Haunted: Penance / After the Lightning / Seeing Red. Debra Cowan
favorite.
Elena had always admired the star, the sharp tips now dulled with age. Irina loved the crescent moon, easily transformed—like Irina’s moods—from a smile to a frown, depending on the angle from which it dangled. Ariel favored the sun, its rays circling a small, smooth disk. Despite its age, this charm seemed to shine brighter than the others. Like Ariel.
Even now, in the dingy little camper, an aura surrounded the child, glowing around her head as spirits hovered close. Did Ariel know what her gift was? Did either of her sisters? Her daughters needed Myra’s guidance so they could understand and use their abilities. They were too young to be without their mother, but she couldn’t put them at risk. All Myra could hope was that the charms would keep them safe, as they had that first Elena so long ago.
Myra knelt before her children where they huddled in their little makeshift bed in the back of the pickup camper, their home for their sporadic travels. This was all she’d been able to give them. Until now. Until she’d shared the legend.
Now she’d given them their heritage, and with the help of the charms, they would remember it always. No matter how much time passed. No matter how much they might want to forget it or ignore it. Like that Elena from so long ago, even though she’d feared her future and tried to outrun it, she’d never thrown away the charms. She’d known how important they were, and so would Myra’s children.
She reached for Elena’s hand first. It was nearly as big as hers, strong and capable, like the girl. She could handle anything…Myra hoped. She dropped the star into Elena’s palm and closed her fingers over the pewter charm. The girl’s blue gaze caught hers, held. No questions filled her eyes, only knowledge. At twelve, she’d already seen too much in visions like her mother’s. The girl had never admitted it, but Myra knew.
She then reached for the smallest—and weakest—hand, Irina’s. Myra worried most about this child. She’d had so little time with her. She closed Irina’s hand around the moon. Hang on tight, child. She didn’t say it aloud; for Irina, she didn’t need to—the child could hear unspoken thoughts.
Myra swallowed down a sob before reaching for Ariel. But the girl’s hand was outstretched already. She was open and trusting, and because of that might be hurt the worst.
“Don’t lose these,” she beseeched them. Without the protection of the little pewter charms, none of them would be strong enough to survive.
“We won’t, Mama,” Elena answered for herself and her younger sisters as she attached her charm to her bracelet and helped Irina with hers.
Despite her trembling fingers, Myra secured the sun charm on Ariel’s bracelet, but when she pulled back, the girl caught her hand. “Mama?”
“Yes, child?”
“You called it a curse…this special ability,” Ariel reminded her, her voice tremulous. She had been listening.
Myra nodded. “Yes, it is a curse, my sweetheart. People don’t understand. They thought our ancestors were witches who cast evil spells.”
And they had been witches, but ones who’d tried to help and heal. Her family had never been about evil; that was what had pursued them and persecuted them throughout the ages.
“But that was long ago,” Elena said, ever practical. “People don’t believe in witches anymore.”
Myra knew it was better to warn them, to make them aware of the dangers. She’d shown them the locket earlier, the one nestled between her breasts, the metal cold against her skin. It was the one Thomas had pressed upon Elena all those years ago. Inside were faded pictures, drawn by Thomas’s young hand, of his sisters, who had died in the fire. Their deaths could have been prevented if only they’d listened and fought their fate. “Some still believe.”
“Mama, I’m cursed?” Ariel asked, her turquoise eyes wide with fear. Her hand trembled as she clutched the sun.
No one more than I. Myra had lost so much in her life. Her one great love—Elena’s father. And now…
“Mama, there are lights coming across the field!” Ariel whispered, as if thinking that if she spoke softly they wouldn’t find her. Maybe she didn’t hear as much as her sisters, but she understood.
Myra didn’t glance out the window. She’d already seen the lights coming, in a vision, and so she’d hidden the camper in the middle of a cornfield. But still they’d found her; they’d found them. She stared at her children, memorizing their faces, praying for their futures. Each would know a great love as she had and all she could hope was that theirs lasted. That they fought against their fate, against the evil stalking them, as she would have fought had she been stronger.
She just stood there next to the camper, in the middle of the cornfield, as they took her children away. The girls screamed and reached for her, tears cascading down their beautiful faces like rain against windows.
This wasn’t Myra’s final fate; her death would come much later. But as her heart bled and her soul withered, this was the night she really died. The night her children were taken away.
Chapter 1
Barrett, Michigan, 2006
The wailing sirens and shouting voices receded to a faint hum as the light flashed before Ariel’s eyes. Glowing through a thin veil of mist, bright but not blinding, it granted her such clarity that she could see what others could not.
The little girl. Her big, dark eyes wide in her pale face, her black hair hanging in limp curls around her cheeks and over her shoulders. In that pale yellow dress she’d favored, she was dressed for school. But she wasn’t there, safe in Ariel’s second-grade classroom. Not now. She hovered before the ramshackle house, back from the curb where police cars and an ambulance blocked the street.
Ariel had left her Jeep farther down the road and walked to the house, which sat on the edge of commercial property, only businesses and warehouses surrounding it and a handful of other rundown rental houses. No trees. No grass. No yard in which a child could play. Ariel had ducked under the crime scene tape roping off the property. She didn’t need to rush around like all the other people, the ones trying to figure out what had happened or how to help. Before she’d even arrived, she’d known what had happened and that it was too late for help.
As she blinked back tears, the mist thickened and the light faded, dimly shining on just the little girl, who, too, was fading and dissolving into the mist. Ariel reached out a hand, trying to hold on to her, trying to keep her from leaving. Her voice thick with emotion, she whispered the child’s name, “Haylee…”
The little girl whispered back, her mouth moving with words Ariel couldn’t hear. What did she want to tell her? Goodbye?
The tears fell now, sliding down Ariel’s cheeks, blurring Haylee from her vision. “I’m not ready to let you go….”
She was too young to be alone. Only eight. And she’d get no older now.
Ariel’s heart ached so much she trembled with the pain. As she shook, the charm dangling from the bracelet on her wrist swayed back and forth. Her hand was still extended, reaching for Haylee as the child faded away. Ariel’s fingers clutched at the mist, slipping through the gossamer wisps until she touched something solid. Something strong and warm.
Arms closed around her. A hand pressed her face against a hard shoulder. On a gasping breath, she drew in the rich scent of leather and man. Her man.
Even with her eyes closed, she saw David as vividly as if she were staring up at him. Although she wasn’t petite at five ten, David towered above her and everyone else. With his golden hair and dark eyes, he was a throwback to the conquering Vikings of centuries ago, not so much in appearance as attitude. Or perhaps a black knight, for he was dressed all in black today—black leather jacket, black silk shirt and black pants.
His deep voice rumbled as he told her, “You shouldn’t be here. I’m going to take you home.”
“H-how