Cursed. Lisa Childs

agent Seth Hughes had interrogated her. “Your killer couldn’t have done that. He’s dead. My sisters worked together to end his reign of terror. They took care of him.”

      And he would never hurt anyone again.

      Elena, Ariel and Irina hadn’t known about her, but Maria had always known about them. Mama had talked about them incessantly—about how beautiful, how smart, how sweet they were. And Maria had never felt as beautiful, as smart or as sweet. She had never felt as if she’d been worthy enough to replace everything that Mama had lost, everything that the woman had missed so much that there had been a hole in her heart. A hole that Maria had never been quite enough to fill.

      “But the witch-hunter had a son.” Maria remembered what she had learned from all the media coverage of the ordeal her family had barely survived eight years ago. “Could he be carrying on the legacy?” While Maria’s family legacy was witchcraft, his was witch-hunting.

      “He may not even know about it,” Mama replied. “Donovan Roarke hadn’t learned about the legacy until long after he lost contact with his son, when he came across the journal of his long-dead ancestor Eli McGregor, who’d begun the witch hunt centuries ago.”

      Eli McGregor had chased the first Elena for years. Thanks to his son, Thomas, he had never found her. But eventually Eli’s descendants had found hers and killed so very many of them...

      “If it’s not Donovan Roarke’s son, then who’s after me, Mama?” Who hated her so much that he killed anyone who got close to her?

      Sadness filled the hollow eyes of her mother’s ghost. “I don’t know, child.”

      “Then why are you here?” Maria asked. “I told you to stay away from me. I don’t need you.” Just as Mama hadn’t needed her, hadn’t loved her—not the way she had loved her three older children. “Go away! And stay away from me!”

      Mama’s arms reached out, as if she wanted to hold Maria. But her image faded...even as the mist thickened and took another shape: the tall thin figure of Raven.

      “She led me here,” the young woman explained. “When I first saw her ghost, I thought she was you. I thought he killed you, too. You look so much alike. She’s your mother?”

      “She’s nothing to me,” Maria replied. “She wasn’t there for me when I needed her, like I wasn’t there for you.” Tears stung her eyes and filled her throat. “I didn’t protect you like I promised. I am so sorry...”

      Raven’s ghost stepped closer, the energy of her spirit warming Maria. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

      “No.” Maria reached out, trying to envelop the girl, but her hands and arms passed through the mist. “It’s my fault. I never should have hired you. I never should have let you get close to me. Everyone who does winds up dead. It’s all my fault.”

      “It’s not you,” the girl said, her eyes shimmering with tears she would never be able to shed now. “You’re not the killer. I’m sorry that I thought you were. If I hadn’t run from you...”

      “You would probably still be dead,” Maria said as regret filled her. “We would probably both be dead because we would’ve been together when he came to the shop. Did you see him?”

      Raven’s image wavered as she shook her head. “I never saw him at the Magik Shoppe. He came up behind me and started strangling me. Then I thought it might have been you. But at the hospital I saw him.”

      Maria gasped as realization struck her. “He was at the hospital?” Why would he have gone there...unless to finish what he’d started?

      “He killed me there,” Raven explained. “He drowned me...”

      Maria shuddered in horror. She could have asked how. But she had a more important question. “Who is he? Is it Agent Hughes?”

      Raven’s ghostly brow furrowed. “I don’t know who he is. His face was in the shadows, but I could see the outline of his jaw and his hair. And his voice...” The ghostly image flickered, as if she was trembling with terror. “Something about him was familiar...”

      So it might have been the FBI agent...

      Maria wanted to ask more questions about the killer, but her heart ached over the senseless loss of her young friend. And guilt overwhelmed her. “It should have been me. I’m the one he’s after. I just wish I knew why...”

      Was it as simple as Mama had always said? Because she was cursed?

      “Because he’s a witch-hunter,” Raven replied. “That’s what he calls himself.”

      “Did you recognize his voice?”

      “No, it was just this weird whisper. He said that he thought I was a witch.” The ghost’s lips curved into a faint smile of satisfaction.

      That was all she had ever wanted—to be a witch like the older sister she had told Maria about—the older sister she had felt she would never be as smart or as beautiful as. Her sister had refused to teach Raven the craft. Maria should have refused, too, but she had identified too much with the girl.

      “You are a real witch, Maria,” Raven continued. “Your knowledge and powers are legendary. I heard about you before I ever met you. That’s why I came up here. It’s why I wanted to learn from you.”

      Maria would never forgive herself for hiring the girl. Even though it had been a year since a murder, she should have known the hunter was still out there, still watching her.

      She shivered as the girl’s image grew fainter. Maria reached for her again, trying to hold her in the room. “Don’t leave...”

      Her voice a mere whisper, her image just a wisp, Raven warned her, “You’re in the most danger from him now. He’s going to try to kill you.”

      “Don’t leave me!” she begged. She had to apologize more, had to try to make amends, to assuage the guilt that cramped her stomach in knots. “Come back!” she cried.

      Keys rattled in the lock, startling her into shocked silence. She should have been relieved that the door was opening, but terror gripped her.

      Even without Raven’s warning, she’d known he would be coming for her. Soon.

      The door opened, and a deep voice asked, “Who are you talking to?”

      “You’re back,” she said, turning to where Agent Hughes filled the doorway; he was so tall, his shoulders so broad. His square jaw was clenched, his handsome face grim. Was his the face Raven had seen in the shadows of her hospital room?

      “You weren’t begging me to come back,” he surmised. “The deputy said you were in here yelling.”

      “Because I wanted to get out,” she said, rubbing her hands over her arms. Her sweater had dried from the rain earlier in the evening. But she was still so cold—even her blood chilled and pumped slowly and heavily through her veins. And that pressure was back in her chest, squeezing her lungs and heart with panic. “I need to get out of here.”

      “The deputy was watching you through the mirror and listening through the intercom,” Agent Hughes divulged. “He said you were telling someone else to get out, that you were talking to someone in here.”

      She lifted her hands and gestured around the tiny room. “Do you see anyone else in here?”

      “I don’t see anyone,” he said, glancing around the small space. “But do you?”

      She drew in a ragged breath. Even without the DNA, he already knew who and what she was. She had already admitted to trying to heal Raven, so she might as well admit to the rest of her abilities. “Raven’s ghost. She’s dead.”

      That muscle twitched along his jaw. “How could you know that?” His gray-blue eyes narrowed with suspicion. He obviously had some ideas...

      Some