Persecuted

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.