Haunted, page 5
She shook her head. “No, I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have called Ty.” He was the last person she should have called. “All those memories must have come rushing back—”
“Not for the first time,” David pointed out. “Ty’s been in that situation before since becoming a police officer, and you had no way of knowing about his past.”
“Because you hadn’t told me,” she reminded him. “We don’t know much about each other’s pasts.” She drew in a shaky breath. Was she ready to tell him?
“We have time to learn,” he said, closing his big hands over her shoulders again.
“Do we?” she wondered aloud.
“Give me another chance, Ariel. I was an ass.” He moved his hands from her shoulders to her neck, holding her face, with his thumbs stroking along her jaw.
She shivered at his light touch. “David—”
“Forgive me.” He didn’t ask for her forgiveness, he demanded it.
She could not deny him. She reached up and linked her arms around his neck. “I already have. If you forgive me…”
“Forgive you what?” he asked as he pulled her closer. He slid his hands over her back, the heat from his palms branding her even through the thickness of her chenille sweater.
“Yelling at you,” she reminded him. “Taking off without telling you where I was going.”
“Did you know where you were going?”
She shook her head, tangling her hair around his fingers. “I just needed to get away.” If not for her feelings for him, she might not have returned.
“You were devastated,” he said, his voice heavy with regret and sympathy. “I should have been more sensitive.”
She gestured toward the fire, the candles and the champagne. “You are.”
“Now. I wasn’t then when you needed sensitivity most,” he said, his voice heavy with self-condemnation. “I was just so scared that you could have been hurt. The thought of losing you…” His breath shuddered out, and his arms tightened even more. “I can’t lose you, Ariel.”
Pressed tight against his hard body, Ariel could feel each beat of his heart and every breath he took. She trembled with the desire to be part of him. Always. “Why, David?”
“I need you in my life. I know we haven’t been together long, but that day—and the past two weeks—made me realize something.”
Nerves fluttered in her stomach. She had to swallow twice before asking, “What did you realize, David?”
He drew back and cupped her face again, his hands gentle as he cradled her jaw. “I love you, Ariel.”
Her heart lifted, but out of self-preservation she squashed the hopefulness. In the past people had claimed to love her, but all of them had eventually abandoned her. She didn’t need the words from him, she needed action, proof of his love. And the only way she’d have that was if she tested him…with the truth.
But she didn’t know where to begin. “David…”
He winced, as if her hesitation physically hurt him. “I know after the way I acted that you must have your doubts about us. But I’ll make it up to you,” he vowed, “if you give me the chance, Ariel. Say yes.”
“Yes?”
He released her and stepped back, then dropped to one knee in front of her and the fire. “Marry me.”
Again, not a request but a demand. From a man who was used to getting what he wanted. But would he want her once he learned the truth? She had to tell him, but she couldn’t look at him, couldn’t face the expression that might cross his face. The way his eyes might widen first with disbelief, then darken with disappointment and regret, then, worst of all, pity. She stared into the fire as she began, “David, I need to…”
“To think about it?” he finished for her. “I’ll give you as much time as you need, Ariel. But while you think about it, I want you to wear this.” He slid something cold and hard onto her finger, drawing Ariel’s attention to her hand. A diamond, square and bright, twinkled up at her, aglow with the reflection of flames.
She drew in a quick breath. “It’s beautiful.” And, knowing David, very expensive. She couldn’t fathom how many carats, nor did she care. The ring meant nothing to her; it was the man she didn’t want to lose.
No windows were open, but it was as if a wind blew through the room. The candles burned higher and brighter. The flames in the hearth kicked up to tall spires of vivid orange. Ariel grabbed David’s shoulders, pulling him back as if he might get burned.
“Ariel, what’s wrong?” His voice was faint, the fire roaring louder, deafening.
Smoke filled the room, thicker and more impenetrable than any mist she’d ever seen. Unlike the mist, the smoke carried a scent, not of burning wood but of sandalwood incense and lavender. The flames rose even higher, taking shape. The shape of a woman. A woman Ariel hadn’t seen in twenty years. The woman’s dark eyes burned with fire, her long, curly black hair turning to lava and her mouth open in a scream that Ariel couldn’t hear…she could only see.
Ariel smothered the scream rising to her lips and tried to still her sudden trembling. Mama? She was older now, twenty years older than when Ariel had last seen her, the night she and her sisters had been taken away and placed into separate foster homes. Her mother had never once sought them out in all those years. Had never once tried to reunite them or even see Ariel. She was only the first of many who had rejected Ariel over the past twenty years. But her rejection had hurt the most.
Resentment rose in a familiar bitter wave of nausea in Ariel’s stomach. But she swallowed it down with the scream, knowing she had no outlet for those feelings. She would never be able to express them now. It was too late.
The flames grew brighter, the image shifting but never vanishing as her mother danced with the fire. Dread settled heavily over Ariel’s heart, and she accepted what she saw.
Her mother appeared to her as so many others had throughout Ariel’s life. Her secret was that she could see the ghosts of those who had recently passed away. Being called crazy was the least of her concerns now, as tears burned her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. Her mother was dead. The last words Ariel had said to her played through her mind with stunning clarity. Mama, I’m cursed….
The cloaked figures danced around the fire, moving in and out of the flames. He didn’t fear them now. He controlled them. He told them what to do. The power was his.
But he wanted more. Killing one of the witches wasn’t enough. He needed to kill them all and reclaim the little pewter charms. The woman had sworn that she hadn’t given them to her children, but he’d known she lied. He’d heard her think it and had seen the flash of her memory as she passed one to each of her three daughters, giving them power. Power that belonged to him.
He opened his eyes, wincing at the light even though it shone softly through the green shade, casting an eerie glow around his office. He reached across his desk, closing his slightly trembling fingers around the pewter edge of a tri fold picture frame. In his vision, the hoods of their dark brown robes concealed their faces, but he knew what they looked like now. Or at least what they’d looked like twenty years ago, the blonde, the redhead and the little one who was the very image of her gypsy mother. Witches, all of them.
His fingers tightened around the frame until his knuckles whitened. A couple more witches than these lived, taunting him. They would have to die, too. But these girls were the ones he most needed to find, these were the ones with the charms.
He had held this frame often just in the short time he’d come into possession of the picture of three young girls. Had she? Had she looked into the faces of her lost children? Had she wondered, as he did now, where the hell they were?
But it wouldn’t take him long. Finding people was easy. They could change their names, their identities; it made it a little harder to track them down than those who hadn’t. But it didn’t matter.
In the end, he would find them. In fact, he was pretty certain he already knew where one was, had already gotten close to her, close enough to kill. But he wanted all of the sisters, not just one.
He closed his eyes on their young faces as pain shot through his skull. He needed the charms. He needed their power if he was going to survive. Blindly he reached inside a desk drawer, passing over the flimsy plastic of a prescription bottle for the metal flask. Even the soft scrape of unscrewing the cap reverberated inside his head. He winced, took a sip of the fiery liquid and winced again.
Fire. That was how the first one had died, the flames consuming her as they had her ancestor over three hundred and fifty years ago. He would kill the others in equally suitable ways befitting witches.
Chapter 3
Ariel avoided cemeteries and never attended funerals. But she couldn’t forgive herself for not going to Haylee’s. She owed her that much because she’d failed her so dismally otherwise. She shouldn’t have counted on social services to save the little girl; she knew better. She should have done it herself by kidnapping her and taking her away. But then she would have had to give up David. The irony was that she still might when he learned the truth.
Her heart heavy with guilt and regret, she drove to Barrett’s cemetery, intent on paying her respects at the child’s grave. Once there, parked along one of the tree-lined streets winding through the plots, dread rose like nausea in her stomach. Her hands shaking, she reached for the handle on the driver’s door, forcing herself to step from the Jeep.
The mist swirled in, not quite as thick as it had the night before, and the light shone brightly through it without the orange glow of the flames. Many images hovered in the mist, ghosts of those departed from this world but not entirely ready for what lay beyond. At least that was why Ariel assumed she could see them—because they hadn’t entirely left. And here, in a cemetery, their bodies were buried but not their souls. Ariel could see their souls, so many souls.
Her head grew light, overwhelmed by all the pale faces and nearly transparent bodies. All their mouths moved, speaking words she couldn’t hear. Mama had always said Ariel needed to learn to listen. Ariel had thought that might have been why her mother had let authorities take her children—because Ariel had never listened. And Elena had been stubborn and willful. And Irina…
There was no reason why her mother let them take Irina. She’d been such a sensitive little girl. Haylee, with her big, dark eyes and long curls, reminded Ariel so much of her little sister. Because of that resemblance and the child’s sweetness, they’d forged a bond deeper than that of teacher and student.
Ariel carried a bouquet of daisies to where a champagne-colored marble stone marked a fresh grave. Haylee must have had some other family, because someone had paid for the elaborate stone, intricately engraved with an angel heralding the years of Haylee’s birth and death. Below her name was the phrase Sweet child, forever an angel. Tears burned Ariel’s eyes, blurring the words. “I’m so sorry, Haylee.”
Through the mist the little girl appeared, shaking her head, denying Ariel any blame. Even without words, Ariel could understand the child, but she couldn’t understand her mother. Why had she appeared in the fire the other night at the moment of David’s proposal?
Had she just died? That was usually when the spirits first appeared to Ariel, soon after their deaths. But that wasn’t always the case, because she could see so many lost souls in the cemetery, and the only fresh grave was Haylee’s. Ariel really had no idea how her “gift” worked. Maybe if she could hear what the ghosts tried to tell her, she would understand. But she couldn’t. So it really was more a curse than a blessing.
If her mother hadn’t just died, she must have had some reason to appear to Ariel. Had she come to warn her about something? Since her forced leave from teaching, Ariel had nothing going on in her life. Nothing but David.
If her mother had come to warn her about him, Ariel hadn’t heeded her. She glanced down at the diamond adorning her finger. Her hand should ache from the size of the square stone, her eyes hurt from its brilliance. Technically she hadn’t accepted the proposal and had only agreed to wear the ring while she considered it. From the flash of pain in his dark eyes, David didn’t understand that her hesitance had nothing to do with him and everything to do with her. She’d intended to share everything with him…until she’d seen her mother’s ghost.
As she stared down at the diamond, the mist thickened, becoming more smoke than fog, carrying that faint scent of sandalwood and lavender. The light turned eerily orange. Even before she glanced up, she knew Haylee was gone, replaced by the image of her mother.
“Mama, what do you want?” Now. After all these years of no contact, no concern. “I’ve been here.” Waiting for her. “Why didn’t you come sooner?” When Ariel could have heard her words and understood what she wanted.
The woman’s arms moved, flailing, almost as if shoving Ariel away. But she’d already done that long ago. Was she urging her to leave again?
Ariel was done running. She couldn’t escape who and what she was. A Durikken woman, both gifted and cursed. Like her mother.
“Mama, I’m sorry….”
The woman reached out again, as if to wipe the tears from her daughter’s face. But Ariel could feel only the barest brush of air against her cheek. Her mother’s image faded along with the light and the smoke.
Smoke. Had Mama died in a fire? One someone had set…like the one that had started that vendetta so long ago? Even though she’d been young when her mother had shared the legend with them, Ariel remembered it well, maybe because it was her last memory of her mother and sisters, in that cramped little camper with candles burning as Mama had talked of special abilities and vengeance. Vengeance had been sworn on all the descendants of that witch; they’d been cursed to die violent deaths.
Ariel shuddered. She’d almost convinced herself that she’d invented the story, maybe as a coping device to deal with the separation from her mother and sisters. No parent would have told a child such a story, one that had given Ariel nightmares even years later. She fumbled with her bracelet, clutching the worn pewter charm. Heat flowed from it through her fingertips. It was real. All of it. Her mother’s story. The legend. The vendetta. Because of the charm, she knew it was true.
Even now she could remember the way her mother’s voice had trembled with fear as she’d told them of her ancestor’s death. Is that how Myra had died? Burned to death?
Pain clenched Ariel’s heart. “Oh, Mama…”
For just an instant the orange glow grew, beckoned, then disappeared entirely. If the vendetta had been resurrected, that meant that Ariel and her sisters would be in danger, that they could be killed, too.
Fear rushed in, but the sensation wasn’t new. She had lived with fear since that night so many years ago when her mother had shared the legend and Ariel had lost her family. Now she could lose her life. And so could her sisters.
Hands shaking, she dropped the daisies on Haylee’s grave and ran to the Jeep. She wasn’t sure where she was driving until she stopped outside the massive dark brick building that housed the offices for the city of Barrett, including Child Protective Services. She tightened her fingers around the steering wheel to still their trembling. This place had brought her nothing but pain and frustration, but that was the least of her concerns now. Impatience gnawed at her as she pulled her car behind the line waiting for admittance to the parking ramp. When her turn came, she ripped off the ticket and barely waited for the gate to lift before driving into the darkness of the concrete structure. Even at noon, light was minimal in the garage. But Ariel wasn’t scared of the dark; she had far worse things to fear.
She squeezed her Jeep Cherokee into a spot designated for small cars, threw open the door, then shut it so hastily that it barely closed. She rushed into the stairwell, passing others on their way down for lunch. But she needn’t have worried that the person she wanted to see had left. The social worker Ariel sought sat at her desk, distractedly pulling crackers from a sandwich bag as she studied a file.
Ariel just stood there for a minute, near the woman’s desk, catching her breath. Not from her quick ascent of the stairs, but from the emotions rushing through her. Seeing this woman brought back painful ones. Ariel’s eyes burned, and she blinked against the glare of the fluorescent lights, so bright in contrast to the darkness of the parking garage and stairwell.
This social worker wasn’t the one who’d taken Ariel and her sisters away from her mom. Margaret was probably only in her thirties; she’d not been at the job so long that she was burned out or didn’t care. But neither had she been able to help Haylee despite the interviews she’d conducted.
Would she help Ariel?
“Margaret.”
The woman closed her eyes a moment before looking up, but she wasn’t able to conceal her feelings from Ariel, her sadness, her guilt. They haunted her dark eyes the way the ghosts haunted Ariel. Lines of stress and exhaustion wrinkled her black skin, adding years to her pretty face.
Ariel’s heart softened, tempting her to assuage the woman’s regret with kind words, to tell her that she’d done all she could. But Ariel couldn’t. To get the information she needed, she intended to use that guilt. She’d deal with her own later…after she knew her sisters were safe.
“Miss Cooper—”
“Ariel. Please call me Ariel.”
“You weren’t so friendly the last time we talked,” the social worker reminded her.
Ariel sighed. “I was frustrated. I wanted you to do more for Haylee.”
“I tried,” the woman insisted, her voice catching with emotion. “I wish I could have.”
“You’re not the only one,” Ariel admitted, her heart heavy with so many regrets.
“You didn’t even come to her funeral,” the social worker said, her gaze hard with recrimination.
Ariel hung her head, straining the tense muscles at the back of her neck. “I couldn’t…I just…couldn’t.”
“It was hard,” Margaret said, sighing. “I didn’t figure on anyone else being there…except for you and me.”
