Cursed. Lisa Childs
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God, it’s bad.” The girl’s breath shuddered out, and tears welled in her eyes. “It’s really bad.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Maria assured her. “We can stop it from happening. I’ll make you an amulet of special herbs and crystals...” And maybe this time it would work.
The girl shook her head, and her tears spilled over, running down her face in black streaks of eyeliner. “Even you can’t change the future!” She jumped up with such force she knocked over her chair.
Maria jumped up, too, and grabbed the girl’s arms. “Don’t panic.” But she felt it—the fear that had her heart hammering in her chest and her breathing coming fast and shallow in her lungs.
“Stay here,” she implored the girl. “Stay with me, and I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”
Blind with terror, Raven clawed at Maria’s hands and jerked free of her grasp. Then she shoved Maria away from her, sending her stumbling back from the table.
“No. It’s you,” the girl said, her eyes reflecting horror. “I’ve seen it—the dark aura around you.”
That was what Maria had been trying to remove. But she had failed. As Raven had said, even she couldn’t change the future—no matter how hard she tried.
“It’s you!” Raven shouted, her voice rising as she continued her accusation. “You’re the moon!”
She hurled the table at Maria, knocking it over like the chair. The cards scattered across the old brick pavers of the barn.
Raven was right: even she, with all the knowledge of her witch ancestor, could not change what she had seen of the future. Like that witch ancestor, who had burned at the stake centuries ago, Maria was helpless to fight the evil that followed her no matter how far and how fast she had tried to outrun it.
The girl turned now and ran for the door, leaving it gaping open behind her as she fled. Just like Maria, Raven wouldn’t be able to escape her fate: death.
* * *
The night breeze drifted through the bedroom window and across the bed, cooling Seth Hughes’s naked skin and rousing him from sleep. He didn’t know how long he’d been out. But it couldn’t have been long, because his heart pounded hard yet, his chest rising and falling with harsh breaths. The breeze stirred a scent from his tangled sheets, of sandalwood and lavender, sweat and sex.
He splayed his hands, reaching across the bed. But she was gone even though he could still feel her in his arms and how he’d felt buried deep inside her body. He could taste her yet on his lips and on his tongue.
With a ragged sigh, he opened his eyes and peered around the room. Moonlight, slanting through the blinds at the window, streaked across the bed and across the naked woman sitting on the foot of it, turned away from him. She leaned forward, and her long black curls skimmed over her shoulders, leaving her back completely bare but for a silver chain and the trio of tattoos a few inches below the chain that circled her neck. There was a sun, a star and a crescent moon.
“I thought you’d left,” he murmured, his voice rough with sleep and the desire that surged through him again. She was so damned beautiful with that sexy gypsy hair and all that honey-toned skin.
“I couldn’t just leave,” she replied as she rose from the bed.
Not after what they’d done? His pulse leaped as the desire surged harder, making him hard. Making love with her had been the most powerful experience of his life. And even though he wasn’t certain he could survive it, it was an experience he wanted again. And again...
“I’m glad,” he said.
She shook her head. “You won’t be.”
“Maria?” he asked, wondering about her ominous tone.
“You’re going to be dead.” Finally, she turned toward him, and the moonlight glinted off the barrel of the gun she held. He glanced toward the bedside table, where the small holster he clamped to the back of his belt lay empty. She held his gun.
“You don’t want to do this,” he said, holding his hand out for the weapon. But as he reached for it, it fired. The gunshot shattered the quiet of the night and...
* * *
The peal of his cell phone pulled him, fighting and kicking, from the grasp of the dark dream. Seth awoke clutching his heart, which pounded out a frantic rhythm. Pulling his hand away, he expected it to be covered with blood. His blood.
But his palm was dry. The room was too dark for him to see anything but the blinking light on his phone. No moonlight shone through the worn blinds at the window of the motel room. The only scent was dust and the grease from the burger and fries he’d brought back from the diner down the street.
“It was just a dream,” Seth said, but no relief eased the tension from his shoulders or loosened the knot in his gut. Nothing was ever just a dream with him.
Drawing a breath into his strained lungs, he reached for the persistently ringing phone. His holstered gun sat on the nightstand next to the cell. His fingers skimmed over the cold barrel before he grabbed up the phone.
Just a dream...
“Hughes,” he said gruffly into the phone.
“Agent Hughes?”
“Yes.”
“You were right!” The girl’s voice cracked with fear as it rose with hysteria. “It’s her! She’s here.”
“Maria Cooper?”
“I lied to you when you were here earlier. I didn’t believe what you said about her, but you’re right. You’re right about everything!” A sob rattled the phone. “I never should have trusted her. Now I’m in danger.”
“Where are you?” An image flashed into his mind of the young woman with the bird tattooed on her face. “Raven?”
“I’m at the Magik Shoppe,” she replied.
The old round red barn was hardly a store. But that was another reason he’d known it was her shop even though he hadn’t found her there, just the girl.
“Why?” he asked. He had no doubt that she was right; she was in danger. So why was she at the barn?
“I came back here to get you proof that she’s the one,” Raven said. “I found it. I have the evidence you need. But you have to come quickly!”
He kicked back the tangled sheets. “I’m coming.”
“How far away are you?”
“I stayed in town.” Although calling Copper Creek, Michigan, a town was stretching the description since it had only a gas station, a diner, a bar and this one ramshackle motel. Despite the girl’s denial, he had known the shop belonged to Maria Cooper. Finally, he’d come across one of her witchcraft stores before it—and she—was gone.
He’d stayed in Copper Creek with the intent to keep returning to the store until he caught her there. Hell, if not for the long drive up north having worn him out, he would have staked out the place until she came back. But if he had fallen asleep and she’d discovered him, the least she would have done was run again.
Maybe he should have risked staying; at least he would have been closer when Raven called and he wouldn’t have to traverse the winding, rutted gravel road in the dead of night. “I’ll be right there.”
“You’re going to be too late...”
Oh, shit. The girl must have warned her boss about him. Maria Cooper was already on the run again. “Stay there. And keep her there if you can.”
Another sob rattled the phone. “No. I don’t want her to find me. I don’t want her to kill me, too.”
Seth reached for his gun again.