Cursed. Lisa Childs

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СКАЧАТЬ sitting on the foot of it, turned away from him. She leaned forward, and her long black curls skimmed over her shoulders, leaving her back completely bare but for a silver chain and the trio of tattoos a few inches below the chain that circled her neck. There was a sun, a star and a crescent moon.

      “I thought you’d left,” he murmured, his voice rough with sleep and the desire that surged through him again. She was so damned beautiful with that sexy gypsy hair and all that honey-toned skin.

      “I couldn’t just leave,” she replied as she rose from the bed.

      Not after what they’d done? His pulse leaped as the desire surged harder, making him hard. Making love with her had been the most powerful experience of his life. And even though he wasn’t certain he could survive it, it was an experience he wanted again. And again...

      “I’m glad,” he said.

      She shook her head. “You won’t be.”

      “Maria?” he asked, wondering about her ominous tone.

      “You’re going to be dead.” Finally, she turned toward him, and the moonlight glinted off the barrel of the gun she held. He glanced toward the bedside table, where the small holster he clamped to the back of his belt lay empty. She held his gun.

      “You don’t want to do this,” he said, holding his hand out for the weapon. But as he reached for it, it fired. The gunshot shattered the quiet of the night and...

      * * *

      The peal of his cell phone pulled him, fighting and kicking, from the grasp of the dark dream. Seth awoke clutching his heart, which pounded out a frantic rhythm. Pulling his hand away, he expected it to be covered with blood. His blood.

      But his palm was dry. The room was too dark for him to see anything but the blinking light on his phone. No moonlight shone through the worn blinds at the window of the motel room. The only scent was dust and the grease from the burger and fries he’d brought back from the diner down the street.

      “It was just a dream,” Seth said, but no relief eased the tension from his shoulders or loosened the knot in his gut. Nothing was ever just a dream with him.

      Drawing a breath into his strained lungs, he reached for the persistently ringing phone. His holstered gun sat on the nightstand next to the cell. His fingers skimmed over the cold barrel before he grabbed up the phone.

       Just a dream...

      “Hughes,” he said gruffly into the phone.

      “Agent Hughes?”

      “Yes.”

      “You were right!” The girl’s voice cracked with fear as it rose with hysteria. “It’s her! She’s here.”

      “Maria Cooper?”

      “I lied to you when you were here earlier. I didn’t believe what you said about her, but you’re right. You’re right about everything!” A sob rattled the phone. “I never should have trusted her. Now I’m in danger.”

      “Where are you?” An image flashed into his mind of the young woman with the bird tattooed on her face. “Raven?”

      “I’m at the Magik Shoppe,” she replied.

      The old round red barn was hardly a store. But that was another reason he’d known it was her shop even though he hadn’t found her there, just the girl.

      “Why?” he asked. He had no doubt that she was right; she was in danger. So why was she at the barn?

      “I came back here to get you proof that she’s the one,” Raven said. “I found it. I have the evidence you need. But you have to come quickly!”

      He kicked back the tangled sheets. “I’m coming.”

      “How far away are you?”

      “I stayed in town.” Although calling Copper Creek, Michigan, a town was stretching the description since it had only a gas station, a diner, a bar and this one ramshackle motel. Despite the girl’s denial, he had known the shop belonged to Maria Cooper. Finally, he’d come across one of her witchcraft stores before it—and she—was gone.

      He’d stayed in Copper Creek with the intent to keep returning to the store until he caught her there. Hell, if not for the long drive up north having worn him out, he would have staked out the place until she came back. But if he had fallen asleep and she’d discovered him, the least she would have done was run again.

      Maybe he should have risked staying; at least he would have been closer when Raven called and he wouldn’t have to traverse the winding, rutted gravel road in the dead of night. “I’ll be right there.”

      “You’re going to be too late...”

      Oh, shit. The girl must have warned her boss about him. Maria Cooper was already on the run again. “Stay there. And keep her there if you can.”

      Another sob rattled the phone. “No. I don’t want her to find me. I don’t want her to kill me, too.”

      Seth reached for his gun again. Maybe it would be fired tonight. “I’ll protect you,” he promised. “I won’t let her hurt you. Just wait for me.”

      Her breath hitched, and he could almost see her nodding in acquiescence. “Please hurry. She read my cards. She told me I’m going to die.”

      He shuddered. Every time Maria Cooper had read someone’s future, they had wound up not having one anymore. They’d wound up dead.

      Just as he had in his dream...

      * * *

      “She’s dead,” Ariel Cooper-Koster said. Goose bumps of dread and cold lifted on her skin as she stood outside in the night breeze.

      “You’ve seen her ghost, then,” Elena Cooper-Dolce replied, her pale blond hair glowing in the lights spilling out of the stately house in front of which they stood. There was no surprise in Elena’s voice. As she’d previously admitted to Ariel, she had already witnessed their youngest sister’s murder in a vision.

      Ariel stared at the ghost of a woman with big brown eyes and long curly dark hair. Caught between two worlds, her image wavered in and out of a cloud of sandalwood-and-lavender-scented smoke.

      “I haven’t seen her yet,” she admitted. “But Mama’s back...” And she hadn’t seen her in years. “She wouldn’t have left her if Maria were still alive.” After child protective services had taken Ariel, Elena and Irina from their mother, they had been separated and hadn’t been reunited until twenty years later. Once they had all found each other and saved themselves from the evil force stalking them, their mother’s ghost had left them. She had stayed with the daughter who’d needed her most—the one who’d been alone. Maria, whom her sisters hadn’t even known existed until those twenty years had passed. It was Irina who’d figured out that her roommate, at the time their mother had died, was actually their sister. But once they’d learned of her existence, they hadn’t been able to find her.

      Elena shuddered. “I hope you’re wrong. For her sake and for Irina’s.”

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