Haunted, page 16
“David!”
His deep voice so cold, he reminded her, “I heard your question. You have that fear now, too. That’s why I didn’t want you to know. I couldn’t stand it if you were frightened of me.”
She couldn’t deny that she sometimes feared him, but maybe she was more afraid of how vulnerable loving him made her. Perhaps her doubts had been just another way to push him away, to protect herself from falling even harder for him.
“I’m scared of how much I love you,” she admitted. So much that she could be risking her life just being alone with him…if her sister’s vision were true. But love, real love, was worth any risk. She realized that now, maybe too late.
No sympathy softened his voice when he replied, “Then you know how I feel.”
“I’ve never felt like this before,” she said. So in love that nothing else mattered, not even her own safety. “I don’t know how to handle a relationship like ours. I’m feeling my way in the dark here. I need you to hold my hand, to help me find my way.”
He ignored her outstretched hand. “It’s only dark because you don’t trust me, Ariel.”
“I do….” Maybe that wasn’t entirely true, but she wanted to trust him. She just didn’t know how; she hadn’t trusted anyone in twenty years.
“No, Ariel,” he said, shaking his head. “If you trusted me, you wouldn’t keep pushing me away.”
She winced, unable to deny his allegation without lying to him. Between the two of them, there had been enough false truths and honest lies, whether real or of omission. “David…”
“What’s going on?” he asked, gesturing around her ransacked house. “Do you think I did this?”
She hadn’t until Elena had reminded her that he was the only other one with a key. “The door wasn’t forced—”
“Why would I do this?” he asked, throwing up his hands as if ready to concede defeat.
She lifted her chin, willing to fight for them even if he wasn’t. But she couldn’t fight what she didn’t know; neither of them could. “Maybe you were trying to find out if I’m keeping any other secrets.”
“Are you?”
She drew in a quick breath. “Elena came to see me today.”
“That’s great,” he said, his deep voice softening, “especially after how cold she was to you yesterday.”
As she had with Ty, Ariel just blurted out what Elena had told her. “Yeah, well, having a vision of my death thawed her out.”
“Ariel!” His hands shook as he grabbed her shoulders, pulling her close to him. Tension radiated from his long, hard body. “She’s just trying to scare you—”
“Well, it worked,” she wasn’t too proud to admit as she jerked away from him. She had to be strong enough to tell him the rest—and she wouldn’t be if she melted in his arms.
“What did she tell you?” he asked, anger darkening his eyes.
Ariel inhaled deeply again, breathing in the comforting scent of lavender and sandalwood. But still her mother’s ghost had not visually appeared.
“Ariel, tell me what she said,” he demanded, impatience sharpening his voice as he reached for her again.
“Apparently I get hanged, like Marie,” she said, forcing nonchalance even as her heart hammered with nerves and fear.
“Oh, my God!”
She bit her lip but couldn’t hold back the rest of her admission. “And apparently you’re the one who hangs me.”
“That’s crazy!” His dark eyes widened as he realized what she was thinking. “Oh, my God, you…believe…her.”
Her heart clenched almost as if she could feel his pain. “David…”
He dropped his hands from her and stepped away. “You actually believe that I could hurt you.”
“I don’t!” she insisted weakly, for she had considered the possibility more than once.
“So you think I’m responsible for what happened to your aunts. You think I’m a killer!” Because he was, because he had killed even though by accident, he had to be even more sensitive to that description.
“David, no…” The tears wouldn’t stop now; they flowed in torrents as sobs strangled her. “Please…listen to me. I didn’t, not—”
“Not really? Just a little bit?” His mouth twisted into a hard, bitter line. “Well, that’s better then.”
“I know you’re hurt,” she said, her voice cracking along with her heart. “I would never hurt you on purpose.”
“I would never hurt you, either, Ariel,” he promised her. “Too bad you don’t trust me enough to know that.”
“David—”
“No, you actually don’t trust me at all. Your sister, she’s a stranger to you, but you believe her over me, over my love for you.” She glimpsed the tear shining on his face as it streaked down his cheek and clung to the edge of his square jaw. His dark eyes cold, he told her, “Don’t bother returning the ring. I don’t want it back.”
He turned away, his feet hitting the floor with such force that it vibrated.
“David!”
The door slammed behind him.
Ariel sank to the floor on her knees, wrapping her arms around herself to hold in the pain. “Mama,” she called, but her mother’s ghost didn’t appear. Nor did Haylee’s.
Like most of her life, Ariel had no one to offer her comfort. She was all alone again.
Chapter 12
Mist swirled around the merry-go-round and swing set, light sparkling on the monkey bars where little hands had worn the paint off the metal. Haylee sat in the one of the swings, pumping it with her legs so that it swayed high and low, like Ariel’s emotions.
Maybe that was why the ghost of the little girl had returned; she’d felt Ariel’s pain and knew she was needed to comfort and soothe.
But no one could do that now. No one but David. Ariel glanced down at his ring. Despite what he’d told her, she should have given it back. He didn’t want to be with her anymore. And she didn’t trust him. She wished she could, but trust wasn’t easy for her to give, maybe impossible. After he’d left her, she’d even checked his background, seeing if she could trace his heritage back to any McGregors. She hadn’t found any. But then, she hadn’t been able to trace back three hundred and fifty years.
“I’ll go play with her,” a soft voice said, as a little girl and her mother walked onto the playground.
“Who?” the mother asked.
“The girl on the swings.”
“But no one’s there.”
Ariel turned around to face her sister and her niece. Her niece who could see what Ariel saw. Stacia looked up at her, those blue eyes bright and intelligent, and Ariel realized that maybe she saw more.
Did Elena know?
“She’s gone, Mommy,” Stacia said with a little sigh of disappointment.
Ariel glanced back over her shoulder, where the swing rocked back and forth even though it was empty now, Haylee, the mist and the light gone.
“Was there someone there?” Elena asked, her eyes anxious.
Ariel nodded, but she didn’t tell her sister that the child had been a ghost. She didn’t think Elena was ready to accept that her daughter was like them. She’d barely been able to accept that her dreams were real, that they were visions of the future. From the dark circles bruising the alabaster skin beneath her eerie eyes, Elena still struggled with acceptance.
“Why did you want to see me?” Elena asked after her daughter had hopped onto a swing and started it moving, her legs pumping as Haylee’s had.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Why?” Elena asked, bitterness adding even more of a chill to her imperious voice. Unlike Ariel, who wore jeans and a sweatshirt, Elena had dressed up even for a playground meeting. She wore a linen skirt with a blue silk blouse and high-heeled pumps, which sunk into the sand and wood chips. “You don’t believe what I tell you.”
“Why should I?” More importantly, why had she? Why had she been so willing to doubt David? That wasn’t a question her sister could answer, though. “I don’t know you. You lied to me the first time we met, claiming you didn’t have the charm. I have no reason to trust you.”
Elena bowed her head, her blue gaze sliding away from Ariel’s. “You blame me for what happened twenty years ago, for us getting taken away from Mother.”
“Not at all,” Ariel assured her, realizing David had been right about Elena feeling guilty. “We were just kids. We had no control over…anything. And I’m sure your grandmother did what she thought was best for you.”
Under her breath Elena muttered, “I’m not so sure about that.” Then, raising her voice, she asked again, “If you don’t trust me, why do you want to talk to me?”
“I have no reason to believe you, but still you put doubts in my head,” Ariel admitted, guilt flashing through her over how badly she’d hurt David.
“You must have already had some.”
She bit her lip. “I shouldn’t have, no matter what you saw. I love David.”
“It’s as easy to love the wrong man as the right,” Elena said, obviously from a bitter place of experience.
“David isn’t the wrong man.” But he might never forgive her for her lack of trust; that had hurt him more than her lies.
“Then you’re still together.” She gestured to the ring on Ariel’s finger.
She sighed. “I don’t know what we are.”
“You’re alive. That’s the important thing. You can love again,” her older sister promised her. “You can’t live again.”
Ariel wasn’t so sure about that, and her sister’s comments raised some suspicions about the state of her marriage. Maybe because of the curse, a happily ever after wasn’t possible for Durikken descendants. But Ariel was sick of running from the possibility of rejection and pain. She wanted to try with David. She really needed to talk to him more than she needed to speak with Elena.
She drew in a deep breath, bracing herself. “I need you to tell me exactly what you saw in your dream.”
Elena closed her eyes, obviously reluctant to relive her vision. “God, Ariel…”
“Tell me!”
Her sharp tone drew a glance from Stacia. “Mommy?”
“I’m fine, honey,” Elena assured her, her heels sinking into the sand as she stepped farther back from the swing set. She lowered her voice and turned on Ariel. “This isn’t the time or the place—”
“You can’t drop a bombshell on me like you did and leave it at that. I need the details.”
Elena blew out a shaky breath. “I already told you, you’re running—”
“Where am I?”
Elena shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s dark. I can’t see the building.”
“You know I’m inside somewhere then? I’m not out on the street.”
“I guess.”
Ariel sucked in a quick breath as her heart kicked against her ribs. “And you see David chasing me?”
Elena’s teeth nibbled at her lip. “I don’t actually see him chase you. He’s still in the shadows then.”
“When do you see him?”
“After the noose has been put around your neck, after you’re pulled up to the rafters.”
Ariel swallowed hard, her throat burning as if she felt the rope digging into her skin, cutting off her breath. “Do you see David pulling me up?”
Elena shook her head. “I don’t see his face until you’re hanging, until after you’re dead.”
Relief filled Ariel. “You don’t understand your vision,” she accused her sister. “You don’t see David killing me, you see him finding me.”
“But he’s there, Ariel, right as you’re dying.”
Ariel nodded. “Of course. He’s trying to protect me, trying to save me.”
“But he doesn’t,” Elena pointed out in a soft whisper. “You die.”
Now Ariel shook her head, dismissing the vision. “That’s not going to happen. We’ll stop this killer.” Who wasn’t David. “To do that, we have to find our little sister. Now.”
Suddenly smoke rose, enveloping the playground. In the middle, under the orange glow, her mother’s ghost hovered, her head nodding approval and she whispered, “Yes.”
Tears burned Ariel’s eyes with relief. She could hear her; it had been her mother’s voice back at the church.
Elena lifted her hands palm up. “I don’t know how to help. I don’t know anything about Irina.”
“But you dreamed about her, that she looked as if she lived on the streets.”
“But I don’t know if it was her. She was only four years old when we were split up. I have no idea what she would look like now as an adult.”
“Then how did you know I was the woman you saw in your vision?” Ariel asked, growing frustrated with Elena’s inability to understand her gift. If only her sister would stop fighting it and accept it…as Ariel finally had. She only hoped it didn’t take a brush with the killer before Elena accepted it.
Her older sister reached out, wrapping one of Ariel’s red tresses around her finger. “This. You’re distinctive.”
“Like you.” With Elena’s pale blond hair and icy blue eyes, it was hard to believe she had an ounce of their mother’s Gypsy blood.
“Irina looked like our mother—like all of the Durikken women—so I don’t know if I’m seeing her or one of them. An aunt, a cousin.” She sighed. “I just don’t know….”
“It has to be her,” Ariel insisted. “There is no one else. Just you, me and…” She gestured toward where her niece swung back and forth. Her little legs didn’t pump now; it was as if someone pushed her. Maybe her grandmother, who hovered protectively near her.
Elena bit her lip as her gaze focused on her daughter. She blinked hard, as if holding back tears. In sympathy, Ariel reached out, but before she could put her arm around her sister, Elena stepped away and asked, “Have you seen Irina? You know, her…?”
“Ghost?” Ariel shook her head, hurting inside at another familial rejection. “No.” And she didn’t believe that homeless person had, either. “If I had, it would be too late.”
Elena expelled a ragged sigh of relief. “So she’s still alive.”
“For now,” Ariel agreed, but she couldn’t be sure. As she’d realized earlier, if Irina had forgotten them, her ghost probably wouldn’t know to seek out Ariel, either. Ariel would have to find her, as she had her aunts.
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” Elena said. “I can’t just make myself dream about her. This…curse…doesn’t work that way.”
“Gift,” Ariel corrected her, defending their heritage despite all the times she’d considered it a curse, too. She couldn’t be certain of when she’d finally accepted it—before or after she’d fallen to the floor of the church, where she might have died if not for her dead mother’s warning. “It is a gift.”
“You really feel that way about seeing ghosts?” Elena asked, her blue eyes filled with doubt.
“I didn’t used to,” she admitted. Elena might be unable to offer affection, but at least she could sympathize. The tight feeling in her chest that had haunted Ariel for the past twenty years eased a bit. “I couldn’t hear them.”
“They didn’t talk to you?”
“They would try,” Ariel admitted, “but I couldn’t hear them. I’d see their mouths move and I’d know they were trying to communicate, but—”
“‘You need to learn to listen, Ariel,’” Elena said with an affected lilting accent.
A smile tipped up Ariel’s lips at the corners. “Mama…”
“I never understood why she told you that,” Elena mused. “You were always the obedient one. I was…”
“Not,” Ariel remembered, her lips twitching into a bigger smile. “I never told her, but she must have known what gift I had.”
“Curse,” Elena insisted. “We’re all cursed.”
When they were kids, there had been no arguing with Elena, so Ariel abandoned the curse/gift debate and concentrated on what was most important to her. “But after finding you, I began to hear Mama.” She didn’t tell her where, sparing her the circumstances. “Finding you—the other charm—must have increased my ability. That’s why we have to find Irina. I know that if we’re reunited and the charms are, too…”
Elena shook her head, her blue eyes soft. “Don’t get your hopes up. She was so young. There’s no guarantee she managed to hang on to the charm.”
“I know we need all the charms.” As if in confirmation, the orange glow encircled Ariel, Elena and Stacia.
She needed to return to the church where she’d found symbols of the charms carved into the charred altar. But she couldn’t ask Elena to come along; she couldn’t put her at risk when her sister had a child depending on her.
Ariel knew how much it hurt to lose her mother. She didn’t want her niece to suffer that same loss. “You have your charm?” she asked Elena. “You’re wearing it?”
Her sister shook her head, the blond hair brushing across her shoulders. “I never wear it. I can’t.”
“But it’ll keep you safe—”
“It might keep you safe, but it would put me in more danger,” Elena admitted, her voice cracking with emotion she somehow kept from her icy eyes.
“Elena, if you’re in danger, let me help you—”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” The imperious chill entered her sister’s voice again, dismissing Ariel even though she stood by her side.
Ariel realized she had only one person she could count on besides herself. Or she’d had him, before her suspicions had pushed him away.
Through eyes squinted with pain, he watched them from the woods, the two witches. And what about the little girl? Was she one, too? Probably.
He could take them all out at once. As he anticipated the kill, his nails dug into the bark of the tree behind which he hid. A pond sparkled in the sun, just beyond the playground where the women stood. He could drown them all. The killings had to be ritualistic or he wouldn’t inherit their power. Eli had written that in the journal. Even though the book was illegible now, he would always remember the words in it, the directions on how to conduct a witch hunt.
But to take on all of them at once? His nails dug deeper, drawing blood to seep into the bark. He hated the quickening of his pulse, hated that it was fear coursing through his veins. Fear of their power.
