Chapter 1
Hurricane stepped out onto the deck of his Maine coastal home and watched as the Atlantic Ocean crashed over the beach. He loved it here; something about the storms electrified him. But then that was his specialty; it’s what he did. That he was a climatologist was something else again. He hadn’t fully utilized his education very much in the last ten years. He needed to help put out too many other electrical storms or energetic storms instead. And this last one had been a prime example—tarot cards that could kill. “What the hell?” he muttered. He shook his head.
He lifted his face into the wind and let it pour over him. When he heard Stefan’s voice in the back of his head, he smiled. “That was a hell of a journey you sent me on.”
But I knew you could handle it, he stated. Besides, you were already in New Orleans.
“Yep, and I was hoping to spend a couple days there,” he muttered. “Not turn around and bolt.”
You still can. I’m sure they would like to see you again.
“That Skylar is pretty amazing,” he noted.
You have no idea, Stefan muttered. The things she can do with the dead are something I’ve never seen before.
“Okay, now you’ve got me fascinated.”
I might have, he agreed, but we have another problem.
“What the hell is that?” he asked, with an eye roll. “You know that I thought all this stuff would help, but instead it seems like the energy just keeps getting crazier and crazier.”
You’re right. It does, and I’m not sure what’s going on with this one though.
“In what way?”
I think it concerns all your trips, collecting all these items and putting them in the museum.
“Yeah. What are you getting at?”
I have a jeweler, who has been putting a lot of emotions into the designs she makes, and, of course, that’s making her products very attractive.
“That’s smart of her. So what about it?”
She contacted me.
“About what?”
A string of pearls she’s trying to repair.
“Uh-oh. Don’t tell me. Teardrops?”
A whole string of them. Pearls are known to be the tears of the ocean.
“Sure, and?”
Every time she goes to repair this necklace, she gets visions of murders. One for every pearl.
He sucked in his breath. “Good God, are you serious?”
Yes, very serious, and I’ve done just enough surface digging to understand that an awful lot of energy is infused into these gems. The problem is, she seems to think that maybe whoever created this necklace had a matching bracelet, and he wasn’t quite done with the job.
“Who is this person, the jeweler you’re talking to?”
She lives in Maine, which is another reason for contacting you, since you’re right there. … Her name is Jewel.
“Jewel. Jewel. Jewel. I don’t think I know anybody by that name.”
No, but you’re likely to.
“Why is that?”
Because she just resurrected from the dead.
*
Jewel opened her eyes, the same panic choking her, as she bolted upright, swinging her arm against a bed rail. Machines beeped at her side, and a nurse came running.
“You’re fine. You’re fine,” she reassured her, “and we’re more than happy to have you awake.”
Jewel stared at the nurse in shock. “What happened?” she murmured.
“We don’t know everything,” she began, “but basically you died and came back.”
“I died?” Jewel asked in shock.
The nurse smiled. “Yes, but it’s fine. You’ll be just fine.” The nurse stared at her with a big grin and added, “You’ve been very, very lucky.”
Jewel nodded slowly, waited while the nurse checked everything, and then withdrew. Jewel wanted to ask a million questions, but, at the same time, she didn’t want to ask any. She had no idea what had happened. Whatever had put her in the hospital was a complete blank. Did she have an accident? Was she having surgery? She didn’t know.
She heard a man’s voice in the background, somewhere in the dark recesses of her brain, telling her, You better not say anything. You better not say anything. Or else.
She didn’t know what the “or else” meant, but she knew it was something important. Her fingers went to her throat, reaching for something that belonged there, something that was always there, a necklace. But not now. She looked around for it, but, of course, no personal belongings were allowed in the hospital. She kept clawing at her throat, prodding her memory to return. When the nurse returned, Jewel asked her, “My necklace, do you know where it is?”
The woman frowned. “Sorry, you didn’t have on a necklace.” She stopped and then calmly explained, “Honestly you didn’t have a stitch on. We don’t have ID for you. You didn’t have any clothing, nothing. Nobody knows what happened or how you came to be found at the front of the hospital, completely nude but not a mark on you.”
She stared at the nurse in shock. “My name is Jewel,” she stated. “And I really need to get back that necklace.”
The woman shrugged. “The doctor is on his way,” she said gently. “You can talk to him about it.” She held out a glass of water. “Here. Take a sip.”
Jewel immediately took one swallow of water, and then, as if her body suddenly realized what water was, she sucked back the entire glass.
The woman raised her eyebrows. “Well, that’s a good sign.”
Jewel nodded. “Did you say I didn’t have any clothes on?”
“You didn’t have anything on, but, at the same time,” she repeated, “you also didn’t have a mark on you, so we don’t know what happened.”
“Good God,” she murmured. She stared down at the hospital gown that covered her, and then she looked at her arms and the bruises all over her wrists and higher up. “If I didn’t have a mark on me,” she asked, “where did these come from?”
“Well, that’s just it,” the nurse added. “Bruises show up after any trauma but later on. We’re still trying to figure out what happened though. So, if you remember anything at all, it would be a really good thing,” she noted.
But Jewel just stared at her, shook her head, and said, “I can’t remember anything.”
Chapter 2
Jewel stared around the pristine white hospital room, wondering how she could push past the clouds in her brain and get answers for the doctor, who stood here staring at her. Once again, she shook her head very gently and repeated, “I have no idea what happened.” Her voice was no more than a murmur. Even that was hard to do.
His lips twitched, and the creases between his eyebrows deepened. He looked down at the tablet in his hand thoughtfully. “I don’t see any physical issues. You don’t appear to have any internal damage. Outside of the amnesia that you’re experiencing …”
He let his voice trail off, and she knew he would say something about it being time to release her.
She pointed to her arms and asked, “What about the bruising?”