Cursed. Lisa Childs

big dark eyes luminous in the candlelight. She heard everything but, at four, was too young to understand.

      Elena, named for that long-ago ancestor, tightened her arm protectively around her sister’s narrow shoulders. Her hair was pale and straight, a contrast to Myra’s and Irina’s dark curls. Her eyes were a vivid icy blue that saw everything. But at twelve, she was too old to believe.

      Ariel kept an arm around her sister, too, while her gaze was intent on Myra’s face as she waited for more of the story. The candlelight reflected in her auburn hair like flames, and her green eyes glowed. She listened. But Myra worried that she did not hear.

      She worried that none of them understood that they were gifted with special abilities. The girls had never spoken of them to her or one another, but maybe that was better. Maybe they would be safer if they denied their heritage. Yet they couldn’t deny what they didn’t know; that was why she had shared the legend. She wanted them to know their fate so they could run from it before they were destroyed.

      “We are Durikken women,” she told her daughters, “like that first Elena.”

      “You named me after her,” her eldest said, not questioning. She already knew.

      Myra nodded. “And I’m named for her mother.” And sometimes, when she believed in reincarnation, she was sure she was that woman, with her memories as well as her special abilities.

      However, most of the time, Myra believed in nothing; it hurt too much to accept her reality. But tonight she had to be responsible. She had one last chance to protect her children; she’d already failed them in so many ways. They didn’t have to live the hardscrabble life she had. They didn’t have to be what she was—a woman whose fears had driven her to desperation.

      “Our last name is Cooper,” Elena reminded her.

      “Papa’s name,” she said, referring to her own father. None of their fathers had given his child his name, either because the man had refused or she hadn’t told him he was a father. “We are Durikken, and Durikken women are special. They know things are going to happen before they do.”

      Pain lanced through Myra, stealing her breath as images rolled through her mind like a black-and-white movie. She couldn’t keep running and she couldn’t make them keep running, either.

      She forced herself to continue. “They see things or people that no one else can see. This ability, like the charms on my bracelet—” she raised her arm, the silver jewelry absorbing the firelight as it dangled from her wrist “—has been passed from generation to generation.”

      But Myra was more powerful than her sisters, had inherited more abilities as a woman and a witch. That was why she had been given the bracelet—because her mother had known she would be the only one of her three daughters to continue the Durikken legacy.

      Myra’s fingers trembled as she unclasped the bracelet. She’d never taken it off, not once since her mother had put it on her wrist, until tonight. Her daughters had admired it many times, running their fingers over the crude pewter charms, and she knew which was each one’s 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.

      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 or ignore it.

      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. 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 through the ages.

      “But that was long ago,” Elena said, ever practical. “People don’t believe in witches anymore.”

      Myra knew better than 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 shook as she clutched the sun.

      No 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 the child protective services, who’d already declared her unfit, 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.

      But