Ghost Key by Trish J. MacGregor Read Free Book Online Page A

he had lost her trail, he had started his Google search with broad terms: unsolved deaths southeast U.S. 2009. This had yielded a ridiculous number of links, so he had whittled them down by narrowing the time frame to the last four months in the Atlanta area, and stipulating the cause of death. By checking each link, each story, he had found two possibilities that fit her MO: a convenience store parking lot north of Atlanta and a seedy motel in downtown Atlanta. The first location yielded nothing. But the motel surrendered its secrets—her distinctive echo, the imprint of her essence, her scent. He even found the room where the death had occurred, number 1313. Since thirteen was significant in the history of Esperanza, the room number had been confirmation. A Mexican cleaning woman he’d befriended had told him the death happened in late November, around the holidays.
    Once he had found Dominica’s imprint in Atlanta, he was able to track her southward to Florida and then across the state to Naples and northward along Florida’s west coast. It seemed a long way for her to go without indulging her sexual needs, but perhaps she knew he was close. After all, the connection between them was not easily broken. It spanned centuries and worked in both directions.
    He passed the landfill, intending to drive through downtown and wander around in some of the neighborhoods to see if he could get a fix on her. But the landfill nagged at him. A quick look, he thought, that was all he needed.
    Wayra turned into a shopping center, nosed into a parking spot, and got out. His pickup wouldn’t attract any attention here and he doubted it would be stolen. Ocala didn’t impress him as a high-crime area. But in the event he was wrong, car thieves wouldn’t find much. He traveled lightly—no laptop, a prepaid cell phone, a pack with three changes of clothes and shoes, a few toiletries. His money, a debit card, and passport were zipped inside a pocket in his jeans. He purchased anything else he needed.
    He slipped his keys in another zippered pocket, then headed toward the thicket of trees between the shopping center and the landfill. His long, narrow shadow moved alongside him, a silent companion. His shadow profile looked crisp, long hair gathered in a ponytail that bounced against the collar of his jacket, his nose and long legs visible against the ground.
    “You again,” he murmured to his shadow.
    The shadow didn’t reply; it never did. At one point in this journey, his loneliness had been so profound that he’d started talking to his shadow, speculating about what Dominica was looking for, what he would do when he found her, how long this pursuit might last, and why the hell he was bothering. In voicing everything he’d been thinking, he realized he already had some of the answers.
    Dominica wanted what she had always wanted—a city of ghosts, specifically those ghosts known as brujos that knew how to exert power over the living by seizing them, controlling their bodies, and living out their mortal lives. Dominica and her kind lusted for physical existence and all its sensual pleasures. In Esperanza, where her tribe of brujos had supposedly been the largest in the world, more than sixty thousand strong, she had nearly succeeded in creating such a city. But last June, on the summer solstice, she was defeated and most of her tribe had been annihilated or had fled Ecuador. Her arrogance had been so great that she’d never considered the possibility that the thousands of individuals who had lost loved ones to brujos would coalesce into an army of twenty thousand and fight her kind.
    Her other desire was someone to love. Nearly anyone would do. For a hundred and thirty-seven years, that someone had been Wayra. Then there was Ben, a man she had seized at the turn of the twentieth century, bled out, and, when he had died, he and Dominica had spent more than a century together. He had been annihilated in a hotel room in Key Largo by