Persecuted
Persecuted
Lisa Childs
Experience the thrill of life on the edge and set your adrenalin pumping! These gripping stories see heroic characters fight for survival and find love in the face of danger.Her curse would become her greatest gift Elena Jones would do anything to stop her dream-visions – until they show her the danger confronting her sisters. She has the chance to transform her curse into a gift and stop death before it strikes. Joseph Dolce has violence in his past and darkness in his soul. Elena’s sweetness brings him new joy.Then her daughter is kidnapped. Joseph must save Elena from the man who hunts her – and find his way to her heart!Witch Hunt Three sisters – magic in their blood and a killer on their trail!
“Have you had any more visions, Elena?”
She retreated from him, shaking her head as she tried to forget the vision she’d had that morning. Joseph opening her blouse, then her bra, staring at her breasts. Her heart pounded. “No.”
“What did you see?” Joseph persisted.
Heat rose to her face, then moved lower, spreading throughout her body. She swallowed hard, reminding herself it was just a dream. “Nothing.”
“You didn’t act like it was nothing. You jumped when I touched you.” His hand slid from her shoulder down her arm. She trembled as desire coursed through her. “Like now.”
“Leave me alone, Joseph.”
“You shouldn’t be alone, Elena.” His voice deepened to a sensual growl. “Was it us? Like this?” he teased, bringing her closer until her body brushed against the hard length of his.
“I’m not going to tell you.” I’d rather show you. The wicked thought flitted through her mind, but she fought the temptation.
Joseph didn’t. His head dipped, his mouth brushing across hers once, twice, before taking it in a deep, intimate kiss.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Award-winning author Lisa childs wrote her first book when she was six, a biography…of the family dog. Now she writes romantic suspense, paranormal romance and women’s fiction. The youngest of seven siblings, she holds family very dear in real life and her fiction, often infusing her books with compelling family dynamics. She lives in west Michigan with her husband, two daughters and a twenty-pound Siamese cat. For the latest on Lisa’s spine-tingling suspense and heart-warming women’s fiction, check out her website at www.lisachilds.com. She loves hearing from readers who can also reach her at Po Box 139, Marne, Michigan 49435, USA.
Dear Reader,
It’s a thrill to be writing NOCTURNE books! I hope you’re all enjoying this exciting new paranormal line!
Persecuted, my second book in the WITCH HUNT series, was a tough one to write because I identify so closely with the heroine, Elena, a mother desperate to keep her child safe. As every mother knows, that’s not an easy task under normal circumstances, but Elena’s matching wits with a madman intent on killing all witches. Not only does he know that Elena’s a witch, he believes her young daughter is, too. Elena has to deal with her past, and accept who and what she is, as well as her future that comes to her in horrifying visions. Fortunately she has the help of her sister, Ariel (from Haunted), and her dream lover. While no white knight, by his own admission, Joseph’s determined to protect her and her daughter. But can Elena convince him to love her, too?
I hope you enjoy Elena’s emotional adventure in Persecuted.
Lisa
Persecuted
LISA CHILDS
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Mary Gardner, whose friendship and
support keeps me sane! I love you!
For the members of Mid-Michigan Romance
Writers of America, who understand when I
blow off meetings to meet deadlines instead.
Thanks for the support!
For Jennifer Green, as always,
I love working with you!
Chapter 1
The muscles in Elena’s arms strained as she struggled against the ropes binding her wrists behind her back. Coarse fibers bit into her skin, scratching so deeply that blood, warm and sticky, ran down her wrists and pooled in her palms.
She bit her lip, holding in a cry at the sting. But that pain was nothing in comparison to the heat of the flames springing up around her. Sweat ran down her face, nearly blinding her, but still she could see a man on the other side of the flames. A hood covered his head; a dark brown robe concealed his body. But his frame, his height and the breadth of his shoulders, identified him as male.
Others stood behind him in the shadows and smoke, also clad in those dark brown robes. They chanted, their voices rising above the hiss and crackle of the flames.
“Exstinguo…veneficus…”
The words were unfamiliar but she suspected they called her a witch.
“Nooo…” She wasn’t a witch. The smoke choked her, cutting off her protest and her breath.
Her line of vision shifted, away from the cloaked figures, to the woman bound to the stake in the middle of the circle of flames. Was Elena the witch? The woman’s hair was dark and curly, not blond like Elena’s. The woman’s eyes were dark and wide, not pale blue.
Uncaring of the pain, Elena continued to struggle, trying to free herself from the hold of the ropes, of the dream. Of the vision.
A scream tore from her throat as she kicked at the covers and bolted upright in bed. Shaking, she settled into the pillows piled against her headboard and gasped for breath, her lungs burning.
As the woman was burning…
Even awake she could see her, illuminated by a flash of lightning inside Elena’s mind. She squeezed her eyes shut and began a chant of her own: “It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.”
But she wasn’t sleeping. She hardly ever slept anymore for fear of dreaming of torture and murder. The images rolled through her mind no matter where she was or what she was doing. They weren’t like the “dreams” she’d had her whole life, the innocuous images of something someone might do or say a day or two after she’d dreamt it. These weren’t little revelations of déjà vu. They were murder, and she was an eyewitness to the unspeakable horror.
She reached out, needing the comfort of strong arms to hold her, to protect her. But for the blankets tangled around her legs, the bed was empty and cold. Her husband no longer shared their room. She’d been the one to throw out his stuff after accusing him of cheating. Not even his tyrant of a boss would send him out of town as often as Kirk was gone.
Truthfully, she’d been gone a long time, too. Despite the fact she’d rarely left the house, she’d been absent from their marriage. She’d pushed him away. But why hadn’t he fought for her, for them? Had he ever loved her or only her money? The hurt that pressed on her heart wasn’t new, like an ache from an old injury rather than a fresh wound.
She fumbled with the switch on the lamp beside the bed and flooded the room with light. Real light. Not that eerie flash only inside her head. The warm glow of the bulb in the Tiffany lamp offered no comfort, either.
Although he denied the cheating and only moved as far as the guest room, she knew Kirk was lying, but she hadn’t told him how she’d gained her knowledge of his affair. She’d “seen” him with another woman. At first she’d passed those images off as she had her others, figments of her overactive imagination or products of stress or paranoia. Finally she’d forced herself to face the truth about her sham of a marriage…and herself.
She didn’t love Kirk; maybe she never had, because she’d never trusted him enough to tell him anything about her past or herself. During college their relationship had been mostly superficial and fun, things that Elena’s life had never been. But their relationship had never really deepened, despite marriage, despite the beautiful four-year-old daughter they shared, and it had stopped being fun a long time ago. Sick of all the lies, his and hers, she’d finally filed for divorce.
For so long Elena hadn’t been able to discern truth from fiction. Although she hadn’t seen her mother in twenty years, she could hear her lilting voice echoing in her head with the words of a gypsy proverb, There are such things as false truths and honest lies.
When she’d been taken away from her mother two decades ago, she had also been separated from her younger half sisters. She’d only recently reconnected with Ariel. Elena had been twelve, Ariel nine and their youngest sister, Irina, just four when social services had taken them away from their mother. They’d never seen Mother again. Alive.
Ariel had seen her dead, though. Her sister could see people after they passed away. She hadn’t wanted to see Elena and Irina for the first time in two decades the way she had their mother, so she’d searched for her sisters to warn them that someone had started a witch hunt. She hadn’t found Irina yet, and had only stumbled across Elena by accident.
But Elena had already known about the witch hunt because of her dreams. She’d fought so hard to suppress her visions, to convince herself that they weren’t real. When her sister had found her, Elena had had to admit to the truth, if only to herself.
The visions were why Elena was cursed, not the three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old vendetta that had started the first witch hunt. One of Elena’s Durikken ancestors had been accused of killing the female members of the McGregor family and was burned at the stake. But like Elena, she’d seen her future and urged her daughter to run. That child, for whom Elena was named, had found safety, and she’d continued the Durikken legacy, passing on to her children the special abilities that people mistook for witchcraft.
Now someone else had resurrected the vendetta that Eli McGregor had begun three and a half centuries ago, of ritualistically killing all witches. Elena had dreamed, sleeping and awake, of his murders. While she saw his victims, she hadn’t seen the killer; she couldn’t identify him. Helplessness and frustration churned in her stomach, gnawing at the lining like ulcers.
“I don’t want this!” she insisted to the empty room, as she had for so many years.
Leaning over, she wrapped her fingers around the handle of the nightstand drawer and pulled with such force that the drawer dropped onto the floor. Papers flew out, scattering across the thick beige carpet. Her copy of the divorce papers. Her husband refused to sign his. She couldn’t continue their farce of a marriage, which had been over long ago and was past time to officially end. If only she was a witch, like the legend claimed, then she could cast a spell on Kirk and make him go away forever. Somehow she suspected that a big check would do the job.
Elena rolled out of bed and dropped to her knees on the floor. Instead of picking up the papers, she pushed them aside. In the dim light, she couldn’t see what she sought. Blindly she ran her fingertips through the carpet, raking it, until her nails grazed warm metal. She dug the pewter charm from the thick fibers, then dropped the little star, the tips dulled with age, into her palm. Twenty years ago her mother had pressed the star upon her, telling Elena that as well as keeping her safe, the charm would ensure that she never forgot who or what she was.
Images flashed in her mind like snapshots. A woman hanging. Another woman crushed beneath rocks. Another woman burning. Pain knotted her stomach and pounded at her temples. Her hands fisted, the points of the star digging into her palm.
She didn’t want to remember those horrifying images.
She didn’t want to be a witch.
She lurched to her feet and staggered to the bathroom. She lifted the lid to the toilet and dropped the little pewter charm into the water. Drops splashed up from inside the bowl, spattering the rim, as the star bobbed. Hand trembling, she reached for the handle. Maybe flushing the charm would stop the visions and make Elena normal. Her fingers closed around the metal handle, which was cool unlike the charm. The little star radiated warmth, always.
Her sister believed the charms held some special power to protect them, that if all three sisters united with the charms, they could stop the witch hunt. Elena’s fingers slipped away from the handle. Then she reached into the bowl and pulled the star from the water. She’d held on to the charm too long to get rid of it now. Even though Elena didn’t share Ariel’s beliefs, she didn’t want to shatter her sister’s hope.
Her breath coming in shallow pants, she moved to the sink, turning on the gold-plated faucets to wash off the charm and her hands. Because of the soap, she kept a firm hold on the piece of metal, careful not to lose the star down the drain. She glanced at her image in the mirror, the disheveled blond hair, the wild light blue eyes, the silk chemise nightgown baring her shoulders.
“Liar,” she called herself. She hadn’t just lied to her sister when she’d claimed that the charms held no power; she had lied to herself, about so many things.
The marble floor cold beneath her bare feet, Elena walked from the bathroom. With one hand, she fitted the drawer back into the nightstand, then laid the star inside. The charm’s warmth had already dried it, so it glistened in the soft glow of the Tiffany lamp.
Over the years Elena had many times considered tossing out the charm, but she always refrained. No matter how hard she’d tried to forget her past, a part of her had been unwilling to let go. With the witch hunt resurrected, that part would either prove her salvation…or her demise.
* * *
Elena had no idea how long she’d been asleep when moist lips touched her shoulder, gliding over the bare skin. Her pulse quickening, she murmured and shifted against the bed, struggling to awaken. She dragged in a deep breath, the scent of citrus soap and musk.
This was not her husband joining her in bed. He wasn’t even down the hall tonight; he was out of town. But when he’d been around, he hadn’t touched her, not for a long time. From the way he’d started looking at her, with uneasiness and a trace of fear, he might have figured out that his wife wasn’t normal. Perhaps he’d picked up clues from her nightmares, or from the things she knew before he told her.
The lips moved, nibbling along her shoulder to her neck. The brush of moist, hot breath raised goose bumps along her skin. The blanket lowered, pushed aside by impatient hands. Then those strong, clever hands ran over her body, skimming down her arms, then around her waist and over her hips. Sometime during the night, even though the air blowing through her windows was cool in mid-May in western Michigan, she had removed her nightgown. Nothing separated her skin from his as his body brushed against hers.
“Elena,” a deep voice whispered in her ear, his hot breath stirring her hair and her senses. “You’re ready for me.”
Excitement pulsed in her veins, and she opened her eyes, staring up into his face as he leaned over her. Desire had darkened his eyes so that only a thin circle of green rimmed his enlarged pupils. A muscle jumped in his cheek, shadowed with the beard clinging to his square jaw.
“Elena, I want you.” His biceps bulged as he braced his arms on the mattress on either side of her, trapping her beneath the long, hard length of his body. His voice deepened to a throaty growl as he told her, “I want to bury myself so deep inside you that you’ll feel me forever as a part of you.”
“You’re already part of me,” she murmured.
His were the arms she’d instinctively sought earlier, when the horrifying dream had awakened her. She turned to him for comfort and protection. And for this, for the passion that pounded like a drum in her heart, heating her skin and melting her muscles so that she flowed beneath him, fitting herself to the hard lines of his body.
His chest tempted her, wide and muscular with soft, black hair that grew thinner as it arrowed down, over his washboard stomach. Some of the hair dusted his muscular legs, tickling hers, as he entwined them.
He was naked and ready. And so was she.
Her stomach quivering with anticipation, she reached up, twining her arms around his back, pulling him closer. But his weight didn’t settle hot and heavy against her. Her arms moved through empty space, flailing the covers aside as she moved restlessly in her bed, empty but for her.
For the second time that night she bolted upright, panting for breath, her lungs burning with the struggle for air, as she awakened from a dream.
Just a dream.
This was no vision of the future, for there could be no future between Elena and her dream lover. Unlike the killer, she’d seen this man’s face; she knew him, and wished she didn’t.
He might not be the killer, but to Elena, he was just as big a threat, if not to her life, to her heart. His were the last arms in which she would find comfort or protection. With a man like him, she’d only find more heartache and danger.
Elena hadn’t been to this wing of the house in six months, not since her father died. Each step on the Oriental runner that covered the wide corridor brought back more memories. Painful ones. That was one reason why she hadn’t been back to this part of the Tudor mansion. She never wanted to relive those last weeks spent at her father’s bedside, listening to his feverish ramblings as she watched him die.
Unlike the many times he’d taken ill before, this time the pneumonia had killed him. Maybe because he’d gotten it so many times before, or maybe because, as his mother had feared twenty years ago, he’d given up fighting for his life.
As with her visions, Elena had been helpless to stop his death. During his last days, half the time he’d thought she was her mother, so the fever had blinded him before killing him. She looked nothing like Myra Cooper with her wild curly black hair and big, dark gypsy eyes; eyes that had seen so much, like Elena’s, through her visions. She might not have resembled her mother in looks, but Elena had taken after her in other ways.
The other half of the time, her father had thought she was his mother, which probably made more sense. She did resemble Thora Jones physically but in no other way. Elena still had her soul, even though she sometimes felt it slipping away… like when she had a vision of murder and didn’t know how to prevent the killing.
Elena stood outside the door to her grandmother’s rooms, hesitant to knock. She was the other reason Elena had stayed away from this wing of the house. No good ever came out of contact with Thora Jones. The first time Elena met her paternal grandmother she’d been twelve and ripped away from her mom and sisters because of Thora’s manipulations. Thora had sworn out the complaint that had declared Myra Cooper an unfit mother, causing the authorities to take away her children.
But Myra hadn’t fought to keep Elena. She’d signed away her parental rights. Until Ariel had found her, Elena had thought she’d been the only one their mother had given up, because of who and what she was. But Myra hadn’t kept any of her three daughters. Ariel believed it was because of the McGregor vendetta, that she’d been trying to protect them. Elena wasn’t convinced. She was a mother; she couldn’t imagine giving up her child for any reason but most especially if Stacia were in danger. No one would fight harder to keep a child safe than her mother.
That was why Thora had found Elena twenty years ago and brought her to this house, to give her son a reason to fight for his life. After a car accident paralyzed him, he’d wanted to die…until he’d met his daughter. He hadn’t known about her existence until that day, but he’d immediately loved her. If not for her father, Elena wouldn’t have stayed. She would have run away the first chance she got.
Growing up in this mausoleum had made Elena feel like a grasshopper trapped under a glass, powerless to escape and totally at the mercy of the person who held her captive. When she’d left for college, she had never intended to come back, but then her father had had one of his bouts with pneumonia. Thora had made certain Elena knew just how sick he was and how much he needed his daughter. So she’d been sucked back under the glass.
She curled her fingers into a fist but didn’t lift it to knock. Not yet. Before she could, the door opened.
“Elena.”
Although she closed her eyes, she recognized the deep voice and wished for many reasons that she could disappear. Joseph Dolce wasn’t her favorite person, probably because since her father died, he was her grandmother’s favorite. Thora had trusted him enough, despite his relative youth and inexperience, to make him CEO of her corporation, stepping down herself from the position of power she had held since her husband died, from a heart attack, over twenty-five years ago.
Rumor was that Thora owned most of Barrett, the midsized city in the southwestern section of Michigan. Elena knew the rumor to be fact; she’d seen the business records since inheriting her father’s shares of the company. Jones Inc. owned car dealerships, trucking companies, hotels and restaurants.
Now a thirty-five-year-old who’d grown up on the streets was in charge of the multimillion-dollar corporation. To his credit, Joseph had managed, despite some juvenile scrapes with the law, to go to college instead of prison. He’d also run a couple of those businesses under the Jones umbrella before running the whole thing. As Thora’s CEO Joseph was at the house often, far too often for Elena’s peace of mind.
“Mr. Dolce,” she finally acknowledged him.
“Joseph,” he corrected her. He’d been telling her to use his first name for the year since he’d become CEO, and she had yet to use it.
She probably never would. She didn’t respect anyone who worked for her grandmother, even though at one time she’d used business to try to gain Thora’s acceptance. When her father’s health had compelled her to return, she’d asked Thora for a favor, the chance for some respect. But despite her MBA, her grandmother had refused to give her anything, let alone the role Elena had wanted running the company. She realized now that she’d been foolish to even ask, to give her grandmother more leverage with which to hurt her.
Her husband worked for Jones Inc., though, far beneath Thora and Joseph’s level. Is that what had changed him from the sweet, fun-loving boy she’d met in college eleven years ago? Elena doubted anyone could stay sweet and fun loving around Thora, least of all someone as weak as Kirk. Because he was weak, she couldn’t fathom why he had chosen to fight the divorce. Why now, when she wanted him gone, did he refuse to leave?
She closed her eyes, as a headache nagged at her temples. Her divorce was the least of her concerns in light of her visions. The dissolution of her marriage was trivial in comparison to someone’s life. Irina? Had her baby sister been the woman in the fire in Elena’s first dream the previous night?
She refused to think about her second, trying to wipe it from her mind even as her body pulsed with frustration in the way it had ended. Too soon.
“Elena, are you all right?” Strong fingers closed around her arm, offering support.
Her heart lurched. Just with surprise, she told herself. Joseph seemed more the type to shake someone than hold her. Curiously enough she’d always respected that about him, that he wasn’t the type to coddle anyone, that he was so strong that he demanded strength from those around him.
When she opened her eyes, his head was close. He had to be leaning, because he was tall, well over six feet with wide shoulders and a chest so muscular it strained the buttons on his gray shirt and suit. His deep green eyes softened with concern. Elena wasn’t used to a man looking at her like that, not since her father died. But underneath the concern was something that unsettled her even more, an awareness that hummed between them; another reason she could never use his first name. For them, it would be too intimate.
Like her dream.
She resisted the urge to tremble and lifted her chin instead. “I’m fine.”
“Yes, you are,” he agreed, his voice deepening with innuendo as he teased her. He always teased her.
Her palm itched to slap him. He didn’t know that she’d filed for divorce. She’d told no one yet. For all he knew she was a happily married woman. Didn’t anyone respect marriage anymore?
Heat warmed her face, as an image from the dream tugged at her memory. Arms and chest rippling with muscles, wrapping tight around her, pulling her close so that skin brushed skin. She drew in a shuddery breath. But that had been just a dream, not a vision. She was never going to make love with him. She would make certain of it, and if she could change that part of her future, she could change more.
She was here, in her grandmother’s wing, because she couldn’t keep ignoring her visions. They weren’t going away; they just kept getting worse. Not for her, but for the people she saw in them. She had to help. Like that ancestor who had so long ago warned about the lightning that would cause the house fire and begin the vendetta, Elena had to take the risk—even if she was the one who wound up getting burned.
“Excuse me,” she said, stepping around Joseph. “I need to speak to her.”
Then she closed the door, shutting him into the hall and herself into her grandmother’s rooms. The parlor, a profusion of Victorian roses and fragile, antique furniture, misled the visitor into thinking Thora Jones a delicate, old-fashioned woman. Nothing could be further from the reality.
Double doors led off the empty parlor into the den. Without knocking, Elena opened those doors into her grandmother’s real sanctum: dark, heavy woods, dim light and the faint, lingering odor of pungently sweet cigars. Elena had never caught her smoking them, but she suspected it was one of her grandmother’s many vices.
The woman lifted her gaze from the files on her desk, which was cluttered with more picture frames than work. Most of the photographs were of Elena’s father, Elijah Jones. The only ones of Elena were snapshots taken with him. Thora’s parlor also had several pictures of him, among the gardening ribbons and plaques, but this room with its faint light and solemn atmosphere felt more like a shrine to him.
This was where, since his death, Thora worshipped her son.
Elena turned her attention from the framed photographs to the woman behind the desk. Her grandmother’s hair was as blond as Elena’s, her eyes as eerily blue. Despite her seventy-three years, very few lines marred her pale complexion. Sometimes Elena wondered if her grandmother had sold her soul for beauty or immortality, but that thought was ridiculous.
Thora had sold her soul for vengeance.
Chapter 2
The older woman leaned back in her chair. But Elena suspected the nonchalance was feigned; tension emanated from Thora’s trim body. “So…you’re finally paying your grandmother a visit? How sweet.” From her sarcastic tone, she considered it anything but.
So did Elena. “We need to talk.”
Thora expelled an exasperated sigh. “I hope you’re not going to bring up that foolishness of moving out again. It’s your home, too. Your father saw to that in his will. And I think we’ve done very well these past six months at staying out of each other’s way,” she pointed out, then added, “until now.”
“I’m not here to talk about moving out.” Although she intended to, once her divorce from Kirk was settled, this house had never been her home. But she had something far more important than moving to discuss. Because Elena had yet to tell her grandmother about Ariel, because she wasn’t certain that she should, she said, “I have to find them.”
To her credit Thora didn’t ask who, even though they hadn’t had this conversation for a long time, since Elena was a girl desperate to be reunited with her mother and half sisters. “Not this again.”
“You know where they are.” Thora knew everything. Sometimes Elena wondered if she, too, was cursed. In a way, she supposed Thora was, but her special abilities were money and power. The only problem was she would never have enough of either to make her happy. The money couldn’t buy her happiness; it hadn’t even been able to save her only child.
“What’s brought this on? Is this about your father?” Thora asked.
So much of the past twenty years had been about her father. He’d been sick for so long his death should have been a relief, but Elena still ached for missing him. She shook her head. “No.”
“You’re missing him so much that you want to find some other family now,” Thora speculated. “They’re not your family, Elle.”
“They’re my sisters, and I need to find them.” An image flashed through her mind, of the curly dark-haired woman tied to a makeshift stake, of flames rising up around her, swallowing her as she was trapped in the middle, screaming. Even though pain hammered at her temples, she raised her voice, shouting, “Now!”
Thora’s eyes widened with surprise over Elena’s vehemence. Then her mouth twisted into a patronizing smile. “You aren’t a little girl anymore, Elle. It’s past time you grow up and realize they won’t want to see you. You’re the reason they were split up, that they grew up in foster homes. They know that, and they must hate you for it.”
She’d heard this first when she was twelve; it hurt no less now, all these years later. But she wasn’t a child anymore. She could hold back the tears and hide the pain, but she’d done that even at twelve, convincing herself that Thora lied to her, that her mom and sisters were still together. Lying to herself was smarter than showing her grandmother any sign of weakness; instinctively she’d known that then. That, like so many other things, hadn’t changed over the past twenty years.
Drawing on her strength and pride, Elena lifted her chin and revealed, “Ariel doesn’t hate me.”
The color drained from Thora’s face. “You’ve already found one of them?”
“She found me.” By accident. She’d actually been looking for Thora, to confront the person who’d sworn out the complaint that had separated their family. Elena would make certain that meeting never happened. She didn’t want her grandmother treating Ariel the way she’d treated Elena, with resentment and bitterness at their mother.
“If she’s talking to you now, it’s only because she doesn’t know everything. Yet.” Thora shook her head, as if she pitied Elena, but a small, satisfied smile played around her mouth. “Maybe I should enlighten her.”
“No.” Ariel deserved to know the truth, but Elena was the one who needed to tell her. Not Thora. Twenty years ago Elena hadn’t been able to protect her sisters from Thora’s manipulations, but now she was older and wiser. She wouldn’t let Thora hurt them again.
The older woman threatened, “I will tell her some interesting family secrets, if you don’t drop this now. If you don’t stay away from them.”
“She is my family. I have a right to speak to her. And Irina.” Again the vision flashed into her mind, in a bright beam of light, the woman trapped in the middle of the flames. Instead of cigars, Elena caught the odor of wood smoke; it burned in her nostrils, the image was so real. “I need to find Irina.”
Thora’s blue eyes flickered, the first sign of genuine annoyance. “Those women are nothing to you anymore. They never were. Accept that.”
Frustration clutched at Elena’s throat, making it hard for her to draw a breath. She wanted to scream, to throw things. But she restrained all those urges. She’d learned well how to control herself the past twenty years. She could restrain her passion and her temper—but not the visions. She’d never learned how to control her ability, only how to deny it.
Thora sighed. “I can’t believe how ungrateful you are. I saved you from that life, from that hand- to-mouth existence and brought you here, to live in luxury, with a father who loved you.”
She never claimed to love Elena though. If not for how devoted she’d been to her son, Elena would have thought Thora incapable of love. But was that obsessive devotion to Elijah, like when she’d deliberately broken up Elena’s family, really love or something darker?
As dark as the man who lurked in the shadows of Elena’s visions, his face obscured but his intentions clear?
She ignored her grandmother’s diatribe. She had come to reason with Thora, not argue. “Ariel found me because we’re in danger. We need to find Irina, to warn her, too.”
Thora shook her head as her thin lips twisted with disgust. “I thought you were smarter than that. How much money did Ariel want for this information? How much were you foolish enough to pay her?”
“She doesn’t want my money.”
Ariel was probably one of the few people to whom wealth meant nothing. She cared only about protecting the sisters she hadn’t seen in so many years. With her determination, it was only a matter of time before she learned everything, like Thora had said, all the family secrets. Elena couldn’t put off telling the truth any longer.
The older woman laughed, the sound of it forced and brittle. “Stupid little girl—”
“She’s telling the truth.” Elena defended her sister, as she should have defended them and their mother two decades ago. She should have insisted that Thora reunite the family she’d destroyed.
But in Thora’s mind, she’d done the right thing by having the children taken away from Myra Cooper. She’d insisted that they were better off away from their mother. She’d relished pointing out how Myra had given up her parental rights to Elena.
Elena swallowed hard, then revealed, “Before Ariel found me, I knew we were in danger.”
“How would you know that?” Thora asked, with more than annoyance in her blue eyes now, an almost indiscernible trace of fear, the same fear Kirk couldn’t quite hide whenever he looked at her. He had to know. He must have figured out exactly what he’d married.
Elena drew in a deep breath. Maybe it was better, for all of them, that they knew. She couldn’t deny the visions any longer, not to herself or anyone else. “I just know.”
“You’re talking that crazy stuff again.” The older woman stood up now and thumped a fist on her desk, scattering papers across the surface as the picture frames rattled. “You will not bring that witchcraft into my home. Do you understand me?”
Elena flashed back, not to a vision or a dream, but to a memory two decades old. The first time she’d told her grandmother of a vision she’d been subjected to a similar tirade. Then she’d been sent to counseling and therapy and prescribed drugs to treat her “disorder.” The doctors and therapists had claimed it was everything from separation anxiety to post-traumatic stress, blaming everything on her mother, like Thora always did. She hated that her son had fallen in love with Myra Cooper.
“I understand you,” Elena said, knowing that the hatred had consumed whatever decency her grandmother might have had. Elena would get no help, from Thora Jones, in locating Irina. “You’ve never understood me. So let me go—”
“Go, get the hell out of here, if that’s the way you want it,” Thora said, shaking with rage. She picked up one of the framed photos from her desk and turned the picture toward Elena. From her grandfather’s arms, a little blond girl smiled sweetly at them. “But she stays.”
Elena’s heart clenched with love and fear. “You can’t take away my daughter.”
“Funny, I think that’s exactly what your mother told me.”
Her grandmother’s laughter echoed in her ears, as Elena rushed out of her rooms. She slammed the door to the corridor, then sagged against it, squeezing her eyes shut on the image of Thora’s hateful face. Every confrontation with her grandmother left Elena this way, weak, shaking…with a little less of her soul.
“Are you all right?”
She opened her eyes, confronting Joseph’s concerned gaze again. “You stayed.”
He nodded, those deep green eyes soft again with sympathy. “Things never go well between you and your grandmother.”
“So you thought what?” She lifted a brow, relieved to feel anger, which made her so much stronger than fear. “That I might need you?”
Haughty, scornful—she’d rather Joseph see her that way than weak. Like Thora, he wouldn’t respect weakness. But why did she want his respect? He was too much like her grandmother. That was why he’d been given the job that by birthright should have been hers. But refusing to hire her had been more favor than punishment for Elena. If she’d worked for Thora, she might have begun to act like her as well, and she never wanted to become that hateful, bitter and unscrupulous.
“I tend to forget that you hate me,” he said, his wide mouth quirking into a wicked grin.
So did she. That scared her nearly as much as her grandmother’s threats, which weren’t empty. She had enough money and power to get whatever she wanted. Not that she especially wanted Stacia. She just wanted to manipulate Elena. Since she couldn’t do it through Elena’s father anymore, she would do it through Elena’s daughter.
Elena did understand the older woman. She understood that Thora couldn’t let her son go despite his death. She needed more than the pictures piled on her desk and adorning every wall of her rooms. Because Elena and Stacia were part of him, she wanted to keep them close even though she hated that Elena was also a part of her mother, and had been punishing Myra through her since the day she’d brought Elena to this house.
Joseph stepped close, the sleeve of his suit brushing against the silk of her blouse. Even through the two layers of material, his heat penetrated, raising her temperature. Her face flushed. She would have stepped away, but her back was against the door. And he towered over her, imposing, intimidating.
Was this why her grandmother had hired him? Because just his presence, his brawn and the breadth of his shoulders and chest, was threatening? Elena suspected the greater threat was the sharp intelligence burning in his green eyes.
“Why do you hate me, Elena?” he asked. His voice, deep and soft, lifted the hair on the nape of her neck. His wicked grin never slipped, amusement lightening his eyes.
Damn him, he knew. She wanted to but couldn’t quite hate him, no matter how much she tried. She opened her mouth, ready to list the reasons, some she’d vented before, like his subordinates sending her husband away on business too much. But that had been more help than hardship. She’d realized that absence hadn’t made her heart grow fonder, only Kirk more faithless. She couldn’t blame Joseph for that, since Kirk didn’t work directly under him. She couldn’t even blame Joseph for the dreams.
All she could do was ask, “Why do you work for her?”
Was it blackmail? Like what kept Elena in this house, the threat of her grandmother using the considerable means at her disposal to take away what mattered most to Elena, her daughter? What was Thora holding over Joseph Dolce? What mattered most to this man?
He shrugged, and his arm moved against hers, wool scraping against silk. “Money. She pays me well.”
“To do her dirty work,” Elena scoffed, inexplicably disappointed that he wasn’t being coerced, too. This was why she had to hate him, why she could never trust him. He was just as soulless and manipulative as his employer, willing to do whatever necessary for money and power. “I hope it’s enough.”
His dark head nodded, but his green eyes dimmed, the amusement gone. “It’s a lot of money, more than I ever really thought a kid who grew up like I did could make.” Wistfulness deepened his voice. “I used to dream about the fast cars, big houses and fancy—” the wicked grin flashed a brief appearance as he stared down at her “—women.”
He considered her a fancy woman? On the outside, she might look the part of an heiress, with the silk clothes and sleek hairdo and manicured nails. Inside, she was still that little girl who’d grown up in the back of a truck camper, eating cold canned food and wishing for a hot shower and a soft bed, one she hadn’t had to share with younger sisters who kicked and flailed elbows in their sleep. Guilt nagged at her, as it had twenty years ago, when she’d thought her wishing had caused her mom to lose her and her sisters. She’d gotten her hot shower and soft bed, but she hadn’t been able to sleep in it for a long time. She’d missed her sisters, flailing elbows and feet, too much.
“So you got what you wished for,” she pointed out to Joseph, but for some reason she suspected he wasn’t any happier than she’d been. “Was it worth it, selling out to Thora?”
She had no doubt the older woman made him do things, probably illegal things, to get her what she wanted for her corporation and herself. Perhaps that was another reason why Thora hadn’t hired her; she’d known Elena would have wanted to run the company honestly.
Irritation darkened his eyes. “You can act all sanctimonious and self-righteous,” he accused. “You don’t have a damn clue how it is growing up with nothing—”
“I’ve been poor,” she interrupted him. But she hadn’t had nothing. She’d had her mom and her sisters. Their love. She swept an arm around the wide corridor full of antiques and framed artwork. “And obviously I’ve been rich. I was much happier poor.”
He stepped even closer, his legs brushing hers, only inches separating his chest from hers. She could nearly feel the beat of his heart beneath his wool suit and silk shirt. She lifted her palms, wanting to push him away. But she dropped her hands back to her sides and fisted them, not trusting herself to touch him…because she couldn’t trust him.
Interest narrowed his green eyes as he studied her. “There’s a helluva lot I don’t know about you, isn’t there?”
“More than you could handle,” she admitted.
“That sounds like a challenge,” he said, the amusement back in his wicked grin and sparkling eyes, as he lifted her chin with the pad of his thumb.
He stroked her skin, which until that moment Elena had never known was so sensitive. She bit her bottom lip, resisting temptation. Then she lifted her fists, using them to shove against his chest so she could step away from the door and away from him.
“I’ve never backed down from a challenge, Elena,” he warned her, as she walked away.
If he learned the truth, would he look at her like Thora did? Like Kirk had started to look at her, when he dared meet her eyes?
Like she was crazy.
God, she wished she was, then she wouldn’t have to worry about her visions, any of her visions, coming true.
Elena sat up in bed, her back sinking into the pillows piled against the brass headboard. A book lay open across her bent knees, but she couldn’t concentrate on the words on the page, swimming in and out of focus. She was so tired but too afraid to sleep…for the dreams she might dream.
Tomorrow she would talk to Ariel. Together, they would find their little sister. They would make sure none of Elena’s visions of Irina came true. With that thought giving her some peace, she drifted off to sleep…until a cry awoke her. For once, it wasn’t hers, drawn out by a horrifying vision.
She threw back the blankets and ran the short distance down the hall to Stacia’s room, which was aglow with ambient light from the Strawberry Shortcake lamp next to the little girl’s bed.
“Sweetheart,” she murmured, pulling the little girl into her arms. “It’s okay. Shhh…”
Stacia hiccupped out a soft sob and burrowed against her mother. “Daddy…” she called out sleepily.
Elena brushed her daughter’s blond curls off her damp forehead. “It’s okay, honey. Mommy’s here.”
The same could not be said of Daddy. Elena knew she’d done the right thing, taking the first step to end her sham of a marriage, for her daughter’s sake. If Mommy and Daddy no longer lived together, she would understand why he was never around, instead of her confusion giving her nightmares. She rocked the warm little body in her arms as Stacia snuggled against her.
“Where’s Daddy?” the little girl asked.
No doubt in another woman’s bed. But she couldn’t tell her daughter that. “He’s away, honey. Remember? He had a business trip.”
Stacia rubbed her eyes, which were the same pale blue as Elena’s and Thora’s. “I saw him in my dream,” she said.
Of course she had to dream about the man; he was never around. Why wouldn’t he just sign the papers and officially end their marriage? Elena suspected he’d grown too accustomed to their big house and his fast cars and didn’t want to give them up. He’d worked with Thora and Joseph too long.
“Did you dream about your daddy, honey?” she asked. At least when Kirk was around, he played with Stacia. He wasn’t the most devoted father, but he could be fun, playing silly games with their little girl. Too bad he was playing games with Elena, too.
“He was with somebody, Mommy. And then—” she shuddered “—something bad happened…”
The fine hair on the nape of Elena’s neck lifted as foreboding washed over her. Her daughter couldn’t be talking about a vision. She couldn’t be cursed, too. Elena ignored the little voice in her head, reminding her of the Durikken legacy passed from generation to generation.
“What happened, Stacia?” she asked.
Small shoulders lifted in a jerky shrug as fear thickened her voice. “I dunno…I was hiding…”
“It was just a dream, sweetheart.” It had to have been. Her daughter couldn’t be cursed, too.
But if not for the vendetta, perhaps having visions wouldn’t be a curse. Through them Elena had learned what man to divorce…and what man to resist. If not for the killer continuing the vendetta, she wouldn’t be having visions of murder.
“Let me read you a story,” she told Stacia, asking nothing more about her daughter’s dream. She’d like to think she was doing it to avoid upsetting Stacia any further, but it was probably herself she didn’t want to upset. Denial was her oldest, closest friend; she had preferred it to counseling and anti-hallucinatory drugs.
She picked up a book from the table beside the bed. Even though she was only four, Stacia could read most of the words in her books, or maybe it was just that she memorized them from Elena having read them to her so many times. Either way, she was one smart little girl.
Elena pulled her daughter close and opened the book across her lap. She read of princesses and glittery white unicorns, but in her head, she didn’t see those images.
Elena didn’t see Kirk, like Stacia had. She saw a woman with dark, curly hair. The woman from the fire. She was young, only in her early twenties, but she appeared to have lived hard. She was dirty, wild-eyed, staggering along a back alley…until a man stopped her, his arms reaching out of the shadows to grab her.
Elena jerked, and Stacia murmured a protest at the sudden movement. “Shh…” she said, soothing her daughter and trying to soothe herself.
She’d had this dream before, but she couldn’t make sense of all her visions. They came to her in no particular order, some flashing through her head time and time again. She’d seen many images of this woman who might be Irina; dirty, unkempt, probably homeless. Was that where the man found her little sister, in an alley, all alone?
Her arms tightened around Stacia’s warm body. Although her daughter looked nothing like her, she reminded Elena of Irina. Her baby sister had been only Stacia’s age when they were separated.
“It’s okay, Mommy,” Stacia murmured in her sleep, the child offering comfort to the mother. “You’ll find her…”
Elena tensed. How did Stacia know what she was thinking? Had she…
No, she must have overheard some of Elena’s conversations with Ariel. She must have learned about their search for Irina through things Elena had let slip. She wasn’t cursed. She was just an insightful child, like Irina had been. At four she’d had that uncanny ability, too, to figure out what someone was thinking.
What was she like now, as an adult? Was she even still alive? They had no proof. Although Ariel saw ghosts, they usually didn’t seek her out unless they knew her. Did Irina even remember them? She’d been so young….
Guilt nagged at Elena. She should have tried to find her sisters before the killing started. She should have been stronger than Thora’s threats and manipulations. She had to put aside the guilt and fear now, if she was going to be strong enough to stop a killer, and protect her sisters.
The old brick mansion loomed on the other side of the wrought-iron gates, illuminated by security lights, guarded and impenetrable. Maybe to others but not him. He could get inside whenever he was ready, tonight, under the cover of the shadows where he stood now just outside the fence or tomorrow, in broad daylight.
A light, tinged with red, shone faintly in a third- story window. The little girl’s room, but the silhouette of a woman moved behind the frilly curtains. They were there, together. Two of the witches. Mother and daughter.
Could she sense his presence? Did she know he stood below her daughter’s window? Or wasn’t that how her witchcraft worked? What was Elena’s special ability? Was she like her mother and could see the future? Or was she like her sister who saw ghosts?
One of them could hear people’s thoughts. He knew this because when he’d killed their mother, her memories had become his. He’d relived the moment when she’d given them up, bestowing upon each of them a charm before letting them go. He couldn’t quite remember who had which ability though.
Was Elena the telepath? Could she read his mind? Did she know what he was planning? He needed to kill one of them to renew his strength. To keep going until he could reclaim the charms and deal with them all.
Pain throbbed in his shoulder and at his temples, stealing his strength. He didn’t know what hurt worse, the inoperable tumor growing in his head or the wound where the redheaded witch had shot him. His knees wobbling, he reached for the fence and twined his fingers around the iron spires, holding himself up.
Not tonight but soon, before he weakened any more, he had to kill one of the witches. With her death, he would regain some power he lost because of the redhead. Because of her, he’d lost the cult of followers he’d formed to help with the witch hunt. He’d been forced to abandon his church, but he didn’t need it or the cult. After killing another witch, he would be strong enough to take on the other witches, alone, and reclaim the charms that rightfully belonged to the McGregors. He needed the magic of the charms to restore his health.
He’d decided on the witch he needed to kill next—the only one he was strong enough now to kill on his own.
Did Elena know that he intended to kill her daughter?
Chapter 3
“I’m glad you called,” the redhead said, walking at Elena’s side along the cobblestone paths winding through the elaborate gardens on the estate. Even though she didn’t physically resemble their mother, either, Ariel dressed like a gypsy in her long gauzy skirts and laced-up peasant blouses; so different from Elena’s conservative attire of cream-colored linen skirt and sleeveless silk blouse.
“Did you finally talk to your grandmother? Does she know where Irina is?” Ariel asked.
Elena’s focus remained on the flowers, the fragrant blossoms in myriad colors, brilliant blues, blazing reds as well as an array of yellows, pinks and purples. The gardens had won awards for beauty. Her grandmother displayed the ribbons in her parlor, taking the credit when all she’d done was hire the best landscapers, the hardest-working gardeners. As Thora often boasted, she hired only the best, like Joseph. At just the thought of him, Elena’s pulse jumped, her face heating.
“Elena?” Ariel nudged her with an elbow. “So did you talk to her?”
She nodded in response to her sister’s impatient question.
Ariel uttered a little scream of frustration. “So tell me, does she know where Irina is?”
“No, and I actually believe her. She thought Irina had gone into foster care, like you had.”
Ariel had been bounced from home to home because of the curse, because every time she admitted to seeing dead people, her foster parents thought she was crazy and either shipped her off to another family or a psychiatric facility.
Guilt tied Elena’s stomach into knots. Ever since Ariel had found her, she’d struggled to meet her younger sister’s turquoise gaze, not just because of what her grandmother had done but who she was.
Ariel’s brow wrinkled as she narrowed her eyes. Her voice soft, she observed, “There isn’t a lot of love between you and your grandma.”
“You don’t understand.” Elena dreaded explaining, but her sister deserved to know the whole truth, all of the family secrets.
An arm slid around her shoulders as her sister half embraced her, bumping her hip against Elena’s. “I know,” she said.
Ariel couldn’t know everything; she only knew that Thora had been the one to report Myra. Elena pulled away, unable to accept her sister’s affection until she’d told her everything.
“What do you think you know?” she asked Ariel, whose turquoise eyes softened with sympathy.
“I can see that you didn’t have it any easier than I did growing up, maybe even harder,” Ariel commiserated.
“I had my dad,” Elena said, not bothering to claim her grandmother. “He loved me…until he died six months ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Ariel said, lifting her arm again but instead of embracing her sister, she brought it back against her side.
Regret over rebuffing her sister twisted Elena’s stomach, along with the grief she still felt over losing her dad. “He’d been sick a long time.”
Ariel began again, “I’m sorry—”
But Elena waved off her sympathy. She wouldn’t bother Ariel with the details about his health. She had something more relevant to tell her. “His name was Elijah.”
Ariel stopped walking, her long, slim body taut and still. “It was?”
“It’s a family name they kept using even though my father’s ancestors changed their last name years ago, when they first came to America.” That was why Ariel’s search for McGregor descendants who may have resumed the vendetta hadn’t turned up Thora. Or Elena. She’d found Thora only through the complaint sworn out against their mother.
Ariel’s eyes widened, the turquoise the only color in her pale face. “What are you saying?”
From her sister’s reaction, Elena was pretty certain that she’d figured it out. “My grandmother is a descendant of Eli McGregor. She named her son after him.”
“After the man who killed our ancestor, burning her at a stake.” Ariel’s voice cracked with emotion. Their mother had died the same way. Burned.
While Ariel could see her ghost, Elena had witnessed the murder…in a vision. She blinked back tears, saddened that she would never have the chance to see her mother again.
“So you’re a McGregor.” Ariel expelled a shaky breath, stirring the red hair that had fallen across her cheek.
Pride lifted Elena’s chin. “And a Durikken.”
Ariel sighed. “I’ve been trying to find McGregors, trying to figure out which one of them might have resurrected the vendetta.”
“You think I could be the killer?”
Ariel studied her, as if assessing her older sister’s strength. Then she shook her head, tumbling her hair around her shoulders. “No.”
Elena’s pride stung; her sister hadn’t sounded convinced. “Are you sure? After all you really don’t know me. Until just a couple weeks ago we hadn’t seen each other in twenty years.”
A little chuckle sputtered out between Ariel’s lips. “Do you want me to think you’re the killer?”
“No. I want you to really believe that I’m not.”
“You’re right. We haven’t seen each other since we were kids, but I know you, Elena. You’re incapable of murder.” Ariel’s turquoise gaze lifted toward the house.
Elena suspected she didn’t seek her niece’s bedroom window. She’d never invited her sister inside, so Ariel would have no way of knowing which wing was Elena’s and which Thora’s. Elena wanted her sister to have no contact with the bitter old woman. If not for Stacia having been tired from her fitful night, Elena would have taken her along to meet Ariel at the playground where they’d met before.
“What about your grandmother?” Ariel asked.
“Her family changed their name from McGregor because they considered Eli McGregor a madman who should have been punished for what he’d done—”
Bitterness hardened Ariel’s voice when she interrupted, “But the townspeople had revered him for killing a witch.”
“Or feared him,” Elena said. “He was crazy. The vendetta was crazy, and his children changed their name because they wanted no part of it.”
But she couldn’t say the same of Thora, not and believe it. Her grandmother claimed she’d only taken away Myra’s daughters because she was an unfit mother, but Elena had always suspected something other than concern for the children or love of her son had motivated Thora’s actions. Vengeance.
“None of her family wanted anything to do with the vendetta?” Ariel asked.
“My father was her only son.” Perhaps that was why her love for him had bordered on obsessive. Did Elena love Stacia like that, so much that she shut out everyone else? Kirk had excused his absence by claiming that Elena had no room in her life for anyone but her daughter and her father. Not her husband. He might have been right, but Elena hated to think she was more than just physically like her grandmother.
“And your father’s dead,” Ariel concluded, then shook her head. “It’s all so incredible. How’d a McGregor hook up with a Durikken? Coincidence?”
Elena glanced toward the house, not the wing where her daughter slept, hopefully, a dreamless slumber, but toward her grandmother’s wing. She hoped her parents’ meeting had been just a coincidence. She bit her lip, then released it to sigh. “My father was a good man. A loving man. He wouldn’t have sought our mother out to hurt her.”
Ariel’s lips lifted in a wistful smile. “Maybe he only wanted to apologize for what his family had done to hers all those years ago. And when they met, they fell in love.”
Cynicism forced Elena to point out, “It didn’t last.” Not with the conflict and obstacles they’d had. She glanced again toward the house, to the shadow looming behind the gauzy curtains in her grandmother’s parlor.
Ariel’s head turned as she followed Elena’s gaze to the house. “So there’s only you and her?”
“And Stacia.” But Elena had an uncomfortable feeling her daughter was mostly Durikken, cursed.
Frustration knitted Ariel’s forehead. “But maybe your grandmother has some distant relatives. You have to ask her.”
“She’s not going to help me. She doesn’t believe that we’re in danger.”
“Did you tell her about our aunts?” Like their mother, they had been murdered. But unlike Myra, their bodies had been found. Ariel had found them, hanged and crushed to death.
“Thora doesn’t want to believe that someone started up the witch hunt again.”
Ariel sighed. “Because then she’d have to accept that one of her relatives, no matter how distant, is a killer.”
“You don’t know for certain that a McGregor is behind this,” Elena felt obligated to point out.
“Who else would resume the vendetta but a McGregor? Who else would even know about it?”
Elena’s shoulders ached as if a weight had settled on them. “You’re probably right.”
Ariel reached out again, despite all the times Elena had pulled away from her, and squeezed her shoulder. “You can’t blame yourself for this, just like you can’t blame yourself for Thora swearing out that complaint against Mama.”
Perhaps her sister knew Elena better than she’d realized despite her guilt causing her to keep Ariel at arm’s length. “I don’t—”
Ariel interrupted the denial with a shake of her head. “You can’t help who your family is, who you are. You just have to accept it.”
And that was what Elena struggled with the most, accepting her ability and her conflicting heritage. “That’s easier said than done.”
The redhead bobbed in a commiserating nod. “Do you have any visions of your own death, Elena?”
“I don’t know.” She rubbed her hands over her bare arms, trying to chase away the chill, but it wasn’t on her skin; the cold was deep inside her. “Sometimes when I’m dreaming, it’s like it’s me who’s being killed. Then I step back, and I see that it’s someone else.”
Her voice flat, matter-of-fact, Ariel acknowledged, “Me.”
“Or Irina. I’ve seen Irina.”
Ariel remembered, “On the streets.”
Images of her most recent vision played through her mind. “He catches her.”
Ariel’s eyes widened with shock and dread. “Oh, God!”
“And I think he kills her the way he killed Mother.” Unless the image of the woman burning at the stake had been the memory of the vision of her mother dying. The woman had looked exactly like their mother. Unlike Ariel, who had accepted her ability as a gift, Elena struggled to even understand hers.
“We have to find our baby sister.”
“I want to help you,” Elena said. But she didn’t know how to use her ability, not unless the vision was really clear, and that had only happened once, when the killer had nearly ended Ariel’s life. Elena had noted the details of the dilapidated church where Ariel, her fiancé, David, and his friend, Ty, tracked the killer and his cult. But Ty had been hurt, and the killer had gotten hold of Ariel, tying a noose around her neck. David had gotten her away from the madman, but he’d been stabbed. If not for Ariel shooting the killer, David probably would have died. Thankfully they’d all survived. Regrettably, so had the killer, who’d gotten away.
That night, seeing Ariel and David’s love for each other, had forced Elena to face the reality of her loveless marriage. She hadn’t even told Kirk about her sister finding her.
Ariel began, “If you want to help me—”
“I do!” Elena insisted.
“Then you have to accept yourself, Elena, everything about yourself.”
Elena’s lips pulled up into a reluctant smile. “I thought you were a teacher, not a psychiatrist.”
Her sister shrugged. “I guess I must have picked up something from all the ones who talked to me when I was growing up, who tried to pass my gift off as a bid for attention, or a coping mechanism for losing my family.”
While her grandmother had had harsher explanations, a few counselors had told Elena the same things about attention and coping. Softly she acknowledged, “Maybe they were right.”
“You don’t believe that I see ghosts?”
“Our mother was a con artist who staged séances to bilk people out of money.” Until they’d been taken away from her, they’d helped.
Maybe that was why Elena was drawn to Joseph; she wasn’t so different from him. She knew how it was to be a kid forced to do whatever necessary to survive. But she’d grown up and realized there were better ways. Someday, maybe, so would he.
She sighed. “I don’t know what to believe.”
Instead of taking offense, her sister chuckled. “That was crazy. Mama had more gifts than you and I. She didn’t have to lie to them, but she thought lies made them happier than the truth.”
“There are such things as false truths and honest lies.” Her mother’s favorite gypsy proverb.
Ariel nodded. “You remember that, too. Remember who you are. Then you can help me.” Her heels clicked against the cobblestone path as she left Elena standing alone in the middle of the garden, trying to absorb her sister’s ultimatum.
Ariel could accept that her sister was a McGregor, but she didn’t want Elena’s help until she’d accepted herself? Her ability, her heritage or both? Either way, she asked the impossible. But to find Irina, to save her sisters from a killer, Elena would find the strength to conquer the impossible.
She glanced toward the four-story house again, her gaze focusing on the windows of her grandmother’s parlor where behind the gauzy curtains the shadow loomed, watching her. Always watching her, worried about her well-being, as she’d claimed when Elena was twelve, or planning her destruction?
“Why are you here?” Elena asked Joseph as she opened the door to his handsome face.
She stepped back as he shouldered his way into her private living room. The room was bigger than most modest ranch houses, with a massive, sandstone fireplace on the outside wall, in the middle of a row of leaded glass windows. The walls were a soft pale blue, with trim and furniture in chocolate brown and rich cream. An ornate oak staircase wound up opposite the door to the hall of the main house, the door through which Joseph had pushed his way.
“Do you need to talk to Kirk?” she asked, unsettled by his physical appearance as much as his visit. She didn’t even know if Kirk was back from his last trip, but then Joseph would probably know before she would. Kirk might not report to him, but she couldn’t imagine there was much at Jones Inc. of which he wasn’t aware or hadn’t orchestrated.
His gaze not meeting hers, Joseph shook his head.
“Well, I guess you’re a little overdressed to talk to an employee,” she remarked, trying to ignore how his muscular body filled out the black tuxedo he wore with no bow tie, just the white pleated shirt sharply contrasting his dark hair and honey-toned skin. “If you want to see Thora, I think she’s out, too, at some political fund-raiser or benefit—”
“Yeah, I escorted her,” he said.
“Oh, you just brought her home?” And decided to look in on Elena after? She couldn’t imagine why…unless he was accepting the challenge she’d unwittingly presented herself as at their last encounter.
Excitement quickened her pulse and shortened her breath as an image flashed through her mind. Green eyes dilated darkly with passion. A chest, dusted with black hair, rising and falling with harsh breaths. A hard body pressed tight against hers. She struggled to draw a deep breath into her suddenly constricted lungs. All she inhaled was his scent, of citrus soap and musk.
He didn’t look at her as he shook his head. “No, your grandmother’s still at the fund-raiser.”
“So you skipped out on Thora?” She whistled under her breath, impressed despite her animosity toward him.
Dismissively he shrugged, his shoulders appearing even broader in his tux. “She has a driver.”
“But if she asked you to accompany her, I’m sure she expected you to stay until she was ready to leave.” Elena would much prefer he were with Thora than her. What if his late night visit brought on another dream? “Maybe you can get back before she realizes you’re gone.”
His lips twitched into that wicked grin as she reached for the door handle. “Trying to get rid of me, Elena?”
Unlike her grandmother who shortened her name to Elle, Joseph always called her Elena. The sound of her name in his deep voice quickened her pulse even more. She clenched her fingers into a fist, fighting her reaction to him. “Since you know Thora’s still at the benefit, I’m not sure why you’re here.”
Under his breath he murmured, “You’re not the only one….”
From the way he wouldn’t meet her gaze, she had a feeling his visit had nothing to do with a challenge. “What’s wrong—” She’d nearly called him Joseph but stopped herself before giving him the satisfaction.
“Does there have to be something wrong for me to come see you?” he asked, his green eyes gleaming as he finally looked at her.
Elena’s heart reacted to his flirting with a sudden jump. She infused her voice with ice, something she’d learned well from her grandmother, when she replied, “Yes.”
Her imperious tone didn’t discourage him. His eyes only gleamed brighter. “Really? I can’t stop by just to visit you?” he teased, as he stepped closer to her, invading her space with his imposing presence.
She locked her knees, so she wouldn’t step back. Like Thora, he wasn’t someone to whom she would ever wittingly reveal weakness. She lifted her chin and reminded him, “I’m a married woman.”
Until Kirk signed the damned papers.
“I talked to Kirk today.”
She held her breath, so it wouldn’t shudder out from between her suddenly parted lips. “You know I’m getting a divorce.”
And he’d come right over? Why? She’d never given him any encouragement but in her dreams.
“I’m sorry, Elena,” he said.
She would have doubted his sincerity, but sympathy and regret deepened his voice. “I didn’t think you had much use for the institution,” she mused aloud.
His lips twitched again. “Just because it’s not for me doesn’t mean that I don’t respect it.”
Maybe he would have respected his vows more than Kirk had, but then he wasn’t likely to ever get married. He’d made it clear his priorities were money and power. Maybe if she kept reminding herself, she would stop having the dreams.
The lightning flashed behind her eyelids, signaling the beginning of a vision. She fought hard to suppress it, squeezing her eyes shut, afraid that it might be the one where she was naked, lying in his arms. She didn’t understand that dream; it wasn’t that she subconsciously wanted him. She couldn’t, not when she didn’t respect or trust him. After Kirk’s infidelity, she wasn’t likely to trust any man, ever again.
“Elena, are you okay?”
Eyes still closed, she nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”
This wasn’t one of those brief flashes where images flitted through her mind. This was deeper, the paralyzing grip of a complete vision. She rallied her strength, fighting against it. She concentrated instead on his voice, which seemed to come at her from a distance.
“Divorce can be tough, so I’ve heard. If you need anything…”
Surprised by his offer, she opened her eyes. Then pride lifted her chin and once again permeated her words with ice. “I don’t need your help.”
He didn’t grin this time, his eyes darkening as if she’d offended or hurt him. But she knew better. She couldn’t hurt him. She could only be hurt by him.
“If you ever do need my help,” he continued, as if she hadn’t rudely thrown his offer back in his face, “I’m here for you, Elena.”
She was almost as afraid of his closeness as she was her visions, but if he were sincere, maybe she could use his help. He might be able to aid in the search for her baby sister. He’d grown up on the streets. If Elena had interpreted her visions of Irina correctly, her sister was living on the streets. He might be able to help Elena find her.
Before she could open her mouth to ask him, the lightning flashed again inside her head, too bright and blinding to be suppressed. Even though she kept her eyes wide open, the images began to play out in her mind like the reel of an old home movie. This wasn’t her and Joseph tangled up in each other’s arms. This was worse. Pain pierced her temples as the lightning brightened, illuminating the person in her vision.
Stacia cowered in a confined place, in the dark. Her little body shaking in her pajamas, the ones Elena had helped her into just a little while ago, the pink ones with the fluffy white sheep, each of them wearing a number, dancing on them. She’d taught Stacia to recognize numbers by pointing to them on those pajamas.
Where was her baby? Elena had to know. She closed her eyes, trying to focus on the vision, but the shadows thickened, obscuring everything but Stacia, lying alone in that tight, dark place but for her teddy bear, the fluffy white one that was so hard to keep clean Elena had to sneak it into the washing machine when Stacia was sleeping. Why was her baby alone in the dark? Stacia was terrified of the dark.
Elena hadn’t had a dream or vision of Stacia in so long, not since the one of her being born. Why now? Was Stacia in danger?
The pain intensified, hammering at Elena’s temples with such force that her knees weakened. As she swayed on her feet, strong hands closed over her shoulders, steadying her. But she couldn’t feel the touch, nor could she hear anything for the roar of fear in her ears, rushing through her pulsing veins.
Inside her head, in the vision, hands came out of the shadows, big hands reaching for Stacia, closing around her thin arms, dragging her out of her hiding place.
The muscles in Elena’s stomach clenched. Why had Stacia been hiding? Where was Stacia? Who was reaching for her?
Stacia’s blue eyes widened with fear, and she twisted in the grasp of the unknown man. But the hands only tightened, squeezing her delicate little arms until her mouth opened in a cry of pain.
“No!” Elena yelled, overcome with the need to protect her child.
The hands on Elena’s shoulders gripped harder, shaking her. “What the hell’s going on? What’s wrong?” Joseph shouted his questions, as if he’d asked before and been ignored. Undoubtedly he wasn’t used to being ignored.
Elena blinked open her eyes and stared up into his face, his brow furrowed in confusion. Choked with fear, all she could do was whisper, “Stacia…”
“She’s upstairs, right? Asleep?” he asked, his concern vibrating in his voice.
Elena drew in a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Her visions were of the future, not the present. And they didn’t always come true. If they did, Ariel wouldn’t still be alive. Stacia was fine. Her pulse leapt as she added her next thought. Now.
“I put her to bed,” she told Joseph and reminded herself. “She was in bed.”
“Then she’s still in bed,” Joseph assured her, as he studied her intently.
No one had ever witnessed Elena having a vision before. She’d been careful to conceal them while awake, even if she’d had to rush from a room during the middle of a conversation, and if a dream had interrupted her sleep, she’d insisted it was just a dream.
“Everything’s fine,” Joseph insisted, so eerily calm and reassuring that he unsettled her as much as the vision. Nobody had ever offered her such solid support.
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Lisa Childs
Experience the thrill of life on the edge and set your adrenalin pumping! These gripping stories see heroic characters fight for survival and find love in the face of danger.Her curse would become her greatest gift Elena Jones would do anything to stop her dream-visions – until they show her the danger confronting her sisters. She has the chance to transform her curse into a gift and stop death before it strikes. Joseph Dolce has violence in his past and darkness in his soul. Elena’s sweetness brings him new joy.Then her daughter is kidnapped. Joseph must save Elena from the man who hunts her – and find his way to her heart!Witch Hunt Three sisters – magic in their blood and a killer on their trail!
“Have you had any more visions, Elena?”
She retreated from him, shaking her head as she tried to forget the vision she’d had that morning. Joseph opening her blouse, then her bra, staring at her breasts. Her heart pounded. “No.”
“What did you see?” Joseph persisted.
Heat rose to her face, then moved lower, spreading throughout her body. She swallowed hard, reminding herself it was just a dream. “Nothing.”
“You didn’t act like it was nothing. You jumped when I touched you.” His hand slid from her shoulder down her arm. She trembled as desire coursed through her. “Like now.”
“Leave me alone, Joseph.”
“You shouldn’t be alone, Elena.” His voice deepened to a sensual growl. “Was it us? Like this?” he teased, bringing her closer until her body brushed against the hard length of his.
“I’m not going to tell you.” I’d rather show you. The wicked thought flitted through her mind, but she fought the temptation.
Joseph didn’t. His head dipped, his mouth brushing across hers once, twice, before taking it in a deep, intimate kiss.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Award-winning author Lisa childs wrote her first book when she was six, a biography…of the family dog. Now she writes romantic suspense, paranormal romance and women’s fiction. The youngest of seven siblings, she holds family very dear in real life and her fiction, often infusing her books with compelling family dynamics. She lives in west Michigan with her husband, two daughters and a twenty-pound Siamese cat. For the latest on Lisa’s spine-tingling suspense and heart-warming women’s fiction, check out her website at www.lisachilds.com. She loves hearing from readers who can also reach her at Po Box 139, Marne, Michigan 49435, USA.
Dear Reader,
It’s a thrill to be writing NOCTURNE books! I hope you’re all enjoying this exciting new paranormal line!
Persecuted, my second book in the WITCH HUNT series, was a tough one to write because I identify so closely with the heroine, Elena, a mother desperate to keep her child safe. As every mother knows, that’s not an easy task under normal circumstances, but Elena’s matching wits with a madman intent on killing all witches. Not only does he know that Elena’s a witch, he believes her young daughter is, too. Elena has to deal with her past, and accept who and what she is, as well as her future that comes to her in horrifying visions. Fortunately she has the help of her sister, Ariel (from Haunted), and her dream lover. While no white knight, by his own admission, Joseph’s determined to protect her and her daughter. But can Elena convince him to love her, too?
I hope you enjoy Elena’s emotional adventure in Persecuted.
Lisa
Persecuted
LISA CHILDS
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Mary Gardner, whose friendship and
support keeps me sane! I love you!
For the members of Mid-Michigan Romance
Writers of America, who understand when I
blow off meetings to meet deadlines instead.
Thanks for the support!
For Jennifer Green, as always,
I love working with you!
Chapter 1
The muscles in Elena’s arms strained as she struggled against the ropes binding her wrists behind her back. Coarse fibers bit into her skin, scratching so deeply that blood, warm and sticky, ran down her wrists and pooled in her palms.
She bit her lip, holding in a cry at the sting. But that pain was nothing in comparison to the heat of the flames springing up around her. Sweat ran down her face, nearly blinding her, but still she could see a man on the other side of the flames. A hood covered his head; a dark brown robe concealed his body. But his frame, his height and the breadth of his shoulders, identified him as male.
Others stood behind him in the shadows and smoke, also clad in those dark brown robes. They chanted, their voices rising above the hiss and crackle of the flames.
“Exstinguo…veneficus…”
The words were unfamiliar but she suspected they called her a witch.
“Nooo…” She wasn’t a witch. The smoke choked her, cutting off her protest and her breath.
Her line of vision shifted, away from the cloaked figures, to the woman bound to the stake in the middle of the circle of flames. Was Elena the witch? The woman’s hair was dark and curly, not blond like Elena’s. The woman’s eyes were dark and wide, not pale blue.
Uncaring of the pain, Elena continued to struggle, trying to free herself from the hold of the ropes, of the dream. Of the vision.
A scream tore from her throat as she kicked at the covers and bolted upright in bed. Shaking, she settled into the pillows piled against her headboard and gasped for breath, her lungs burning.
As the woman was burning…
Even awake she could see her, illuminated by a flash of lightning inside Elena’s mind. She squeezed her eyes shut and began a chant of her own: “It’s just a dream. It’s just a dream.”
But she wasn’t sleeping. She hardly ever slept anymore for fear of dreaming of torture and murder. The images rolled through her mind no matter where she was or what she was doing. They weren’t like the “dreams” she’d had her whole life, the innocuous images of something someone might do or say a day or two after she’d dreamt it. These weren’t little revelations of déjà vu. They were murder, and she was an eyewitness to the unspeakable horror.
She reached out, needing the comfort of strong arms to hold her, to protect her. But for the blankets tangled around her legs, the bed was empty and cold. Her husband no longer shared their room. She’d been the one to throw out his stuff after accusing him of cheating. Not even his tyrant of a boss would send him out of town as often as Kirk was gone.
Truthfully, she’d been gone a long time, too. Despite the fact she’d rarely left the house, she’d been absent from their marriage. She’d pushed him away. But why hadn’t he fought for her, for them? Had he ever loved her or only her money? The hurt that pressed on her heart wasn’t new, like an ache from an old injury rather than a fresh wound.
She fumbled with the switch on the lamp beside the bed and flooded the room with light. Real light. Not that eerie flash only inside her head. The warm glow of the bulb in the Tiffany lamp offered no comfort, either.
Although he denied the cheating and only moved as far as the guest room, she knew Kirk was lying, but she hadn’t told him how she’d gained her knowledge of his affair. She’d “seen” him with another woman. At first she’d passed those images off as she had her others, figments of her overactive imagination or products of stress or paranoia. Finally she’d forced herself to face the truth about her sham of a marriage…and herself.
She didn’t love Kirk; maybe she never had, because she’d never trusted him enough to tell him anything about her past or herself. During college their relationship had been mostly superficial and fun, things that Elena’s life had never been. But their relationship had never really deepened, despite marriage, despite the beautiful four-year-old daughter they shared, and it had stopped being fun a long time ago. Sick of all the lies, his and hers, she’d finally filed for divorce.
For so long Elena hadn’t been able to discern truth from fiction. Although she hadn’t seen her mother in twenty years, she could hear her lilting voice echoing in her head with the words of a gypsy proverb, There are such things as false truths and honest lies.
When she’d been taken away from her mother two decades ago, she had also been separated from her younger half sisters. She’d only recently reconnected with Ariel. Elena had been twelve, Ariel nine and their youngest sister, Irina, just four when social services had taken them away from their mother. They’d never seen Mother again. Alive.
Ariel had seen her dead, though. Her sister could see people after they passed away. She hadn’t wanted to see Elena and Irina for the first time in two decades the way she had their mother, so she’d searched for her sisters to warn them that someone had started a witch hunt. She hadn’t found Irina yet, and had only stumbled across Elena by accident.
But Elena had already known about the witch hunt because of her dreams. She’d fought so hard to suppress her visions, to convince herself that they weren’t real. When her sister had found her, Elena had had to admit to the truth, if only to herself.
The visions were why Elena was cursed, not the three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old vendetta that had started the first witch hunt. One of Elena’s Durikken ancestors had been accused of killing the female members of the McGregor family and was burned at the stake. But like Elena, she’d seen her future and urged her daughter to run. That child, for whom Elena was named, had found safety, and she’d continued the Durikken legacy, passing on to her children the special abilities that people mistook for witchcraft.
Now someone else had resurrected the vendetta that Eli McGregor had begun three and a half centuries ago, of ritualistically killing all witches. Elena had dreamed, sleeping and awake, of his murders. While she saw his victims, she hadn’t seen the killer; she couldn’t identify him. Helplessness and frustration churned in her stomach, gnawing at the lining like ulcers.
“I don’t want this!” she insisted to the empty room, as she had for so many years.
Leaning over, she wrapped her fingers around the handle of the nightstand drawer and pulled with such force that the drawer dropped onto the floor. Papers flew out, scattering across the thick beige carpet. Her copy of the divorce papers. Her husband refused to sign his. She couldn’t continue their farce of a marriage, which had been over long ago and was past time to officially end. If only she was a witch, like the legend claimed, then she could cast a spell on Kirk and make him go away forever. Somehow she suspected that a big check would do the job.
Elena rolled out of bed and dropped to her knees on the floor. Instead of picking up the papers, she pushed them aside. In the dim light, she couldn’t see what she sought. Blindly she ran her fingertips through the carpet, raking it, until her nails grazed warm metal. She dug the pewter charm from the thick fibers, then dropped the little star, the tips dulled with age, into her palm. Twenty years ago her mother had pressed the star upon her, telling Elena that as well as keeping her safe, the charm would ensure that she never forgot who or what she was.
Images flashed in her mind like snapshots. A woman hanging. Another woman crushed beneath rocks. Another woman burning. Pain knotted her stomach and pounded at her temples. Her hands fisted, the points of the star digging into her palm.
She didn’t want to remember those horrifying images.
She didn’t want to be a witch.
She lurched to her feet and staggered to the bathroom. She lifted the lid to the toilet and dropped the little pewter charm into the water. Drops splashed up from inside the bowl, spattering the rim, as the star bobbed. Hand trembling, she reached for the handle. Maybe flushing the charm would stop the visions and make Elena normal. Her fingers closed around the metal handle, which was cool unlike the charm. The little star radiated warmth, always.
Her sister believed the charms held some special power to protect them, that if all three sisters united with the charms, they could stop the witch hunt. Elena’s fingers slipped away from the handle. Then she reached into the bowl and pulled the star from the water. She’d held on to the charm too long to get rid of it now. Even though Elena didn’t share Ariel’s beliefs, she didn’t want to shatter her sister’s hope.
Her breath coming in shallow pants, she moved to the sink, turning on the gold-plated faucets to wash off the charm and her hands. Because of the soap, she kept a firm hold on the piece of metal, careful not to lose the star down the drain. She glanced at her image in the mirror, the disheveled blond hair, the wild light blue eyes, the silk chemise nightgown baring her shoulders.
“Liar,” she called herself. She hadn’t just lied to her sister when she’d claimed that the charms held no power; she had lied to herself, about so many things.
The marble floor cold beneath her bare feet, Elena walked from the bathroom. With one hand, she fitted the drawer back into the nightstand, then laid the star inside. The charm’s warmth had already dried it, so it glistened in the soft glow of the Tiffany lamp.
Over the years Elena had many times considered tossing out the charm, but she always refrained. No matter how hard she’d tried to forget her past, a part of her had been unwilling to let go. With the witch hunt resurrected, that part would either prove her salvation…or her demise.
* * *
Elena had no idea how long she’d been asleep when moist lips touched her shoulder, gliding over the bare skin. Her pulse quickening, she murmured and shifted against the bed, struggling to awaken. She dragged in a deep breath, the scent of citrus soap and musk.
This was not her husband joining her in bed. He wasn’t even down the hall tonight; he was out of town. But when he’d been around, he hadn’t touched her, not for a long time. From the way he’d started looking at her, with uneasiness and a trace of fear, he might have figured out that his wife wasn’t normal. Perhaps he’d picked up clues from her nightmares, or from the things she knew before he told her.
The lips moved, nibbling along her shoulder to her neck. The brush of moist, hot breath raised goose bumps along her skin. The blanket lowered, pushed aside by impatient hands. Then those strong, clever hands ran over her body, skimming down her arms, then around her waist and over her hips. Sometime during the night, even though the air blowing through her windows was cool in mid-May in western Michigan, she had removed her nightgown. Nothing separated her skin from his as his body brushed against hers.
“Elena,” a deep voice whispered in her ear, his hot breath stirring her hair and her senses. “You’re ready for me.”
Excitement pulsed in her veins, and she opened her eyes, staring up into his face as he leaned over her. Desire had darkened his eyes so that only a thin circle of green rimmed his enlarged pupils. A muscle jumped in his cheek, shadowed with the beard clinging to his square jaw.
“Elena, I want you.” His biceps bulged as he braced his arms on the mattress on either side of her, trapping her beneath the long, hard length of his body. His voice deepened to a throaty growl as he told her, “I want to bury myself so deep inside you that you’ll feel me forever as a part of you.”
“You’re already part of me,” she murmured.
His were the arms she’d instinctively sought earlier, when the horrifying dream had awakened her. She turned to him for comfort and protection. And for this, for the passion that pounded like a drum in her heart, heating her skin and melting her muscles so that she flowed beneath him, fitting herself to the hard lines of his body.
His chest tempted her, wide and muscular with soft, black hair that grew thinner as it arrowed down, over his washboard stomach. Some of the hair dusted his muscular legs, tickling hers, as he entwined them.
He was naked and ready. And so was she.
Her stomach quivering with anticipation, she reached up, twining her arms around his back, pulling him closer. But his weight didn’t settle hot and heavy against her. Her arms moved through empty space, flailing the covers aside as she moved restlessly in her bed, empty but for her.
For the second time that night she bolted upright, panting for breath, her lungs burning with the struggle for air, as she awakened from a dream.
Just a dream.
This was no vision of the future, for there could be no future between Elena and her dream lover. Unlike the killer, she’d seen this man’s face; she knew him, and wished she didn’t.
He might not be the killer, but to Elena, he was just as big a threat, if not to her life, to her heart. His were the last arms in which she would find comfort or protection. With a man like him, she’d only find more heartache and danger.
Elena hadn’t been to this wing of the house in six months, not since her father died. Each step on the Oriental runner that covered the wide corridor brought back more memories. Painful ones. That was one reason why she hadn’t been back to this part of the Tudor mansion. She never wanted to relive those last weeks spent at her father’s bedside, listening to his feverish ramblings as she watched him die.
Unlike the many times he’d taken ill before, this time the pneumonia had killed him. Maybe because he’d gotten it so many times before, or maybe because, as his mother had feared twenty years ago, he’d given up fighting for his life.
As with her visions, Elena had been helpless to stop his death. During his last days, half the time he’d thought she was her mother, so the fever had blinded him before killing him. She looked nothing like Myra Cooper with her wild curly black hair and big, dark gypsy eyes; eyes that had seen so much, like Elena’s, through her visions. She might not have resembled her mother in looks, but Elena had taken after her in other ways.
The other half of the time, her father had thought she was his mother, which probably made more sense. She did resemble Thora Jones physically but in no other way. Elena still had her soul, even though she sometimes felt it slipping away… like when she had a vision of murder and didn’t know how to prevent the killing.
Elena stood outside the door to her grandmother’s rooms, hesitant to knock. She was the other reason Elena had stayed away from this wing of the house. No good ever came out of contact with Thora Jones. The first time Elena met her paternal grandmother she’d been twelve and ripped away from her mom and sisters because of Thora’s manipulations. Thora had sworn out the complaint that had declared Myra Cooper an unfit mother, causing the authorities to take away her children.
But Myra hadn’t fought to keep Elena. She’d signed away her parental rights. Until Ariel had found her, Elena had thought she’d been the only one their mother had given up, because of who and what she was. But Myra hadn’t kept any of her three daughters. Ariel believed it was because of the McGregor vendetta, that she’d been trying to protect them. Elena wasn’t convinced. She was a mother; she couldn’t imagine giving up her child for any reason but most especially if Stacia were in danger. No one would fight harder to keep a child safe than her mother.
That was why Thora had found Elena twenty years ago and brought her to this house, to give her son a reason to fight for his life. After a car accident paralyzed him, he’d wanted to die…until he’d met his daughter. He hadn’t known about her existence until that day, but he’d immediately loved her. If not for her father, Elena wouldn’t have stayed. She would have run away the first chance she got.
Growing up in this mausoleum had made Elena feel like a grasshopper trapped under a glass, powerless to escape and totally at the mercy of the person who held her captive. When she’d left for college, she had never intended to come back, but then her father had had one of his bouts with pneumonia. Thora had made certain Elena knew just how sick he was and how much he needed his daughter. So she’d been sucked back under the glass.
She curled her fingers into a fist but didn’t lift it to knock. Not yet. Before she could, the door opened.
“Elena.”
Although she closed her eyes, she recognized the deep voice and wished for many reasons that she could disappear. Joseph Dolce wasn’t her favorite person, probably because since her father died, he was her grandmother’s favorite. Thora had trusted him enough, despite his relative youth and inexperience, to make him CEO of her corporation, stepping down herself from the position of power she had held since her husband died, from a heart attack, over twenty-five years ago.
Rumor was that Thora owned most of Barrett, the midsized city in the southwestern section of Michigan. Elena knew the rumor to be fact; she’d seen the business records since inheriting her father’s shares of the company. Jones Inc. owned car dealerships, trucking companies, hotels and restaurants.
Now a thirty-five-year-old who’d grown up on the streets was in charge of the multimillion-dollar corporation. To his credit, Joseph had managed, despite some juvenile scrapes with the law, to go to college instead of prison. He’d also run a couple of those businesses under the Jones umbrella before running the whole thing. As Thora’s CEO Joseph was at the house often, far too often for Elena’s peace of mind.
“Mr. Dolce,” she finally acknowledged him.
“Joseph,” he corrected her. He’d been telling her to use his first name for the year since he’d become CEO, and she had yet to use it.
She probably never would. She didn’t respect anyone who worked for her grandmother, even though at one time she’d used business to try to gain Thora’s acceptance. When her father’s health had compelled her to return, she’d asked Thora for a favor, the chance for some respect. But despite her MBA, her grandmother had refused to give her anything, let alone the role Elena had wanted running the company. She realized now that she’d been foolish to even ask, to give her grandmother more leverage with which to hurt her.
Her husband worked for Jones Inc., though, far beneath Thora and Joseph’s level. Is that what had changed him from the sweet, fun-loving boy she’d met in college eleven years ago? Elena doubted anyone could stay sweet and fun loving around Thora, least of all someone as weak as Kirk. Because he was weak, she couldn’t fathom why he had chosen to fight the divorce. Why now, when she wanted him gone, did he refuse to leave?
She closed her eyes, as a headache nagged at her temples. Her divorce was the least of her concerns in light of her visions. The dissolution of her marriage was trivial in comparison to someone’s life. Irina? Had her baby sister been the woman in the fire in Elena’s first dream the previous night?
She refused to think about her second, trying to wipe it from her mind even as her body pulsed with frustration in the way it had ended. Too soon.
“Elena, are you all right?” Strong fingers closed around her arm, offering support.
Her heart lurched. Just with surprise, she told herself. Joseph seemed more the type to shake someone than hold her. Curiously enough she’d always respected that about him, that he wasn’t the type to coddle anyone, that he was so strong that he demanded strength from those around him.
When she opened her eyes, his head was close. He had to be leaning, because he was tall, well over six feet with wide shoulders and a chest so muscular it strained the buttons on his gray shirt and suit. His deep green eyes softened with concern. Elena wasn’t used to a man looking at her like that, not since her father died. But underneath the concern was something that unsettled her even more, an awareness that hummed between them; another reason she could never use his first name. For them, it would be too intimate.
Like her dream.
She resisted the urge to tremble and lifted her chin instead. “I’m fine.”
“Yes, you are,” he agreed, his voice deepening with innuendo as he teased her. He always teased her.
Her palm itched to slap him. He didn’t know that she’d filed for divorce. She’d told no one yet. For all he knew she was a happily married woman. Didn’t anyone respect marriage anymore?
Heat warmed her face, as an image from the dream tugged at her memory. Arms and chest rippling with muscles, wrapping tight around her, pulling her close so that skin brushed skin. She drew in a shuddery breath. But that had been just a dream, not a vision. She was never going to make love with him. She would make certain of it, and if she could change that part of her future, she could change more.
She was here, in her grandmother’s wing, because she couldn’t keep ignoring her visions. They weren’t going away; they just kept getting worse. Not for her, but for the people she saw in them. She had to help. Like that ancestor who had so long ago warned about the lightning that would cause the house fire and begin the vendetta, Elena had to take the risk—even if she was the one who wound up getting burned.
“Excuse me,” she said, stepping around Joseph. “I need to speak to her.”
Then she closed the door, shutting him into the hall and herself into her grandmother’s rooms. The parlor, a profusion of Victorian roses and fragile, antique furniture, misled the visitor into thinking Thora Jones a delicate, old-fashioned woman. Nothing could be further from the reality.
Double doors led off the empty parlor into the den. Without knocking, Elena opened those doors into her grandmother’s real sanctum: dark, heavy woods, dim light and the faint, lingering odor of pungently sweet cigars. Elena had never caught her smoking them, but she suspected it was one of her grandmother’s many vices.
The woman lifted her gaze from the files on her desk, which was cluttered with more picture frames than work. Most of the photographs were of Elena’s father, Elijah Jones. The only ones of Elena were snapshots taken with him. Thora’s parlor also had several pictures of him, among the gardening ribbons and plaques, but this room with its faint light and solemn atmosphere felt more like a shrine to him.
This was where, since his death, Thora worshipped her son.
Elena turned her attention from the framed photographs to the woman behind the desk. Her grandmother’s hair was as blond as Elena’s, her eyes as eerily blue. Despite her seventy-three years, very few lines marred her pale complexion. Sometimes Elena wondered if her grandmother had sold her soul for beauty or immortality, but that thought was ridiculous.
Thora had sold her soul for vengeance.
Chapter 2
The older woman leaned back in her chair. But Elena suspected the nonchalance was feigned; tension emanated from Thora’s trim body. “So…you’re finally paying your grandmother a visit? How sweet.” From her sarcastic tone, she considered it anything but.
So did Elena. “We need to talk.”
Thora expelled an exasperated sigh. “I hope you’re not going to bring up that foolishness of moving out again. It’s your home, too. Your father saw to that in his will. And I think we’ve done very well these past six months at staying out of each other’s way,” she pointed out, then added, “until now.”
“I’m not here to talk about moving out.” Although she intended to, once her divorce from Kirk was settled, this house had never been her home. But she had something far more important than moving to discuss. Because Elena had yet to tell her grandmother about Ariel, because she wasn’t certain that she should, she said, “I have to find them.”
To her credit Thora didn’t ask who, even though they hadn’t had this conversation for a long time, since Elena was a girl desperate to be reunited with her mother and half sisters. “Not this again.”
“You know where they are.” Thora knew everything. Sometimes Elena wondered if she, too, was cursed. In a way, she supposed Thora was, but her special abilities were money and power. The only problem was she would never have enough of either to make her happy. The money couldn’t buy her happiness; it hadn’t even been able to save her only child.
“What’s brought this on? Is this about your father?” Thora asked.
So much of the past twenty years had been about her father. He’d been sick for so long his death should have been a relief, but Elena still ached for missing him. She shook her head. “No.”
“You’re missing him so much that you want to find some other family now,” Thora speculated. “They’re not your family, Elle.”
“They’re my sisters, and I need to find them.” An image flashed through her mind, of the curly dark-haired woman tied to a makeshift stake, of flames rising up around her, swallowing her as she was trapped in the middle, screaming. Even though pain hammered at her temples, she raised her voice, shouting, “Now!”
Thora’s eyes widened with surprise over Elena’s vehemence. Then her mouth twisted into a patronizing smile. “You aren’t a little girl anymore, Elle. It’s past time you grow up and realize they won’t want to see you. You’re the reason they were split up, that they grew up in foster homes. They know that, and they must hate you for it.”
She’d heard this first when she was twelve; it hurt no less now, all these years later. But she wasn’t a child anymore. She could hold back the tears and hide the pain, but she’d done that even at twelve, convincing herself that Thora lied to her, that her mom and sisters were still together. Lying to herself was smarter than showing her grandmother any sign of weakness; instinctively she’d known that then. That, like so many other things, hadn’t changed over the past twenty years.
Drawing on her strength and pride, Elena lifted her chin and revealed, “Ariel doesn’t hate me.”
The color drained from Thora’s face. “You’ve already found one of them?”
“She found me.” By accident. She’d actually been looking for Thora, to confront the person who’d sworn out the complaint that had separated their family. Elena would make certain that meeting never happened. She didn’t want her grandmother treating Ariel the way she’d treated Elena, with resentment and bitterness at their mother.
“If she’s talking to you now, it’s only because she doesn’t know everything. Yet.” Thora shook her head, as if she pitied Elena, but a small, satisfied smile played around her mouth. “Maybe I should enlighten her.”
“No.” Ariel deserved to know the truth, but Elena was the one who needed to tell her. Not Thora. Twenty years ago Elena hadn’t been able to protect her sisters from Thora’s manipulations, but now she was older and wiser. She wouldn’t let Thora hurt them again.
The older woman threatened, “I will tell her some interesting family secrets, if you don’t drop this now. If you don’t stay away from them.”
“She is my family. I have a right to speak to her. And Irina.” Again the vision flashed into her mind, in a bright beam of light, the woman trapped in the middle of the flames. Instead of cigars, Elena caught the odor of wood smoke; it burned in her nostrils, the image was so real. “I need to find Irina.”
Thora’s blue eyes flickered, the first sign of genuine annoyance. “Those women are nothing to you anymore. They never were. Accept that.”
Frustration clutched at Elena’s throat, making it hard for her to draw a breath. She wanted to scream, to throw things. But she restrained all those urges. She’d learned well how to control herself the past twenty years. She could restrain her passion and her temper—but not the visions. She’d never learned how to control her ability, only how to deny it.
Thora sighed. “I can’t believe how ungrateful you are. I saved you from that life, from that hand- to-mouth existence and brought you here, to live in luxury, with a father who loved you.”
She never claimed to love Elena though. If not for how devoted she’d been to her son, Elena would have thought Thora incapable of love. But was that obsessive devotion to Elijah, like when she’d deliberately broken up Elena’s family, really love or something darker?
As dark as the man who lurked in the shadows of Elena’s visions, his face obscured but his intentions clear?
She ignored her grandmother’s diatribe. She had come to reason with Thora, not argue. “Ariel found me because we’re in danger. We need to find Irina, to warn her, too.”
Thora shook her head as her thin lips twisted with disgust. “I thought you were smarter than that. How much money did Ariel want for this information? How much were you foolish enough to pay her?”
“She doesn’t want my money.”
Ariel was probably one of the few people to whom wealth meant nothing. She cared only about protecting the sisters she hadn’t seen in so many years. With her determination, it was only a matter of time before she learned everything, like Thora had said, all the family secrets. Elena couldn’t put off telling the truth any longer.
The older woman laughed, the sound of it forced and brittle. “Stupid little girl—”
“She’s telling the truth.” Elena defended her sister, as she should have defended them and their mother two decades ago. She should have insisted that Thora reunite the family she’d destroyed.
But in Thora’s mind, she’d done the right thing by having the children taken away from Myra Cooper. She’d insisted that they were better off away from their mother. She’d relished pointing out how Myra had given up her parental rights to Elena.
Elena swallowed hard, then revealed, “Before Ariel found me, I knew we were in danger.”
“How would you know that?” Thora asked, with more than annoyance in her blue eyes now, an almost indiscernible trace of fear, the same fear Kirk couldn’t quite hide whenever he looked at her. He had to know. He must have figured out exactly what he’d married.
Elena drew in a deep breath. Maybe it was better, for all of them, that they knew. She couldn’t deny the visions any longer, not to herself or anyone else. “I just know.”
“You’re talking that crazy stuff again.” The older woman stood up now and thumped a fist on her desk, scattering papers across the surface as the picture frames rattled. “You will not bring that witchcraft into my home. Do you understand me?”
Elena flashed back, not to a vision or a dream, but to a memory two decades old. The first time she’d told her grandmother of a vision she’d been subjected to a similar tirade. Then she’d been sent to counseling and therapy and prescribed drugs to treat her “disorder.” The doctors and therapists had claimed it was everything from separation anxiety to post-traumatic stress, blaming everything on her mother, like Thora always did. She hated that her son had fallen in love with Myra Cooper.
“I understand you,” Elena said, knowing that the hatred had consumed whatever decency her grandmother might have had. Elena would get no help, from Thora Jones, in locating Irina. “You’ve never understood me. So let me go—”
“Go, get the hell out of here, if that’s the way you want it,” Thora said, shaking with rage. She picked up one of the framed photos from her desk and turned the picture toward Elena. From her grandfather’s arms, a little blond girl smiled sweetly at them. “But she stays.”
Elena’s heart clenched with love and fear. “You can’t take away my daughter.”
“Funny, I think that’s exactly what your mother told me.”
Her grandmother’s laughter echoed in her ears, as Elena rushed out of her rooms. She slammed the door to the corridor, then sagged against it, squeezing her eyes shut on the image of Thora’s hateful face. Every confrontation with her grandmother left Elena this way, weak, shaking…with a little less of her soul.
“Are you all right?”
She opened her eyes, confronting Joseph’s concerned gaze again. “You stayed.”
He nodded, those deep green eyes soft again with sympathy. “Things never go well between you and your grandmother.”
“So you thought what?” She lifted a brow, relieved to feel anger, which made her so much stronger than fear. “That I might need you?”
Haughty, scornful—she’d rather Joseph see her that way than weak. Like Thora, he wouldn’t respect weakness. But why did she want his respect? He was too much like her grandmother. That was why he’d been given the job that by birthright should have been hers. But refusing to hire her had been more favor than punishment for Elena. If she’d worked for Thora, she might have begun to act like her as well, and she never wanted to become that hateful, bitter and unscrupulous.
“I tend to forget that you hate me,” he said, his wide mouth quirking into a wicked grin.
So did she. That scared her nearly as much as her grandmother’s threats, which weren’t empty. She had enough money and power to get whatever she wanted. Not that she especially wanted Stacia. She just wanted to manipulate Elena. Since she couldn’t do it through Elena’s father anymore, she would do it through Elena’s daughter.
Elena did understand the older woman. She understood that Thora couldn’t let her son go despite his death. She needed more than the pictures piled on her desk and adorning every wall of her rooms. Because Elena and Stacia were part of him, she wanted to keep them close even though she hated that Elena was also a part of her mother, and had been punishing Myra through her since the day she’d brought Elena to this house.
Joseph stepped close, the sleeve of his suit brushing against the silk of her blouse. Even through the two layers of material, his heat penetrated, raising her temperature. Her face flushed. She would have stepped away, but her back was against the door. And he towered over her, imposing, intimidating.
Was this why her grandmother had hired him? Because just his presence, his brawn and the breadth of his shoulders and chest, was threatening? Elena suspected the greater threat was the sharp intelligence burning in his green eyes.
“Why do you hate me, Elena?” he asked. His voice, deep and soft, lifted the hair on the nape of her neck. His wicked grin never slipped, amusement lightening his eyes.
Damn him, he knew. She wanted to but couldn’t quite hate him, no matter how much she tried. She opened her mouth, ready to list the reasons, some she’d vented before, like his subordinates sending her husband away on business too much. But that had been more help than hardship. She’d realized that absence hadn’t made her heart grow fonder, only Kirk more faithless. She couldn’t blame Joseph for that, since Kirk didn’t work directly under him. She couldn’t even blame Joseph for the dreams.
All she could do was ask, “Why do you work for her?”
Was it blackmail? Like what kept Elena in this house, the threat of her grandmother using the considerable means at her disposal to take away what mattered most to Elena, her daughter? What was Thora holding over Joseph Dolce? What mattered most to this man?
He shrugged, and his arm moved against hers, wool scraping against silk. “Money. She pays me well.”
“To do her dirty work,” Elena scoffed, inexplicably disappointed that he wasn’t being coerced, too. This was why she had to hate him, why she could never trust him. He was just as soulless and manipulative as his employer, willing to do whatever necessary for money and power. “I hope it’s enough.”
His dark head nodded, but his green eyes dimmed, the amusement gone. “It’s a lot of money, more than I ever really thought a kid who grew up like I did could make.” Wistfulness deepened his voice. “I used to dream about the fast cars, big houses and fancy—” the wicked grin flashed a brief appearance as he stared down at her “—women.”
He considered her a fancy woman? On the outside, she might look the part of an heiress, with the silk clothes and sleek hairdo and manicured nails. Inside, she was still that little girl who’d grown up in the back of a truck camper, eating cold canned food and wishing for a hot shower and a soft bed, one she hadn’t had to share with younger sisters who kicked and flailed elbows in their sleep. Guilt nagged at her, as it had twenty years ago, when she’d thought her wishing had caused her mom to lose her and her sisters. She’d gotten her hot shower and soft bed, but she hadn’t been able to sleep in it for a long time. She’d missed her sisters, flailing elbows and feet, too much.
“So you got what you wished for,” she pointed out to Joseph, but for some reason she suspected he wasn’t any happier than she’d been. “Was it worth it, selling out to Thora?”
She had no doubt the older woman made him do things, probably illegal things, to get her what she wanted for her corporation and herself. Perhaps that was another reason why Thora hadn’t hired her; she’d known Elena would have wanted to run the company honestly.
Irritation darkened his eyes. “You can act all sanctimonious and self-righteous,” he accused. “You don’t have a damn clue how it is growing up with nothing—”
“I’ve been poor,” she interrupted him. But she hadn’t had nothing. She’d had her mom and her sisters. Their love. She swept an arm around the wide corridor full of antiques and framed artwork. “And obviously I’ve been rich. I was much happier poor.”
He stepped even closer, his legs brushing hers, only inches separating his chest from hers. She could nearly feel the beat of his heart beneath his wool suit and silk shirt. She lifted her palms, wanting to push him away. But she dropped her hands back to her sides and fisted them, not trusting herself to touch him…because she couldn’t trust him.
Interest narrowed his green eyes as he studied her. “There’s a helluva lot I don’t know about you, isn’t there?”
“More than you could handle,” she admitted.
“That sounds like a challenge,” he said, the amusement back in his wicked grin and sparkling eyes, as he lifted her chin with the pad of his thumb.
He stroked her skin, which until that moment Elena had never known was so sensitive. She bit her bottom lip, resisting temptation. Then she lifted her fists, using them to shove against his chest so she could step away from the door and away from him.
“I’ve never backed down from a challenge, Elena,” he warned her, as she walked away.
If he learned the truth, would he look at her like Thora did? Like Kirk had started to look at her, when he dared meet her eyes?
Like she was crazy.
God, she wished she was, then she wouldn’t have to worry about her visions, any of her visions, coming true.
Elena sat up in bed, her back sinking into the pillows piled against the brass headboard. A book lay open across her bent knees, but she couldn’t concentrate on the words on the page, swimming in and out of focus. She was so tired but too afraid to sleep…for the dreams she might dream.
Tomorrow she would talk to Ariel. Together, they would find their little sister. They would make sure none of Elena’s visions of Irina came true. With that thought giving her some peace, she drifted off to sleep…until a cry awoke her. For once, it wasn’t hers, drawn out by a horrifying vision.
She threw back the blankets and ran the short distance down the hall to Stacia’s room, which was aglow with ambient light from the Strawberry Shortcake lamp next to the little girl’s bed.
“Sweetheart,” she murmured, pulling the little girl into her arms. “It’s okay. Shhh…”
Stacia hiccupped out a soft sob and burrowed against her mother. “Daddy…” she called out sleepily.
Elena brushed her daughter’s blond curls off her damp forehead. “It’s okay, honey. Mommy’s here.”
The same could not be said of Daddy. Elena knew she’d done the right thing, taking the first step to end her sham of a marriage, for her daughter’s sake. If Mommy and Daddy no longer lived together, she would understand why he was never around, instead of her confusion giving her nightmares. She rocked the warm little body in her arms as Stacia snuggled against her.
“Where’s Daddy?” the little girl asked.
No doubt in another woman’s bed. But she couldn’t tell her daughter that. “He’s away, honey. Remember? He had a business trip.”
Stacia rubbed her eyes, which were the same pale blue as Elena’s and Thora’s. “I saw him in my dream,” she said.
Of course she had to dream about the man; he was never around. Why wouldn’t he just sign the papers and officially end their marriage? Elena suspected he’d grown too accustomed to their big house and his fast cars and didn’t want to give them up. He’d worked with Thora and Joseph too long.
“Did you dream about your daddy, honey?” she asked. At least when Kirk was around, he played with Stacia. He wasn’t the most devoted father, but he could be fun, playing silly games with their little girl. Too bad he was playing games with Elena, too.
“He was with somebody, Mommy. And then—” she shuddered “—something bad happened…”
The fine hair on the nape of Elena’s neck lifted as foreboding washed over her. Her daughter couldn’t be talking about a vision. She couldn’t be cursed, too. Elena ignored the little voice in her head, reminding her of the Durikken legacy passed from generation to generation.
“What happened, Stacia?” she asked.
Small shoulders lifted in a jerky shrug as fear thickened her voice. “I dunno…I was hiding…”
“It was just a dream, sweetheart.” It had to have been. Her daughter couldn’t be cursed, too.
But if not for the vendetta, perhaps having visions wouldn’t be a curse. Through them Elena had learned what man to divorce…and what man to resist. If not for the killer continuing the vendetta, she wouldn’t be having visions of murder.
“Let me read you a story,” she told Stacia, asking nothing more about her daughter’s dream. She’d like to think she was doing it to avoid upsetting Stacia any further, but it was probably herself she didn’t want to upset. Denial was her oldest, closest friend; she had preferred it to counseling and anti-hallucinatory drugs.
She picked up a book from the table beside the bed. Even though she was only four, Stacia could read most of the words in her books, or maybe it was just that she memorized them from Elena having read them to her so many times. Either way, she was one smart little girl.
Elena pulled her daughter close and opened the book across her lap. She read of princesses and glittery white unicorns, but in her head, she didn’t see those images.
Elena didn’t see Kirk, like Stacia had. She saw a woman with dark, curly hair. The woman from the fire. She was young, only in her early twenties, but she appeared to have lived hard. She was dirty, wild-eyed, staggering along a back alley…until a man stopped her, his arms reaching out of the shadows to grab her.
Elena jerked, and Stacia murmured a protest at the sudden movement. “Shh…” she said, soothing her daughter and trying to soothe herself.
She’d had this dream before, but she couldn’t make sense of all her visions. They came to her in no particular order, some flashing through her head time and time again. She’d seen many images of this woman who might be Irina; dirty, unkempt, probably homeless. Was that where the man found her little sister, in an alley, all alone?
Her arms tightened around Stacia’s warm body. Although her daughter looked nothing like her, she reminded Elena of Irina. Her baby sister had been only Stacia’s age when they were separated.
“It’s okay, Mommy,” Stacia murmured in her sleep, the child offering comfort to the mother. “You’ll find her…”
Elena tensed. How did Stacia know what she was thinking? Had she…
No, she must have overheard some of Elena’s conversations with Ariel. She must have learned about their search for Irina through things Elena had let slip. She wasn’t cursed. She was just an insightful child, like Irina had been. At four she’d had that uncanny ability, too, to figure out what someone was thinking.
What was she like now, as an adult? Was she even still alive? They had no proof. Although Ariel saw ghosts, they usually didn’t seek her out unless they knew her. Did Irina even remember them? She’d been so young….
Guilt nagged at Elena. She should have tried to find her sisters before the killing started. She should have been stronger than Thora’s threats and manipulations. She had to put aside the guilt and fear now, if she was going to be strong enough to stop a killer, and protect her sisters.
The old brick mansion loomed on the other side of the wrought-iron gates, illuminated by security lights, guarded and impenetrable. Maybe to others but not him. He could get inside whenever he was ready, tonight, under the cover of the shadows where he stood now just outside the fence or tomorrow, in broad daylight.
A light, tinged with red, shone faintly in a third- story window. The little girl’s room, but the silhouette of a woman moved behind the frilly curtains. They were there, together. Two of the witches. Mother and daughter.
Could she sense his presence? Did she know he stood below her daughter’s window? Or wasn’t that how her witchcraft worked? What was Elena’s special ability? Was she like her mother and could see the future? Or was she like her sister who saw ghosts?
One of them could hear people’s thoughts. He knew this because when he’d killed their mother, her memories had become his. He’d relived the moment when she’d given them up, bestowing upon each of them a charm before letting them go. He couldn’t quite remember who had which ability though.
Was Elena the telepath? Could she read his mind? Did she know what he was planning? He needed to kill one of them to renew his strength. To keep going until he could reclaim the charms and deal with them all.
Pain throbbed in his shoulder and at his temples, stealing his strength. He didn’t know what hurt worse, the inoperable tumor growing in his head or the wound where the redheaded witch had shot him. His knees wobbling, he reached for the fence and twined his fingers around the iron spires, holding himself up.
Not tonight but soon, before he weakened any more, he had to kill one of the witches. With her death, he would regain some power he lost because of the redhead. Because of her, he’d lost the cult of followers he’d formed to help with the witch hunt. He’d been forced to abandon his church, but he didn’t need it or the cult. After killing another witch, he would be strong enough to take on the other witches, alone, and reclaim the charms that rightfully belonged to the McGregors. He needed the magic of the charms to restore his health.
He’d decided on the witch he needed to kill next—the only one he was strong enough now to kill on his own.
Did Elena know that he intended to kill her daughter?
Chapter 3
“I’m glad you called,” the redhead said, walking at Elena’s side along the cobblestone paths winding through the elaborate gardens on the estate. Even though she didn’t physically resemble their mother, either, Ariel dressed like a gypsy in her long gauzy skirts and laced-up peasant blouses; so different from Elena’s conservative attire of cream-colored linen skirt and sleeveless silk blouse.
“Did you finally talk to your grandmother? Does she know where Irina is?” Ariel asked.
Elena’s focus remained on the flowers, the fragrant blossoms in myriad colors, brilliant blues, blazing reds as well as an array of yellows, pinks and purples. The gardens had won awards for beauty. Her grandmother displayed the ribbons in her parlor, taking the credit when all she’d done was hire the best landscapers, the hardest-working gardeners. As Thora often boasted, she hired only the best, like Joseph. At just the thought of him, Elena’s pulse jumped, her face heating.
“Elena?” Ariel nudged her with an elbow. “So did you talk to her?”
She nodded in response to her sister’s impatient question.
Ariel uttered a little scream of frustration. “So tell me, does she know where Irina is?”
“No, and I actually believe her. She thought Irina had gone into foster care, like you had.”
Ariel had been bounced from home to home because of the curse, because every time she admitted to seeing dead people, her foster parents thought she was crazy and either shipped her off to another family or a psychiatric facility.
Guilt tied Elena’s stomach into knots. Ever since Ariel had found her, she’d struggled to meet her younger sister’s turquoise gaze, not just because of what her grandmother had done but who she was.
Ariel’s brow wrinkled as she narrowed her eyes. Her voice soft, she observed, “There isn’t a lot of love between you and your grandma.”
“You don’t understand.” Elena dreaded explaining, but her sister deserved to know the whole truth, all of the family secrets.
An arm slid around her shoulders as her sister half embraced her, bumping her hip against Elena’s. “I know,” she said.
Ariel couldn’t know everything; she only knew that Thora had been the one to report Myra. Elena pulled away, unable to accept her sister’s affection until she’d told her everything.
“What do you think you know?” she asked Ariel, whose turquoise eyes softened with sympathy.
“I can see that you didn’t have it any easier than I did growing up, maybe even harder,” Ariel commiserated.
“I had my dad,” Elena said, not bothering to claim her grandmother. “He loved me…until he died six months ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Ariel said, lifting her arm again but instead of embracing her sister, she brought it back against her side.
Regret over rebuffing her sister twisted Elena’s stomach, along with the grief she still felt over losing her dad. “He’d been sick a long time.”
Ariel began again, “I’m sorry—”
But Elena waved off her sympathy. She wouldn’t bother Ariel with the details about his health. She had something more relevant to tell her. “His name was Elijah.”
Ariel stopped walking, her long, slim body taut and still. “It was?”
“It’s a family name they kept using even though my father’s ancestors changed their last name years ago, when they first came to America.” That was why Ariel’s search for McGregor descendants who may have resumed the vendetta hadn’t turned up Thora. Or Elena. She’d found Thora only through the complaint sworn out against their mother.
Ariel’s eyes widened, the turquoise the only color in her pale face. “What are you saying?”
From her sister’s reaction, Elena was pretty certain that she’d figured it out. “My grandmother is a descendant of Eli McGregor. She named her son after him.”
“After the man who killed our ancestor, burning her at a stake.” Ariel’s voice cracked with emotion. Their mother had died the same way. Burned.
While Ariel could see her ghost, Elena had witnessed the murder…in a vision. She blinked back tears, saddened that she would never have the chance to see her mother again.
“So you’re a McGregor.” Ariel expelled a shaky breath, stirring the red hair that had fallen across her cheek.
Pride lifted Elena’s chin. “And a Durikken.”
Ariel sighed. “I’ve been trying to find McGregors, trying to figure out which one of them might have resurrected the vendetta.”
“You think I could be the killer?”
Ariel studied her, as if assessing her older sister’s strength. Then she shook her head, tumbling her hair around her shoulders. “No.”
Elena’s pride stung; her sister hadn’t sounded convinced. “Are you sure? After all you really don’t know me. Until just a couple weeks ago we hadn’t seen each other in twenty years.”
A little chuckle sputtered out between Ariel’s lips. “Do you want me to think you’re the killer?”
“No. I want you to really believe that I’m not.”
“You’re right. We haven’t seen each other since we were kids, but I know you, Elena. You’re incapable of murder.” Ariel’s turquoise gaze lifted toward the house.
Elena suspected she didn’t seek her niece’s bedroom window. She’d never invited her sister inside, so Ariel would have no way of knowing which wing was Elena’s and which Thora’s. Elena wanted her sister to have no contact with the bitter old woman. If not for Stacia having been tired from her fitful night, Elena would have taken her along to meet Ariel at the playground where they’d met before.
“What about your grandmother?” Ariel asked.
“Her family changed their name from McGregor because they considered Eli McGregor a madman who should have been punished for what he’d done—”
Bitterness hardened Ariel’s voice when she interrupted, “But the townspeople had revered him for killing a witch.”
“Or feared him,” Elena said. “He was crazy. The vendetta was crazy, and his children changed their name because they wanted no part of it.”
But she couldn’t say the same of Thora, not and believe it. Her grandmother claimed she’d only taken away Myra’s daughters because she was an unfit mother, but Elena had always suspected something other than concern for the children or love of her son had motivated Thora’s actions. Vengeance.
“None of her family wanted anything to do with the vendetta?” Ariel asked.
“My father was her only son.” Perhaps that was why her love for him had bordered on obsessive. Did Elena love Stacia like that, so much that she shut out everyone else? Kirk had excused his absence by claiming that Elena had no room in her life for anyone but her daughter and her father. Not her husband. He might have been right, but Elena hated to think she was more than just physically like her grandmother.
“And your father’s dead,” Ariel concluded, then shook her head. “It’s all so incredible. How’d a McGregor hook up with a Durikken? Coincidence?”
Elena glanced toward the house, not the wing where her daughter slept, hopefully, a dreamless slumber, but toward her grandmother’s wing. She hoped her parents’ meeting had been just a coincidence. She bit her lip, then released it to sigh. “My father was a good man. A loving man. He wouldn’t have sought our mother out to hurt her.”
Ariel’s lips lifted in a wistful smile. “Maybe he only wanted to apologize for what his family had done to hers all those years ago. And when they met, they fell in love.”
Cynicism forced Elena to point out, “It didn’t last.” Not with the conflict and obstacles they’d had. She glanced again toward the house, to the shadow looming behind the gauzy curtains in her grandmother’s parlor.
Ariel’s head turned as she followed Elena’s gaze to the house. “So there’s only you and her?”
“And Stacia.” But Elena had an uncomfortable feeling her daughter was mostly Durikken, cursed.
Frustration knitted Ariel’s forehead. “But maybe your grandmother has some distant relatives. You have to ask her.”
“She’s not going to help me. She doesn’t believe that we’re in danger.”
“Did you tell her about our aunts?” Like their mother, they had been murdered. But unlike Myra, their bodies had been found. Ariel had found them, hanged and crushed to death.
“Thora doesn’t want to believe that someone started up the witch hunt again.”
Ariel sighed. “Because then she’d have to accept that one of her relatives, no matter how distant, is a killer.”
“You don’t know for certain that a McGregor is behind this,” Elena felt obligated to point out.
“Who else would resume the vendetta but a McGregor? Who else would even know about it?”
Elena’s shoulders ached as if a weight had settled on them. “You’re probably right.”
Ariel reached out again, despite all the times Elena had pulled away from her, and squeezed her shoulder. “You can’t blame yourself for this, just like you can’t blame yourself for Thora swearing out that complaint against Mama.”
Perhaps her sister knew Elena better than she’d realized despite her guilt causing her to keep Ariel at arm’s length. “I don’t—”
Ariel interrupted the denial with a shake of her head. “You can’t help who your family is, who you are. You just have to accept it.”
And that was what Elena struggled with the most, accepting her ability and her conflicting heritage. “That’s easier said than done.”
The redhead bobbed in a commiserating nod. “Do you have any visions of your own death, Elena?”
“I don’t know.” She rubbed her hands over her bare arms, trying to chase away the chill, but it wasn’t on her skin; the cold was deep inside her. “Sometimes when I’m dreaming, it’s like it’s me who’s being killed. Then I step back, and I see that it’s someone else.”
Her voice flat, matter-of-fact, Ariel acknowledged, “Me.”
“Or Irina. I’ve seen Irina.”
Ariel remembered, “On the streets.”
Images of her most recent vision played through her mind. “He catches her.”
Ariel’s eyes widened with shock and dread. “Oh, God!”
“And I think he kills her the way he killed Mother.” Unless the image of the woman burning at the stake had been the memory of the vision of her mother dying. The woman had looked exactly like their mother. Unlike Ariel, who had accepted her ability as a gift, Elena struggled to even understand hers.
“We have to find our baby sister.”
“I want to help you,” Elena said. But she didn’t know how to use her ability, not unless the vision was really clear, and that had only happened once, when the killer had nearly ended Ariel’s life. Elena had noted the details of the dilapidated church where Ariel, her fiancé, David, and his friend, Ty, tracked the killer and his cult. But Ty had been hurt, and the killer had gotten hold of Ariel, tying a noose around her neck. David had gotten her away from the madman, but he’d been stabbed. If not for Ariel shooting the killer, David probably would have died. Thankfully they’d all survived. Regrettably, so had the killer, who’d gotten away.
That night, seeing Ariel and David’s love for each other, had forced Elena to face the reality of her loveless marriage. She hadn’t even told Kirk about her sister finding her.
Ariel began, “If you want to help me—”
“I do!” Elena insisted.
“Then you have to accept yourself, Elena, everything about yourself.”
Elena’s lips pulled up into a reluctant smile. “I thought you were a teacher, not a psychiatrist.”
Her sister shrugged. “I guess I must have picked up something from all the ones who talked to me when I was growing up, who tried to pass my gift off as a bid for attention, or a coping mechanism for losing my family.”
While her grandmother had had harsher explanations, a few counselors had told Elena the same things about attention and coping. Softly she acknowledged, “Maybe they were right.”
“You don’t believe that I see ghosts?”
“Our mother was a con artist who staged séances to bilk people out of money.” Until they’d been taken away from her, they’d helped.
Maybe that was why Elena was drawn to Joseph; she wasn’t so different from him. She knew how it was to be a kid forced to do whatever necessary to survive. But she’d grown up and realized there were better ways. Someday, maybe, so would he.
She sighed. “I don’t know what to believe.”
Instead of taking offense, her sister chuckled. “That was crazy. Mama had more gifts than you and I. She didn’t have to lie to them, but she thought lies made them happier than the truth.”
“There are such things as false truths and honest lies.” Her mother’s favorite gypsy proverb.
Ariel nodded. “You remember that, too. Remember who you are. Then you can help me.” Her heels clicked against the cobblestone path as she left Elena standing alone in the middle of the garden, trying to absorb her sister’s ultimatum.
Ariel could accept that her sister was a McGregor, but she didn’t want Elena’s help until she’d accepted herself? Her ability, her heritage or both? Either way, she asked the impossible. But to find Irina, to save her sisters from a killer, Elena would find the strength to conquer the impossible.
She glanced toward the four-story house again, her gaze focusing on the windows of her grandmother’s parlor where behind the gauzy curtains the shadow loomed, watching her. Always watching her, worried about her well-being, as she’d claimed when Elena was twelve, or planning her destruction?
“Why are you here?” Elena asked Joseph as she opened the door to his handsome face.
She stepped back as he shouldered his way into her private living room. The room was bigger than most modest ranch houses, with a massive, sandstone fireplace on the outside wall, in the middle of a row of leaded glass windows. The walls were a soft pale blue, with trim and furniture in chocolate brown and rich cream. An ornate oak staircase wound up opposite the door to the hall of the main house, the door through which Joseph had pushed his way.
“Do you need to talk to Kirk?” she asked, unsettled by his physical appearance as much as his visit. She didn’t even know if Kirk was back from his last trip, but then Joseph would probably know before she would. Kirk might not report to him, but she couldn’t imagine there was much at Jones Inc. of which he wasn’t aware or hadn’t orchestrated.
His gaze not meeting hers, Joseph shook his head.
“Well, I guess you’re a little overdressed to talk to an employee,” she remarked, trying to ignore how his muscular body filled out the black tuxedo he wore with no bow tie, just the white pleated shirt sharply contrasting his dark hair and honey-toned skin. “If you want to see Thora, I think she’s out, too, at some political fund-raiser or benefit—”
“Yeah, I escorted her,” he said.
“Oh, you just brought her home?” And decided to look in on Elena after? She couldn’t imagine why…unless he was accepting the challenge she’d unwittingly presented herself as at their last encounter.
Excitement quickened her pulse and shortened her breath as an image flashed through her mind. Green eyes dilated darkly with passion. A chest, dusted with black hair, rising and falling with harsh breaths. A hard body pressed tight against hers. She struggled to draw a deep breath into her suddenly constricted lungs. All she inhaled was his scent, of citrus soap and musk.
He didn’t look at her as he shook his head. “No, your grandmother’s still at the fund-raiser.”
“So you skipped out on Thora?” She whistled under her breath, impressed despite her animosity toward him.
Dismissively he shrugged, his shoulders appearing even broader in his tux. “She has a driver.”
“But if she asked you to accompany her, I’m sure she expected you to stay until she was ready to leave.” Elena would much prefer he were with Thora than her. What if his late night visit brought on another dream? “Maybe you can get back before she realizes you’re gone.”
His lips twitched into that wicked grin as she reached for the door handle. “Trying to get rid of me, Elena?”
Unlike her grandmother who shortened her name to Elle, Joseph always called her Elena. The sound of her name in his deep voice quickened her pulse even more. She clenched her fingers into a fist, fighting her reaction to him. “Since you know Thora’s still at the benefit, I’m not sure why you’re here.”
Under his breath he murmured, “You’re not the only one….”
From the way he wouldn’t meet her gaze, she had a feeling his visit had nothing to do with a challenge. “What’s wrong—” She’d nearly called him Joseph but stopped herself before giving him the satisfaction.
“Does there have to be something wrong for me to come see you?” he asked, his green eyes gleaming as he finally looked at her.
Elena’s heart reacted to his flirting with a sudden jump. She infused her voice with ice, something she’d learned well from her grandmother, when she replied, “Yes.”
Her imperious tone didn’t discourage him. His eyes only gleamed brighter. “Really? I can’t stop by just to visit you?” he teased, as he stepped closer to her, invading her space with his imposing presence.
She locked her knees, so she wouldn’t step back. Like Thora, he wasn’t someone to whom she would ever wittingly reveal weakness. She lifted her chin and reminded him, “I’m a married woman.”
Until Kirk signed the damned papers.
“I talked to Kirk today.”
She held her breath, so it wouldn’t shudder out from between her suddenly parted lips. “You know I’m getting a divorce.”
And he’d come right over? Why? She’d never given him any encouragement but in her dreams.
“I’m sorry, Elena,” he said.
She would have doubted his sincerity, but sympathy and regret deepened his voice. “I didn’t think you had much use for the institution,” she mused aloud.
His lips twitched again. “Just because it’s not for me doesn’t mean that I don’t respect it.”
Maybe he would have respected his vows more than Kirk had, but then he wasn’t likely to ever get married. He’d made it clear his priorities were money and power. Maybe if she kept reminding herself, she would stop having the dreams.
The lightning flashed behind her eyelids, signaling the beginning of a vision. She fought hard to suppress it, squeezing her eyes shut, afraid that it might be the one where she was naked, lying in his arms. She didn’t understand that dream; it wasn’t that she subconsciously wanted him. She couldn’t, not when she didn’t respect or trust him. After Kirk’s infidelity, she wasn’t likely to trust any man, ever again.
“Elena, are you okay?”
Eyes still closed, she nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”
This wasn’t one of those brief flashes where images flitted through her mind. This was deeper, the paralyzing grip of a complete vision. She rallied her strength, fighting against it. She concentrated instead on his voice, which seemed to come at her from a distance.
“Divorce can be tough, so I’ve heard. If you need anything…”
Surprised by his offer, she opened her eyes. Then pride lifted her chin and once again permeated her words with ice. “I don’t need your help.”
He didn’t grin this time, his eyes darkening as if she’d offended or hurt him. But she knew better. She couldn’t hurt him. She could only be hurt by him.
“If you ever do need my help,” he continued, as if she hadn’t rudely thrown his offer back in his face, “I’m here for you, Elena.”
She was almost as afraid of his closeness as she was her visions, but if he were sincere, maybe she could use his help. He might be able to aid in the search for her baby sister. He’d grown up on the streets. If Elena had interpreted her visions of Irina correctly, her sister was living on the streets. He might be able to help Elena find her.
Before she could open her mouth to ask him, the lightning flashed again inside her head, too bright and blinding to be suppressed. Even though she kept her eyes wide open, the images began to play out in her mind like the reel of an old home movie. This wasn’t her and Joseph tangled up in each other’s arms. This was worse. Pain pierced her temples as the lightning brightened, illuminating the person in her vision.
Stacia cowered in a confined place, in the dark. Her little body shaking in her pajamas, the ones Elena had helped her into just a little while ago, the pink ones with the fluffy white sheep, each of them wearing a number, dancing on them. She’d taught Stacia to recognize numbers by pointing to them on those pajamas.
Where was her baby? Elena had to know. She closed her eyes, trying to focus on the vision, but the shadows thickened, obscuring everything but Stacia, lying alone in that tight, dark place but for her teddy bear, the fluffy white one that was so hard to keep clean Elena had to sneak it into the washing machine when Stacia was sleeping. Why was her baby alone in the dark? Stacia was terrified of the dark.
Elena hadn’t had a dream or vision of Stacia in so long, not since the one of her being born. Why now? Was Stacia in danger?
The pain intensified, hammering at Elena’s temples with such force that her knees weakened. As she swayed on her feet, strong hands closed over her shoulders, steadying her. But she couldn’t feel the touch, nor could she hear anything for the roar of fear in her ears, rushing through her pulsing veins.
Inside her head, in the vision, hands came out of the shadows, big hands reaching for Stacia, closing around her thin arms, dragging her out of her hiding place.
The muscles in Elena’s stomach clenched. Why had Stacia been hiding? Where was Stacia? Who was reaching for her?
Stacia’s blue eyes widened with fear, and she twisted in the grasp of the unknown man. But the hands only tightened, squeezing her delicate little arms until her mouth opened in a cry of pain.
“No!” Elena yelled, overcome with the need to protect her child.
The hands on Elena’s shoulders gripped harder, shaking her. “What the hell’s going on? What’s wrong?” Joseph shouted his questions, as if he’d asked before and been ignored. Undoubtedly he wasn’t used to being ignored.
Elena blinked open her eyes and stared up into his face, his brow furrowed in confusion. Choked with fear, all she could do was whisper, “Stacia…”
“She’s upstairs, right? Asleep?” he asked, his concern vibrating in his voice.
Elena drew in a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Her visions were of the future, not the present. And they didn’t always come true. If they did, Ariel wouldn’t still be alive. Stacia was fine. Her pulse leapt as she added her next thought. Now.
“I put her to bed,” she told Joseph and reminded herself. “She was in bed.”
“Then she’s still in bed,” Joseph assured her, as he studied her intently.
No one had ever witnessed Elena having a vision before. She’d been careful to conceal them while awake, even if she’d had to rush from a room during the middle of a conversation, and if a dream had interrupted her sleep, she’d insisted it was just a dream.
“Everything’s fine,” Joseph insisted, so eerily calm and reassuring that he unsettled her as much as the vision. Nobody had ever offered her such solid support.
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Lisa Childs
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Experience the thrill of life on the edge and set your adrenalin pumping! These gripping stories see heroic characters fight for survival and find love in the face of danger.Her curse would become her greatest gift Elena Jones would do anything to stop her dream-visions – until they show her the danger confronting her sisters. She has the chance to transform her curse into a gift and stop death before it strikes. Joseph Dolce has violence in his past and darkness in his soul. Elena’s sweetness brings him new joy.Then her daughter is kidnapped. Joseph must save Elena from the man who hunts her – and find his way to her heart!Witch Hunt Three sisters – magic in their blood and a killer on their trail!