by Cait London
Joel Chablis had been an easy kill as well. The friendly invitation to go snowmobiling on that Colorado mountain pass had ended perfectly. Joel hadn’t made it through that avalanche, of course.
And now it was Leona’s turn.
When she wasn’t in her home, Rolf enjoyed disguising himself as a handyman; he’d walk through it and study her. When she’d occasionally left her laptop at home, he’d used it to research her even more closely.
Her sisters’ psychic-residue fluff filled Leona’s comfortable home. In the third bedroom, he’d sensed Greer Aisling’s energy.
Greer Aisling. Rolf’s psychic hackles had risen as he’d entered that tiny third bedroom. “She will be thoroughly humiliated before I’m done with her.”
A fresh wave of anger washed over Rolf; Leona had taken Shaw to her home and to her bed. The psychic residue in the larger guest bedroom had held enough sexual punch to take away Rolf’s breath, to harden his body. In his anger he’d almost lost control and sought out a woman to rape and kill. He’d killed before to release the building pressure. But he couldn’t allow his plans to be ruined now, not when he was so close to taking down the Aislings.
After he fulfilled the revenge of the Borg curse and completed his personal vendetta against Greer Aisling, Shaw was next on Rolf’s list.
But Shaw, too, was proving useful to Rolf right now. Shaw had safely transported the perfect instrument, the perfect bait for Leona’s downfall. Janice Shaw’s troubled soul, her minimal gift, would surely ensnare Leona. Once tangled with Janice, Leona’s energies would become strained and vulnerable. She would become the perfect prey.
Then, for having Leona, Owen Shaw would die slowly, painfully.
“Leona…”
The eerie whisper of her name reached her above the sound of the raindrops and the rustle of the tree leaves. It was nine o’clock at night and she had just turned into her driveway, stopping her car to avoid hitting a small branch in her way. As she stood beside her car, ready to pick up the branch, she heard her name again. Frozen by terror, Leona scanned the darkness.
Her neighbors on her cul-de-sac had settled in for the night. Leona heard her next door neighbor calling her dog.
Streetlights pooled gently through a mist that foretold heavier rain. In the distance, a figure stood, barely visible.
“Hello?” she called. Fear rippled up her nape and chilled her body. Her senses quivered, and something inside her shrunk back, hiding as a child would from danger stronger than she. “Were you calling me? Who are you?”
“Leona…” The shadow faded back into the night, leaving only the mist surrounding her, damp on her face.
Leona frantically searched for inner calm, her protection against the fierce emotions she knew she held deep inside. In a traumatic situation, her feelings were too powerful, and she didn’t like to release them. Now all she felt was fear.
Shaken, Leona hurried to get back into her car. She drove over the small branch, entered her garage, and quickly shut its heavy door. Inside her house moments later, she was still trembling. She hurried to check the locks on her back and front doors. Shivering, she hugged herself. What was that Owen had said that morning? Someone was keeping very close tabs on you last night, Leona, and it wasn’t me. What did he mean? Who was it outside just now?
Earlier in the year, her sisters had heard their names called in the same eerie way. Then Leona had visited Tempest by Lake Michigan, in a town with a name that would chill any psychic—Port Salem. The lake’s fog had caught her on the porch; it chilled her and took away her breath. Leona hadn’t been able to move. Had that fog, as an extension of the lake, taken her energy, like a bloodhound tracing her here to Lexington?
The dampness had felt the same, almost with a pulse and a heartbeat. At the time, Leona had pushed away the unwelcome realization that she and her sisters could be reached by the fog and mist growing out of large natural bodies of water. Someone, or something, could connect to them using the mist. Who was it tonight, the shadow in the mist?
In her small foyer mirror, Leona caught a glimpse of her pale face and frightened green eyes. The image reminded Leona of her seer DNA and the curse that could become reality. She spoke to her ancestor who she felt hovered closely now. “Aisling, go away. Please leave me alone.”
Frowning, she tossed her favorite flowing turquoise-and-teal scarf over the mirror. Her image remained behind the sheer cloth. “I want no part of you tonight, Aisling. Or any other night.”
You’re not to blame for your husband’s death. Don’t blame yourself, that familiar inner voice murmured.
“I could have stopped Joel from taking that trip to Colorado. I could have done something. Instead, I didn’t want to believe.”
Believe…
“No, I won’t. At least not for tonight. I’m bone-tired, and you’ll have to wait.”
Firmly resolved to push any extrasensory perception plaguing her away for the night, Leona kicked off her shoes. She walked to her desk, tossed her tote onto the chair, and stretched her shoulders. After a long day and a relaxing dinner with Alex, she was determined not to let last night’s lovemaking, or Owen’s disturbing research of her, ruin a good night’s sleep.
She stood very still, suddenly chilled with an eerie sense that she wasn’t the only person in the room. That’s ridiculous. No one is watching me, she told herself.
The mist outside had become a pounding rain, another thunderstorm in the forecast. It reminded Leona of the sexual storm last night. She’d given herself so easily to a man who was entirely too dangerous to her calm, structured life. And perhaps to her family.
Lack of sleep made her too vulnerable to dreams prowling in her mind. The nightmare of the man with long, rippling black hair, the twin braids swinging like snakes around that sharp face, those penetrating black eyes would come too readily now.
With a sigh, Leona quickly reminded herself that it wasn’t only the night dreams. Her visions came in the daytime, too, in the flash of a mirror, or images sliding by her shop’s window.
Even now, Owen was probably prowling through her life. There were things no reporter had discovered, the intricate web of mystic DNA, enhanced by the trauma the triplets had suffered in the Blair Institute of Parapsychology.
That sailboat accident had changed the triplets, too, linking them with large bodies of water, making them more vulnerable to any powerful psychic who wished to use that universal portal. Owen couldn’t know that at age three, she and her sisters had been terrified in the ocean. He couldn’t know that before their parents rescued them, they had linked somehow in that universal, psychic portal. He couldn’t truly know what the wolf’s-head brooch meant to the Aislings.
Leona remembered holding the original brooch; its image burned in her mind. She rubbed her hands together, as if she could erase the curse. But she knew the dream of the man with the black, mesmerizing eyes, the Borg-descendant, would still come. End the line, get the brooch, get the power….
Leona rubbed her temples, a headache brewing there. She couldn’t afford the so-called “gift” that had caused her grandmother to kill herself. “I am not the strongest, and I don’t want to be.”
Removing her brooch, she walked to the kitchen and retrieved her bottle of wine from the refrigerator. She’d already had two glasses at Alex’s, but she still wasn’t relaxed. Stella Mornay, her grandmother, had wanted to relax, too….
“Just a little more to top off the night, Grams. No more than that,” Leona murmured firmly as she poured a glass and walked back to her living room.
If she walked down the hallway, she’d remember how Owen had carried her as if nothing could stop him, but her. Maybe she should have.
She settled into her favorite chair, sipping her wine and drawing the soft, comforting weight of the afghan over her shoulders. The streetlights caught the rain as it beaded her windows. The drops streamed down the glass like little snakes waiting to strike.
Settling down to brood, Leona worried th
at her night with Owen was causing too much to happen, too quickly. Just a while ago, someone had stood in the mist and called to her…. Had she brought danger closer by getting involved with a man who was possibly an intuitive, too?
Leona took another sip of wine and stared at the windows, rain sparkling upon the glass. The curse upon the genuine brooch was relentless, circling her. Borg’s descendant still wanted revenge upon her family, and someone had gone after her sisters.
If Aisling’s psychic gifts had passed to her descendants, then it was also possible that another line also had dreams of that same brutal fight over a woman. In their visions, they might have heard the grunts of men, the clashing of swords. Since the Borg family had lost the prize of a woman to Celtic seer Aisling, the Borg family believed they had cause for revenge. The need for revenge could be strong enough to last centuries. The right descendant, one who had perfected his gifts, might be stalking Leona’s family right now….
“It’s possible. More than possible,” Leona acknowledged as she lifted her glass to toast the rain, another possible extension of a psychic portal, acknowledging the link between the fog, the rain and the large body of water and how she’d felt.
Whatever was out there had come after Claire in a similar way. She’d felt that energy and heard her name as she and Neil had camped beside the Missouri River. Then Tempest experienced the same by Lake Michigan. Leona lifted her glass to the window again, toasting whoever was out in the night, calling her name, stalking her family. “Logically, I’m next. If I am, I won’t go down easily. You can’t have my family, you bastard. You can slink right back to whatever bog you crawled out of, curse or not.”
Her gaze fell upon Tempest’s statue of the triplets; in life the triplets were linked in every way, physically and with their senses. The parapsychologists had tested Leona’s link with her sisters. The tests had determined that Leona could potentially be the strongest, the fiercest when aroused, capable of wielding more extrasensory powers than the rest. The tests had presumably shown that Leona could perhaps be more powerful than Greer Aisling, their mother and a proven psychic.
“Bah-humbug. Malarkey.” Still…In her lifetime, Leona hadn’t wanted to believe that she could be aroused into fighting. She was now, enough to kill. For her family, Leona would do what she must to protect them. “If that was you out there calling my name and standing beneath that streetlight, don’t test me too far, you bastard. Maybe I’ve been saving everything I am, just as a special gift to you. Don’t you dare hurt my family.”
With that thought, Leona finished her glass of wine and snuggled down under her afghan to doze.
She awoke to the sound of the pounding rain, the erotic hunger of her body and to the sensual sound of her own voice, “Owen…”
“Owen…”
The aching sound of a woman in sensual need caused Rolf to tense, his senses tingling. He’d been at his worktable, perfecting his disguises, when the woman’s erotic tone had caught him. In that instant, he’d known his senses had caught Leona’s voice. She must have been in the twilight of her dreams, when her mind floated more easily to him, her protective shields down.
That day in her shop, disguised as the blue-eyed blond, Rolf had snagged something of Leona, just as she had caught something of him. This time it wasn’t electronic sound transferring her voice, and her need, it was the extrasensory connection they had made that day.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. I wasn’t supposed to pick up from her. That can only mean Leona is stronger than I had guessed. But not strong enough to detect my disguise as Alex. I am still stronger.”
Rolf met his own compelling black eyes in the mirror; anger flashed back at him. “She calls to Owen, does she? Soon, it will be my name on her lips…begging me to take her, before I kill her. I’ll enjoy it, Leona. I really will.”
“Owen…”
Owen sat up in his tangled bedding, his body aroused, his flesh hot and damp. It was Leona’s voice, the sound of a woman in ecstasy. She’d sounded that way last night, just as they both went over the edge. For a moment, he held the sound in his mind, hoarding it in that margin between sleep and consciousness. In that drowsy twilight, he sensed her hunger, remembered how she felt, sleek and soft and strong, taking what she wanted, what he wanted—
His body tensed in anticipation, his erection hard. Startled awake, just at the point of release, Owen jackknifed off the bed and rubbed the tension in his nape. He almost felt her above him, taking him and he’d almost—“Dammit, I’m not a boy anymore.”
Somehow Leona had conceived a lock on his senses. It had happened when they’d made love, and it wouldn’t go away easily.
The discovery of Leona’s psychic family, the link that Janice had made between the Bartel women, and the need to be with Leona again hadn’t made it an easy day for him. It was only eleven o’clock at night and he had an early morning interviewing a carpenter, and a full day after that.
Janice was desperate to meet Leona. From what Owen had seen of Leona this morning, defensive and braced for battle, an arranged meeting wouldn’t be easy.
After a stinging cold shower, Owen threw on clothes then opened the door to his bedroom and found Janice’s pale, haunted face staring up at him. “I have to meet her, Owen. Or I’ll die.”
Her statement chilled him. Would Janice kill herself if she didn’t meet Leona? Owen drew his sister into his arms and rocked her with his body. Their father hadn’t given her comfort and warmth, and Owen had tried to learn new ways to replace that missing element. “You’re not going to die, honey.”
“Help me, Owen. I feel it,” Janice whispered as she shuddered and gripped him tightly. “I know.”
Owen stroked her hair. It had been so long and soft and sweet swirling around her when she was a child, playing in the field. Now Janice was no longer a child but a deeply troubled woman.
Owen knew Janice’s predictions sometimes came true. He prayed they wouldn’t this time. He would make certain they didn’t. “We’ll talk with Leona. Don’t worry. She’s nice.”
Janice looked up at him, her expression hopeful. “You know what she is, don’t you? You know that she can help me, your spirit woman? You have the gray eyes of the ones who see into the future. You know this truth, don’t you?”
“Maybe,” he answered cautiously.
Because at the moment, Owen wasn’t certain of anything. There was no way he could have heard Leona call to him. No way.
Still, he fought a cold premonition that Janice could be right about Leona.
After a sleepless night and before she left to open her shop for the morning, Leona left a note for Vernon. He wasn’t to allow anyone in the house without her specific permission. Someone had been out there last night, and she wasn’t taking chances. That fear and her hunger for Owen had stalked her all night.
During a brief quiet moment in her shop, Leona leaned back into the shadows of a corner and gripped her wolf’s-head brooch. Without sleep, she was even more sensitive to everything. Sensitive or not, too much was stirring around her.
Owen just could be part of this psychic tangle, the curse and the Borg-descendant who wanted to make it come true. Leona felt something, other than the physical bond. Owen could be a descendant of another psychic power, ready to—
Swallowing her fear, she stepped from the shadows into the air stirred by the ceiling’s plantation-style fan. She repeated the firm statement she’d made many times since Tempest had first placed the brooch in Greer’s hands: “I refuse to live in fear.”
As she hurried to take blouses from the fitting room back out to the display room, Leona’s fingers shook as she replaced a blouse’s hanger on the rack. Methodically, she straightened the other blouses around it. She had too many uneven edges in her life. She had to regain control, and do it quickly.
Glancing at her wristwatch she wondered where Sue Ann was. It had been a hectic hour since opening and her seamstress hadn’t appeared at nine-thirty, the arranged time
to prepare for Mrs. Alexander’s fitting—she would be arriving any moment. Sue Ann was usually early, in time to chat a bit with Leona. If delayed, Sue Ann was always very prompt to call, and her reasons were always very important.
Leona decided to call her friend. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’ve decided to quit working for you.”
Sue Ann’s voice lacked her usual cheerful tone, and that shook Leona; they’d been such good friends. “I see. You’ve probably found something better.”
“No. I haven’t. Don’t call me—ever. I’m not going to see you again.”
Sue Ann had not only decided to stop working in Leona’s shop, she had decided to end their five-year friendship. Leona didn’t understand her friend’s sudden change. Sue Ann had been a blessing after Joel’s death; she had urged Leona to keep going on the darkest of days, encouraging Leona to go to restaurants and carefully chosen movies, inviting her into her home for dinner.
And now Sue Ann wanted out of Leona’s life? Deeply concerned now, Leona asked, “Is there something wrong? Can I help?”
“I just don’t want to work there anymore. Or see you again,” Sue Ann stated before she hung up.
Troubled by Sue Ann’s behavoir, Leona decided to visit her friend after work. In the meantime, she apologized to Mrs. Alexander when she came into the shop, and called to cancel Sue Ann’s other appointments. Hopefully, a conversation with Sue Ann would straighten out any problems. Working arrangements were one thing, but friendship another.
Movement beyond the shop’s window caused Leona to glance outside. At first she thought that Owen and the girl beside him were another vision.
Momentarily closing her eyes, she willed the images away. But Owen and the girl were flesh and blood and they were coming to see her. Their straight black hair and burnished skin marked them as family—Janice! He’d brought her here!