The terrible grief he’d felt upon her death was turning slowly, inexorably, into a cold and killing rage.

Had she tricked him? Had she somehow planned and executed the faking of her own death?

He hadn’t thought her smart enough, certainly not brave enough, to try to leave him, much less succeed. She knew the consequences. He had made them perfectly clear.

Till death do us part.

Obviously she couldn’t have done so alone. She’d had help. A man, a lover. A woman, especially a woman like Helen, could never have devised such a scheme on her own. How many times had she sneaked off to lie with some wife-stealing bastard, working out the details of her deception?

Laughing and fucking, plotting and planning.

Oh, there would be payment made.

He could calm himself again, continue about his business and his life without an outward ripple. He could nearly convince himself again that Pamela’s claims were nonsense. She was, after all, a woman. And women, by nature, were given to flights of fancy and foolishness.

Ghosts didn’t exist. And there was only one Helen Remington. The Helen who had been meant for him.

But at times in that big, glamorous house in Beverly Hills, he thought he heard ghosts whispering, or caught the bright sound of his dead wife’s taunting laughter.

What if she wasn’t dead?

He had to know. He had to be careful, and clever.

“Ferry’s loading.”

His eyes, pale as water, blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

The ferry worker stopped blowing on his take-out cup of coffee and instinctively stepped back from that blank stare. It was, he would think later, like staring into an empty sea.

“Ferry’s loading,” he repeated. “You’re going to Three Sisters, ain’t ya?”

“Yes.” The smile that spread over the handsome face was worse than the eyes. “Yes, I am.”

According to legend, the one known as Air had left her island to go with the man who promised to love her, to care for her. And when he’d broken those promises and turned her life into a misery she had done nothing. She’d borne children in sorrow, raised them in fear. Had bowed, and had broken.

Had died.

Her last act had been to send her children back to the Sisters for protection. But she had done nothing, even with her powers, to protect or save herself.

So the first link in the chain of a curse was forged.

Nell thought of the story again. Of the choices and mistakes, and of destiny. She kept it clear in her head as she walked down the street of what had become her home. What she intended to keep as her home.

When she walked in, Zack was delivering a blistering lecture to a young boy she didn’t recognize. Automatically, she started to step out again, but Zack merely held up a finger and never broke rhythm.