up their money to her and her mother claimed that she was a fake. But maybe she’d just been faking with them...

“When I read the cards,” she said, “I saw that she was in danger. I wanted to protect her. I tried to get her to stay with me—”

“She stayed,” he said. “She called me from the shop. And that’s where I found her—with you.” If only he had been able to get there in time, the girl might not be fighting for her life at that very moment.

“She left,” Maria argued, “right after I read her cards. I tried to stop her.”

“Was that when you struggled?”

“Struggled?”

“The table was overturned, the cards scattered across the floor.” He caught her hands in his and stroked his thumbs over the scratches on the backs of them. As if she felt the same jolt he did, she jerked her hands from his. “Is that when she scratched you, or was it when you tied the noose around her neck?”

She shook her head. “No. I found her like that...when I came back to the shop.”

“So you left the shop, too? You chased after her?”

“Not right away,” she said. “I made her the amulet first. Then I tried to find her—to give it to her.”

“Amulet?” The dried plants hanging, like the rope, from the rafters, and the crystals and candles hadn’t been just for ambiance. She used them, as witches had centuries ago, to cast spells.

“I made it of herbs and crystals to ward off the evil and protect her from harm.”

“It didn’t work.” Harm had befallen Raven. And from the last words the girl had said to him, he had his prime suspect sitting across the table from him. Their knees touched again, his sliding between hers. The warmth of her body emanated through their rain-damp clothes, and heat rushed through him.

Another image flashed through his mind.

Her hair tangled across his pillow. Her nails digging into his shoulders, then clawing down his back. She clutched at him, her body tensing beneath his. She cried out his name. “Seth!”

He blinked, forcing the thoughts from his brain. He had been focused on the case—and on finding her—for too long. Had he—as some of his colleagues had suggested—become obsessed? His obsession needed to be justice. Not her. He coughed, clearing the thickness of desire from his throat, and asked, “What were you saying?”

Her brow furrowed with confusion, but then she repeated, “I couldn’t find her—to give the amulet to her.”

“You did find her,” he pointed out. “Or had you stayed at the shop the whole time, waiting for her?”

Had Maria been there already when Raven had called him? After hearing the terror in the girl’s voice, he’d driven as fast as he could and also had called Sheriff Moore as he had left the motel, hoping the older lawman had been closer. Still, Seth had beaten him to the Magik Shoppe.

She shook her head again, making her wild curls cascade around the shoulders of her worn sweater. “It wasn’t me. Someone else must have been there. Someone else hurt her. I tried to help her. That’s why I had the knife. I cut her down.” She shivered. “You’ll see—when she wakes up, Raven will tell you everything.”

“I hope like hell she can,” he said. The girl had mentioned having evidence to prove that Maria was the one he had been looking for, the killer he was determined to stop. That was why she’d gone back to the shop, to find him that evidence. She’d risked her life for it. But what he’d found on her didn’t prove that Maria was a murderer, just that she was Maria Cooper. There must have been something else...

He pulled his cell from the inside pocket of his leather jacket, checking to see if he had missed any calls. “I left a message for the hospital to call me as soon as she regained consciousness.”

“And they haven’t called.”

Regret trapped his breath in his lungs. Had he been too late? Had his efforts at reviving her been unsuccessful? “No. They haven’t.”

“She’s not dead.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he replied. “What the hell did you put on her throat and in her mouth?”

“Those were herbs that I use for healing,” she said. “The mixture should have restored her breathing and reduced the swelling in her throat.”

He held up his cell phone. “I don’t think it worked,” he said. “Or I would have a call by now.”

Maria gazed around the small room as if searching the corners for something. For what? And she insisted, “She can’t be dead.”

“You better hope like hell she isn’t, because I can put you at the scene. In addition to your DNA that I’m sure was under her fingernails, I’m an eyewitness.” He had her. He finally had her. And now the senseless killing would stop.

“I didn’t hurt her. It wasn’t me.” She gestured at the photos. “I didn’t hurt any of them.”

“You’re the one. Raven confirmed it to me on the phone.” Even without that confirmation, he had been certain. She was the only thing all the victims had had in common; she was the last person every one of them had seen. “Raven also said she had proof.” And he needed to find out what that proof was. He needed to talk to the girl—needed her to live—so that he could officially close all those other cold-.case files. “I should call the hospital again.”

But a call wouldn’t be good enough. If she regained consciousness, even for just a second as she had at the barn, he needed to be there to question her. “Actually, I should go to the hospital.”

She nodded and stood up again. “I want to go with you. I want to see her.”

“I can’t let you go,” he said. “I have a material witness order for you. I don’t have to release you until you answer my questions.”

Or until she called a lawyer who could get her released. He could question her for only so long without charging her. And he didn’t have enough to charge her. Yet.

He hoped Maria was right and that the girl wasn’t dead. But he wasn’t sure how anyone could have survived a hanging. He doubted that the herbs put in her mouth and on her throat had actually been a healing potion. They were more likely to have been poison.

Maria settled back onto the chair. “I’ll stay,” she said as if she had a choice. “Please check on her.”

He slid his phone back into his pocket and reached for his keys. “I’m going to lock you in here.” Because he had no doubt that if he didn’t, she would be long gone by the time he returned.

But he waited for her protest. Maybe she would even ask for that lawyer now.

Instead she nodded in agreement. “That’s fine with me. I want to stay until you get back anyway. I have to know how she’s doing.”

Seth studied her beautiful face and wished he could read her mind. Did she want the girl alive or dead? Did she really believe the girl would exonerate her? Or was she afraid that Raven would implicate her, and she wanted the young woman as dead as her other victims?

* * *

It was so much easier than he had thought it would be—easier even than killing them in Maria Cooper’s little magic shops. Maybe a big-city hospital would have had better security, but here in Copper Creek he had no problem moving freely around the building, which was more urgent-care center than actual hospital. The lights low, as patients slept, he hovered in the shadows, as he had earlier that night in the barn.

He had been there when the girl had placed her hysterical phone call to the FBI agent. For him that call had confirmed that she really was a witch. How else would she have known, just as she’d told the FBI agent, that he would be too late to save her?

She had seen her future. Her fate. At his hands. And since she could see the future, she was definitely a witch.

But the girl hadn’t seen that Maria would come back to the shop. Neither had he.

Usually when the cards came up as they had, Maria Cooper took off—leaving everything and everyone behind her. Except him. She would never be able to leave him behind. He always knew where she was—unlike the FBI agent who’d been trying to track her down for years.

But Seth Hughes couldn’t save her—just as he hadn’t been able to save the girl with that hideous tattoo painted on what must have once been a pretty face.

Maria had been the one to cut her down—just seconds after he had strung up the girl and knocked the chair from under her. He would have grabbed Maria then, but he’d known the FBI agent was on his way. He couldn’t risk getting caught before he’d completed his mission.

Before he killed the most powerful witch...

And he’d thought the girl was dead—that surely her neck would have broken when she hung. But Maria had used one of her potions and some mystical spell to save her life. Or to steal her death from him.

Sticking to the shadows, he now crept into a room the farthest down the hall from Raven’s. Then, after tripping the alarm on the machine connected to the patient in that room, he slipped deeper into the shadows. He waited for the medical staff to rush to the elderly man’s aid before he stole, unseen, into Raven’s room.

Acting quickly, he disconnected the air hose from the machine and poured in the water he carried in a cup. It slid down the tube and directly into the girl’s airway. Her eyes opened, big with terror, and she stared up at him, a question in her gaze.

Why?

She wanted to know why he was so determined to take her life.

“Because you’re a witch,” he whispered. “And I’m a witch-hunter.” He didn’t know if she heard him, because with one last gurgling gasp, she was gone.

Another witch dead...

But he felt none of the satisfaction of his earlier kills; his joy in the hunt was waning. Yet he couldn’t leave his mission undone. He couldn’t allow witches to live—to work their craft and mess with people’s minds and hearts and livelihoods. He had to save the world from their evil ways.

The alarm sounded on Raven’s machine now, signaling with a flat line that she was really gone this time. He disappeared again into the shadows behind a tall cart in the hall as the nurses hurried back toward the girl’s room.

“What the hell happened?” one of them asked as she grabbed up the disconnected tube.

“Could she have done it?” the other nurse asked. “She’s in here because she tried hanging herself.”

Curses rang out, the voice deep and masculine, as the FBI agent joined the nurses at the bedside of the dead witch. He was getting close, too. Not just to Maria but to him.

He had been saving Maria until last, using her as bait to draw out the other witches. But she seldom shared her knowledge of witchcraft now.

While she sold the herbs and talismans and amulets, she didn’t teach the craft of spells and potions. It had taken Raven a long time to get close to her, and probably no one would get that close again.

Except for him.

It was time for Maria Cooper to die.


Chapter 3 (#ulink_befc4b84-052a-5116-be94-d9f000d098d6)

Blood and water leaked out as the scalpel sliced through the flesh and tissue of the victim’s lungs. Seth didn’t even flinch; he had already seen so much horror in his job.

And in his dreams.

“I don’t understand it,” the coroner murmured as he stared down at the water spilled on the stainless steel table.

Bright light shone onto the table and the body of the young woman lying on it. Seth stood just outside the light, in the shadows, where he felt he’d spent so much of his life.

“With the trauma to the neck and the lack of oxygen that would have caused to her brain,” the doctor said, “I figured it might have been a stroke that caused her death.”

“She was drowned,” Seth said. He’d had the sheriff wake up the coroner to perform the autopsy to confirm it. But he’d already known.

He had seen the water that had spilled on the floor and had condensed on the inside of her breathing tube. When he’d stepped off the elevator, he had heard the alarm beeping.

And he’d known. He was too late.

Raven had told him that he would be too late to save her. And she’d been right. He had failed her twice.

“How the hell did she drown?” the coroner asked. The older man shook his head as if befuddled. The sheriff had assured Seth that despite Dr. Kohler’s age, the man was sharp. With his years of experience and the expansive county he worked, he had seen everything before.

Apparently he hadn’t seen anything like this—like a woman being drowned in her hospital bed.

“I’m pretty sure someone poured water into her breathing tube,” Seth said. While waiting for Sheriff Moore and the coroner to arrive at the hospital, he had investigated the scene and interviewed all the possible witnesses.

The coroner gasped but nodded his gray head. “That would have done it.”

“But how?” the sheriff asked. He had joined Seth in the morgue in the basement of the county hospital, but he’d stayed even farther from that brightly lit table than Seth had. So he hadn’t witnessed much of the autopsy. He wasn’t asking about the medical aspects, though.

He was asking the same question that Seth had been asking himself when he’d found Raven dead. How?

Maria was in custody. Wasn’t she?

“You have someone watching the suspect?” he asked Sheriff Moore. Again. It had been the first thing he had asked the man when he’d called him from Raven’s bedside.

The older lawman nodded. “Yes.” Now he glanced at the body on the autopsy table. “But it looks as if we should have had someone watching her instead.”

Seth silently cursed himself. He should have had a protection detail on Raven. But he’d thought he had the right person in custody.

He could feel his suspect slipping away now, though. This death would give her reasonable doubt. A grand jury might not even indict her now. And then she would be free again.

And if Maria was free, he was certain that more people would die—since everyone around her kept dying...

If only he had been able to talk to Raven...

Frustration eating at him, Seth grumbled, “I can’t believe this hospital doesn’t have security.”

“We’ve never needed it,” the coroner said. “This is Copper Creek.”

“But no cameras—”

“Never needed them,” the doctor interjected.

“Tonight you needed them,” Seth said. Because all of the nurses he’d questioned had claimed that they had seen no stranger—no one suspicious at all—lurking around the place. But they’d shivered as he’d talked to them—as if some cold spirit had crossed their paths.

Or some heartless killer...

Despite his leather jacket, goose bumps lifted on Seth’s skin. Maybe it was the coldness of the morgue. Or maybe it was something else that chilled his skin and his blood. He refused to believe in spirits.

Evil.

Hell, he knew evil existed. He had already seen so much of it. More likely what had chilled his skin was the thought that had just occurred to him.

If Maria really was at the station, then someone else was out there. Not acting instead of her but maybe in collusion with her. He should have considered before that she wasn’t working alone. The gruesome ways all the other victims had died would have been hard for her to pull off alone—unless she really was a witch. Or she’d had someone stronger helping her. Probably some hapless male who had fallen for her undeniable sexy charms...

Seth swallowed nervously as he realized he could be that hapless male—that he had been distracted so much by her looks that he hadn’t thought to put protective duty on Raven. His distraction had cost the girl her life. Along with the frustration, guilt ate at him, clenching his stomach into knots.

“I need to get back to the station,” he said. To make certain that Maria was still there—that whoever had just killed Raven for her wasn’t trying to break her out of the room in which he’d locked her.

As if he’d read his mind, the sheriff assured him, “Your suspect is still there.”

Where Maria Cooper was concerned, Seth would accept no assurances. He had to see for himself. But he didn’t want to just see her. He wanted to touch her, too.

“I’ll drive Dr. Kohler back to his house and meet you at the station,” the sheriff said.

“I have to finish up the autopsy,” the doctor said. “I can’t leave her like this...” He stared grimly down at the body.

“That’ll give you time to finish up the investigation here,” Seth suggested to Sheriff Moore. “Maybe you’ll have better luck talking to the nurses than I did.”

They might talk more freely to the local lawman than the stranger he was to them. They might admit to seeing something or someone tonight that would explain how Raven had died.

And maybe now that Seth knew Maria wasn’t working alone, he might have better luck getting her to talk. Maybe she would implicate her accomplice in order to save herself. If her accomplice hadn’t already managed to free her...

The security at the sheriff’s office wasn’t much better than at the county hospital. So Seth worried that he would find her as he had found Raven: already gone.

* * *

“She’s gone...”

“Who?” Elena asked as she glanced over her shoulder at her sister Ariel, who’d spoken so softly that she’d barely heard her whisper.

“Mama,” Ariel murmured. She was probably being quiet so she wouldn’t wake Irina. She was sleeping, finally, and hopefully so deeply that she wasn’t able to hear them.

When they were kids, the three of them had slept together on that lumpy mattress in the camper on the back of Mama’s old pickup truck. As they had then, the three of them slept together now—on the soft mattress of Irina’s king-size bed, though. Elena lay in the middle, as she had all those years ago, a younger sister under each arm as if she could keep them safe from all those horrible dreams she’d had. All those horrible things she had seen each of them endure...

As she thought of those twenty years without her sisters, Elena’s pain increased. And now she knew there was still one sister out there—still alone, as they had each been alone for so long.

Because, eventually, Mama had abandoned Maria, too.

Ariel’s husband, David Koster, had discovered that as he and his best friend, Ty, had tried tracking down Maria. Elena’s husband, Joseph, had other sources who had discovered other things about Maria.

Like her criminal past...

Or was it actually in the past...?

Elena closed her eyes and played out the vision she’d had days earlier.

Candlelight flickered, casting shadows about the interior of a barn. Dried herbs hung from the rafters. But they weren’t the only things dangling from the worn boards. A noose swung in the cool night air blowing in through the open door.

A man crouched on the floor, leaning over a woman—trying to save her. The candlelight glinted in his auburn hair.

The first time she’d had the vision, Elena had awakened screaming. As always Joseph had comforted her, pulling her tightly against his hard chest. His strong arms had held her close, and he’d reassured her that she was safe. But she had known she wasn’t the one in danger. She had thought that the woman lying lifelessly on the ground was Maria. But then she’d had the vision again and she hadn’t awakened that time until later. And then she had been even more horrified.

A woman crouched behind him. Long curly black hair hung down her back. She wore an old gray sweater and a long skirt. And from the folds of the long skirt she pulled a knife. The backs of her hands were gouged, as if she’d already fought with someone. And then she swung the blade of that long knife toward the man’s back...

That woman was Maria. Not the one lying on the floor. Joseph’s contacts had confirmed that Elena’s youngest sister had been a con artist. Elena remembered helping her mother run cons—before she, Ariel and Irina had been taken away from her. But Maria had kept running those cons—by herself—after their mother abandoned her. So she’d chosen to be a con artist. Was she now a killer?

Or had she always been?

Elena had had other visions. She had seen other bodies. Was Maria so damaged—so evil—that she had taken those lives?

“No...” Irina murmured the word in her sleep as she shifted restlessly on the bed.

“She can hear you,” Ariel warned her. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m remembering a vision.”

Ariel’s turquoise eyes widened and glowed in the darkened bedroom. She knew about the visions—knew that Elena wasn’t as convinced as she and Irina that it was a good idea to find Maria.

They were desperate to find the youngest Cooper sister because they were worried that Maria was in danger. Elena was worried that Maria was the danger.

Maybe to them all...

Ariel settled closer to Elena’s side, as if seeking comfort. She softly murmured, “I hope you’re wrong.”

Elena shrugged so that her shoulder rubbed against Ariel’s—offering comfort as she had when they were kids. “I can’t help what I see.”

And if Maria was what Elena was afraid she was, then they wouldn’t be able to help her, either.

* * *

Maria fought to breathe as she waited in the cell, opening her mouth to suck in deep breaths—to fill her aching lungs.

Was it her fear? Or someone else’s?

Shortly after Seth Hughes had locked her in the room and left, she’d felt that choking sensation. It wasn’t the too-close walls that were shrinking the already small room. It was the mist that filtered in beneath the door.

“No,” she murmured around the sob choking her throat. She felt as though that noose were around her neck, pulling tight, cutting off her breath. Off her life...

Raven had been such a sweet girl. She had never done anything wrong except for trying to be Maria’s friend...and for being a witch. Raven had wanted to be a witch. That was why she’d sought out the shop. Not for the healing cures or love potions that Maria could sell her. Like learning to read the cards, Raven had wanted to learn to make the potions and cures herself.

Maria glanced down at the photos Agent Hughes had left strewn across the small table. Every one of them had wanted the same thing. To practice witchcraft...

Even the two guys. And one of them had been crushed to death, the other burned. But had becoming a witch been their real wish...or was it just because they’d wanted to be close to her?

She had been told that she was that kind of person—the kind who drew other people to her. Apparently even when she didn’t want to...

Like Raven...

Her breath shuddered out with the sob that she couldn’t restrain. Nobody could get close to her without losing everything.

Nobody...

She reached out for the briefcase Agent Hughes had left on the table to see what else he had inside—like maybe the keys to the door. But the case was empty; he’d only had those crime scene photos in it. No keys. She needed the keys. She had to get out of here—before she suffocated or strangled. But as soon as her fingers touched the leather, images flashed through her mind...like when she read cards or touched a crystal ball.

His smoky blue eyes stared down at her, his gaze intense. Not with anger or suspicion now but with passion. Moonlight gleamed on the bare skin of his broad shoulders and heavily muscled chest. Then his face, so handsome with his square jaw and sharp cheekbones, got closer as he lowered his body. His legs, naked but for soft hair, parted hers. And his chest covered her breasts, crushing them so that her nipples hardened and pressed against his skin.

She moaned at the exquisite sensation. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted more, wanted his mouth...everywhere. On her lips, on her breasts and...

He must have read her mind because he chuckled and his chest rumbled against hers. “I can’t believe this...”

She shook her head, shaking off the image. “I can’t believe it, either.” It couldn’t be a vision; making love with Seth Hughes would not happen. Not just because he thought she was a killer, and she wasn’t entirely convinced he wasn’t one, too, but also because she would never, ever make the mistake of getting close to anyone else.

Ever again.

Even though she didn’t need reminders of what happened to people who got too close to her, she tried to focus on those pictures. Maybe she could see something in the crime scene photos that would help her figure out who was doing this. Who was the dark aura following her...

But even in her visions, she never saw a person, never saw who was hurting these victims. She saw only the darkness. The evil.

And then these images that the crime scene photos had captured. She had seen them before they had even happened—in her mind as she’d read their cards. The same cards that had turned up tonight. For Raven. The mist thickened so that she couldn’t see the photos. Or anything in the room.

Then the mist shifted into a human form. She expected Raven’s tall thin body, so she gasped in surprise at the small stature and long curly black hair of the ghost. “No...”

She shoved back her chair, as far as the wall would allow, and jumped up. Then she turned toward the door, clawing at the handle and hammering at the wood. “Let me out! Let me out!”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” that all-too-familiar soft voice assured her.

The scent of sandalwood and lavender, mixing with her own, overwhelmed her. And smoke. She always smelled smoke now whenever this ghost visited her. Tears burned her eyes. Seeing her always hurt. “I don’t want to see you. I told you to leave me alone!”

Her voice cracked with so many emotions as the ghost whispered her name: “Maria...”

“Go away!” she screamed.

“I can’t leave you, child.”

“Why not? You had no problem leaving me before!” she lashed out.

“I did it for you,” her mama’s ghost insisted. “To keep you safe.”

“You left a fifteen-year-old to fend for herself. How was that keeping me safe?” She had been lucky to survive on her own, driving without a license, continuing the scams so that she could put gas in the truck Mama had left her. So she could eat...

She had done it just so she could survive. But she felt sick with guilt and self-loathing as she remembered turning those cards and telling so many lies to the people who’d paid her to tell their real futures.

But that wasn’t all she’d done...

There had been the fake séances her mother had taught her to run. The way of projecting her voice so the ghost said what the person wanted to hear. She hadn’t charged as much as her mother had to summon the people’s lost loved ones, but she shouldn’t have charged at all for a lie.

Unlike her mother, most people passed from one world to the next without ever coming back. So no matter how much she had actually tried, she hadn’t often been able to summon the real spirit for her mark. And then the times she had, the real spirit hadn’t always said what they had wanted to hear. So she’d lied.

And people had paid more for her lies, tipping her generously as they’d cried with relief.

“My leaving you was my way of keeping you safe.” Mama’s reply was one that Maria had heard before. “I knew I was in danger.”

Even though it hadn’t happened until five years after she had abandoned Maria, Mama’s witch-hunter had eventually caught her. He had burned her alive. And that was the first time her ghost had appeared to Maria, warning her to run for her life—that he was coming for her, too.

“I thought that no one knew about you,” Mama said. “So I thought that if I left you alone, I could keep you safe...from my demons.”

Maria closed her eyes, trying to shut out the ghostly image.

But Mama’s voice wrapped around her, filling her head as she continued, “But you always had your own demons, hovering like that dark aura around you, putting you and anyone who would ever get close to you in danger. You were always...”

“Cursed,” Maria said, bitterness filling her with the warning her mother had given her. Too many times. A child shouldn’t have to grow up knowing that she would never know true happiness, that she would always be hunted.

“I should have left you sooner,” Mama said, “like I did the others.” The others were the sisters Maria had never known. “Or I should have given you to your father.”

The father Maria hadn’t even known about until she’d read about him in the letter her mother had left her, along with the locket. She was supposed to go to him if she needed anything. She had needed her mother—not some stranger she’d never met.

“But he wasn’t equipped to deal with you,” Mama continued, “because I saw this in your future.”

In the same cards Maria kept turning over for the others, Mama had seen her youngest daughter’s future, too. Had seen all the tragedy and loss...

“So I had to teach you how to run,” Mama explained. “How to stay ahead of the danger that surrounds you, that goes after anyone who ever gets close to you...”

Was that why Mama hadn’t wanted Maria to have anything to do with her sisters? To keep them safe? Maria believed that Mama had always loved them more than she had the child she had actually kept.

Hurt, because Mama always hurt her, Maria opened her eyes and lashed out. “Were you the right one to teach me...when you weren’t able to run fast enough yourself?”

“I always knew he would catch me one day,” Mama said. “But the witch-hunter didn’t know about you. No one did.”

Not her mama’s killer, and not even her sisters.

She turned away from the door and gestured at the pictures spread across the table over which FBI special agent Seth Hughes had interrogated her. “Your killer couldn’t have done that. He’s dead. My sisters worked together to end his reign of terror. They took care of him.”

And he would never hurt anyone again.

Elena, Ariel and Irina hadn’t known about her, but Maria had always known about them. Mama had talked about them incessantly—about how beautiful, how smart, how sweet they were. And Maria had never felt as beautiful, as smart or as sweet. She had never felt as if she’d been worthy enough to replace everything that Mama had lost, everything that the woman had missed so much that there had been a hole in her heart. A hole that Maria had never been quite enough to fill.

“But the witch-hunter had a son.” Maria remembered what she had learned from all the media coverage of the ordeal her family had barely survived eight years ago. “Could he be carrying on the legacy?” While Maria’s family legacy was witchcraft, his was witch-hunting.

“He may not even know about it,” Mama replied. “Donovan Roarke hadn’t learned about the legacy until long after he lost contact with his son, when he came across the journal of his long-dead ancestor Eli McGregor, who’d begun the witch hunt centuries ago.”

Eli McGregor had chased the first Elena for years. Thanks to his son, Thomas, he had never found her. But eventually Eli’s descendants had found hers and killed so very many of them...

“If it’s not Donovan Roarke’s son, then who’s after me, Mama?” Who hated her so much that he killed anyone who got close to her?

Sadness filled the hollow eyes of her mother’s ghost. “I don’t know, child.”

“Then why are you here?” Maria asked. “I told you to stay away from me. I don’t need you.” Just as Mama hadn’t needed her, hadn’t loved her—not the way she had loved her three older children. “Go away! And stay away from me!”

Mama’s arms reached out, as if she wanted to hold Maria. But her image faded...even as the mist thickened and took another shape: the tall thin figure of Raven.

“She led me here,” the young woman explained. “When I first saw her ghost, I thought she was you. I thought he killed you, too. You look so much alike. She’s your mother?”

“She’s nothing to me,” Maria replied. “She wasn’t there for me when I needed her, like I wasn’t there for you.” Tears stung her eyes and filled her throat. “I didn’t protect you like I promised. I am so sorry...”

Raven’s ghost stepped closer, the energy of her spirit warming Maria. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

“No.” Maria reached out, trying to envelop the girl, but her hands and arms passed through the mist. “It’s my fault. I never should have hired you. I never should have let you get close to me. Everyone who does winds up dead. It’s all my fault.”

“It’s not you,” the girl said, her eyes shimmering with tears she would never be able to shed now. “You’re not the killer. I’m sorry that I thought you were. If I hadn’t run from you...”

“You would probably still be dead,” Maria said as regret filled her. “We would probably both be dead because we would’ve been together when he came to the shop. Did you see him?”

Raven’s image wavered as she shook her head. “I never saw him at the Magik Shoppe. He came up behind me and started strangling me. Then I thought it might have been you. But at the hospital I saw him.”

Maria gasped as realization struck her. “He was at the hospital?” Why would he have gone there...unless to finish what he’d started?

“He killed me there,” Raven explained. “He drowned me...”

Maria shuddered in horror. She could have asked how. But she had a more important question. “Who is he? Is it Agent Hughes?”

Raven’s ghostly brow furrowed. “I don’t know who he is. His face was in the shadows, but I could see the outline of his jaw and his hair. And his voice...” The ghostly image flickered, as if she was trembling with terror. “Something about him was familiar...”

So it might have been the FBI agent...

Maria wanted to ask more questions about the killer, but her heart ached over the senseless loss of her young friend. And guilt overwhelmed her. “It should have been me. I’m the one he’s after. I just wish I knew why...”

Was it as simple as Mama had always said? Because she was cursed?

“Because he’s a witch-hunter,” Raven replied. “That’s what he calls himself.”

“Did you recognize his voice?”

“No, it was just this weird whisper. He said that he thought I was a witch.” The ghost’s lips curved into a faint smile of satisfaction.

That was all she had ever wanted—to be a witch like the older sister she had told Maria about—the older sister she had felt she would never be as smart or as beautiful as. Her sister had refused to teach Raven the craft. Maria should have refused, too, but she had identified too much with the girl.

“You are a real witch, Maria,” Raven continued. “Your knowledge and powers are legendary. I heard about you before I ever met you. That’s why I came up here. It’s why I wanted to learn from you.”

Maria would never forgive herself for hiring the girl. Even though it had been a year since a murder, she should have known the hunter was still out there, still watching her.

She shivered as the girl’s image grew fainter. Maria reached for her again, trying to hold her in the room. “Don’t leave...”

Her voice a mere whisper, her image just a wisp, Raven warned her, “You’re in the most danger from him now. He’s going to try to kill you.”

“Don’t leave me!” she begged. She had to apologize more, had to try to make amends, to assuage the guilt that cramped her stomach in knots. “Come back!” she cried.

Keys rattled in the lock, startling her into shocked silence. She should have been relieved that the door was opening, but terror gripped her.

Even without Raven’s warning, she’d known he would be coming for her. Soon.

The door opened, and a deep voice asked, “Who are you talking to?”

“You’re back,” she said, turning to where Agent Hughes filled the doorway; he was so tall, his shoulders so broad. His square jaw was clenched, his handsome face grim. Was his the face Raven had seen in the shadows of her hospital room?

“You weren’t begging me to come back,” he surmised. “The deputy said you were in here yelling.”

“Because I wanted to get out,” she said, rubbing her hands over her arms. Her sweater had dried from the rain earlier in the evening. But she was still so cold—even her blood chilled and pumped slowly and heavily through her veins. And that pressure was back in her chest, squeezing her lungs and heart with panic. “I need to get out of here.”

“The deputy was watching you through the mirror and listening through the intercom,” Agent Hughes divulged. “He said you were telling someone else to get out, that you were talking to someone in here.”

She lifted her hands and gestured around the tiny room. “Do you see anyone else in here?”

“I don’t see anyone,” he said, glancing around the small space. “But do you?”

She drew in a ragged breath. Even without the DNA, he already knew who and what she was. She had already admitted to trying to heal Raven, so she might as well admit to the rest of her abilities. “Raven’s ghost. She’s dead.”

That muscle twitched along his jaw. “How could you know that?” His gray-blue eyes narrowed with suspicion. He obviously had some ideas...

Some ideas that cast his suspicion on her again...

“I just told you that I saw her ghost.” Hers wasn’t the only ghost she had seen, but she wasn’t about to tell him about Mama. That brought out even more pain and vulnerability than seeing Raven’s ghost had.

“She was here,” Maria replied honestly even though he would probably think she was lying. Or trying to con him. “Her ghost was here...until you came in.”

Was he the reason that Raven had slipped away so quickly? Because she didn’t want to see her killer again?

“Why was she here?” he asked, speaking slowly and softly as if Maria were a young child...or mentally unstable, which was probably what that poor deputy thought of her, too.

“She came here to warn me. I’m in danger, too. That’s what all this is about,” she said, gesturing at those photos he’d left on the table.

He cocked his head as he continued to scrutinize her through narrowed eyes. He was probably trying to determine if she’d lost her mind. “What is all this?”

“All these murders,” she said impatiently. Why wasn’t he following her? “This is about me. Someone’s trying to kill me.” Because she was the real witch.

Images flashed through her head of the murders of everyone who’d gotten close to her. But in her mind she was now the victim. It was her head being held underwater, her neck the noose wound tightly around, her body the brick-laden board crushed...her skin the flames burned.

Not only could she see a vision of what would happen to someone, she experienced every feeling that person did when it happened. Every moment of terror. Every stab of pain. When they died, it was as if she died, too.




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