LITMIR.BIZ

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have behaved appropriately paternally in life—or even been aware he’d sired offspring—he was correcting the oversight in death.

      After listening closely for any sounds of movement, Gabriel peered narrowly through half-closed lids to find his beautiful descendent lying restlessly across the bed.

      He sighed, relieved, and opened his eyes.

      “You are a fool.” A familiar voice startled him.

      “Eternal damnation,” he snapped much louder than he had intended, a rebellion against the invisible barrier between the living world and his own. “Must you plague me at every turn?”

      “Yes.”

      An unnecessary reply to a question he well knew the answer to. This crone had been tormenting him ever since the fateful night he’d been gunned down on his ship. He’d awakened to find himself dead and her his only companion in the afterlife.

      Talk about cursed!

      Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw her ghostly form emerge through the wall, a shawl pulled tightly around her stooped shoulders, a pleased expression on her withered face.

      The sum of his life obviously equaled a dismal failure to have earned this woman as an eternal reward.

      “Go away. I have no wish to deal with you tonight.”

      She laughed, a grim sound that would have raised the hairs on his neck had life still pulsed through his veins. “You should have thought of that before you involved yourself with my granddaughter and spawned a bloodline that we share. I’m surprised you have not yet figured out that death is not about what you wish.”

      That much he knew. “You shall not ruin my mood, belle grand-mère. Not when the end is finally within my grasp. Breanne has met a man who sparks her interest. She is all that is standing between me and my eternal peace. I can break your damn curse once and for all.”

      “Still so proud, pirate.”

      “I am no pirate.” The words fell from his lips mindlessly, a habit from long ago.

      But even as his denial faded to silence, he could see a smile split her shriveled cheeks until she reminded him of an apple left too long in the sun.

      “Then go about your business. I will not disturb you. I would only savor the joy of watching you fail.”

      “Fail? This chit’s twin lies in the arms of her new fiancé. Tallis has placed her love for him above her ambition. The curse you placed on our descendents—”

      “You I cursed, pirate. Our descendents I blessed to never know the heartache you heaped upon my beautiful granddaughter.”

      Curses. Blessings. A matter of opinion. Gabriel’s only consolation was that by cursing him, this vengeful old grand-mère had cursed herself to share in his fate. Not much of a consolation when he’d had to actually listen to her for two hundred years, of course.

      “As I was saying,” he continued. “The curse is almost broken. You should be grateful, so you can finally rest, too.”

      “I’d rather watch you fail than rest, pirate.”

      “Fail? You seem to have forgotten the new skill I acquired to help me bring Tallis and Christien together.”

      “Oh, no, no, no,” she said in an irritating singsong voice. “I’ve forgotten no such thing. You have every right to be flush with your new skill.”

      A compliment? Had he been alive, the hairs on his neck would have been bristle-straight. This woman loathed him. He loathed her, too, truth be told, but she actually had more of a reason. He had been the biggest fool where the beautiful Madeleine had been concerned.

      But hadn’t he heard somewhere that forgiveness played a part of death?

      Sheer stubbornness forced Gabriel to turn away and pretend to ignore her. He would not ask what she meant because he knew she wouldn’t tell him. No forgiveness with this one. She would only reveal herself when she knew it would stab like a knife, and he’d entertained her far too often with his failures to doubt that. He wouldn’t let her see that her words had hit their mark. And honestly, he wasn’t all that confident of his ability to help Breanne overcome her ambition.

      Even in sleep his granddaughter’s aura gleamed the dull gray of one who would never know any true emotion. She’d wandered through life in pursuit of ambition, restless in spirit and unfulfilled by her goals, never experiencing the plunging despair that made the heights of happiness all the more sweet.

      And Breanne was only one in a long line of descendents he’d watched suffer the same cursed fate because of his selfish actions. When all was finally said and done—and it would be—he wondered if there would be much forgiveness among any of them.

      To his credit, though, Breanne also had him to thank for remaining in one piece after her stupid stunt in the yard of Number Sixteen tonight.

      Not that she knew it, of course. Spirits had no substance in the living world. A fine thing, too, since had he been of corporeal form, he would have broken his bloody neck saving her when she’d fallen off the wall. But he had managed to cushion her fall—a fine feat.

      Generally, spirits could not appear to the living. Apparently only those old enough or powerful enough could learn to summon matter and affect the living world. It had become rather a race between him and the old crone to see who could sharpen their abilities best.

      So Gabriel had practiced summoning his strength to bridge death to the living world. It was draining business, to be sure, but he continued to prevail and proudly added new and useful skills to his repertoire.

      His proudest achievement thus far had been fully materializing to Tallis and her fiancé.

      That had been the only reason he’d finally convinced Tallis to recognize how precious love was. But Breanne was even more headstrong than her sister, and until tonight there hadn’t even been a potential male around.

      But Gabriel had seen the way her aura had sparked off Lucas. Lucas’s aura had sparked right back.

      These two had the potential to share a truly great love. Auras never lied, and he’d grown quite sensitive to reading the nuances of energy that radiated off the living.

      “What shall I do with you, Breanne?” he asked aloud, almost forgetting the old woman who watched him. “Aha. I know.”

      He would start by whispering suggestions while she slept.

      Yes, the helpful man in Number Sixteen is very handsome.

      Yes, he had been a gentleman to bandage your wounds and see you home.

      Yes, the sparks had flown between you.

      Yes, you want to see him again.

      Gabriel sat on the bed beside Breanne, leaned close to her ear and summoned his strength to materialize so she could hear him speak….

      Nothing happened.

      He felt no echo of the life that had once pulsed through his veins, no stirring of the heart that had once beat in his chest. He felt no rush of the air through his lungs.

      Puzzled, he inhaled deeply—another habit of old that had no place in the afterlife—and tried again.

      Nothing.

      He heard the crone’s laughter.

      Amazing how he could feel fear chase up his spine. “What have you done to me?”

      “I have done nothing.”

      “I appeared to Tallis. And Christien. They could see and hear me. Why can I not now? Is this some new trickery of yours?”

      “You credit me with too much power, pirate. And yourself.” She held up her hand dismissively when he opened his mouth to argue. “You did nothing special to appear to our Tallis. You delude yourself in death the way you did in life. In all these years of haunting you,

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