The Cursed

She stood up abruptly. “Thank you all, but I’m about to keel over, so I’m going to bed.”

 

 

“Sounds like a plan,” Dallas said. “I’ll be up a bit later, if that’s all right with you.”

 

“Make yourself at home,” she told him. As she walked toward the stairs, she realized with renewed astonishment that he was going to spend more time talking with Melody and Hagen.

 

She wanted to turn around and demand to know how the hell he was able to see and speak with the dead so easily. She knew other people—especially in her small, tight circle of friends—who could do it. But to most of the world it would seem bizarre.

 

So where and how the hell and why had he come to be one of the few people in the world who had the strange ability?

 

She could still hear the low drone of voices downstairs when she reached her door. She wanted to know what they were saying.

 

But she was falling asleep standing up. She headed into her bedroom, washed her face and brushed her teeth, then donned a large nightshirt, fell into bed and, before she knew it, was asleep.

 

*

 

“So you believe this killer thinks Hannah knows something?” Hagen asked. “If that is true, I understand why you are worried. From the little I have heard about Los Lobos, crossing them can be dangerous.”

 

“I don’t know exactly why I’m worried, I just am. There are too many little things that the killer could put together and come up with the wrong answer. A couple who were staying here saw Jose Rodriguez just before he died,” Dallas told him. “Hannah herself found the body. And there’s no alarm system here, so it would be easy for anyone to get in and hurt her. One bright spot is that she has family coming tomorrow. A cousin, I think.”

 

“I hope it is Kelsey,” Melody said, pleased.

 

“We know her. She sees us, too,” Hagen told him.

 

“That’s excellent,” Dallas said, then hesitated. He wondered how many other people in Hannah’s circle could communicate with ghosts and whether they’d been born with the ability. He hadn’t learned to see the dead until he’d been older and no longer living in Key West. “Forgive me for asking, but, I’d like to hear it in your own words. Melody, how did...?”

 

“How did I die?” she asked, then glanced at Hagen with pain in her eyes. Even so many years later, the memory clearly still hurt.

 

“I kept going down to the sea,” she said. “Just as the legends say. One day I walked out into the water, because I could have sworn I saw a boat.”

 

“And if you had seen a boat and I had been on it...well, there would have been real irony. You would have been dead before I ever could have reached the shore,” Hagen said roughly.

 

She nodded. “But,” she reminded him, “you cannot imagine how I felt. Losing my father and you in one night...life was unbearable.”

 

“We think that might be why we are still here,” Hagen said.

 

“You think God sees what Melody did as suicide?” Dallas asked.

 

Hagen shrugged.

 

Dallas leaned forward. “I don’t believe that for a minute,” he said. “God, however one defines him, isn’t cruel. Life is what can be cruel. What we do to one another can be cruel. Perhaps you’re here to have a chance to be together now as you couldn’t be in life. Or to help right a wrong or save a life when the time comes.”

 

Melody rose and sat by him. He didn’t feel cold, as he would have expected. Instead, he felt a surprising warmth. She touched his knee, and he felt it like a shift in the air.

 

“Thank you,” she said, then looked over at Hagen. “I was foolish, heartbroken, inconsolable and foolish. My poor Hagen. He might have saved my father and himself—if not for Valmont LaBruge.”

 

“So that part of the story is true,” Dallas said.

 

“People do not have all the details right, but yes,” Hagen said, and there was bitterness in his voice. “I had Ian—I had him! We had just reached the lifeboat my men were in and were climbing aboard when LaBruge actually rammed it and plunged into the water himself. I do not suppose the dead like me should be spiteful, but I was glad I got to see him go down. I think he wanted Ian dead so he could have both Melody and Ian’s fortune, but...I think he wanted something more that night, too. Maybe the treasure that was rumored to be on board the Wind and the Sea. I did not know then, and I still do not.”

 

“You know, you may be right,” Melody said. “My father was not happy that I was in love with Hagen, but I was his only child and he doted on me after my mother’s death—afraid he’d lose me, too, I imagine. I do not think he would have liked to see me fall in love with anyone. LaBruge had spoken to my father about a match, but my father had never agreed to it.”

 

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