what will happen now. I need you to go. To run. And keep running, Elena. Never stop. Or they will catch you.”
Elena threw her arms around her mother’s neck, more scared than she had ever been. Even though she heard no one, saw no light in the blackness outside her window, she knew her mama was right. They were coming for her. The men who’d returned, who’d found their wives, sisters and daughters dead, burned.
“Come with me, Mama,” Elena beseeched her, holding tight.
“No, child. ’Tis too late for me to fight my fate, but you can. You can run.” She closed her arms around Elena, clutching her tight for just a moment before thrusting her away. “Now go!”
Tears blinded Elena as much as the darkness. She’d just turned toward the ladder leading down from the loft when Mama caught her hand, squeezing Elena’s fingers around the soft velvet satchel. “Do not lose the charms.”
Elena’s heart contracted. “You gave me the charms?”
“They will keep you safe.”
“How?” Elena asked in a breathless whisper.
“They hold great power, child.”
“You need them.” Elena did not know from where they had come, but Mama had never removed the three charms from the leather thong tied around her wrist. Until now.
Mama shook her head. “I cannot keep them. They are yours, to pass to your children. To remember who and what we are.”
Witches.
Mama did not say it, but Elena knew. She shivered.
“Go now, child,” Mama urged. “Go before it is too late for us both.” She expelled a ragged breath of air, then pleaded, “Do not forget...”
Elena hugged her mother again, pressing her face tight against her, breathing in the scent of lavender and sandalwood incense. The paradox that was her mama, the scent by which she would always remember her. “I will never forget. Never!”
“I know, child. You have it, too. The curse. The gift. Whatever it be.”
“No, Mama...” She didn’t want to be what her mother was; she didn’t want to be a witch.
“You have it, too,” Mama insisted. “I see the power you have, much stronger than any of mine. He would see it as well, and want to destroy you.” Before Elena could ask of whom her mother spoke, the woman pushed her away, her voice quavering with urgency as she shouted, “You have to go!”
Elena fumbled with the satchel as she scrambled down the ladder, running as much from her mother’s words as her warning. She didn’t want the curse, whatever the mystical power was. She didn’t want to flee, either. But her mama’s fear stole into her heart, forcing her to run.
Keep to the woods.
She did, cringing as twigs and underbrush snapped beneath the worn soles of her old boots. She ran for so long that her lungs burned and sweat dried on her skin, both heating and chilling her. She’d gone a long way before turning and looking back toward her house.
She knew she’d gone too far, too deep into the woods to see it clearly with her eyes. So, like Mama, she must have seen it with her mind. The fire.
Burning.
The woman in the middle of it, screaming, crying out for God to forgive them. Pain tore at Elena, burning, crippling. She dropped to her knees, wrapping her arms around her middle, trying to hold in the agony. Trying to shut out the image in her head. She crouched there for a long while, her mama’s screams ringing in her ears.
Behind her, brush rustled, the blackness shattered by the glow of a lantern. Oh, God, they’d found her already.
The glow fell across her face and that of the boy who held the lantern. Thomas McGregor. He wasn’t much older than she, but he’d gone to work with his father and uncles, leaving his mother, sisters, aunt and cousins behind...to burn alive.
As they’d burned her mother. “No...”
“I was sent to find you. To bring you back,” he said, his voice choked as tears ran down his face. Tears for his family or for her?
Her mother had seen this, had tried to fight this fate for her daughter, the same fate that had just taken her life.
“You hate me?” she asked.
He shook his head, and something flickered in his eyes with the lantern light. Something she had seen before when she’d caught him staring at her. “No, Elena.”
“But you wish me harm? I had nothing to do with your loss.” Nor did her mother, but they had killed her. Smoke swept into the woods, too far from the fire to be real, and in the middle of the haze hovered a woman. Elena’s mother.
“I have to bring you back,” Thomas said, his hand trembling as he reached for her, his fingers closing over her arm.
The charms will keep you safe.
Had her mother’s ghost spoken or was it only Elena’s memory? Regardless, she reached in the pocket of her cape and held the satchel tight. Heat emanated through the thick velvet, warming her palm. As if she’d stepped into Thomas’s mind, she read his thoughts and saw the daydreams he had had of the two of them. “Thomas, you do not wish me harm.”
“But Papa...”
Other memories played through Elena’s mind, her mother’s memories. She shuddered, reeling under the impact of knowledge she was too young to understand. “Your papa is a bad man,” she whispered. “Come with me, Thomas. We will run together.”
He shook his head. “He would find us. He would kill us both.”
Because of what she’d seen, she knew he spoke the truth. Eli McGregor would kill anyone who got between him and what he wanted.
“Thomas, please...”
His fingers tightened on her arm as if he were about to drag her off. Elena clutched the satchel so close the jagged little metal pieces cut her palm through the velvet.
He sighed as if a great battle waged inside him. “I cannot give you to him. Go, Elena. You are lost to me.” But when she turned to leave, he caught her hand as her mother had, shaking as he pressed something against her bloody palm. “Take my mother’s locket.”
To remember him? To remember what his family had done to hers? She would want no reminders. But her fingers closed over the metal, warm from the heat of his skin. She couldn’t refuse. Not when he had spared her life.
“Use it for barter, if need be, to get as far away from here as you can. My father has sworn vengeance on all your mother’s relatives and descendants. He says he will let no witch live.”
“I am not a witch.” She whispered the lie, closing her eyes to the luminous image of her mother’s ghost.
“He will kill you,” Thomas whispered back.
She knew he spoke the truth. Like her mother, she could now see her fate. But unlike her mother, she wouldn’t wait for Eli McGregor to come for her. She turned to leave again, then twirled back, moved closer to Thomas and pressed her lips against his cheek, cold and wet from his tears.
“Godspeed, Elena,” he said as she stepped out of the circle of light from his lantern, letting the darkness and smoke swallow her as she ran.
This time she wouldn’t stop... She wouldn’t stop until she’d gotten as far away as she could. And even then, she wouldn’t ever stop running...
From who and what she was.
Armaya, Michigan, 1986
The candlelight flickered as the wind danced through the open windows of the camper, carrying with it the scent of lavender and sandalwood incense. Myra Cooper dragged in the first breath she’d taken since she’d