Loretta Moore died in 1912. Over one hundred years later, school children sing rhymes of her that I dare not repeat.

Loretta is my curse. She haunts my dreams and has every night since my birth. She lifted me from my crib every night and rocked me in her cold gray arms and sang a lullaby that can be translated into no earthly tongue. When I was a child, Loretta would sit on my window sill, watching.

In my teen years, I'd see her haunting the shadows of trees when I left a party late or out the window of my boyfriend's car.

I have not seen her since I inherited the manor. I believed until tonight that I'd imagined her in my youth. But an hour ago something called to me out of my warm bed.

Under the moonlight, my feet guide me toward the family plots. I go there often to kneel by my mother's grave. This time, a figure standing in the center of the graves stops me.

Now I stand. Staring at Loretta's back.

The grass is high and brushes the back of her knees. And her long dress sways to a wind that does not caress the plants, or move the distant trees surrounding this lonely place. The moon is the only light, but not even its forgiving glow can add luster to her gray skin.

She is beauty twisted round to the hideous and then around again.

I can't look away?

Gazing at her is like gazing in a hazy mirror. I resemble her, my great-great-great grandmother. I have her pert chin, her graceful neck and her willowy waist.

I do not have the knife she holds behind her.

Mist rolls in at the graveyard's edge and seeps past the family grave markers, simple wooden crosses.

Loretta killed five men on the day she died. They say she sliced their throats open and drank their blood.

Her daughter killed six men on the eve of her twenty-first birthday. She chewed on their flesh before slitting her own throat. This line went on, always a single girl child who grew into a killer after giving birth to the next girl-child.

My mother hung herself the moment she knew she was pregnant. She survived. The day I was born, she killed two people.

My mother swore that she had never known a man in any carnal sense.

I have. But not recently. No. There is no logic behind the life growing inside me. It is part of Loretta's curse. And that is why she stands in front of me, her wedding veil, gray and filthy dances in the wind to outline her beautiful face, so very like mine. Identical to mine.

I should be scared.

And yet...she is so sad. I don't want to run. I want to take Loretta in my arms and cradle her as I will never cradle my child.

I step toward Loretta, touching her elbow where her once elegant gloves slouch.

Loretta turns. Her eyes are wells of misery filling with blood.

I see. I see for the very first time.

***

Loretta bound up her ash blonde hair, looping it into a loose bun and letting curls fall down her back and frame her face. She glanced behind her at a bouquet of white roses sitting on a table by the church's back door, but didn't move to fetch them. In another hour or so she'd let her hair down again, an empty pastime as she waited for him.

For the man who'd made her promises of the world.

For the man who'd brought her out into the woods and made love to her after he put a simple gold band on her finger. She waited, even though all others had left the church. Only her mother, weeping in the pews remained and the sound filtered through the door to Loretta on occasion.

Loretta practiced what she would say to her love when he came. "I forgive you."

Then next, after he'd had a chance to respond, she'd say. "I'm pregnant."

After an hour, she let her hair down. Children ran outside the church laughing. As they laughed and sang, Loretta's shoulders slumped, and she wept into her palms.

After the things he promised her...how could she live this life? She would grow grey and old. She would die.

Her mother burst into the room at the sound of her tears and bundled Loretta into her arms. She stroked Loretta's hair, pulling the veil free.

"Shush, my love. We'll be okay, just you and I," her mother said.

"No, Momma, we won't. It all ends for me if he doesn't return... how can I without the things he promised? Without him? Now all there is for me is to grow old and fade to dust."

"Nonsense, girl. I know it hurts, but this too can be born. You will have a child. And you will live on in that child. That is how life works."

"Not for me, Momma." Loretta wept.

"It is not good for me to stay in one place so long," he had whispered, staring at her with eyes with color as thick and rich as honeyed wine. "But you tie me here. I cannot leave you."

"So I will tie myself to you, and we will drift together. I don't need this life if I have you." Lorretta had responded, laying her hand over his bare chest. The skin between her fingers was whiter than death.

"It is dangerous for me to step from the shadows, but for you, I will. You must make me part of your world, beautiful Loretta. Marry me. I have no name to give you, but use the ties of your world to bind me and I will show you all the dark corners of eternity."

"You must have a name to marry me," Loretta smiled. "I shall call you Damon Noctis."

"Demon Night? I do speak Latin, my dear, so will your priest."

"All you need to do is arrive."

Only he hadn't come. She was still Loretta Sigler. But she knew, in a way that charged her bones and made her clutch at her belly, she'd wait for him. She'd make him prove good on his promises.

***

I wake in a heap on the family plot.

Loretta is gone, and I lie sprawled over her grave. I stand, brushing grass from my jeans. I whistle as I head toward the manor. The moss covered roof comes into view first and then the cracked pavement of the driveway. Next the shuttered windows, blocking out all light, blocking out the world.

I skip up the porch steps into my house. My mother despaired, but I won't. I knew something my mother hadn't known...because perhaps it hadn't been true back then. Now is the time for the curse to end.

I head to pantry to discover how long I can hide out here. My body is already beginning to change with the pregnancy. The only thing to do is disappear as the town has a rational fear of a pregnant Moore girl. Of course, I have no intention of leaving Able's Hollow. I must find Damon's body.

***

Dolled up in her Sunday best, Loretta ambled down the center of the road, her head lowered. Her pregnancy was undeniable. Everyone she passed, smiled at lovely Loretta but they were no more than gray shadows to her.

She had bolted from church after the sermon but now dawdled in her walk towards her mother's house. Nathan Moore would approach her today. She'd felt his hungry eyes on the back of her neck all morning and many previous mornings.

Pride and longing sustained her. But she needed more. She needed the security Nate could provide until she could locate her Damon.

When Mr. Moore caught up, he was out of breath. This brought a smile to Loretta's face as she pictured his speedy stride to catch her. Perhaps if she had never known Damon, she would have truly welcomed his courting.

"Mr. Moore," she said.

"Nathan or Nate, please," he replied. "There is something I wish to discuss with you, Loretta. I've already spoken to your mother."

"Yes, Mr. Moore."

"You need not call me that. Aren't we friends?"

"So you say again and again." Loretta batted her eyelashes at him. Loretta had a face made for innocence. "I do enjoy our talks. You have made my evenings more pleasant these past months."

"Please, Loretta, hear me."

Loretta paused and turned to him. Nathan was a slightly pudgy man, neither short nor tall, but with lovely green eyes and graceful hands. "I'm sorry, Nate. I don't mean to be difficult."

How dull Nate was, nothing like her love. Damon had been pure fury encased in adamantine. His body had been flesh, but the blood within was ice.

"Live a mortal life, Loretta. The shadows are cold," he had said.

"I will warm them...you will not ever be cold with me by your side, not until death takes you."

"Can one who has never lived ever truly die?"

"Then when I die I'll be alone?"

"Never. If I pull you into the shadows, you will walk with me forever." His murky eyes had gleamed with hunger.

"You live, my love, because you are in my heart."

"Loretta, I..." Nate said.

He used her name again as he did almost every time he spoke, and it grated on her. Was her name some spell for him to bind her with? If so it hadn't worked.

The town adored her, but only Damon's love had any value.

"Yes?" She reached out to touch Nate's shoulder.

"You don't have to be alone, Loretta. You must know I've been wild for you for years. Will you marry me?"

Loretta smiled. What a lie. He hadn't even noticed her until after she was left at the altar.

"Ask me again," Loretta said, leaning to kiss the corner of his mouth, "after the baby has been born, and I will say yes."

***

I search the woods each night. Usually I sleep in my manor during the day, but some days when I return, there is a car and then I avoid the grounds. I must not meet with anyone. That is essential.

My shovel bounces on my shoulder as I approach the lake. I have dug many places around its border, searching, ever searching for what Loretta lost—for what I lost. Sometimes I see her silhouette in the moonlight on a cliff face or simply out on the water. Her sadness sings in my bones.

I scoop the rocky dirt aside from the spot in front of me. The white bones of tree roots make my digging difficult, but my arms are strong. Loretta is strong.

***

Verna was two days old when Mr. Moore called. Lorretta waited in the nursery and her mother showed him back. Candle wax and dried flowers created an odor distinct from the rest of the house.

Loretta sat in a rocking chair beside the crib and six candles, all in different stages of melting winked around the infant caged within. Waxy lines etched across the floor.

The babe itself was calm and still. Yet its blue eyes stared up as if seeing nothing, as if dead.

Loretta rested her head against the back of her chair. The sun hit her but contrary to logic the light darkened her buoyant locks as if under a storm cloud.

"Loretta," Nathan Moore said.

Loretta reminded herself that she needed access to his lands and his money. "You came," she responded with a resplendent smile to dismiss all of his doubts. Even doubts that might have been brought on by the waxy drawings on the floor— the text too faded to read.

"Loretta, will you marry me?" he asked. "I've brought the priest. He could marry us today."

"No," Loretta said, then softened at his deepening frown. "Not today. I will marry you on May second."

They both knew that had been her first wedding date. But only she knew this date would call Damon back.

"And you will adopt Verna first." Lorretta was willing to bend on this point alone. But Verna having Nate's last name and not hers on that day might strengthen the call.

He nodded. "Of course."

Loretta allowed her eyes to drift closed. "You are a good man."

Good was far from what Loretta wanted.

Loretta's efforts were bearing fruit. The babe would serve her purposes, she would summon Damon. This winding path would call him back, and this time, Loretta would keep her love.

***

I'm in my house, thinking of all the places I haven't yet searched when a car pulls into the drive below. I twist away from the window and lumber from the kitchen down into the wine cellar.

Earlier in my pregnancy, I might have run to the woods and hidden, but now I'm too slow. So I hide behind a cask and trail my foot in the dust over the earthen floor.

Have these floors seen blood and death? This manor reeks of mortality, ghosts linger in every crevice. Loretta will not let them go. Not until her purpose is complete. Now that I carry this baby and have touched the spirit form of Loretta, I can see their shadows lurking.

They fear me.

They should.

I am Loretta.

My foot scuffs along the packed dirt, and my breath whooshes from me. I have been searching too far away from home. My answer is here, in this home. In Nathan's home where he intended to bed his new bride.

And then Loretta is there in front me, kneeling on the ground behind another cask. Tears coat her cheeks and glisten on the bright smile that lights her face. She has remembered something, something I don't remember yet. But it doesn't matter, I know where to look. Tonight, I will get my shovel and dig.

I will find Damon's bones and then he will return. The world will be right again when he holds me. I have so much to show him.

***

May came and with it birds sang. Loretta refused the church grounds for her wedding and instead had a room in her groom's manor made up for the occasion.

Had any other done this, and done so with an illegitimate babe in her arms, whispers so loud as to rival screams would have filled the town. But not for Loretta.

Loretta shone in her cream colored gown. Its frothy fabric moving around her like sea foam at the shore. Had the women not been equally entranced as their men they would have cried witchcraft. And perhaps it would have been the first true accusation of such in those parts. As it was, the ensorcelled crowd paid homage to their goddess.

Loretta Moore, Loretta Moore,

More beautiful than any before

"I can't believe she married him," they whispered. They all loved her and their guilt ate at them.

Other whispers reached Loretta on that day.

"Odd for her to choose him of all men. After all he led the hunt."

"Do you think she knows?"

"No, no. Poor girl."

And that's when Loretta knew. Pieces broke from over the months and fell into place. Why less than half the guests ever showed for her first wedding—they'd always known her love wouldn't come. And Nate, Nate had started coming around though he'd showed no interest before—his guilt started his courting.

Loretta cared little for guilt. Revenge and retribution flowered in her chest.

"This town killed my love. My new husband killed Damon and buried him in some unmarked grave." Loretta wandered outside the manor. Her plans in a waste around her once again.

She'd planned to call her love back to her with the blood of a soulless one—that's why she'd protected her babe so carefully from being inhabited—but if Damon was dead that wouldn't work. She'd need stronger magic even than that to reach across the Veil, had her love been merely mortal, she never could have reached him.

But he wasn't. And he'd promised her his life. And she'd share that life with him yet.

She'd raise Damon from whatever death waited his kind.

The town had betrayed her.

Loretta stared at her baby, the babe's vacant stare like a well to fall into. It would take time to call him back—more time than Loretta's body had. But there in front of her was a vessel ready to hold her being.

Loretta cut her finger and swiped the blood on Verna's forehead.

Then, still in her wedding gown, though the brilliance of her blood already decorated its cream folds, Loretta took her knife and strode into the crowded room being used for her reception. Anyone was fair game—anyone but Nate, who had promised to take care of her.

She'd hold him to that promise.

***

The life grows inside me, but this is different from the other pregnancies I've known. I think I understand why. The time has finally come. In all my incarnations, I have finally gathered enough souls, spilled enough blood and so have finally be graced with the sign that Damon is within reach.

I do not carry a girl child.

No. I carry my love. I will bring him back into the world. So much death rides with me, but at last I can be done with killing. He is all I need to be complete. And Able's Hollow will finally have paid its due to me and my love.

My shovel hits something hard. I kneel, scraping the dirt away with my fingertips until one long black bone is revealed. All of him will be here, and with the life growing inside me the circle will complete.

I take one black bone and grind it between my teeth. It won't be long now. Mere hours and I will finally be reunited with my love.