Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 102280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 511(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102280 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 511(@200wpm)___ 409(@250wpm)___ 341(@300wpm)
When tourist Melissa Clark vanishes near Westerly Cove's historic lighthouse, Detective Brooks Harrington expects a routine missing person case. Instead, he's paired with Vivienne Hawthorne, a tea shop owner who claims her family can speak to the dead.
The case mirrors a twenty-five-year-old mystery—teenage Lily Morgan, who disappeared while researching the same lighthouse. Both women were asking dangerous questions about the town's buried secrets.
Vivienne's visions reveal corruption deeper than anyone imagined, but skeptical Brooks believes in evidence, not psychic abilities—until her insights lead him to clues logic couldn't uncover.
Racing against time, they must navigate their growing attraction while confronting enemies determined to keep Westerly Cove's darkest secrets buried forever
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ONE
vivienne
Saltwater soaked through Vivienne Hawthorne’s nightgown and dripped from her hair onto her pillow. Seaweed clung to the sheets. Three parallel scratches marked her forearm—wounds from a drowning woman’s grip that existed only in visions but left real blood on her skin. Her lungs burned with phantom brine. When she coughed, seawater spattered across her palm.
“Not again.” She touched the scratches. The vision had torn through her while she slept, violent enough to scar her body.
Beyond her window, the structure stood on its rocky cliff. October fog had blanketed Westerly Cove for three days, carrying whispers in voices only she could hear—fragments of pleas and warnings that made her skull ache. At its peak, three ravens perched in perfect symmetry. Death was circling closer.
She moved through her apartment above The Mystic Cup, checking the protective barriers. The salt line at the eastern window had been disturbed—a thin break where restless spirits had tested it during the night. Vivienne repaired the line with fresh sea salt, whispering the old words her grandmother had taught her. The iron nails in the doorframes showed tarnish marks from recent spiritual activity that grew stronger each night.
In the kitchen, she prepared chamomile tea. Three drops of blessed water went into the steaming cup. “Grant me clarity to see what must be seen, strength to bear what must be borne.” The ritual centered her energy after intense visions. Without it, otherworldly messages would drain her for hours.
The sight had manifested when she was eleven. Twenty-five years of learning to work with it. The Hawthorne women had served Westerly Cove through the centuries, each finding her own way to use the gift. Her mother had struggled with it until the burden became too much. Vivienne would find a way to honor her family’s legacy while maintaining her own wellbeing.
“What are you trying to tell me?” The spirits communicated best when approached with patience and respect. As a pre-teen, standing on these same cliffs, she’d witnessed her first death echo—a sailor walking into the sea, his body already recovered miles down the coast. The vision had exhausted her for days but had brought closure to his family.
Grandmother Emmeline had called it “the sight” and taught Vivienne that the dead communicated in fragments and whispers, in sensations and prophetic dreams. Each generation manifested it differently. Great-grandmother Josephine had visions through water that helped prevent maritime disasters. Grandmother Emmeline could read impressions from objects. Vivienne’s mother, Cordelia, had heard the dead singing—beautiful at first, but eventually overwhelming.
The gift demanded respect and careful boundaries.
The antique grandfather clock in the hallway chimed seven times. The Mystic Cup needed to be open by eight, and Tuesday mornings brought the book club ladies craving her specialty lavender scones and readings.
Vivienne set her teacup down and rose to prepare for the day. At thirty-six, she’d learned to embrace her role as Westerly Cove’s resident medium.
The Hawthorne family had anchored this town since before anyone called it Westerly Cove. Most locals accepted Vivienne’s abilities, even if they couldn’t fully understand them. Some sought her for readings, others for her baked goods, and a few simply to gawk at the “witch,” as Mrs. Mary Pennington from the historical society still whispered behind her back. Mrs. Pennington’s own great-aunt had consulted Emmeline Hawthorne for communion with her departed husband.
This latest vision pulsed with different energy—urgent, persistent. The girl within the structure demanded to be found. Unease settled in Vivienne’s stomach. Time was running out.
Resigned, she dressed in a deep teal dress that brought out her distinctive eyes—another Hawthorne legacy stamped on every female in the family line. Eyes that seemed to look beyond the present moment into realms where truth waited. She pulled her wavy auburn hair into a loose braid that hung over one shoulder, securing it with a silver clip that had belonged to her grandmother. Around her neck, she fastened the silver pendant containing a small piece of lighthouse stone that Emmeline had given her on her sixteenth birthday. Today, it hummed against her skin, responding to spiritual activity in the area.
Her heeled boots clicked on the old wooden steps as she descended the narrow staircase from her apartment. The massive Victorian building that housed both her apartment and The Mystic Cup had been a Hawthorne birthright, passed down through generations of women who had all served as bridges between the living and the dead.
Before unlocking the shop, Vivienne stepped out the back door into the garden. The morning air carried autumn’s bite. The garden overflowed with herbs both medicinal and spiritually beneficial. Rosemary for remembrance, lavender for peace, mugwort for enhancing psychic dreams, sage for cleansing. She gathered a few sprigs of fresh rosemary and lavender for the day’s baking.
Through the shop’s bay windows, Harbor Street was just beginning to stir, lights appearing in windows of other centuries-old homes.