Immortal Bride. Lisa Childs

believed. Even after tonight, after seeing a ghost himself, Damien struggled to accept otherworldly powers or abilities.

      Nathan stood up and returned to the fire, staring into the flames. “You need to get back to work.”

      “I go to work.”

      “What? A few times a week? Your job used to consume your life. You need to let it consume you again,” Nathan advised, “before she does.”

      Damien didn’t bother telling his cousin that it was already too late. If Nathan were really a shaman, he knew.

      Olivia consumed him. Thoughts of her haunted him day and night. And now her ghost haunted him.

      “Can’t you help me?” Damien asked. “This—spirits—that’s your thing, your area of expertise.”

      Nathan chuckled. “So you believe me now? You must be desperate.”

      “I am,” Damien admitted, knowing he deserved his cousin’s derision. He had treated him to more than enough of his disbelief over the years, when he’d been unable to accept that Nathan had any special abilities. But Nathan had never been offended, not even when Damien had raged at him over his plans to perform weddings on the shore of the Lake of Tears—where Nathan had married him and Melanie and where she had died years later on the rocky hill above the lake. Damien had been furious, and Nathan had apologized, respecting Damien’s wishes to keep the tragedy private.

      Nathan had always understood and, Damien suspected, pitied him for not being able to believe in the magic of the land the young shaman considered sacred and of the special abilities of their people—of him.

      “Can’t you help me?” he implored his cousin.

      Nathan shook his head. “I wish there was some drink I could make you. Some talisman I could give you. But even I can’t find a cure for a broken heart, man.”

      “You think that’s what’s going on with me? You don’t think I really saw her tonight?”

      His cousin shrugged. “I don’t know, Damien. You’ve never seen anything before, and this land is alive with the energy of the spirits of all our ancestors who passed. Why would you see only her?”

      “Because I love her.” Even now, even after what she’d done tonight.

      Nathan nodded. “And because of that, you don’t want to let her go.”

      “I can’t.”

      “And that’s probably why, if you really saw her ghost, that she’s still here,” the shaman explained. “Because you won’t let her go. You’re holding her back from crossing over.”

      Could that be why she hated him now?

      “How do I let her go?”

      Nathan shrugged again. “You need time, but more importantly, you need distance. You hardly came around here after Melanie died. And that helped you get over her.”

      Olivia, and really falling in love for the first time, had helped him get over the senseless death of his first wife. “I won’t get over Olivia.”

      “Not if you don’t try,” Nathan agreed. “You need to get the hell out of here.”

      Damien shook his head. He couldn’t leave her…even if she hated him.

      Chapter 3

      The Wise One stood on the rocky bluff where he had died centuries ago, before the lake had formed from the sorceress’s tears. Like then, when a dagger had pierced his heart, he felt his power slipping away. Once again a Gray Wolf warrior threatened to disrupt his plan—over a woman.

      She was dead. Did she not know it? She wandered the lake and the land as if unaware she had been killed. And she remained unaware of his presence, as if she were more real than him, as if she were more human than ghost.

      Or was she, like the long-dead woman she eerily resembled, a sorceress? Fear flickered through him like a flame, but he snuffed out the fire with reason. If she were a sorceress, she would have been able to save herself or to bring herself back as a flesh-and-blood woman rather than a ghost.

      No, this woman had no more power than any other mere mortal. The only way the Wise One suspected she was like him was that she had some unfinished business trapping her in this world. And perhaps he could use that, and use her as he had used others, to help him—at long last—complete his mission.

      

      Maybe she could have passed through the walls. But since she wasn’t certain of the limitations of being a ghost, Olivia opened the front door. She stared down at her hand on the knob, surprised she had enough strength to turn it. Until last night, when Damien had finally seen her by the lake, she hadn’t been strong enough or substantial enough to even create a ripple across the surface of the water. Until she had grabbed his ankle, touching him, she hadn’t had enough strength to hold on to or move anything. But now she was strong—strong enough to do what she needed to do.

      She stepped inside the house, wincing as the mahogany door closed behind her and the click of the lock echoed in the two-story foyer. As moved by the beauty of the house as she had been the first time she’d seen it, Olivia stared in awe at the chandelier hanging above her. Light caught in the crystal prisms and bounced off the gleaming marble floor in myriad colors.

      How could a man responsible for such beauty be capable of so much ugliness? She had seen the “before” pictures and had lived in the “after.” She knew the money and time Damien had spent restoring the house after it had fallen into a state of disrepair when his grandfather had owned it.

      Another man might have torn down the home that had succumbed to the harsh elements of the Upper Peninsula. Tearing down and building new would have been cheaper and easier. But Damien never did what was easy.

      And killing him wouldn’t be easy, either. She should have known he would fight. Yet, had he broken free of her hold, or had she let him go last night?

      Guilt tempered her anger as she recalled the look in his eyes—the utter shock and…

      Devastation?

      Had she hurt him? She would not have considered it possible to hurt a man as tough and independent as Damien Gray. But then what did she really know about the man she had married in such a hurry?

      That he was incredibly charismatic. She had never been as immediately drawn to another human being. Even now embarrassment filled her that she had made love with him the first day they’d met. She had dated her ex-fiancé for months before finally, after much deliberation, deciding to take their relationship to the next level.

      With Damien, she had never deliberated. She had never thought at all. Until now. When it was too late. Anger rushed through her, energizing her. But this time she was mad at herself as she silently admitted to letting him go last night. She had released him—unable to kill him. Her anger turned to disgust. For six months she had plotted her revenge—and not just for herself.

      She glided her palm over her stomach. Her whole body was empty now—with no substance, like her. She had been so weak to let him go just because of how he’d looked at her. And how he’d made her feel…

      When Olivia had worked in the prosecutor’s office in Detroit, she had never understood those women who refused to testify against the husbands or boyfriends who had abused them and then returned to these men when they were released from jail. Was she one of those women—so obsessed with Damien that she would go back to him if she were able?

      If she were alive…

      No. She was smarter than that—stronger than that. She had only changed her mind about killing him because she needed more proof of his guilt first.

      She had only heard his car that night, coming up the drive. She hadn’t heard him creep up behind her moments later. But only Damien moved that silently, as silently as whoever had struck her over the head as she waited for her new husband beside the