Cursed

“And they haven’t called.”

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

“She’s not dead.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before he killed the most powerful witch...

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

Another witch dead...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Except for him.

It was time for Maria Cooper to die.

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