Cursed. Lisa Childs

to be Maria’s friend...and for being a witch. Raven had wanted to be a witch. That was why she’d sought out the shop. Not for the healing cures or love potions that Maria could sell her. Like learning to read the cards, Raven had wanted to learn to make the potions and cures herself.

      Maria glanced down at the photos Agent Hughes had left strewn across the small table. Every one of them had wanted the same thing. To practice witchcraft...

      Even the two guys. And one of them had been crushed to death, the other burned. But had becoming a witch been their real wish...or was it just because they’d wanted to be close to her?

      She had been told that she was that kind of person—the kind who drew other people to her. Apparently even when she didn’t want to...

      Like Raven...

      Her breath shuddered out with the sob that she couldn’t restrain. Nobody could get close to her without losing everything.

       Nobody...

      She reached out for the briefcase Agent Hughes had left on the table to see what else he had inside—like maybe the keys to the door. But the case was empty; he’d only had those crime scene photos in it. No keys. She needed the keys. She had to get out of here—before she suffocated or strangled. But as soon as her fingers touched the leather, images flashed through her mind...like when she read cards or touched a crystal ball.

      His smoky blue eyes stared down at her, his gaze intense. Not with anger or suspicion now but with passion. Moonlight gleamed on the bare skin of his broad shoulders and heavily muscled chest. Then his face, so handsome with his square jaw and sharp cheekbones, got closer as he lowered his body. His legs, naked but for soft hair, parted hers. And his chest covered her breasts, crushing them so that her nipples hardened and pressed against his skin.

      She moaned at the exquisite sensation. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted more, wanted his mouth...everywhere. On her lips, on her breasts and...

      He must have read her mind because he chuckled and his chest rumbled against hers. “I can’t believe this...”

      She shook her head, shaking off the image. “I can’t believe it, either.” It couldn’t be a vision; making love with Seth Hughes would not happen. Not just because he thought she was a killer, and she wasn’t entirely convinced he wasn’t one, too, but also because she would never, ever make the mistake of getting close to anyone else.

      Ever again.

      Even though she didn’t need reminders of what happened to people who got too close to her, she tried to focus on those pictures. Maybe she could see something in the crime scene photos that would help her figure out who was doing this. Who was the dark aura following her...

      But even in her visions, she never saw a person, never saw who was hurting these victims. She saw only the darkness. The evil.

      And then these images that the crime scene photos had captured. She had seen them before they had even happened—in her mind as she’d read their cards. The same cards that had turned up tonight. For Raven. The mist thickened so that she couldn’t see the photos. Or anything in the room.

      Then the mist shifted into a human form. She expected Raven’s tall thin body, so she gasped in surprise at the small stature and long curly black hair of the ghost. “No...”

      She shoved back her chair, as far as the wall would allow, and jumped up. Then she turned toward the door, clawing at the handle and hammering at the wood. “Let me out! Let me out!”

      “I’m not going to hurt you,” that all-too-familiar soft voice assured her.

      The scent of sandalwood and lavender, mixing with her own, overwhelmed her. And smoke. She always smelled smoke now whenever this ghost visited her. Tears burned her eyes. Seeing her always hurt. “I don’t want to see you. I told you to leave me alone!”

      Her voice cracked with so many emotions as the ghost whispered her name: “Maria...”

      “Go away!” she screamed.

      “I can’t leave you, child.”

      “Why not? You had no problem leaving me before!” she lashed out.

      “I did it for you,” her mama’s ghost insisted. “To keep you safe.”

      “You left a fifteen-year-old to fend for herself. How was that keeping me safe?” She had been lucky to survive on her own, driving without a license, continuing the scams so that she could put gas in the truck Mama had left her. So she could eat...

      She had done it just so she could survive. But she felt sick with guilt and self-loathing as she remembered turning those cards and telling so many lies to the people who’d paid her to tell their real futures.

      But that wasn’t all she’d done...

      There had been the fake séances her mother had taught her to run. The way of projecting her voice so the ghost said what the person wanted to hear. She hadn’t charged as much as her mother had to summon the people’s lost loved ones, but she shouldn’t have charged at all for a lie.

      Unlike her mother, most people passed from one world to the next without ever coming back. So no matter how much she had actually tried, she hadn’t often been able to summon the real spirit for her mark. And then the times she had, the real spirit hadn’t always said what they had wanted to hear. So she’d lied.

      And people had paid more for her lies, tipping her generously as they’d cried with relief.

      “My leaving you was my way of keeping you safe.” Mama’s reply was one that Maria had heard before. “I knew I was in danger.”

      Even though it hadn’t happened until five years after she had abandoned Maria, Mama’s witch-hunter had eventually caught her. He had burned her alive. And that was the first time her ghost had appeared to Maria, warning her to run for her life—that he was coming for her, too.

      “I thought that no one knew about you,” Mama said. “So I thought that if I left you alone, I could keep you safe...from my demons.”

      Maria closed her eyes, trying to shut out the ghostly image.

      But Mama’s voice wrapped around her, filling her head as she continued, “But you always had your own demons, hovering like that dark aura around you, putting you and anyone who would ever get close to you in danger. You were always...”

      “Cursed,” Maria said, bitterness filling her with the warning her mother had given her. Too many times. A child shouldn’t have to grow up knowing that she would never know true happiness, that she would always be hunted.

      “I should have left you sooner,” Mama said, “like I did the others.” The others were the sisters Maria had never known. “Or I should have given you to your father.”

      The father Maria hadn’t even known about until she’d read about him in the letter her mother had left her, along with the locket. She was supposed to go to him if she needed anything. She had needed her mother—not some stranger she’d never met.

      “But he wasn’t equipped to deal with you,” Mama continued, “because I saw this in your future.”

      In the same cards Maria kept turning over for the others, Mama had seen her youngest daughter’s future, too. Had seen all the tragedy and loss...

      “So I had to teach you how to run,” Mama explained. “How to stay ahead of the danger that surrounds you, that goes after anyone who ever gets close to you...”

      Was that why Mama hadn’t wanted Maria to have anything to do with her sisters? To keep them safe? Maria believed that Mama had always loved them more than she had the child she had actually kept.

      Hurt, because Mama always hurt her, Maria opened her eyes and lashed out. “Were you the right one to teach me...when you weren’t able to run fast enough yourself?”

      “I always knew he would catch