Whispers from the Lighthouse (Westerly Cove #1)

Chapter 1 - Vivienne

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.

Westerly Cove had changed little in the century and a half since Mathilde Hawthorne, Vivienne’s great-great-grandmother and the lighthouse’s original designer, had arrived from France.

The same brick and cobblestone streets wound through town, the same sea-facing buildings lined the harbor, though they now housed art galleries and coffee shops alongside the traditional maritime businesses.

The locals still earned their living from fishing, tourism, and commuting to Providence.

From the bay windows of The Mystic Cup, the harbor stretched out, dotted with fishing boats and pleasure craft, framed by rocky outcroppings on either side.

On the northern peninsula stood the beacon.

Eighty-seven feet of granite carved from Vermont quarries and imported stone had guided mariners safely into Westerly Cove for over a century and a half.

Even from a distance, it called to her, constant in her life and dreams. The keeper’s cottage beside it—now a small museum—had been Mathilde’s first home in America.

Family legend spoke of French-inspired carvings near the entrance, details most visitors overlooked, but that carried meaning only the Hawthornes understood.

The Mystic Cup occupied the ground floor of the foreboding Victorian building on Harbor Street, its dark wood exterior and heavy curtains making it stand out among the more cheerful maritime structures.

Vivienne unlocked the front door from the inside and paused on the threshold, removing a small vial of iron-infused oil from her pocket.

She traced the protection sigil on the doorframe—three interlocking circles bound by a single line—while whispering words in the old French dialect Mathilde had brought from across the sea.

Inside, shadows pooled in corners despite the morning light streaming through the windows.

The familiar scent of herbs, tea, and old wood greeted her, but underneath lurked something else—the metallic tang of an otherworldly presence that never dissipated no matter how thoroughly she cleansed the space.

Dried herbs hung in bundles from the dark ceiling beams: vervain and salt-blessed rosemary, iron-soaked sage and protective rowan.

As Vivienne moved through her opening routine, she noticed something that made her pause.

There on the dark wooden floor near Mathilde’s ancient oak table was a wet footprint.

The print was small, feminine, and had not been there when she’d locked up the previous evening.

Water still beaded around its edges—seawater, her nose told her, not the fresh water she used for cleaning.

“Someone was here.” She studied the print.

The spirits sometimes left traces when they had urgent messages to convey, though typically those manifested as temperature changes or moved objects.

A physical footprint suggested either a very powerful spirit or someone with flesh and blood who had found a way inside.

She flipped the sign to “Open” and began her morning routine of setting water to boil, preheating the oven for scones, and arranging fresh flowers on the tables.

The main tearoom held a dozen mismatched tables, each with its own character, surrounding the true heart of The Mystic Cup—a magnificent oak table that had belonged to Mathilde herself, brought over from France and rumored to be centuries older than even she had claimed.

The wood was smooth and dark with age, its surface stained with tea rings and marked by countless elbows that had leaned on it in search of comfort or guidance.

Along one wall stood shelves of antique teacups and jars of loose-leaf tea, while another displayed crystals, tarot decks, and handmade candles.

A velvet curtain at the back concealed her reading room, adorned with faded photographs of Hawthorne women going back to Mathilde, all with the same distinctive eyes that Vivienne had inherited.

Before her morning customers arrived, Vivienne followed a ritual that had grounded her for years.

She retrieved Mathilde’s tarot deck from its silk-wrapped home beneath the cash register—seventy-eight cards worn smooth by generations of her family’s hands.

The deck felt warm against her palms, almost alive with accumulated energy.

She settled at Mathilde’s oak table and shuffled the cards, letting her mind clear. “What do I need to know about today?”