Pirate's Persuasion - Lisa Kessler Page 0,9

there wasn’t a logical way to explain how he could be an uncle of a boy who took his last breath in 1795, and he couldn’t tell her he drank from the Holy Grail without exposing his entire crew.

Unless the boy already told her. She said she could talk to the dead. Drake shook his head. She didn’t know. She would have said something or peppered him with questions to verify the boy’s claim. She didn’t know the truth, and he wasn’t going to try to explain it.

Easier to deny any connection.

But fuck, he was paying the price now. He hadn’t dreamed of that night in over fifty years. Foolishly, he thought that curse might be behind him.

He didn’t deserve to be free of it.

Will we see the angels, Uncle Drake?

Aye, he’d whispered before water covered their faces.

Drake pinched the bridge of his nose, denying the emotions threatening to flood him as the waters of a sinking ship did over two hundred years before.

He pulled on a pair of sweats and a tank top then tied his blond hair back. He went into his shop area and got to work refinishing the hurricane shutters for the Pirate’s Inn. The sun wouldn’t be up for another three hours, and his muscles ached with fatigue, but he wasn’t about to lay his head back on the fucking pillow.

The peeling paint flaked away under his sandpaper, and gradually the shadows from the dream lifted. And thoughts of Heather crept in. Odd. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been preoccupied with a woman. Not since he gave his heart to Lucy centuries ago. He had promised to love her until the day he died.

He never dreamed death would be stolen from him.

Sweat ran down his forehead as he sanded the next slats on the storm shutter. Work was his mistress now, his constant companion. But seeing the worry in Heather’s eyes awakened something inside him, something beyond the guilt that shadowed him. A yearning for…connection.

With a mortal? No way. That path led to never-ending grief. He had enough of that already. Besides, he had his crew. They were all the connection he needed.

Tonight had been different. Heather had been the safe port in the storm. Her touch had buoyed him when the shadows pulled him under. He sanded harder, reminding himself she was mortal. Off limits. Allowing himself to think about her would only prolong the torture.

Colton’s words whispered through Drake’s mind.

Eternity is a long time to be lost.

Chapter Four

Agent David Bale knocked on the doorframe of Kingsley Pratt’s office. He’d been making an effort to be more patient and friendly with his shamanic computer programmer after the alcoholic Brit spoke up during the review board and saved David’s job.

He’d been doing a lot of things differently since the clusterfuck over Pandora’s Box that led to the review board.

King looked up from his computer screen. “I’m afraid I don’t have answers for you yet. But feel free to hover if you’ve got nothing better to do.”

Not that King made getting along easy.

David cleared his throat and entered the office, taking the chair across from King’s desk. “Actually, I didn’t come over here to rush you, just thought of something that might help you narrow the search.”

Kingsley Pratt had worked in Department 13 for over ten years now. David had found him haunting a barstool in Savannah, babbling about men being torn limb from limb. While the rest of the bar wrote him off as a drunk, when he mentioned men wearing serpent rings with red eyes, David recognized these weren’t alcohol-fueled ramblings. This man had witnessed a real paranormal phenomenon.

By the end of the night, he’d convinced King to return to Department 13 for further review, and even though the Brit still drank too much, he’d become a valuable part of their small, overworked team.

King took his glasses off and arched a brow. “I’m listening.”

“Start with Heather Storrey.”

“The medium in Savannah is involved in a coven?”

“No.” David rested his elbows on his knees. “But she’s the one who tipped me off last night that a coven might be responsible for the recent increase in paranormal activity being reported in Savannah.”

Until a few weeks ago, when David’s distant relative had been tempted to open Pandora’s Box and potentially end the world, David had kept his personal life close to the vest. Department 13 protocols were all that mattered to him, until he almost lost everything. He’d spent the past few weeks reevaluating his life,