Eden's Shadow. Jenna Ryan

Eden had inherited Haitian blood. But not, she promised herself, a mystical Haitian mindset. She and Lisa had been born with green eyes.

      The eldest born to eldest grown, my pain shall bear. Believe. Beware.

      Dolores had been the eldest grown, and of course Eden was the eldest born—but that meant nothing. Curses had no place in the twenty-first century.

      For deeds long past, chère child will reap, my vengeance curse, of death—or worse.

      Worse than death was a prospect Eden preferred not to consider, at least not as it pertained to the supernatural. But she had to admit, it was difficult to ignore a thing when you had a sister and grandmother who were forever bringing it up.

      Determined not to dwell on such an unpleasant subject, Eden trudged through the mini jungle that had once been Therese Dumont’s prized garden to the back terrace. Gravel and broken concrete crunched underfoot the closer she drew to the old house. She spotted a beam of light—or possibly the flash of a camera—upstairs, and called to her sister. Receiving no answer, she tried again in a less patient tone.

      “Are you up there, Mary?”

      She heard a sound like stone grinding against stone and attempted to pinpoint it. She was standing beneath a wide protrusion that had once been the second-story gallery. It would have wrapped around the entire house and, in the back at least, allowed for a spectacular view of the river. Eden felt certain the sound she’d heard had come from the upper wall.

      When the air stilled and the sound didn’t repeat, she gave up. Absolutely nothing moved, not even the deadhead flowers hanging by a thread to their stems.

      One last time, she tipped her head back and called to her sister.

      To her surprise, she heard what might have been an answer. Something echoed inside the house.

      That meant she’d have to break her promise to Dolores—probably her neck as well. Pushing aside a tangle of vines, she backtracked through the garden.

      An old pergola hung at a precarious angle above her. Like everything else, it was choked with weeds, many of them dead, all of them clinging. Thorns snagged her pants, making her grateful she’d worn a pair of old hikers.

      A granite cross and a cracked marble headstone lay across the path. Eden didn’t see a raised plot, which probably meant someone had tried to make off with the stone, failed and wound up abandoning it. She looked, but couldn’t read the writing in the poor light. Respectful of its significance, she stepped over the stone and continued on toward the terrace.

      Three wide steps appeared through the dense foliage. Lisa, she mused, would love to get her green thumbs on a place like this.

      Eden yanked down one last vine and spotted the bottom step. Scratched, but glad to be out of the maze, she muttered, “Vampires live in cellars by day, Mary, not second-story bedrooms. Even fly-by-night magazine editors can tell the difference between a bed in a crumbling master suite and a coffin in the basement.”

      A train rolled past across the river. The whistle reached her over the croaking bullfrogs.

      She looked back at the fallen headstone and for a moment was tempted to get her flashlight. If the stone was Eva Dumont’s, she could tell Dolores…

      “No.” She stopped the thought flat. The past was the past, over and done. No matter what Dolores believed, there were no such things as ghosts. And even if there were, if she didn’t hurt them, why should they bother her?

      The grinding noise reached her again. Tilting her head back, Eden glimpsed a rectangular object above. Then she spied a blur of motion and felt a pair of strong arms wrap themselves around her. She saw dark hair and a flurry of leaves and felt her body leave the ground. A second later, she landed on her back on the garden path.

      Stunned, she watched as a large white planter crashed onto the very spot where she’d been standing.