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“I tried to help her,” she told him. But her herbs weren’t working. “Please, do something! Save her!”
The man knelt beside Raven, and his fingers probed her wrist. “She’s dead.”
“No, not yet.” If Raven were dead, Maria would have seen her ghost because she always saw the souls of the recently departed. And
sometimes of the not-so-recently departed. “She needs a doctor.”
He shook his head.
“Why won’t you help her?” The answer was obvious. He had tried killing the girl; he had no intention of saving her. Or of letting Maria live...
If she had any hope of surviving—and getting help for Raven—she had to act. Just as she had swung the knife at the rope noose with all of her strength, she pulled it from beneath her skirt and swung it at the man leaning over Raven’s body. She didn’t want to kill him; she just wanted to hurt him badly enough that he dropped the gun.
But as she neared his body, her momentum slowed—and she hesitated before burying the blade. She closed her eyes and pushed the knife down, then gasped as strong fingers locked around her wrist. Something cold and shaped like a circle pressed against her chin.
She drew in an unsteady breath, and the gun barrel pinched her skin. Maybe she should have read her own cards. Maybe then she would have seen this—would have seen this man. She opened her eyes to study him because his was the last face she would probably ever see.
He stared at her, his grayish-blue eyes as cold and hard as his gun. The candlelight flickered, picking up red glints in his thick brown hair. Even kneeling on the floor, he towered over her, broad shouldered and square jawed.
She tugged at her wrist, but his grasp tightened. And the knife dropped from her numb fingers onto the floor. “Let go of me...”
His mouth curved into a faint grin. “I’ve spent too long tracking you down to let you get away now.”
Her heart slammed against her ribs. He was the one. The person who’d been hunting her for all these years and had taken all those other lives...
A gasp broke the eerie silence of the room. But it hadn’t slipped through her lips. Or his.
She glanced down at Raven as the girl’s eyes fluttered open and she stared up at them, her eyes wide with shock and horror. The girl had survived a hanging—maybe because of Maria’s healing, maybe because she was stronger than she looked. But Maria doubted Raven was strong enough to survive whatever else the man had planned for her. For them.
She should have driven the knife deep in his chest while she’d had the chance. So that she wouldn’t die as the others had—as Raven nearly had.
Like a witch...
