LITMIR.BIZ

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“No.”

      “Nor am I.” He glanced at the front of her nightgown, at the flutter of feminine lace. A second later, he shook his head and stepped back. “I miss my wife.”

      “I know. I’m sorry.” He’d been married to a woman that he’d desperately loved. That he hadn’t forgotten, not even a century later. And here she’d been worried about the bird having a mate. How ironic was that?

      They walked into the living room and Samantha darted into a corner to hide.

      Raven ignored the wary cat and studied his surroundings, taking a special interest in the mural that covered the wall. He even reached out to touch the dragon.

      Curious, Allie watched him.

      “In the beginning, the world was covered with darkness,” he said. “The night had no moon or stars. But there were birds and beasts. One of the beasts was a dragon.” He ran a finger down its scales. “Like this. The coating on its skin came in four layers.”

      “I wasn’t aware that dragons existed in Apache myths.”

      “You were not taught our creation story?”

      “No. I’m only half Chiricahua.”

      “The witch half,” he said.

      “Yes.” Her chest turned tight. “What happened to the dragon? Did anyone ever slay him?”

      He nodded. “A young boy whose name was Apache. He shot the dragon four times. The fourth piercing exposed the beast’s heart and killed him. After that, Usen taught the boy how to gather herbs and how to hunt and fight. He became the first chief of our people.”

      “Then maybe this is him.” Allie gestured to the knight in the mural. “Maybe I painted him without knowing it.”

      “Like you did with me.” Raven made a thought-provoking expression. “You’re a shaman.”

      “No, I’m not.” She resisted the urge to step back, to move away from him. “I don’t conduct ceremonies.”

      “Your paintings are your ceremonies.”

      “But I don’t cure the sick. I was involved in a healing once, but the main source of power didn’t come from me.”

      “Not all Apache shamans heal. Some are bringers of rain. Some have medicine over snakes. Others can shoot guns without touching the trigger.”

      “And I give men wings?” She pointed to the television, then smiled a little. “There’s an energy drink on TV that claims to do that.”

      He smiled, too. The transformation made him look even more handsome. “I know about those entertainment boxes. I have watched them in store windows.”

      And he came from the era where moving pictures were invented. “You fascinate me. The man and the raven.”

      “You do that to me, as well. The woman and her paintings.”

      Another intimate moment passed between them, and she told herself this wasn’t as strange as it seemed. That it was fate. Part of her destiny. Something that was meant to happen.

      “I’ll get our tea.” She started for the kitchen, then stopped, turning back to look at him. He’d clarified her confusion about her power. He’d called her artwork ceremonies, associating it with shamanism.

      Giving her magic new meaning.

      Chapter 4

      Allie made a pot of mint tea. She poured the hot beverage into two sturdy mugs and added honey as a sweetener.

      The rain hadn’t let up. If anything, it had gotten stronger. Raven had said that there were shamans who brought rain, but this violent downpour hadn’t come from a medicine man.

      She carried the tea into the living room and handed him a cup. He thanked her and took a sip. She glanced at the scars on his chest. They were marks from Zinna, from where she’d clawed him.

      Allie caught his gaze. “Before we knew Zinna’s name, my sister and I called her the Owl Lady. Her reflection was in Olivia’s mirror.”

      “Olivia lives here, too?”

      “Yes. But she’s out of town. She won’t be back for about three weeks, maybe a little longer.”

      “Did you see Zinna’s reflection?”

      “Yes, but when I saw her, she looked like a woman, the ghost of a person, not an owl.” And as much as Allie hated to admit it, Zinna had been young and beautiful, with exotic-shaped eyes and two streaks of silver in her long black hair. “Olivia crossed over into the mirror.”

      Rain slashed against the living room windows, nearly rattling the blinds. “Where did it lead?”

      “To a haunted dimension. To a place Zinna created. Olivia’s FBI lover was there. Our great-grandmother had taken him.” But it had been their mother who’d infected him with an object-intrusion spell, a witchcraft tool inserted under his skin, making him deathly ill. But she, too, had eventually been stripped of her magic. Only unlike Zinna, Mommie Dearest would never regain her powers. Or so Allie hoped.

      Raven didn’t respond. He simply drank more of his tea. Behind him, shadows shimmered on the wall, making portions of the mural seem watery.

      Like Zinna’s ghost.

      Allie rubbed the goose bumps on her arm.

      “What is wrong?” he asked. “Does your wound hurt?”

      “What? No.” She hadn’t realized it was her bandaged arm she was rubbing. “It’s fine.”

      “But something is wrong.”

      “Just dancing shadows.” She indicated a backless stool that would accommodate him and his wings. “Do you want to sit?” They’d been standing all this time.

      He shook his head. “No, thank you. But you can.”

      She perched on the edge of a chair, where she could keep an eye on the mural. Just in case, she thought.

      Finally, she shifted her gaze to her companion. Raven looked big and strong, powerfully tattered, with his rough-hewn trousers and fraying shirt. But he looked lost, too.

      “In some ways, our lives have been similar,” she said.

      He clutched the cup, his callused fingers wrapped around the handle. “How so?”

      “My father committed suicide, too.”

      “You understand this pain?”

      “Yes. Our mother abandoned us. She disappeared for many years. During the time she was gone, my father shot himself.”

      “When my father did it, I had nightmares about him,” he said. “About the rifle he used. About the bullet shattering his skull. I was twelve years old, living in that boarding school, afraid they would punish me if I mourned him openly, if I grieved the Indian way.”

      Suddenly she pictured him as a child, alone in his dormitory bed, trying to conceal his emotions, the ache that was still hidden in his eyes. “My dad didn’t use a rifle. He put a handgun in his mouth.”

      Raven angled his head, making his hair fall in a razor-sharp line. “He did this because your mother hurt him?”

      Allie placed her tea on a wrought-iron table. “She left him for another man.”

      “But your father was not Apache?”

      “No. He was Lakota.”

      “An Apache man can punish his wife for being unfaithful. He can whip her, cut her nose or kill her.”

      “They can’t do that anymore. There are laws.”

      He frowned a little. “There were moral laws then. The leaders would try to discourage

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