“Our daughter,” I corrected. “And yes, he did.”

  “So… what… you’re going to sacrifice her?”

  I shook my head. “You stupid man.”

  He gritted his teeth. “What is going on, Wanda?”

  I took a deep breath and everything ached. I was getting too old for this shit. “If you’d been here for the last few days, you’d understand everything I didn’t have the time to tell you.”

  “Fill me in now.”

  “Sybil can adopt almost total stillness when she wants to. Her heart slows down, she gets paler, and she stops breathing. It’s enough to fool even a vampire if they aren’t paying close enough attention. Poppy calls it ‘playing dead’.”

  Maverick’s glower didn’t waver, but a little of the ominous presence dimmed. The shadows became ordinary shadows once more. “She’s going to pretend to turn.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s not right,” he argued. “He just bit her. And she’s scared and so young and…”

  His voice cracked and he turned away, unwilling to look at me. I stood, rubbing the kinks out of my back, righting the table and cleaning up the scene in an effort to give him his moment.

  “Lorcan is going to take her home, after pretending to have turned her,” I continued. “Then we’re going to dose Rupert’s blood brews with a forgetfulness curse.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that any time Lorcan or I come to mind in the next few years, Rupert and his retinue will conveniently lose track of the thought. It should buy us time, though I doubt Rupert is going to check in often after the show Lorcan put on for him.”

  Maverick didn’t say anything at first. He craned his neck, watching the shadows on the ceiling undulate, shifting over each other in a serpentine motion that left me feeling a little nauseous. If the sight bothered him, it didn’t show.

  “Let’s curse this son of a bitch,” he said finally.

  He waved an arm at me in the ‘after you’ gesture and took a step back with a rather humorless smile. Thunder rolled, so close it shifted the ground beneath our feet. Distantly, I heard screaming. The smell of char tickled my nose.

  I stared at him, wide-eyed. “What did you just do?”

  His eyes were cold. “What you and that spineless bloodsucker didn’t have the power, control, or courage to do.”

  I felt my heart drop as it then started pounding inside my chest. “What does that mean, Maverick?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t worry. Only a few of them are dead. The rest will be able to run before the entire place goes up in smoke.”

  “You can’t!” I hissed. “If other vampire clans think magic did this, that witches had something to do with it, they’ll kick off a war! That’s what we came here to stop!”

  Maverick turned his back on me, instead weighing a chair in one hand, trying to determine whether it could be used to break one of the large hall windows.

  “Don’t worry, only Blood Witches can bring down storms,” he said offhandedly. “And as far as any of them know, you’re dead—or you’re turning fully into one of them. Either way, you couldn’t be at fault. So that leaves… no one. Unless you plan to air my new status to the vampires?”

  I shook my head. He knew I wouldn’t. It was bad enough that some witches outside our circles knew the truth about what he was. No one was going to make it public for fear of retribution.

  “You know I won’t.”

  Maverick swung the chair. The glass exploded outward, tinkling onto the ground below. The smell of char was thicker now. Over the rush of the wind and continued thunder, I heard screams. The manor was burning.

  “Are you coming?” Maverick called, swinging himself out of the window. He didn’t seem to mind the bloody gashes the glass shards left in his palms.

  Smoke was curling under the door now. I didn’t have much choice, did I? Praying that my brothers, my daughter, and my boyfriend had gotten out alive, I got a running start and launched myself out after him.

  I landed in damp grass, glancing up in time to see Maverick lope into the night, silhouetted by the arc violet-white cloud-to-cloud lightning. The ground rippled, dead things shivering as he passed. A vulture circled overhead.

  I let out a soft sound of fright when a feathered shape alighted on my shoulder, but relaxed when I saw the familiar white and tawny-plumage.

  “Isis,” I breathed. “Is he…?”

  “Unstable,” she answered quietly. “Very unstable. That magical discharge harmed his psyche. I am worried for my master.”

  “Me too, Isis,” I said, watching Maverick disappear into the night. “Me too.”

  Epilogue

  “Does it feel like a bit of an anticlimax, sweetling?”

  I shifted a pair of pins to the corner of my mouth, carefully draping my pieces on the dress form. After Sybil, I’d been careful to keep all liquids in the back, including my much-needed cup of evening coffee. The odds that my French Vanilla was going to animate another humanoid figure was low, but this was Haven Hollow, after all.

  I wasn’t taking any more chances.

  I pinned the collar in place before saying, “Always, but that’s what I get for crawling into bed with you, I suppose.”

  Lorcan leaned back in his chair, studying my ceiling with a smirk. It needed to be retouched or, at the very least, power washed. I hadn’t noticed in the initial panic, but Sybil’s explosive entrance had stained it an ashy gray.

  The week after my alleged turning had been some of the tensest in Haven Hollow history, and I’d barely been privy to any of it. I was meant to be dead, after all. That meant, I couldn’t waltz around town for three days, minimum. And while I was ‘unaware’ a great deal had changed.

  Maverick’s lightning curse had killed Rupert instantaneously, and the resulting fire had killed three more vampires before the evacuation was complete. A few humans had to be hospitalized, but almost everyone had come out of the blaze with their lives or rather, unlives.

  Yes, it was a huge relief to have Rupert out of the picture and most times, I could barely even believe it was true. For Lorcan’s part, he’d remained surprisingly quiet about the whole thing—stoic, one might have termed it.

  But any relief I had at knowing Rupert was dead didn’t last long because an investigation had been launched, and most of the blame was being put on Tabitha, most unfortunately. Fortunately, though, no one could prove anything.

  Tensions were now sky-high between vampires and witches not only in Portland, but across the nation. I was beginning to wonder if it was a good idea to send Astrid away to school in the coming near future when things were this fraught. But the moment I mentioned my concern, she’d begun to plead with me, which had set Sybil off. They were joined at the hip these days, with Sybil taking most of her cues on how to be a young witch from her aunt.

  I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pry them apart when the time came for Astrid to leave. If she left—something I still had serious reservations about.

  “Pull the curtains,” Lorcan said, eyes sparking with challenge. “I’d like to see if I can make you eat those words.”

  “I have a project to finish,” I answered, waving a hand at the dress form. “Work now, play later.”

  “Fine.” But then he just stood there, staring at me in that way of his that really got under my skin. “But answer my question.”

  “You’ll have to be more specific. Is what anticlimactic?”

  He gestured between us. “This little love saga of ours turned into a soap opera.”

  “A soap opera? What are you talking about?”

  He chuckled. “I’m talking about the fact that we’ve gone from passionate enemies to a married couple living in a small town. And throw into that the fact you have a child with another man and our story could rival any soap.”

  “A daughter with my cousin no less,” I added with a laugh. “Who has his own vengeance plot afoot.”

  “Speaking of the pain in the arse, where is he?”

  I shook my head. “No one knows. Taliyah is still trying to find him. She thinks he’s hiding out in Seattle.” Then I looked up from what I was doing and smiled at Lorcan. “It is a little soap-opera-esque, isn’t it?”

  “I would say so.”

  I sobered long enough to really think about it. Lorcan watched the thoughts flash across my face, trying and failing to look impassive.

  “Are you asking if I’m bored?” I set my remaining needles aside, sashaying toward him. He tracked me hungrily, tensing when I slung one leg over his.

  “Are you bored?” he asked, while looking up at me with a serious expression on his face. “I mean, we’re married now. Blood bond is gone, and any outside pressure has literally been struck off the face of the earth.”

  “Hmm, when you put it like that,” I giggled.

  He traced the line of my upper lip. “It’s you and me now, sweetling.”

  I leaned down to brush my lips lightly over his. He groaned when I tugged at his bottom lip with my teeth.

  “Never,” I whispered. “I could never get bored with you.”

  We kissed for a while—I’m not exactly sure how long but when I pulled away, Lorcan smiled up at me.

  “Never get bored with me? Those are powerful words, dearest.”

  I laughed. “I am fairly sure I have the most irritating husband in the world—and that means he’ll always find new and creative ways to piss me off. So, boring? No, not exactly.”

  His smile was a flash of sharp teeth in the dark.

  “Your fondest annoyance,” he said.

  “Forever and ever,” I agreed. “And ever after that.”

  The End

  Return to Haven Hollow in:

  Day Dream

  Haven Hollow Book # 21

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  Also Available:

  Dance With the Dead

  Gwen’s Ghosts #1

  by H.P. Mallory & J.R. Rain

  (read on for a sample)

  Chapter One

  Petra and Me

  The vacation I took to England’s West Country was one of my best and earliest memories.

  I was eight or so at the time and it was my first time on a plane, my first time out of the country and the first time I remember leaving New York and its environs. For a child who’d known nothing but the city and its suburbs, the rolling fields and majestic hills of Somerset and Wiltshire (our American pronunciation of which greatly amused the locals) was a fantasy landscape, like the Shire from The Lord of the Rings.

  My parents and I stayed in a bed and breakfast in a village called Morley-on-Avon, through which the river lazily snaked. It was a wonderland that imprinted itself on my young mind and I swore I would someday return.

  But the trip was mostly memorable because it was the location where Petra became my constant companion, the ‘imaginary friend’ about whom my parents smiled quietly and for whom they even set a place at the table (as recommended by various parenting guides on the subject of ‘invisible friends’). Of course, that was before I patiently explained that Petra didn’t need to eat.

  The day I met Petra is still etched in my mind in such vivid detail, it feels as if it were only yesterday.

  “Petra Shearwater,” the tour guide had announced, an almost circular man with a moustache that appeared to be trying to take over his face. He was dressed in a red, velvet outfit that looked as if it was meant to mimic something Henry VIII would have worn, though the guide’s was a cheap imitation. I was fairly sure it was mustard that was staining the ruff around his neck. While the guide’s outward appearance was bland (with the notable exception of his monstrous moustache), he seemed to make up for that blandness with the shrillness of his voice and the theatrical waving of his arms. He looked like a man about to take off for the clouds.

  “It was within this house, or just outside it, that she died and some say, she still haunts it.” He pointed at the dirt patch on which he stood and then did a strange little jig, as if Petra were reaching up from her grave to tickle the undersides of his feet. “On this very spot here, that I’m currently standing upon.”

  We were standing in the mighty shadow of one of the great stately homes of the county. Not the biggest or most expensive that Britain had to offer (not quite Downton Abbey scale) but an impressive ‘country pile’ never the less. It was called Chambon Hall.

  “Though, of course, it only got that name in the sixties when a pair of monied hippies,” the guide raised his eyebrows to show what he thought of said monied hippies, “Lucius and Delphine Chambon—better known as ‘Thor’ and ‘Feather’ to their circle of unwashed ragamuffins—bought it up for a song after the de Crecy family, who had lived on this site since the fifteenth century, went broke following bad investments. On the ponies,” he added with a wink and then did a little twirl that seemed to surprise all those in attendance.

  “But back to Petra,” the guide continued. “She didn’t live in Chambon Hall, but she was a guest of the de Crecy family, from back when they were at their peak,” the guide went on, nodding at everyone in turn. “This was in the late nineteenth century, mind you. The Victorian era.” The guide cleared his throat and his voice rang out even louder. “Petra was invited to stay because young Roger de Crecy,” at which point the guide winked at my parents and continued, “Roger by name and Roger by nature—saving your daughter’s presence, aye?” My parents nodded uncertainly, and the guide continued on. “Roger had taken a fancy to Petra, who was renowned as a bit of a looker—which was perhaps exactly what had appealed to Roger. So, Petra was invited to stay and quite quickly into her stay, she died, some say by mysterious circumstances,” (accompanied by much wiggling of fingers). “She fell to her death, right here on this here spot.”

  “Not true,” said a woman’s voice from beside me. “I fell over there,” and then she pointed to a place that was a few feet away. When she faced the guide again, she cocked an irritated brow in his direction. “And I certainly do not appreciate the fact that every time you tell this story erroneously, it is my reputation that suffers as you fail to mention that the de Crecy’s were cousins to my family and thus, I was not simply visiting an unattached man with whom I had no affiliation.”

  The woman, presumably Petra, appeared to be in her early twenties with dark hair that was done up in curls around her face. She wore a bonnet and was dressed in a long and beautiful, emerald gown with bilious skirts that sashayed around her and touched the ground. I couldn’t help noticing that she was slightly transparent, so I could see through her to the tree line at the fringes of the lawn. Of course, I assumed that had to mean she was a ghost, but I wasn’t in the least bit frightened of her.

  “Some believe Petra was killed by Roger’s father, who thought her to be ill-suited to marry his son,” the guide continued.

  She, meanwhile, scowled at him. “Yes, yes, always this about my being ill-suited for the rascal Roger de Crecy. The truth was, I had no interest in marrying the scoundrel! And as to the particulars of my death...” the woman went on, shaking her head as she made a dismissive gesture at the guide who had, apparently, gotten it all wrong. “I can’t recall why I was killed or by whom. Perhaps it was simply an accident.” Then she shook her head like the whole thing was one big shame and sighed. “You get the details incorrect every day on every tour and you never listen to me correcting you because you can’t hear me. None of you can.”

  “I can hear you,” I said.

  The transparent woman looked down at me and her mouth dropped open in shock.

  “Well, that’s nice to know, little lady,” smiled the guide. “But I’m over here.”

  There’s no need to go over the rest of the conversational cross purposes because you can probably guess how the rest of it went. The important thing is that, at the end of the day, Petra sat beside me in the back of our rental car, heading to the hotel in which we were staying. And it was no surprise either, because for over a hundred years she’d had no one to talk to but other departed spirits, whose conversation was apparently ‘limited and self-involved’, and who usually ‘moved on’ pretty quickly. Now she had a companion, and she wasn’t letting me go.

  I was perfectly happy with my strange, new friend, and still happier when Petra regressed to childhood, appearing my own age and dressing in appropriate clothes for a Victorian child. As an only child, I’d sometimes struggled to make friends—now I had one who came with me everywhere. When we left for New York a week later, Petra was in tow.

  It should be relatively clear by this point that Petra was not an imaginary friend, she was, for want of a better word, a ghost. But I didn’t really think of her as a ghost because there was nothing about her that was ghostlike or frightening. To me, she was more like a magical fairy who could change her appearance at will and who mostly just wanted to gossip. But she wasn’t the only deceased person I could see.

  Maybe it was owing to my first seeing Petra, to whom I had some indefinable connection, but that day in Morley opened the floodgates, and from then on, I saw ghosts on a semi-regular basis. Only a few were like Petra, though: clear and almost solid to look at. Most were varying degrees of flickering translucency, some barely even human-shaped. I don’t recall ever being scared of them, though—they simply became a part of my life.

  As I grew older, and began to better understand what it was I was seeing, then I also began to understand, mostly through Petra, what the rules were about the deceased and how it all worked.