LITMIR.BIZ

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killer?”

      “No. I want you to really believe that I’m not.”

      “You’re right. We haven’t seen each other since we were kids, but I know you, Elena. You’re incapable of murder.” Ariel’s turquoise gaze lifted toward the house.

      Elena suspected she didn’t seek her niece’s bedroom window. She’d never invited her sister inside, so Ariel would have no way of knowing which wing was Elena’s and which Thora’s. Elena wanted her sister to have no contact with the bitter old woman. If not for Stacia having been tired from her fitful night, Elena would have taken her along to meet Ariel at the playground where they’d met before.

      “What about your grandmother?” Ariel asked.

      “Her family changed their name from McGregor because they considered Eli McGregor a madman who should have been punished for what he’d done—”

      Bitterness hardened Ariel’s voice when she interrupted, “But the townspeople had revered him for killing a witch.”

      “Or feared him,” Elena said. “He was crazy. The vendetta was crazy, and his children changed their name because they wanted no part of it.”

      But she couldn’t say the same of Thora, not and believe it. Her grandmother claimed she’d only taken away Myra’s daughters because she was an unfit mother, but Elena had always suspected something other than concern for the children or love of her son had motivated Thora’s actions. Vengeance.

      “None of her family wanted anything to do with the vendetta?” Ariel asked.

      “My father was her only son.” Perhaps that was why her love for him had bordered on obsessive. Did Elena love Stacia like that, so much that she shut out everyone else? Kirk had excused his absence by claiming that Elena had no room in her life for anyone but her daughter and her father. Not her husband. He might have been right, but Elena hated to think she was more than just physically like her grandmother.

      “And your father’s dead,” Ariel concluded, then shook her head. “It’s all so incredible. How’d a McGregor hook up with a Durikken? Coincidence?”

      Elena glanced toward the house, not the wing where her daughter slept, hopefully, a dreamless slumber, but toward her grandmother’s wing. She hoped her parents’ meeting had been just a coincidence. She bit her lip, then released it to sigh. “My father was a good man. A loving man. He wouldn’t have sought our mother out to hurt her.”

      Ariel’s lips lifted in a wistful smile. “Maybe he only wanted to apologize for what his family had done to hers all those years ago. And when they met, they fell in love.”

      Cynicism 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

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