The Cursed

Hannah said, “No. He was married when he was young. His wife died of cancer when she was in her thirties. He never fell in love again.”

 

 

“He dated, and Hannah and I would judge the women for him. Oh, and no, I didn’t mind. Hannah was always the historian, and I wanted to be a U.S. Marshal from the time I was a kid. He left me some bonds. But the bottom line is that we both loved him and we knew he loved us. He didn’t need to leave either of us anything.”

 

Petrie suddenly jumped up on Hannah’s lap, and she let out a little gasp of surprise. She was amazed at the way the other three jumped into motion, rising, drawing their weapons.

 

“Sorry! Sorry! It’s just Petrie,” she said.

 

“Petrie!” Kelsey said, walking over to scratch the cat on the head. “You little mongrel. You scared us all to pieces.”

 

“I think he just wants to be fed,” Hannah said. “I’ll be right back.”

 

She took the cat into the kitchen. Petrie was beautiful. As big as a Maine Coon and just as bushy, he had paws that looked gigantic because each one had six toes.

 

“I’m really not forgetting you, but no more just staring out of windows, okay? It freaks me out,” she told him.

 

He rubbed against her as she prepared his food, then dug right in when she left to rejoin the others.

 

There was a knock at the door just as they finished eating. The first people to arrive were four middle-aged women on a reunion trip together. Three couples followed them, and then a group of six students who were down from Tallahassee.

 

“None of them looks dangerous,” Hannah told Dallas in the kitchen as they gathered water bottles to hand around.

 

“No,” he agreed. “But Liam and David are on the way, and they’ll be coming with us. We’re not taking any chances. And tonight I’m not so worried about who’s on the tour. I’m more worried about who may be following it.”

 

“So should we bait him?” Hannah asked.

 

“If we’re going to bait him, we have to figure out the right way to do it. And it’s too dangerous to do it out in the open, where we have no control of the scene. Tonight we’ll just be watching, too.”

 

She couldn’t help noticing how close he was to her, how he was smiling at her. She felt as if the world should know there was something special about him, something that called to her, as if she’d longed for him forever somewhere in her soul. He was...

 

...leaving the kitchen without a second glance her way.

 

She followed him, mentally kicking herself for being an idiot. Liam and David had arrived by the time she reached the parlor, and she found herself more than usually glad to see them. She was relieved that she would be surrounded by law enforcement tonight. It would be suicidal for someone to go after her.

 

Then again, the Wolf’s crew seemed to be suicidal. Maybe it was a requirement of the job.

 

As she always did, Hannah began with the history of her own house. One of the women was delighted to tell her that she was certain she had seen Melody Chandler up on the widow’s walk the night before.

 

When they left the house, she walked them to Duval and told them stories about the hanging tree in Captain Tony’s Saloon. The building had been erected in 1851 as an icehouse, but it had doubled as the morgue. Sixteen pirates had been hanged from the tree, as well as one woman, who had killed her own family. She was known as the Lady in Blue, some said because she had worn blue when she died, while others said it was because she had turned blue when she was hanged. She was buried beneath the pool table and was known to haunt the bathroom. The late Captain Tony himself had been like a Hemingway character, engaged in all kinds of enterprises, as well as being the mayor of Key West. But it had been a woman, Josie Russell, who had first opened the building as a saloon. It had been called Sloppy Joe’s until a rental dispute had driven the owner to move the well-known Hemingway haunt across the street. Josie packed up all her equipment and alcohol in the middle of the night and moved over to the current location of Sloppy Joe’s on the corner of Duval and Green Street. Key West, however, was a haven for bars. The old Sloppy Joe’s reopened as Captain Tony’s.

 

They moved on to St. Paul’s, where an old sea captain haunted the graveyard where he remained along with a number of children who’d died in the fire at the theater nearby. Most of those buried in the graveyard had been moved to the Key West Cemetery, but a few remained. The sea captain was known to have haunted a down-and-out traveler who had decided to sleep there; the children were heard to cry and sing. From the church they moved to the theater where the children had died. That was followed by the La Concha hotel, haunted by both old and new ghosts. The group was delightful, asking questions, commenting and staying close.

 

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