by Cait London
It leaped in her again, this time much stronger, and seemed to crush the breath from her. She’d felt like that before, in her dreams and when she and her sisters had almost drowned….
“Water or fog or mist,” Leona understood her own weaknesses, her whisper uneven. “Okay, Jasmine, I admit it. Water terrifies me, even now.” But there were no large bodies of water around here and no reason for her to feel this way now. Yet she felt just the same as when she and her sisters were in a sailboat accident at the age of three. They had been tossed into the ocean, and the trauma heightened their vulnerability. It was why the sisters couldn’t live too close together. They would interfere with each other’s lives. The accident also heightened their awareness to other extrasensory perception, especially when they were anywhere near a large body of water, which water could act as a psychic portal. Anyone who wanted to cast out their psychic net could possibly connect to one of the sisters when she was near a large body of water.
Leona’s latest experience had occurred early one morning last fall. She’d delivered a client’s hefty purchase to a thoroughbred farm nearby. Invited for a little walk around the gorgeous, groomed property, Leona had been suddenly gripped by the sight of a pond, mist rising from it. Her hostess had proudly explained that the pond was unusual on their “horse farm” because it wasn’t man-made.
Small in comparison to the Great Lakes, or an ocean, or a mighty river like the Columbia, the pond’s silvery surface had seemed to hold Leona. The mist was its extension; she’d almost felt it pressing into her chest, crushing her, sucking away her energy.
Startled by a shadow passing by her shop’s display window, Leona was brought back to the present. By habit, her hand went to the silver brooch on her shoulder, the only jewelry on her plain white blouse. Crafted by her sister, Tempest, the brooch was a replica intended for good-luck protection and to unite her family.
The replica’s Celtic swirls circled a wolf’s head at the center. By contrast, angular Viking characters circled the real brooch.
Leona had once held the genuine ninth-century artifact. Borg’s curse upon it had burned her skin as if it were marking her forever.
Now, her senses told her that she wasn’t alone. Leona turned suddenly and met her own reflection in the shop’s mirror.
In that heartbeat, Leona understood everything that she could be and everything she didn’t want to be: potentially the most powerful descendant of the ancient Celtic seer, Aisling.
DNA had gifted Leona with Aisling’s shade of dark red hair, though Leona’s was smooth and in a cut that turned under at her shoulders. Her bangs framed earth-green eyes and skin as pale as the Celt seer’s.
“If I could tear you from my blood, I would, Aisling. How I hate what you were, what my mother is, what I will not be. I will not go mad like Grams because I refuse to accept your so-called gifts.”
Her silvery reflection stared back at Leona, the argument silent and effective, almost as if Aisling were actually speaking to her. Look at yourself. You and your sisters and your mother and her mother before her, all resemble me. You think you can escape what you are? Ha! You can no more escape the visions of what would be, than I could. You have the power to be as strong or stronger than your mother, who has perfected her senses, who has studied her gifts and uses them.
“I don’t have to do the same. Why don’t we just call it a day, Aisling? You go back where you came from, and I will try to live like any other woman—a normal woman.”
The silent challenge came back swiftly, truthfully. You have the gift of sight, to see what has not yet happened, and even more gifts, if you let them in. Deny it, deny me, if you will. Be careful, Leona. You’ve seen him in your nightmares. You know what he wants. He’s coming, a descendant of Borg. He wants to kill you, or worse—he may take your mind. Once done, the bond that keeps your family strong will weaken and they, too, will suffer.
“I refuse to live my life in fear. I’m safe here, as long as I stay away from natural large bodies of water,” Leona stated boldly. But she knew fear, and it knew her; it had wrapped its tentacles around her before, and it would again.
An image flashed in the display glass, reminding her of one special man. A fit, tall, blond man with blue eyes, he’d come into her shop. Leona had immediately sensed his psychic energy.
She gripped the wolf’s head brooch tightly as she remembered that day. The front door’s tiny bell signaling customers had seemed oddly muffled and distant. At the rear of the shop, Leona had been busy with a woman shopping for an elegant hat to match her gloves. The man had nodded agreement to Leona’s usual “Be with you in a minute.”
The man had wandered slowly around the shop. He’d come to a display of Claire’s Bags resting on a small display table. His smile had seemed too private, as if the handbags held a fond memory. He picked up one evening handbag and cradled it in both big broad hands.
Distracted by the way he studied the bag, as if it held something special, Leona handed another hat to her customer. But the hairs on her nape lifted slightly. From across the shop, he’d met her stare, and the filtered light caught his too-blue eyes, riveting her. His gaze had moved slowly to her silver brooch.
Leona had held her breath as those blue eyes lifted to meet hers again. The impact was almost physical, a silent storm swirling around her, as if there were feathers and beads inside her to shimmering in warning.
He’d smiled slightly, but his eyes held hers. He seemed to probe what she was, as if he knew just what she was.
Locked to the spot, Leona had tried to catch her breath. She’d felt as if she’d been touched by something evil, the living warmth crushed out of her.
Since that hot July day, when the earth had seemed to stop spinning, she’d suspected that man was the hunter, and she was his prey. Who was he? Had he taken just a tidbit of her psychic energy from her? Or had she given it?
The curse on the real brooch was too strong to deny. Nor could she deny its likeness to the one in her dreams, gleaming on the Viking chieftain’s shoulder. She knew his name, Thorgood, the warrior who had taken the Celtic seer to wife and to love. With Aisling, he had created Leona’s psychic bloodline. But by claiming the Celtic seer as his own, he had created a vile enemy. Was the blond stranger connected to this evil premise somehow?
Leona’s hand trembled as she placed it flat against the mirror, willing the images to stop churning inside her.
Instead, beyond the silvery glass, they seemed to become real. In the smoke of a devastated Celt village, amid the terrified cries the image of the Viking chieftain with cold gray eyes came striding toward her.
“Thorgood, take me and let my people go. I am worth more than anything you will possess.”
The sound of Leona’s own uneven whisper cut through the image, and she stood in her display room again—in an ordinary, early-September day, just minutes from opening her boutique. She jerked her hand from the mirror to place it over her racing heart. Fear trickled icily over her and she knew—someone was coming to kill her and her family…. Thorgood’s enemy wanted to possess the genuine artifact, the Viking chieftain’s brooch, now in her mother’s keeping.
The curse upon the brooch moved through Leona: He’s coming. The one. The descendant of an ancient line who wants to kill you and your family. He wants revenge…. Kill one, weaken the bond to the others, kill them, get the brooch, get the power….
Two
LEONA PUSHED HERSELF THROUGH HER MORNING ROUTINE and the sporadic flow of customers. But the eerie sense that she was being watched continued, and the curse on her family haunted her.
During a quiet moment in her office, Leona stared at her husband’s picture. She tried to imprint Joel’s face upon her mind so that he would stay with her in her dreams. Last night, her body had been aroused, just as if a lover had touched her. But Joel was not in her dreams last night; he’d been an integral part of her life, and now she felt like she was losing him forever.
She tried to inhale deeply
and found that impossible. Her office’s new shelving seemed too close and too cluttered, not a good sensation for Leona, who had claustrophobia. The limited space was uncomfortable; she hadn’t expected the new shelves to occupy so much room. Her carpenter had said the additional extra inches were necessary to accommodate new plumbing. While Leona appreciated the tiny renovated bathroom, she missed the office space. Uneasy, as if another person were in the room and crowding her, Leona tried to work on the invoices on her desk but couldn’t.
Restless, she got up, picking up the tote her sister Claire had created. It was a special order for Rose Starling’s daughter, Kerrylyn, who had placed first in dressage. Amid a winding trail of red silk flowers and horseshoes, Claire had stitched a girl dressed in a riding outfit on a horse.
Leona thought of her sister as she ran her thumb over Claire’s delicate hand stitching. In May, Claire had been attacked without apparent cause. Tears burned Leona’s eyes as she remembered the incidents. “I’m so sorry that happened to you, Claire Bear.”
As she looked out of the second-story window onto the strip mall’s parking lot and traffic passing on the street, Leona’s hand went to her good-luck brooch. Her wrists were usually bare because bracelets of any kind caused her to remember the restraints she’d worn while at the Blair Institute of Parapsychology. She was only ten when she and her sisters had been unwilling subjects for medical research. Her claustrophobia had begun then.
Leona’s emotions tumbled fiercely around her as she wrapped her arms around herself. The shadows that had settled firmly around her shifted when the door’s tiny overhead bell tinkled, and a cheerful feminine voice sounded. “Leona? Where are you, honey? I brought lunch.”
Leona smiled, welcoming the warmth of the shop’s part-time seamstress and her good friend. Careful to choose friendships, Leona had been surprised at how easily Sue Ann Marshfield’s easy, cheerful personality had suited her. Dinner, a movie, and girl talk with Sue Ann had often eased Leona’s dark moments. The young homemaker and mother of two young children also enjoyed their friendship and dinner dates: Sue Ann had laughed as she explained to Leona how she badly needed the “breathers” from her family.
To escape her uneasiness Leona focused on girl talk over lunch with Sue Ann, the two of them sharing Kentucky’s customary sugared “sweet tea” with their meal. Sue Ann’s soft Southern tone and her animated stories about her two young children calmed Leona’s restless senses.
Three fittings had been scheduled for Sue Ann’s busy fingers that afternoon. When finished, Sue Ann picked up the clothing to be altered and left at four o’clock. “I’ll bring these back tomorrow. I’ll start working on them the minute the kids hit the sack. You look tired, hon. Get some sleep tonight, okay? Take a long bubble bath, and you’ll settle right down.”
“Thanks. I’ll do that.” Leona thought of the wine she’d sip before, during, and after that bubble bath, just enough to take the edge off her tense nerves.
She was always very careful not to drink too much. Her grandmother had drunk heavily to escape her extrasensory perceptions; it hadn’t worked.
After Sue Ann left the shop, Leona automatically waited on a few browsers and regular customers. During breaks, she refreshed her laptop’s database with the day’s purchases and called to check a late shipment of silk blouses.
She reached for the cell phone in her slacks pocket. There was no need for it to ring or vibrate; her sisters and her mother didn’t need actual sound when psychic tingles served just as well. The tingle this time told Leona that her youngest sister was calling from Montana. “Hi, Claire.”
Claire’s soft, soothing tones reflected her empathic gift of bringing ease to others. Leona let herself flow into that easy, calming river her sister provided. Claire spoke of her new husband, Neil Olafson, of the camper he was building, and of the new Claire’s Bags shipment she was sending to Leona. Then she asked, “Is everything all right?”
“I’m fine, but I miss Joel. It’s been five years but I still dream of him. I—it’s highly sexual—and now his face is blurring in my visions. I don’t want to lose him. And I don’t even want to talk about my other dreams.”
“I know,” Claire said softly.
As an empath and as a sister, Claire always understood. No matter how sharp or angry or frustrated Leona was, her sister remained calm. “The dreams are coming more rapidly now, aren’t they?”
“They have since that man walked into this shop in July. Some of them are violent.” Leona didn’t want to remember the dream she’d had at daybreak. It was as if she were Aisling, her ancestor, awaiting the Viking raiders, their ships’ sails the color of newly spilled blood. She understood the terror the raiders would bring to her people, but the violent images that came next had been even worse. Then the Viking chieftain, Thorgood, had taken Aisling for his own, and she’d made love with him.
Leona had made love with him. She had awakened in the aftermath, her body well sated as if the dream had been real. At that frantic, slippery twilight moment, she decided that it was time to take a real-life lover to help her erase the dreams. She wanted to exhaust herself body and soul, until nothing was left for her visions to invade.
“You have a plan, and it involves having sex, Leona Fiona,” Claire playfully used Leona’s childhood nickname. Her psychic connection had caught Leona’s plan for relief.
Leona didn’t deny the need Claire had picked up on. When on the telephone, the triplets often caught remnants of the others’ emotions, and sometimes even what they were seeing, if the person or object made a strong enough impression. “I’ve decided to start dating again. Okay, I’ve dated infrequently—no sex involved—but this time, I want a brief, hot, exhausting, satisfying affair that goes absolutely nowhere. Don’t worry. I’ll be cautious and selective.”
A newlywed, Claire laughed softly, and from her tone, she could have been wearing a blush. “Sex won’t stop the dreams. It may enhance them, though.”
Leona watched a tall man pause outside the tinted display windows, evidently considering coming in to browse.
Claire’s sister-and-psychic connection quickly picked up the image in Leona’s mind. “He’s attractive, is he? The man outside your window?”
The man moved slightly, hidden by a window display. “I can’t see that well. I’m at the back of the store, and the windows are tinted to protect against the sunlight’s damage to fabrics. But he’s tall and dark.”
“And handsome?”
“Listen, if he spends money in here, I really don’t care.”
Claire laughed softly. “Try that hard-businesswoman act on someone else. You just saw a man who interested you. I felt the leap in your senses clear up here in Montana.”
“I can’t keep anything from you while we’re on the line, can I? Thank goodness we can’t live too close to each other, or you’d really be absorbing a lot of frustration. But, hey, you just got married, and you wouldn’t have a problem relieving the pressure, would you?” While Leona kept her personal life private with outsiders, it was not possible with her family. It was not necessary either.
Her sisters understood her needs all too well. They also knew exactly how much she resented their psychic inheritance and their mother.
As if sensing the turn in Leona’s thoughts, Claire said, “You resent Mom, and she can’t help it, any more than her mother before her and so on. Aisling couldn’t help it either. You could be the strongest of us all, Leona Fiona, if you ever decide to open that door fully and train yourself. Are you wearing your brooch? Promise me that you’ll wear that brooch,” Claire added urgently. “I’m wearing mine, and so is Tempest. It comforts me that we’re connected in this way, when we have to live so far apart.”
“No, it wouldn’t be good for me to live close to you or Tempest and her husband. I’d pick up that newlywed pink cloud, then I’d really be on the make.”
Leona smoothed the brooch with her fingertip. It was much lighter and less savage-looking than the original
heavier four-inch-by-six-inch artifact—a wolf’s head amid worn, angular Viking characters. On the outer band, empty indentations remained where once stones would have been set.
A very powerful seer and magician had sworn to end the line of Thorgood and Aisling, to take the brooch and to take the power….
In her dreams, when she was Aisling, Leona had faced him. Borg’s psychic power had sucked at her mind as his black eyes had stripped her body. “You will be mine,” he promised, “sooner or later. Thorgood and his men can’t protect you forever.”
“Forever is a long time, Borg,” she’d replied fiercely. “Your curses mean nothing.”
But, with Claire and Tempest both recently attacked, Leona wasn’t as certain as Aisling had been.
“You’re thinking about the brooch again, aren’t you? And the curse that goes with it?” Claire asked.
Leona struggled to block Claire, an empath too easily injured by dark savage emotions. “You asked if I was wearing the wolf’s-head brooch?”
She looked down at her usual workday outfit. “Today I’m wearing it on a fitted white blouse with my black slacks. I wonder if Mother ever wears the real one.”
“I doubt it. It would be too heavy for today’s fabrics. But she might at times, trying to connect with whoever this ‘right descendant’ is. She’s hoping this actual flesh-and-blood descendant of Borg will come after her—she says it feels like a ‘him.’ But she’s been hunting him and says something is blocking her. She’s said that those dreams you are having of being crushed are exactly what a psychic vampire can make you feel. They can suck away your energy and use it to build their own.”
Leona picked up Claire’s next suggestion before it was voiced: “Mother can’t come here. She can’t protect me every minute. Besides, she’s strongest near the ocean, or a large body of water. Here, without that reinforcement, she might be just human, after all…. That man outside the shop is moving toward the door, as if he’s coming inside. Talk with you later.”
