Cursed. Lisa Childs

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.

       Chapter 3

      Blood and water leaked out as the scalpel sliced through the flesh and tissue of the victim’s lungs. Seth didn’t even flinch; he had already seen so much horror in his job.

      And in his dreams.

      “I don’t understand it,” the coroner murmured as he stared down at the water spilled on the stainless steel table.

      Bright light shone onto the table and the body of the young woman lying on it. Seth stood just outside the light, in the shadows, where he felt he’d spent so much of his life.

      “With the trauma to the neck and the lack of oxygen that would have caused to her brain,” the doctor said, “I figured it might have been a stroke that caused her death.”

      “She was drowned,” Seth said. He’d had the sheriff wake up the coroner to perform the autopsy to confirm it. But he’d already known.

      He had seen the water that had spilled on the floor and had condensed on the inside of her breathing tube. When he’d stepped off the elevator, he had heard the alarm beeping.

      And he’d known. He was too late.

      Raven had told him that he would be too late to save her. And she’d been right. He had failed her twice.

      “How the hell did she drown?” the coroner asked. The older man shook his head as if befuddled. The sheriff had assured Seth that despite Dr. Kohler’s age, the man was sharp. With his years of experience and the expansive county he worked, he had seen everything before.

      Apparently he hadn’t seen anything like this—like a woman being drowned in her hospital bed.

      “I’m pretty sure someone poured water into her breathing tube,” Seth said. While waiting for Sheriff Moore and the coroner to arrive at the hospital, he had investigated the scene and interviewed all the possible witnesses.

      The coroner gasped but nodded his gray head. “That would have done it.”

      “But how?” the sheriff asked. He had joined Seth in the morgue in the basement of the county hospital, but he’d stayed even farther from that brightly lit table than Seth had. So he hadn’t witnessed much of the autopsy. He wasn’t asking about the medical aspects, though.

      He was asking the same question that Seth had been asking himself when he’d found Raven dead. How?

      Maria was in custody. Wasn’t she?

      “You have someone watching the suspect?” he asked Sheriff Moore. Again. It had been the first thing he had asked the man when he’d called him from Raven’s bedside.

      The older lawman nodded. “Yes.” Now he glanced at the body on the autopsy table. “But it looks as if we should have had someone watching her instead.”

      Seth silently cursed himself. He should have had a protection detail on Raven. But he’d thought he had the right person in custody.

      He could feel his suspect slipping away now, though. This death would give her reasonable doubt. A grand jury might not even indict her now. And then she would be free again.

      And if Maria was free, he was certain that more people would die—since everyone around her kept dying...

      If only he had been able to talk to Raven...

      Frustration eating at him, Seth grumbled, “I