* * *
“She’s dead,” Ariel Cooper-Koster said. Goose bumps of dread and cold lifted on her skin as she stood outside in the night breeze.
“You’ve seen her ghost, then,” Elena Cooper-Dolce replied, her pale blond hair glowing in the lights spilling out of the stately house in front of which they stood. There was no surprise in Elena’s voice. As she’d previously admitted to Ariel, she had already witnessed their youngest sister’s murder in a vision.
Ariel stared at the ghost of a woman with big brown eyes and long curly dark hair. Caught between two worlds, her image wavered in and out of a cloud of sandalwood-and-lavender-scented smoke.
“I haven’t seen her yet,” she admitted. “But Mama’s back...” And she hadn’t seen her in years. “She wouldn’t have left her if Maria were still alive.” After child protective services had taken Ariel, Elena and Irina from their mother, they had been separated and hadn’t been reunited until twenty years later. Once they had all found each other and saved themselves from the evil force stalking them, their mother’s ghost had left them. She had stayed with the daughter who’d needed her most—the one who’d been alone. Maria, whom her sisters hadn’t even known existed until those twenty years had passed. It was Irina who’d figured out that her roommate, at the time their mother had died, was actually their sister. But once they’d learned of her existence, they hadn’t been able to find her.
Elena shuddered. “I hope you’re wrong. For her sake and for Irina’s.”
“She can’t know,” Ariel agreed. Their younger sister was in a fragile state; eight months pregnant with twins, she had been confined to bed rest and absolutely no stress.
“She does,” a raspy male voice said as Ty McIntyre opened his front door to his sisters-in-law. He was a muscular man with dark hair, dark blue eyes and a jagged scar running through one eyebrow.
“Maria is not dead,” Ty said as he gestured them inside the two-story foyer of his grand house. “She knows what the two of you are thinking, though. She hears you.”
Ariel’s face heated, and Elena’s flushed bright red in the glow of the chandelier hanging over their heads. “Of course...” Irina could hear the thoughts of others—especially those with whom she was connected. “We can’t block her like she can...”
“Maria isn’t blocking her right now,” he said, and a muscle twitched along his clenched jaw.
“But you wish she was,” Elena said as she reached out and squeezed his arm, offering support and comfort.
“Maria can’t block her when she’s really upset,” he said. “When she’s really scared. Her emotions are so strong that Irina feels them, too.”
Ariel’s heart rate quickened. “Maria is upset and scared?”
Maybe that was why Mama had come back to her—to get her other children to help her youngest. While Ariel had always been able to see ghosts, she couldn’t always hear them. She had struggled the most with her mother’s ghost—probably because of all the emotions her mother’s appearance always summoned in Ariel. The pain and regret and resentment.
Ty grimly nodded. “That’s why I asked you both to come over tonight,” he said. “Irina wants me to go find Maria.”
“You’ve been looking for her for eight years,” Ariel said with frustration and resignation. “We all have.” And with the six of them working together, they had more resources than most—financially and supernaturally.
“So you’re giving up?” It wasn’t Ty asking; i
t was Irina, standing precariously at the top of the stairwell—her legs wobbling.
Ty vaulted up the steps and caught his wife up in his arms, lifting her as easily as if she were one of their seven-year-old twins. “You’re not supposed to be out of bed.”
“I could hear you all,” she said. But probably only in her mind, since they hadn’t awakened either one of the twins.
Ariel and Elena hurried up the stairs and followed Ty down the hall as he carried Irina back to their bedroom. “We didn’t mean to upset you,” Ariel said.
“We came to help,” Elena said, her usually soft voice heavy with guilt and regret.
Ty gently settled his wife back onto their king-size bed. Irina sat up against the pillows and stared at them all, her brown eyes even darker with hurt and accusation.
She looked so much like the ghost of their mother—so much like the picture she’d shown them of their sister Maria. The three of them looked like gypsies—like witches—while Ariel and Elena didn’t look related to any of them or even to each other. But their abilities united them—the Durikken blood that flowed in all their veins. Or had once flowed in their mother’s...
She hovered near Irina. Maybe she had come back because Irina needed her more than Maria did.
“We’re going to find her,” Irina insisted.
Or maybe Maria would find them—after she died.
“Ty will bring her back.”
It might not be possible. All they had found of their mother’s remains had been her ashes.