Comes the Dark.

A Dark Tides Romance.

Celia Ashley.

Hauntingly beautiful, Alcina Cove lures many into its lovely port. But these days, the coastal New England town's allure could be deadly....

Drawn back to Alcina Cove by an ominous dream, Maris Granger hopes to reconcile with her beloved but long-estranged Aunt Alva. Sadly, Maris discovers Alva has died under mysterious circ.u.mstances, destroying any hope for closure. Bereft and vulnerable, Maris finds shelter in the arms of the s.e.xy, stalwart cop handling the case. But loving Detective Dan Stauffer feels like a betrayal of Aunt Alva's memory, especially when the stubborn lawman denies her sinister suspicions about her aunt's death.

Falling for Maris is easy. Believing in the "clues" the dark-haired beauty swears will solve her aunt's murder is another story. Dan isn't about to let go of reason when it comes to solving the biggest case of his career. But when Maris is suddenly pegged as the prime suspect, Dan is ready to do anything to keep her safe, no matter what dark truths emerge....

Dedication.

To the believers in this world.

Author's Foreword.

I know readers have wondered why I write what I do. In my other existence (well, under my other pen name) I write sweet romance, wholesome and, at this point in time, centered around small town life and the holiday season. Readers wonder where the darkness in this world of Alcina Cove comes from. I freely admit, at the risk of sounding dramatic, it comes from experience. I have witnessed the paranormal-the first time as a very young child-and I have had premonitions of events that have come to pa.s.s, both while dreaming and when awake and staring with open eyes at something I could not possibly be seeing. None of these events have been, perhaps, as mysterious and dark as the situations in which I place my characters, but we as writers all draw on experience somewhere and expound on that hard-won knowledge to create mood and tale. I know a few of you have questioned with digital frowns the flights of dark fancy my stories take, but not all paranormal is werewolves and vampires, shape shifters and demons. Some of it comes much closer to real life. And some of it moves clearly to the other side of life...

Acknowledgements.

Once again, I would like to thank the sisters in my writers group. When the going gets tough, they are always quick with a well-aimed kick to the inspiration. Thanks again to my editor, Corinne, who is not only great at her job but provides an excellent sounding board for all things.

And as always, thank you dear readers for keeping your faith in me and making me remember the reason I write.

Chapter 1.

"The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

No one got a second chance. Not really. There were no reconstructed moments, no opportunities to make a different decision, because all the time between could not be erased. The consequences of choice remained. All one could hope for was a chance to start again.

Maris finished packing her bag. She zipped it shut, clutching the zipper tag between thumb and forefinger so tightly the raised letters on metal imprinted themselves into her flesh.

Time to go.

To her right, white curtains fluttered with a song's rhythm, rising in a pale, curling billow and falling back again, the delicate rasp of lace against the window screen like sand settling over paper. Cold, the air-colder than it had been for more than a week. Too early. September was the month for embedding one's fingernails into the last of summer, unwilling to let it go. Instead, the temperature felt like winter's onset, as if the season was rushing toward bone-chill and long nights. When she'd first climbed into bed, the air had been refreshing. Now she hastened to shut and lock the cas.e.m.e.nt before adding her wool coat to the items on the bed.

Maris glanced at the clock. Midnight. Yes. Time to go.

It would be hard driving on two hours sleep, but the weighted urgency would carry her through, keep her eyes wide and her thoughts alert. She hadn't dreamed in a very long time. Not of that place. Not of the woman who waited for her there.

Reaching for the switch on the bedside lamp, Maris paused in contemplation of the brown plastic bottle she'd told herself to leave behind. The sleeping pills kept the dreams at bay, held the haunting down to a minimum. She didn't take them every night. Last night she hadn't, and the past had broken through. Perhaps it would all be too much. Perhaps...yes, perhaps she should bring the pills with her.

She grabbed the medicine bottle-and the diary, too-shoving both items into her purse. Before turning off the light, Maris gave herself a final look in the mirror, finger-fluffing her short, dark hair as she stared into the eyes looking back at her. Black-lashed, gray as smoke. Her eyes.

Outside, she stowed the canvas satchel, her laptop, and an insulated lunch bag on the pa.s.senger side floor. She tossed her coat over the seat with her purse and went back around to the driver's side where she spent a moment studying the sky. Earlier clouds had been ushered to the sidelines by the cold front. Stars shone in velvety blackness, barely dimmed by the lights of the strip mall in the distance. Before the intervention of modern technology, sailors navigated by the stars. She supposed many still did. The last sailor she'd known had died nine years past. She hadn't let his stories die with him, though. In those final days, she'd written down by hand into a notebook every word her father had spoken, then transferred the narratives to her laptop. One day she would see those marvelous tales of the sea published. That was her plan. But like many other plans, there were no a.s.surances.

One hundred miles into her drive and the pavement of the interstate awash in the glow of her headlights, a pair of blue eyes flashed into her mind's eye with such clarity her gut wrenched. She had no idea whose they were, but a name had come with them. A first name only. No one she knew. Maris pulled her car off onto the shoulder of the highway and stopped. Gripping the wheel with tightly curled fingers, she leaned toward the glow of the dashboard lights, bile churning in her stomach.

I'm sorry, my dear. So very sorry...

No one got a second chance.

Chapter 2.

Dan slapped across the surface of the nightstand in search of the buzzing cell phone, head pounding with each vibration of his palm against wood. Locating the instrument, he s.n.a.t.c.hed it up to his ear, smacking himself in the temple. Ow.

"Dan Stauffer here." Dan cleared his throat before speaking again. "What's up?" He glanced at the clock. "At three forty-five in the d.a.m.ned morning."

His head hurt. Sometimes one more beer could be the one that caused the damage. He hadn't been drunk, but for some reason he felt like he had one h.e.l.l of a hangover. Maybe it was a cold coming on. This d.a.m.ned, indecisive weather didn't help. "h.e.l.lo?"

"We've got a body."

"Where?" Groaning, Dan swung his legs over the side of the bed. He leaned forward, squinting at the bright rays of the streetlight burning through the slats of the blinds. He crossed the floor, and with an aching stretch of his arm, he reached up and shut them, dimming the room to near-darkness. What the heck had he been doing? Sure, he'd spent some time at the gym before heading out with the guys, but being hit by a truck hadn't been in his exercise regimen.

"Alva Mabry's."

Rubbing his eyes, Dan scanned the floor through his fingers for the clothes he'd discarded earlier. Paler than the dark rug beneath them, they lay in a shadowed, crumpled heap. "Is it Alva herself?"

"Looks to be."

Dan ma.s.saged the back of his neck, turning his head from side to side. "You don't know for sure?"

"Whitley's here. He says it's her. I've never met the woman."

"Never had the hankering to get your fortune told?" His joke met by silence, Dan straightened. "Signs of foul play?"

Dan heard a voice in the background-presumably Whitley-speaking in an undertone. Officer Green spoke once the other officer had finished.

"Not really," he said without inflection.

Dan paused as he reached for his pants. "Not really or no? You need to be more specific when I'm asking questions."

Green inhaled and then hesitated before speaking. "Then the answer would be no."

"Alva has to be more than ninety years old. I'm willing to lay odds on natural causes."

"I don't want to make that call, Detective. That would...that would be your job."

Dan didn't need the reminder. He didn't like the reminder. Since his advancement to detective several months ago, he'd noted some of the younger officers were miffed. He didn't understand why. He had seniority over them all, and the position was based on experience. He'd worked hard for it. The promotion certainly hadn't been handed to him as matter of favoritism. Far from it.

"All right," Dan said. "I'll be there in ten minutes."

"Look, Detective Stauffer, I apologize if it seems I'm out of line. It's just...well, there's something off about her. The dead lady."

Jonathan Green was fairly young. Maybe this was his first dead body and his reaction one of nerves. "Okay," Dan said in an attempt at rea.s.surance, "I'll be heading out in a sec."

"You need the address?"

"Nope. I know the place."

Dan hung up and pulled on his pants. His b.u.t.ton-down shirt had been slung crookedly over the back of the desk chair, and he pulled it free. He held the fabric to his face to breathe in the scent of perfume clinging to the soft folds. Nice. Trouble was he couldn't even remember the woman's name. He hadn't had that much to drink tonight. His inability to recall the ident.i.ty of the perfume owner had nothing to do with inebriation, only lack of interest.

G.o.d, was he that much of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d? He didn't want to be. As he slipped his arms into his shirtsleeves, he gave brief consideration to his defunct marriage. Funny, everyone figured he'd caused the demise of that relationship. He had a reputation. Not a particularly good one. Not unfounded. But for the time he'd been married, he'd been an honest husband. It had been his wife who'd strayed, who eventually left him for some guy she hooked up with in the grocery store after discussing the cost of chicken with him. Dan had spent the years since making sure he didn't get hurt again. Maybe he'd gotten too good at it.

Shoving his feet into his shoes, he snorted. h.e.l.l, the issues between him and his ex had begun long before she found a lover in the packaged meat aisle. And that was something for which they both were to blame.

Dan dropped his cell phone into his pants pocket, grabbed his keys, ID, and wallet, and jogged down the stairs, body protesting. He snagged his jacket from the banister as he pa.s.sed. As he put on the garment, he noticed lipstick on the lapel. The marking appeared deliberately placed to form a full set of lips. Dan pulled a tissue out of the box by the door and scrubbed the oily substance off. "Sorry, Miss Nameless, but I don't need the guys seeing that."

Not at an investigation. Not in front of men who resented him enough already.

As he backed out of the garage, he glanced in the rearview mirror and stopped short, the force of the brakes jerking him in the seat. A feminine silhouette blocked the driveway behind his car, a shawl on her shoulders blowing like a flag in the breeze. He started to get out, then paused. He could see through her to the post of the streetlight across the road. Tightening his fingers on the inside handle, he pulled the door shut.

"Not tonight. I don't need this type of s.h.i.t tonight."

The figure didn't move. Dan held a silent debate with himself regarding the difference between reality and the effects of sleep deprivation. "Get away from me. I mean it."

Good G.o.d, if anyone at the station could hear him now he'd be up for a psych evaluation. He couldn't deny, though, that he'd seen his share of strange, but he had hoped to go the rest of his lifetime without a repeat. He opted to wait, keeping the figure in sight in his rearview. After a moment, the apparition turned and vanished like smoke in the wind.

With a great deal of profanity, Dan backed the car from the driveway and sped down the street in the direction of Alva Mabry's house, pushing the hair at his nape down with an open palm. A few years back, he'd learned rather horrifically that more existed in this world than logic could explain. But what did a person do with that type of knowledge? It wasn't something a man imparted to others as the wisdom of experience. No, it was the kind of information a man kept to himself, mouth shut, teeth clenched against the yell that always wanted to escape at the memory.

When Dan reached Alva Mabry's two-story, nineteenth-century house at the edge of the commercial district of Alcina Cove, two marked cars were already parked out front. The nearest partially blocked the purple sign that read in large, block letters Alva Mabry, Psychic - Palmistry and Tarot Card Readings. Dan managed to prevent rolling his eyes at the last second. A little respect for the dead might be in order. No matter what her occupation, Alva had been a resident of Alcina Cove for nearly a century. And if a man believed he'd seen ghosts, who the heck was he to question a woman's claim to clairvoyance or an ability to speak with those very spirits? Even so, the notion made him far from comfortable. He wanted to deny all of it outright, but lying had its own costs.

Dan closed the car door with a quiet click. As he strode across the sidewalk and up the steps to the front door, he shoved his hands into his pockets in a search for the notepad and pen he'd clearly forgotten to grab from his desk. Green and the other officer, Whitley, stood together in the foyer of the antiquated white house, not doing much of anything. Dan nodded at the man who'd phoned him. "Green. Where's the body?"

The two uniformed men stepped back, parting in opposite directions like a pair of double doors. Dan looked past them into the parlor Alva utilized for her business and sucked a breath in through his teeth. He resisted the urge to smooth the fine hairs on his neck again. "s.h.i.t."

"See what I mean?" Green said.

Dan walked into the room in silence. His contact with the dead wasn't the same as what this woman had claimed when alive, but in the corporeal sense. In a harbor town, there were plenty of drowning victims. Accident victims, too, and the occasional murder, as well as those who had died from whatever natural cause had taken them. Even so, Dan's heart had skipped a beat at the sight of Alva Mabry sitting bolt upright in the red upholstered wing-back chair behind the draped table. Her thin arms lay along the tabletop. Clouded eyes in a wrinkled face slanted at an angle that made them appear to be watching Dan and the officers behind him.

"s.h.i.t," Dan said again and hastened forward. "Did either of you think to take her d.a.m.ned pulse?"

He reached for the woman's arm as the two men protested-of course they had. Dan closed his fingers on chilled flesh. Pressing his middle finger against the inside of Alva's narrow wrist, he found no evidence of life. He watched her chest for movement, bent his cheek to her face to feel for breath, pressed the flesh beneath her jaw. Alva was definitely gone.

Dropping his hand to his thigh with a small slap against fabric, Dan sighed. "Did you call the medical examiner's office?"

"Yep." This from Whitley.

"What have you touched in here?" When neither of them answered, Dan glanced back.

"Nothing," said Green. "I called you first."

"All right."

Dan stared at the body in the chair, a fringed shawl draped across the shoulders in folds, as if blown by a current of air. The memory of the silhouette, shawl fluttering in the wind behind his car, came back to him. "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l."

"What's up, Detective?"

Dan raised his hand in dismissal of his own brief expletive and moved forward, making a careful stroll around the table's circ.u.mference, looking for anything that might be lying on the floor. He settled each foot one step at a time, eyes downcast. No scuff marks on the carpet, no debris. With the exception of the uncanny positioning of Alva's body, all appeared in order. "Who called this in?"

"A neighbor noticed the parlor lights on. Figured it was late for that, so asked us to check on her."

He shot a glance at Whitley. "And what was this neighbor doing out at this hour?"

"Walking his dog," Whitley informed him. "Seemed straight up."

Dan nodded and completed his circuit around the table, pausing once again at the woman's right side. He bent and studied Alva's neck, her face. He looked over her clothing, her hands resting on the table, the right turned up, a single card gripped in the fingers. Beyond them, a series of ill.u.s.trated cards lay in a pattern on the table. Dan a.s.sumed the card in Alva's hand coincided with the one empty s.p.a.ce. He didn't know anything about Tarot reading, although he had heard that people sometimes performed their own. Across from Alva, the guest chair remained pushed against the table and the rug beneath undisturbed. He felt safe in concluding the presence of the cards didn't necessarily mean someone had been there.

Dan's gaze strayed back to the card in Alva's hand. He wondered what the picture on it signified and supposed each card held a meaning. Perhaps the pattern in which they ended up on the table did, as well. Quackery, if you asked him. The pictures, however, were quite beautiful, especially the one in Alva's hand. What he could see of it appeared to be a woman in ceremonial garb, dark hair curling down her shoulders but partially concealed by some type of headdress.

He heard the voice of the local ME outside at the bottom of the short flight of steps leading to the front door. G.o.d, he'd forgotten to close it. He glanced at Alva apologetically, but stopped at the realization she was beyond caring. He turned back to the two officers. "I always heard Alva didn't have any family. Did you locate any signs of her people? Photos?"

Green stirred. "Not in here, but we'll check around the house. h.e.l.lo, Dr. Rankin."

Charlie Rankin lumbered into the room carrying a folded black bag. He nodded. "Jonathan. d.i.c.k. Dan, congratulations on the promotion."

"Thanks," Dan said. The young officers exchanged a glance. Dan ignored them. Rankin's a.s.sistant arrived dragging a rattling gurney.

Rankin cleared his throat. Beside him, the younger man, eyes wide, glanced at Alva, then around the decorated parlor. Rankin's face wrinkled in amus.e.m.e.nt. "Ed here thinks Alva's ghost is going to follow him home."