Finn’s soft voice is an anchor. Without it I’d be lost completely; I’d let this feeling carry me away.
“Frances.” He strokes my shoulder. “Don’t give up on me yet, Frances.”
“The spell doesn’t work. It’s broken. It’s all so goddamn broken,” I sob.
He takes a breath. “We might have another option.”
Another option. I cling to the words and push myself up off the ground. Finn points to a note written in Gaelic, the one I can’t read. “This one references another spell. There’s something else we could try.”
Hope bubbles up from despair. Anything. I’ll try anything.
He flips the pages of The Elemental to one of the very last pages and lets out a sigh. “We could bind our magic. Together, we might be strong enough.”
I blink through my tears. “Bind our magic?”
Finn studies the page. “It’s forbidden. It’s dangerous. It’s like a… marriage.” He struggles to get the word out. “It ties us together, our souls, I mean.”
I’m still confused—I don’t understand what I’d be doing to him. “I couldn’t ask you to do that for me.”
Finn looks at me, his eyes wide. “Frances, I’d do anything for you.”
I close my eyes for a moment. I think of the first time I met Finn in the park. A light in the darkness. I could certainly do worse.
From between my tears I let out a laugh. “I never thought I’d be wed at seventeen.”
Finn smiles up at me through thick lashes, but I can tell he’s as scared as I am. “I’ve always enjoyed surprising you.”
He lays the spell book at the base of the lantern and takes a steadying breath.
I look over the spell. It looks like any other in the book, with delicate drawings of hands and rope and a spell in a strange language.
I’ve long been a creature of desperation. Agreeing to this doesn’t seem any worse than agreeing to do the Resurrection in the first place.
“Can we undo it once it’s done?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he answers honestly.
“Go on then,” I urge him. I don’t know how to return to the world if I can’t complete this spell. I will finish this tonight, or I will burn my soul to ashes trying.
He swallows. His confident veneer is stripped, revealing the nervous eighteen-year-old underneath. But he is brave for me. We’ll be brave for each other. “No matter what happens, I’m here.”
Without further discussion he rips through the hem of his white shirt, producing a thick ribbon of fabric.
“Give me your hand.” His eyes are wild with the flickering lantern flame.
He adjusts himself so he’s sitting cross-legged directly across from me, and he takes my right hand in his.
He drapes the ripped shirt hem over our clasped hands, where it dangles on each side.
“The original spell is in Gaelic,” he explains. “But I think it will be more powerful if we recite it in English, so we both understand the meaning.”
I nod in agreement.
With his left hand, Finn gathers the two ends of the shirt hem and, in an elegant figure eight, winds them around our joined hands, tying them in a knot at the base of my wrist.
He leans forward and places his forehead against mine. The heat from his skull unravels the tension between my eyebrows. And then he begins.
“I, Finn James D’Arcy, give myself to you, Frances Victoria Hallowell. All that I am and will be is yours, from this life onto the next. My soul, and all that is within it, belongs to you.”
I let the words work their way inside me. They find their home somewhere in the left chamber of my heart, where I know I’ll carry them forever.
“Your turn,” he whispers.
I close my eyes and speak the words deliberately. “I, Frances Victoria Hallowell, give myself to you, Finn James D’Arcy. All that I am and will be is yours, from this life onto the next. My soul, and all that is within it, belongs to you.”
Saying the words breaks my heart for reasons I cannot name, but Finn gives my tied-up hand a reassuring squeeze. With his left hand, he points to the spell book and a line of Gaelic words at the bottom of the page.
“Now say this.”
I obey. “Déantar é. Is leatsa tú.”
With those words, something happens. The temperature of the basement drops even further, and a shudder like a November wind courses through my body. My heart feels suddenly hollowed out. I dry heave, but nothing comes up. My hand, still tied to Finn’s, is shaking.
“Did we do it wrong?” I choke out to Finn, who looks somehow more golden in the light of the lantern.
“There’s only one way to find out.”
He turns back to the Resurrection.
“Together this time?” he asks, looking into my tear-streaked face.
“Together.”
His deep Irish brogue joins my quiet American accent. The spell feels different now; I can feel the magic within me reaching out, a spark begging for something to light on fire.
Upon the last three words, “ama a labhairt,” something strange happens to the scrying mirror. The glass ripples like waves of dark water, no longer reflecting the room, but something silvery and strange and not of this world.
Then, like fog parting, the cloudiness dissipates, and in the mirror is him. Reflected, just as if he were standing on the other side, is my brother. It knocks the wind out of me to see his face in such perfect detail. Closely cropped brown hair, eyes that always looked ready for a laugh, the same straight nose as the one on my face.
I let out an exclamation somewhere between a wail and a shout of joy. I scramble closer to the mirror on my hands and knees.
“William.” His name comes out as a sob, and the tears begin falling once more.
“Hello, Frances.” It’s the voice I never thought I’d hear again.
I was afraid the Resurrection all might be an illusion, an untruth spun with magic, but there’s something about the particular line of his grin that is so unmistakably William. Real, this is real.
I have one million things to say, but the only thing I can manage is “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”
“Sorry for what, sis?” He’s looking at me in that fond, sort of patronizing way he did in life. He’s slouching, too, in the way our mother used to nag him about. There’s a freckle next to his nose that I’d forgotten. “People die. It appears I was one of them.” It’s just like him, to treat his death as casually as he treated everything else.
“But I didn’t save you.”
He laughs—his chest rises and falls with it. “I didn’t save me either. No one could have.” He shrugs, and the gesture is so William, it devastates me.
There are so many questions on the tip of my tongue, but all I can think about is time. “How long do we have?”
He presses his lips together and exhales. It’s a smile of pity. “Not long, I think, sis.”
I wish we had more time. There’s so much I want to tell him about magic and Haxahaven and Oliver and our mother, and the millions of other things he’s missed.
“I miss you. You don’t know how much I miss you. I can’t lose you again. One day you were just gone, and I can’t have you be gone again.”
“Will it make you feel better if I say I’m at peace?”
I swallow the lump in my throat. I don’t want to waste the time I have with tears. I want to crawl inside the glass, throw my arms around him, and let every broken piece of my heart finally rest.
“You need to move on. God, that’s a cliché. Being dead has made me a cliché.” He laughs. “But it hasn’t made me any less right.”
“Where are you?” I press my hands to the mirror; it’s so cold, it feels like being burned. I jerk away.
William knits his eyebrows together in concern but keeps his tone as jokey as ever. “You know I can’t say. I’ve always thought you worried too much about me. Stop worrying so much.”
From behind the glass he closes his eyes
. He’s becoming more translucent by the moment.
I don’t know how if my heart will stand losing him again.
“You can’t leave yet. We need more time. What happened the night you died?”
“It’s the stupidest thing. I hardly know. I’d worked a late shift and was walking home like I always did. Something hit me hard from behind. There was a gloved hand over my mouth. It was scratchy. The river was cold, but only for a minute. I barely felt a thing. Next thing I knew I was dead. Didn’t even have time to turn around.”
Disappointment surges through me. When I imagined this moment, I always pictured him giving me a name, a full description, something I could take action on. “You don’t know who did it?”
He shakes his head. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.” It’s just like William, to be so nonchalant about his own murder.
“Did you see a woman, maybe? About forty? Or a taller, younger one?”
He sighs. “I didn’t see a thing. I was gazing at the river. I heard someone whistling a tune. It was a beautiful night, and then, boom, lights out.”
Some part of me wonders if he’s lying to spare my feelings.
“So what do I do?” I ask my brother in the very last moments I’ll ever have with him. “What do I do in a world without you?”
He smiles, and the moment is perfect, except it’s not, because he’s dead and I’m still here.
“You live, silly.”
“I don’t know how.” I can barely speak for holding back tears.
“You were always the smart Hallowell. I don’t want you to feel any guilt about my death. Go live your life enough for the both of us. Don’t for one single second feel guilty that you can’t change the past.”
There’s nothing I wouldn’t give to step into that mirror and switch places with him. “You were always the brave one.”
He’s fading quickly—parts of him are curling and evaporating like smoke on the wind. “Now it has to be you.”
“I don’t know how,” I repeat, tears spilling hot down my cheeks.
“So you’ll do what you’ve always done. You’ll learn.”
My chest is caving in on itself. “Please don’t leave me,” I sob.
“You know I’d never do that.” He smiles one last time, and then he is gone.
“No,” I cry. Finn is behind me, holding my shoulders as I collapse over my knees, sobs racking my body. “No!” I shake him off and crawl to where the spell book lies on the dirt behind us.
“Tras thar an veil agus tabhair dom an méid a cailleadh ionas go faimais níos mó ama a labhairt.” I recite the spell between gasping sobs. It sounds like I’m begging. I suppose I am.
“Stop, love, you’ll hyperventilate.” Finn tries to take the book from me.
“No!” I scream at him. “I need more time!”
I snatch the book back from him and crawl to the mirror. Again I recite the spell, but nothing comes. Nothing stirs within me.
I try a third time.
A fourth time.
In the reflection of the mirror, Finn looks on with pity.
Again and again I recite the spell and beg the universe to break the rules for me just one more time.
Finn places a gentle hand on my shoulder. “C’mon, Frances.”
I press my forehead to the cold mirror and let the horrible truth take root inside me.
I’ve lost William again, and this time it’s forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I collapse and cry so hard, it seems unbelievable it doesn’t shatter every bone in my body.
Finn holds me until my eyes are all but swelled shut. “You did it, Frances.”
I should find peace in knowing he felt no pain. Maybe that will come when I don’t feel quite so ruined for having lost him a second time.
Finn lets me cry for what feels like a long time. When the tears slow and I’m strong enough to look up at him, he picks me up off the floor and supports me back up the basement stairs. His chest is solid. It’s nice to have something steady to cling to.
He takes me to his room, small and windowless, not much bigger than a closet. The narrow space contains a cot and a desk, which is covered in books, skeins of yarn, and scrawled notes in familiar handwriting.
Leaned up against the wall is a scuffed-up fiddle and a fraying bow.
“I didn’t know you played,” I say in a weak voice. I don’t want to cry anymore. I feel hollowed out and desperate to think of anything other than how bad I feel.
“I don’t much anymore.”
He guides me to his bed, the only place to sit down with much comfort. I lie back and roll to my side. My body feels so heavy, but my mind is alert with the kind of clarity that comes after crying. “What do we do now?” I ask him.
He lies down on the bed next to me, so we’re facing each other. Our noses are almost but not quite touching. “We have a lifetime to figure that out.”
I gaze at Finn’s fine profile. I could spend hours examining the slope of his nose.
He cards my hair with his hands. Soft and steady, without urgency or pressure, simply touching me like I’m a thing worth touching.
It’s strange to know I’ve existed for him for so long, when he is so new to me.
We sit quietly until my hands stop shaking and my breathing slows. It’s only then I ask him the question I’ve wanted to ask him for a very long time.
“Am I what you imagined I’d be when you saw me in your dreams all those years ago?”
Finn bites his lower lip. Finally he answers, “You’re better.”
“In what way?”
“You’re real.”
And then, before I have a chance to overthink it, he turns his head and presses his lips to mine.
His kiss is urgent and reckless. I rise to meet it with a recklessness of my own. His hands wind through my hair, finding their way to the nape of my neck. He tugs a little, pulling my head back, and trails his mouth down my neck, liquid and hot down my jackrabbit pulse. I grasp at the expanse of his shoulders. It would be so easy to lose myself to this feeling. I want to drown in it and never come up.
When he finishes his work on my neck, his mouth slots against mine once more. His tongue darts in between my lips.
I allow every one of his touches to push the sorrowful thoughts from my mind. I could become nothing, no one. I crave more, this heat of oblivion.
The hand that isn’t in my hair presses hard against the small of my back, pulling me closer to him.
He rolls, and suddenly I’m under him, the weight and warmth of him is overwhelming. He is everywhere.
I think I want this.
I want to want this. It’s safety and comfort and peace. The grief in my head is quieted in the moment, replaced with Finn—his touch, his urgency… his need.
Finn’s kiss sends fire through my veins, but my heart echoes like the halls of an empty cathedral.
He rolls so we are lying side to side once more.
I pull back, panting and flushed.
Pupils blown out and awestruck, his eyes are sparkly even in the low light of his basement room.
This moment feels inevitable, and in that there is comfort.
“Thank you,” I whisper. I close my eyes and curl against his chest. His heart is beating fast. It makes me blush.
“For what?” he whispers against my hair.
“Not giving up on me.”
He places a kiss on top of my head. “We’re together now, you and I. It’s going to stay that way.”
* * *
The room is dark when I wake with a start, but I feel it must be close to dawn.
Next to me, Finn’s breathing is steady. He looks so much younger in sleep. There’s a constellation of freckles across the bridge of his nose so faint, they’re only visible this close. I feel a deep sense of possessiveness when I look at him, like I want to spend the rest of my life making sure nothing else ever hurts him.
Suddenly there is an unmistakable tug in my rib cage, dema
nding I go up to the foyer. I don’t know how I know—I just do.
I feel it again. Like there’s a string attached to my sternum. The sensation is nauseating. Come on, it says. Come with me.
I grab a knotty knit sweater of Finn’s off his desk chair and pull it over my dress.
Finn doesn’t stir as I leave the room and creep quietly up the stairs.
Through the hall windows, the first pale pink light of dawn leaks. The Commodore Club is quiet.
I wrap my arms tight around my middle and follow more serpentine halls until I reach a swinging door that will lead me to the main foyer.
I take a breath and push through.
Pacing the gleaming wood floors is a very concerned-looking Mrs. Vykotsky. She’s in the same buttoned-up, stiff, high-necked black dress and velvet cape she always wears, except she’s added a wide-brimmed hat to the ensemble. Haloed in streaming light, the moonstone brooch at her throat throws rainbows along the stern line of her jaw. She cuts a frightening figure with her hands on her hips and the look of maternal disapproval etched on her face.
I should be less shocked she’s found me here, but her presence still shakes me to my core.
“I am disappointed but not surprised,” she says by way of greeting.
There is fear, and then comes anger, a fire sparking from long-burning embers of rage. How dare she follow me here like she has any claim to me at all. “I’m not going back with you.”
“Don’t be stubborn, dear. I thought perhaps with a little time you’d come to your senses on your own. It is unfortunate to find I was mistaken.” She clicks her tongue.
“How did you know where I was?”
She turns her nose up at me. “I don’t know what it is that makes young girls think you’re so unknowable. You’re incredibly predictable.”
She can condescend to me all she wants, but I am no longer her pupil, and this is not her school. “You can insult me if you’d like, but I’m not coming back with you.”
She arches a brow. “Now, I wouldn’t be so sure about that. You do seem to care genuinely about Miss Jamison and Miss DuPre.”
The Witch Haven Page 31
