My sister, my cousin? she thought. It didn’t matter what relationship they had—Maddie had had the chance to save her when she needed her most, and she didn’t. She was too weak and scared. But Cordelia really couldn’t blame her. Hawthorne and those girls were all she ever knew. She aimlessly thumbed through the pages until she noticed something fall out of the paper onto her lap.
She looked at the glossy tarot card that had fallen out of the paper. It looked brand-new, right out of the pack. Suddenly she felt like someone had known all along where she was and what she was planning. Someone was trying to scare her by letting her know that there was unfinished business. Someone was out to get her.
A man on a horse marched triumphantly over fallen bodies. He was holding a large black flag. But instead of a face, there was only a skull. And the eyes of the horse were bloodred.
It was the Death tarot card.
Reed Campbell lifted the brown glass bottle to his lips, letting the liquid fill and burn the back of his throat. The cool salty air rubbed his throat raw, forcing him to indulge in his preferred medication. He caught a glimpse of himself in the glass window of his boat—the only place he felt at home these days.
He was the bastard son, all right.
While his baby brother, Trevor, had somehow become the golden child of Hawthorne, Massachusetts—the fair-haired prodigal son who could do no wrong—Reed occupied the role of town drunk, screwup, alleged murderer, and pedophile. On his sober days, he realized how the drinking was becoming a problem, which was why he’d made sure that those days were few and far between. It had already cost him his job, his dignity, and countless friends.
But thanks to Great-grandfather Campbell and the little oil company he started decades ago, Reed no longer felt the need to be gainfully employed. His bank account remained healthy thanks to the thousands of people who needed to stay warm on shivering New England nights. Reed often reminded himself of that fact on nights when he careened down to the waterfront after last call at one of the local taverns. Even though he was personally a failure and unable to support himself, the oil company that bore his family name kept everyone in town warm, and by default, lined his own deep, albeit threadbare, pockets.
He drowned out his sorrows in bottles and bars. He knew that his feelings for Cordelia and Maddie could be seen as inappropriate—that his actions could be called into question. Cordelia just blew him away with her love of literature and her free spirit. He knew that her time in Hawthorne would be short-lived, but he just couldn’t understand why people would think he had anything to do with her disappearance. If anything, he was more enthralled and enchanted by her than anyone else in town. Perhaps that was his downfall.
And Maddie. Ever since she left for boarding school, he realized how deep his feelings ran for her. There were hundreds of reasons why he should stay away from her and keep her out of his mind. But he couldn’t get over the way that she looked at him—like he was a knight in shining armor. She saw past all the flaws that his family and the town of Hawthorne held over him. She made him feel like a man. And even though he was in a relationship with someone new—someone his own age, someone more appropriate—he couldn’t get Maddie out of his head. Which was why he kept the liquor flowing and the nights endless so he was never faced with the harsh light of the dawn.
Finnegan O’Malley didn’t believe in ghosts, but he swore on his great-grandmother’s grave that he saw one. And not just any ghost. Not the random specters known to wander through the historical properties he took care of, the ones who seemed to have no awareness of their ghostly state, but just continued their daily activities in the same manner that they had done centuries before. Not Deacon Knott, who was believed to still take up residence on the top floor of the Knott Cove Inn, his heavy boots famously echoing throughout the Victorian bed-and-breakfast. Curls of smoke from his pipe hovered in the air of the grand parlor, his shadow loomed over the pretty women who dared to stay overnight as guests. Some even claimed to have been pinched rather viciously in their sleep, the purplish bruising on their backsides or upper thighs the only physical proof.
No, this ghost was a familiar one to Finn, or at least, she had been in life. This was a girl who continued to haunt Finn equally in his dreaming and wakeful states. A girl whose voice still rang out as clear and lyrical as it had when she first swept into town. She was a misfit and an outsider, not unlike himself. Someone whom he’d admired and even loved (though he’d never admit it to anyone—hardly even to himself), and ultimately had lost. But Cordelia LeClaire hadn’t slipped away easily. He couldn’t let her go—his heart wouldn’t allow for it.
He’d loved her from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. He loved her even more when he observed her midnight swims and watched as she danced through gardens in the early morning hours. He didn’t know why he felt the need to watch over her. It just came instinctually. It was like watching over a beautiful rainbow fish in a sea of sharks. He still remembered their first kiss. It was just as important—if not more—than the night that they first made love. He’d secretly watched her midnight swims with Maddie, and he knew that she would return on certain nights alone. He knew she would need protection, even if she didn’t believe it herself. And knowing the rough treatment she’d received upon her arrival in town, that there would be some people who would take advantage of her solitary swims if they ever found out. Which was why he was determined to never let her out of his sight on those hot, humid nights when the ocean beckoned to her like a siren’s song to a sailor.
One stifling night at the end of August, he watched from behind a rock as she dipped in and out of the ocean like a mermaid. He was afraid to take his eyes off her for fear that she’d slip beneath the water and swim away forever—taking his heart with her.
He watched as she cocked her head to the side and spun around in the water. She looked right over to where he was crouched and he slunk backward, afraid that he’d been caught as a sort of Peeping Tom.
She came right out of the water—letting the heat of the night burn the water droplets off her skin, her long red hair clinging to her wet skin—and instinctively moved over to his hiding spot.
Before he could come up with a plausible excuse, she smiled widely and put her hand on his cheek.
“My own personal bodyguard,” she said brightly. “My valiant knight, I know that you’ve been keeping watch over me. I can feel your eyes on me.”
He stuttered, trying to come up with an explanation. Wanting her to believe that he wasn’t some kind of a stalker. Before he could say anything more, she quieted him with a kiss. At first it was tentative and sweet. And then he reciprocated with a longer kiss, embracing her and not minding that her wet body was soaking his clothes. It was a kiss that he’d remember until his dying day.
He knew her intimately and he knew her secrets. He’d once heard his grandfather say that if two people shared a secret—one that nobody else knew about—it bound them together until the secret was finally revealed. He swore on his life that he’d never reveal it, not when she went missing, and not even when he’d been suspected of being involved in her vanishing. He gave his word—and his heart—to Cordelia.
And now, with no warning, in the bright light of day, he saw her. She’d come back to him. It was only for a moment and could be blamed on the dehydrated and overtired state he was in after doing the landscaping in the Old Town Hall’s courtyard. He knew it was Cordelia because he caught her familiar scent of apples and lavender. He knew it was her from the look in her eyes. It was the same look he saw in her pale, watery blue eyes that she had the last time he saw her. Those eyes were forever etched in his memory. They were wide-set, haunted, shimmering, and most memorably, they were filled with fear.
Kate Endicott didn’t believe in coincidences.
She was not superstitious, and wasn’t really concerned with improving her luck,