Persecuted. Lisa Childs

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СКАЧАТЬ forced Elena to point out, “It didn’t last.” Not with the conflict and obstacles they’d had. She glanced again toward the house, to the shadow looming behind the gauzy curtains in her grandmother’s parlor.

      Ariel’s head turned as she followed Elena’s gaze to the house. “So there’s only you and her?”

      “And Stacia.” But Elena had an uncomfortable feeling her daughter was mostly Durikken, cursed.

      Frustration knitted Ariel’s forehead. “But maybe your grandmother has some distant relatives. You have to ask her.”

      “She’s not going to help me. She doesn’t believe that we’re in danger.”

      “Did you tell her about our aunts?” Like their mother, they had been murdered. But unlike Myra, their bodies had been found. Ariel had found them, hanged and crushed to death.

      “Thora doesn’t want to believe that someone started up the witch hunt again.”

      Ariel sighed. “Because then she’d have to accept that one of her relatives, no matter how distant, is a killer.”

      “You don’t know for certain that a McGregor is behind this,” Elena felt obligated to point out.

      “Who else would resume the vendetta but a McGregor? Who else would even know about it?”

      Elena’s shoulders ached as if a weight had settled on them. “You’re probably right.”

      Ariel reached out again, despite all the times Elena had pulled away from her, and squeezed her shoulder. “You can’t blame yourself for this, just like you can’t blame yourself for Thora swearing out that complaint against Mama.”

      Perhaps her sister knew Elena better than she’d realized despite her guilt causing her to keep Ariel at arm’s length. “I don’t—”

      Ariel interrupted the denial with a shake of her head. “You can’t help who your family is, who you are. You just have to accept it.”

      And that was what Elena struggled with the most, accepting her ability and her conflicting heritage. “That’s easier said than done.”

      The redhead bobbed in a commiserating nod. “Do you have any visions of your own death, Elena?”

      “I don’t know.” She rubbed her hands over her bare arms, trying to chase away the chill, but it wasn’t on her skin; the cold was deep inside her. “Sometimes when I’m dreaming, it’s like it’s me who’s being killed. Then I step back, and I see that it’s someone else.”

      Her voice flat, matter-of-fact, Ariel acknowledged, “Me.”

      “Or Irina. I’ve seen Irina.”

      Ariel remembered, “On the streets.”

      Images of her most recent vision played through her mind. “He catches her.”

      Ariel’s eyes widened with shock and dread. “Oh, God!”

      “And I think he kills her the way he killed Mother.” Unless the image of the woman burning at the stake had been the memory of the vision of her mother dying. The woman had looked exactly like their mother. Unlike Ariel, who had accepted her ability as a gift, Elena struggled to even understand hers.

      “We have to find our baby sister.”

      “I want to help you,” Elena said. But she didn’t know how to use her ability, not unless the vision was really clear, and that had only happened once, when the killer had nearly ended Ariel’s life. Elena had noted the details of the dilapidated church where Ariel, her fiancé, David, and his friend, Ty, tracked the killer and his cult. But Ty had been hurt, and the killer had gotten hold of Ariel, tying a noose around her neck. David had gotten her away from the madman, but he’d been stabbed. If not for Ariel shooting the killer, David probably would have died. Thankfully they’d all survived. Regrettably, so had the killer, who’d gotten away.

      That night, seeing Ariel and David’s love for each other, had forced Elena to face the reality of her loveless marriage. She hadn’t even told Kirk about her sister finding her.

      Ariel began, “If you want to help me—”

      “I do!” Elena insisted.

      “Then you have to accept yourself, Elena, everything about yourself.”

      Elena’s lips pulled up into a reluctant smile. “I thought you were a teacher, not a psychiatrist.”

      Her sister shrugged. “I guess I must have picked up something from all the ones who talked to me when I was growing up, who tried to pass my gift off as a bid for attention, or a coping mechanism for losing my family.”

      While her grandmother had had harsher explanations, a few counselors had told Elena the same things about attention and coping. Softly she acknowledged, “Maybe they were right.”

      “You don’t believe that I see ghosts?”

      “Our mother was a con artist who staged séances to bilk people out of money.” Until they’d been taken away from her, they’d helped.

      Maybe that was why Elena was drawn to Joseph; she wasn’t so different from him. She knew how it was to be a kid forced to do whatever necessary to survive. But she’d grown up and realized there were better ways. Someday, maybe, so would he.

      She sighed. “I don’t know what to believe.”

      Instead of taking offense, her sister chuckled. “That was crazy. Mama had more gifts than you and I. She didn’t have to lie to them, but she thought lies made them happier than the truth.”

      “There are such things as false truths and honest lies.” Her mother’s favorite gypsy proverb.

      Ariel nodded. “You remember that, too. Remember who you are. Then you can help me.” Her heels clicked against the cobblestone path as she left Elena standing alone in the middle of the garden, trying to absorb her sister’s ultimatum.

      Ariel could accept that her sister was a McGregor, but she didn’t want Elena’s help until she’d accepted herself? Her ability, her heritage or both? Either way, she asked the impossible. But to find Irina, to save her sisters from a killer, Elena would find the strength to conquer the impossible.

      She glanced toward the four-story house again, her gaze focusing on the windows of her grandmother’s parlor where behind the gauzy curtains the shadow loomed, watching her. Always watching her, worried about her well-being, as she’d claimed when Elena was twelve, or planning her destruction?

      “Why are you here?” Elena asked Joseph as she opened the door to his handsome face.

      She stepped back as he shouldered his way into her private living room. The room was bigger than most modest ranch houses, with a massive, sandstone fireplace on the outside wall, in the middle of a row of leaded glass windows. The walls were a soft pale blue, with trim and furniture in chocolate brown and rich cream. An ornate oak staircase СКАЧАТЬ