The Price of Atonement: Harbor Pointe Series Book 1 by Mae Clair

Author:Mae Clair [Clair, Mae]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

The screams started shortly after midnight. Awake and fully dressed, Leviticus had been sitting quietly in his bedroom, gaze turned out the window. No sooner did the shrieking begin than a spark of light flared in the keeper’s house, followed quickly by another.

Cane forgotten, he bolted from his chair, down the stairs, then out of the inn. By the time he reached the front porch of the Lowens home, his leg throbbed with pain. Thankfully, the screams had stopped. Before he could raise a fist to pound on the door, the barrier swept open. Willie blundered over the threshold, shoved outside by her mother.

He caught the girl as she stumbled, her eyes wide and frightened. Barefoot, clad in a ruffled nightdress, pale hair tangled and askew, she looked as though she’d been hastily roused from bed. Behind her, Blythe had at least managed to pull on a housecoat, but her face was white as the collar of her dressing gown, the lacy edges just visible at her throat.

Lifting a lantern, she peered up at him with a frantic gaze, mouth pumping soundlessly. It took several seconds to gather her wits. “I have to get away from here! Take Wilhelmina to the inn—please.”

“Was it Iona?”

She bobbed her head, lips pressed tightly, tears threatening to spill. “She… she wants to kill me. I know she does!”

“Go to the inn with Willie. You’ll be safe there.”

Without waiting for a reply, Leviticus brushed past them into the house. He sensed the ghost immediately. Not her presence, but the residue of her passing. The rope burn on his neck tingled, growing stronger as he moved swiftly through the room toward the rear. He found the bedrooms situated across from one another, the smaller clearly belonging to Willie. An oil lantern stood on the bedside table, casting a puddle of light into the hallway. The bed was rumpled, covers tossed aside as if in haste, but he sensed nothing malicious in the empty room.

Would Grant have been able to hear the screams from his post in the lighthouse? Doubtful, but the keeper might have noticed the flicker of lantern light. Leviticus bent his head to glance out the window, then returned to the hallway where he immediately encountered a wall of cold air.

Iona materialized inches from his face, no more than a hand’s span of distance between them. He might have inhaled her breath, she stood so close. Gone was the ethereal spirit who’d resembled a living woman. Her eyes had become cavernous black holes, while her flesh mirrored the cobweb-gray of a crypt. The right side of her skull was partially caved in, brain matter tangled in the blood-soaked strands of her hair. Wet sand clung to her hands and nightdress, both mockery and memory of the woman who’d died on the beach—who’d thrown herself from the lighthouse to end broken and shattered on the ground below.

He resisted the impulse to recoil. “Is this how you appeared to Blythe? I’ve seen far worse than you, Iona York.

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