Raintree: Oracle

by Linda Winstead Jones

  Myra nodded. “And I’m named for her mother.” And sometimes, when she believed in reincarnation, she was sure she was that woman, with her memories as well as her special abilities.

  However, most of the time, Myra believed in nothing; it hurt too much to accept her reality. But tonight she had to be responsible. She had one last chance to protect her children; she’d already failed them in so many ways. They didn’t have to live the hardscrabble life she had. They didn’t have to be what she was—a woman whose fears had driven her to desperation.

  “Our last name is Cooper,” Elena reminded her.

  “Papa’s name,” she said, referring to her own father. None of their fathers had given his child his name, either because the man had refused or she hadn’t told him he was a father. “We are Durikken, and Durikken women are special. They know things are going to happen before they do.”

  Pain lanced through Myra, stealing her breath as images rolled through her mind like a black-and-white movie. She couldn’t keep running and she couldn’t make them keep running, either.

  She forced herself to continue. “They see things or people that no one else can see. This ability, like the charms on my bracelet—” she raised her arm, the silver jewelry absorbing the firelight as it dangled from her wrist “—has been passed from generation to generation.”

  But Myra was more powerful than her sisters, had inherited more abilities as a woman and a witch. That was why she had been given the bracelet—because her mother had known she would be the only one of her three daughters to continue the Durikken legacy.

  Myra’s fingers trembled as she unclasped the bracelet. She’d never taken it off, not once since her mother had put it on her wrist, until tonight. Her daughters had admired it many times, running their fingers over the crude pewter charms, and she knew which was each one’s favorite.

  Elena had always admired the star, the sharp tips now dulled with age. Irina loved the crescent moon, easily transformed—like Irina’s moods—from a smile to a frown, depending on the angle from which it dangled. Ariel favored the sun, its rays circling a small smooth disk. Despite its age, this charm seemed to shine brighter than the others. Like Ariel.

  Even now, in the dingy little camper, an aura surrounded the child, glowing around her head as spirits hovered close. Did Ariel know what her gift was? Did either of her sisters? Her daughters needed Myra’s guidance so they could understand and use their abilities. They were too young to be without their mother, but she couldn’t put them at risk. All Myra could hope was that the charms would keep them safe.

  Myra knelt before her children where they huddled in their little makeshift bed in the back of the pickup camper, their home for their sporadic travels. This was all she’d been able to give them. Until now. Until she’d shared the legend.

  Now she’d given them their heritage, and with the help of the charms, they would remember it always. No matter how much time passed. No matter how much they might want to forget or ignore it.

  She reached for Elena’s hand first. It was nearly as big as hers, strong and capable, like the girl. She could handle anything...Myra hoped. She dropped the star into Elena’s palm and closed her fingers over the pewter charm. The girl’s blue gaze caught hers, held. No questions filled her eyes, only knowledge. She’d already seen too much in visions like her mother’s. The girl had never admitted it, but Myra knew.

  She then reached for the smallest—and weakest—hand, Irina’s. Myra worried most about this child. She’d had so little time with her. She closed Irina’s hand around the moon. Hang on tight, child. She didn’t say it aloud. For Irina she didn’t need to—the child could hear unspoken thoughts.

  Myra swallowed down a sob before reaching for Ariel. But the girl’s hand was outstretched already. She was open and trusting, and because of that might be hurt the worst.

  “Don’t lose these,” she beseeched them. Without the protection of the little pewter charms, none of them would be strong enough to survive.

  “We won’t, Mama,” Elena answered for herself and her younger sisters as she attached her charm to her bracelet and helped Irina with hers.

  Despite her trembling fingers, Myra secured the sun charm on Ariel’s bracelet, but when she pulled back, the girl caught her hand. “Mama?”

  “Yes, child?”

  “You called it a curse...this special ability,” Ariel reminded her, her voice tremulous. She had been listening.

  Myra nodded. “Yes, it is a curse, my sweetheart. People don’t understand. They thought our ancestors were witches who cast evil spells.”

  And they had been witches, but ones who’d tried to help and heal. Her family had never been about evil; that was what had pursued them and persecuted them through the ages.

  “But that was long ago,” Elena said, ever practical. “People don’t believe in witches anymore.”

  Myra knew better than to warn them, to make them aware of the dangers. She’d shown them the locket earlier, the one nestled between her breasts, the metal cold against her skin. It was the one Thomas had pressed upon Elena all those years ago. Inside were faded pictures, drawn by Thomas’s young hand, of his sisters, who had died in the fire. Their deaths could have been prevented if only they’d listened and fought their fate. “Some still believe.”

  “Mama, I’m cursed?” Ariel asked, her turquoise eyes wide with fear. Her hand shook as she clutched the sun.

  No more than I. Myra had lost so much in her life. Her one great love—Elena’s father. And now...

  “Mama, there are lights coming across the field!” Ariel whispered, as if thinking that if she spoke softly they wouldn’t find her. Maybe she didn’t hear as much as her sisters, but she understood.

  Myra didn’t glance out the window. She’d already seen the lights coming, in a vision, and so she’d hidden the camper in the middle of a cornfield. But still they’d found her; they’d found them. She stared at her children, memorizing their faces, praying for their futures. Each would know a great love as she had, and all she could hope was that theirs lasted. That they fought against their fate, against the evil stalking them, as she would have fought had she been stronger.

  She just stood there next to the camper, in the middle of the cornfield, as the child protective services, who’d already declared her unfit, took her children away. The girls screamed and reached for her, tears cascading down their beautiful faces like rain against windows.

  This wasn’t Myra’s final fate; her death would come much later. But as her heart bled and her soul withered, this was the night she really died.

  But the authorities didn’t take them all. Her hands clasped her swollen belly. Soon she would have another little girl. This child would need her even more than the others, for she would have more abilities than they had. She would be more powerful a witch even than Myra. But yet she would be even more cursed. The witch hunt would end for the others. But for her fourth child, whom she would call Maria, the witch hunt would never end...

  Chapter 1

  Energy flowed from the cards up the tips of Maria Cooper’s tingling fingers. Warmth spread through her as the energy enveloped her. This will be a clear reading...

  She had been blocking her special abilities for so long that she’d worried she might have lost them. But maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. In the past they had proved more destructive than special—more curse than gift.

  “What do you see?” the young woman asked, her voice quavering with excitement.

  “I haven’t turned the first card,” Maria pointed out. Only the Significator, the fair-haired Queen of Cups, lay faceup on the table between them. The card didn’t represent the young woman’s physical appearance—not since the girl had dyed her hair black, tattooed a crow on her face and renamed herself Raven. But the card represented the wistfulness of the young woman’s nature,
so Maria had chosen it for her.

  “But you see stuff—that’s what people say about you,” the girl continued. “That’s why I wanted to learn from you—how to read the cards and how to make the potions and amulets. I know that you have a real gift.”

  A gift. Or a curse? She used to think it was the first and had grown up embracing her heritage. But then everything had gone so wrong, and she had begun to believe what others had—that she was cursed. That was why she had refused the girl’s previous requests to learn to read. Maria had taught her about the crystals and herbs she sold in her shop but she’d resisted the cards—afraid of what she herself might see.

  “I have it, too,” Raven confided. “I get that sense of déjà vu all the time. I know I’ve already dreamed what’s happening. I saw it...like you see stuff.”

  I hope you don’t see the stuff I’ve seen...

  “That’s why I want to learn tarot,” the girl said. “Because I know I’ll be good at it.”

  Raven had been saying the same thing ever since she had first started hanging around the Magik Shoppe. The twenty-two-year-old had spent so much time there that Maria had finally given her a job, and now she had given in on teaching her tarot. She hoped like hell that she didn’t come to regret caving in to the girl’s pleas.

  Maybe Raven had a gift. Or maybe, like so many others, she only wished she did because she had glamorized the supernatural ability into something that it wasn’t. Into something powerful, when having these abilities actually made Maria feel powerless, helpless to stop what she might see.

  “Thank you,” Raven said, “for helping me.”

  I hope it helps and doesn’t hurt...

  “To teach you how to read the cards, I have to show you how I do a reading,” Maria said. That was how her mother had taught her, having Maria watch her do readings for other people. But Mama hadn’t always told the truth of the cards. Instead of telling people what she saw, she had told them what they’d wanted to see.

  The old gypsy proverb that her mother had always recited echoed in Maria’s head. There are such things as false truths and honest lies.

  But there was no one but she and Raven in the old barn on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that Maria had converted into her shop. She had only the girl’s cards to read. And she had already told Raven the meaning of each card, so she wouldn’t be able to lie to her—even if it would be the kinder thing to do.

  This is a mistake...

  Her fingers stilled against the deck, which was the size of a paperback novel. She preferred the big cards because of the greater detail. She had always used them, ever since she had first started reading—at the age of four. She had read cards before she’d been able to read words.

  “I’ve been working here almost since you opened a few months ago, but I’ve never seen you do a reading,” Raven remarked.

  And she shouldn’t be doing one now. She shouldn’t risk it...but it had been so long. She had missed it. Surely it couldn’t happen again. The cards wouldn’t come up the way they had before...

  “I haven’t done one in a while,” she admitted. But she hadn’t lost the ability. Energy continued to tingle up Maria’s fingertips, spreading into her arms and chest. Before the girl could ask her why she hadn’t, Maria shuffled the cards again and eased one off the top of the deck. “This first card will represent your environment.”

  Maria turned over the card atop the Significator, and dread knotted her stomach as she stared down at it. The moon shone down upon snarling dogs and a deadly scorpion.

  A gasp slipped through the girl’s painted black lips. “That’s not good.”

  Maria’s temple throbbed, and her pulse beat heavily in her throat. “No. The moon represents hidden enemies. Danger.”

  The girl’s eyes, heavily lined with black, widened with fear. “You’re saying I’m in danger.”

  Not again...

  “That’s what that means, right?” Raven persisted, her voice rising into hysteria.

  Since Maria had already taught the girl the meaning of each card, she couldn’t deny what Raven already knew. So she nodded. “Danger. Deceit. A dark aura...”

  Maria saw it now, enveloping Raven like a starless night sky—cold and eerie, untold dangers hiding in the darkness. Goose bumps lifted on her skin beneath her heavy knit sweater, and she shivered.

  “Turn over the next card,” the girl urged. “That’s what’s coming up—that’s what’s going to be my obstacle, right?”

  Maria shook her head. She wouldn’t do it; she wouldn’t turn that card. “No. We need to stop. We can’t continue.” She shouldn’t have even begun; she shouldn’t have risked the cards coming up the way they had before. But it had been more than a year...

  She had thought that she might have reversed the curse, that her fortunes might have finally changed. She’d been using the crystals, herbs and incense that she used for healing to treat herself.

  “Turn the card!” The girl’s voice had gone shrill, and her face flushed with anger despite her pale pancake makeup. “Turn it!”

  “No.” Her heart beating fast, she could feel the girl’s panic and fear as if it were her own. But she also felt her desperation and determination.

  “I have to know!” Raven shouted.

  Maybe she did. Maybe they both needed to know. Maria’s fingers trembled as she fumbled with the next card. Then she flipped it over to reveal the skeleton knight.

  Raven screamed. “That’s the death card.”

  “It has other meanings,” Maria reminded her. “You’ve been studying the tarot with me. You know that it might just mean the end of something.”

  “What is it the end of? You see more than the cards. You see the future.”

  As Maria stared across the table at the young woman, an image flashed through her mind. The girl—her face pale not with makeup but with death—her fearful eyes closed forever.

  Raven demanded, “What is my future?”

  You won’t have one.

  “I don’t see anything,” Maria claimed.

  “You’re lying!”

  Maybe the girl actually had a gift—because Maria was a very good liar. Like reading the cards, she had learned at a very young age how to lie from her mother. “Raven...”

  “You were looking at me, but you weren’t really looking at me. You saw something. Tell me what you saw!”

  “Raven...”

  “Oh, God, it’s bad.” The girl’s breath shuddered out, and tears welled in her eyes. “It’s really bad.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” Maria assured her. “We can stop it from happening. I’ll make you an amulet of special herbs and crystals...” And maybe this time it would work.

  The girl shook her head, and her tears spilled over, running down her face in black streaks of eyeliner. “Even you can’t change the future!” She jumped up with such force she knocked over her chair.

  Maria jumped up, too, and grabbed the girl’s arms. “Don’t panic.” But she felt it—the fear that had her heart hammering in her chest and her breathing coming fast and shallow in her lungs.

  “Stay here,” she implored the girl. “Stay with me, and I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”

  Blind with terror, Raven clawed at Maria’s hands and jerked free of her grasp. Then she shoved Maria away from her, sending her stumbling back from the table.

  “No. It’s you,” the girl said, her eyes reflecting horror. “I’ve seen it—the dark aura around you.”

  That was what Maria had been trying to remove. But she had failed. As Raven had said, even she couldn’t change the future—no matter how hard she tried.

  “It’s you!” Raven shouted, her voice rising as she continued her accusation. “You’re the moon!”

  She hurled the table at Maria, knocking it over like t
he chair. The cards scattered across the old brick pavers of the barn.

  Raven was right: even she, with all the knowledge of her witch ancestor, could not change what she had seen of the future. Like that witch ancestor, who had burned at the stake centuries ago, Maria was helpless to fight the evil that followed her no matter how far and how fast she had tried to outrun it.

  The girl turned now and ran for the door, leaving it gaping open behind her as she fled. Just like Maria, Raven wouldn’t be able to escape her fate: death.

  * * *

  The night breeze drifted through the bedroom window and across the bed, cooling Seth Hughes’s naked skin and rousing him from sleep. He didn’t know how long he’d been out. But it couldn’t have been long, because his heart pounded hard yet, his chest rising and falling with harsh breaths. The breeze stirred a scent from his tangled sheets, of sandalwood and lavender, sweat and sex.

  He splayed his hands, reaching across the bed. But she was gone even though he could still feel her in his arms and how he’d felt buried deep inside her body. He could taste her yet on his lips and on his tongue.

  With a ragged sigh, he opened his eyes and peered around the room. Moonlight, slanting through the blinds at the window, streaked across the bed and across the naked woman sitting on the foot of it, turned away from him. She leaned forward, and her long black curls skimmed over her shoulders, leaving her back completely bare but for a silver chain and the trio of tattoos a few inches below the chain that circled her neck. There was a sun, a star and a crescent moon.

  “I thought you’d left,” he murmured, his voice rough with sleep and the desire that surged through him again. She was so damned beautiful with that sexy gypsy hair and all that honey-toned skin.

  “I couldn’t just leave,” she replied as she rose from the bed.

  Not after what they’d done? His pulse leaped as the desire surged harder, making him hard. Making love with her had been the most powerful experience of his life. And even though he wasn’t certain he could survive it, it was an experience he wanted again. And again...