“Are they all alive?” she asked quietly. She was too worn out to try sensing for them.
“They’re alive,” he said, and she closed her eyes in relief. She couldn’t take any more burials. “He knocked Patti out right away, and then he went for the two Shadow sisters.”
“Draining them,” Sophie said as she glanced at herself in the mirror. She was pale, her eyes bloodshot. Dark circles under her eyes made her look like something from a zombie movie. “Hopefully I didn’t hurt her worse than she already was.”
“I’d say you saved her life, Sophie. It just probably didn’t feel the way you remember it feeling.”
She nodded, then looked up, meeting his eyes in the mirror.
“We almost had him,” Calder said.
“Almost. I almost killed him,” she whispered. “And it felt good.”
“That’s not a bad thing. I know I would feel pretty damn good if I killed that bastard,” he answered. Sophie gave a little shake of her head, then walked back into the living room, picked up Calder’s clothes, and handed them to him before turning her attention to the sisters.
“Are you all right?” she asked. They were sitting together on the sofa, which had been tipped over in their struggle with Marshall. They were holding hands, Patti between her two Shadow sisters. All three were clearly shaken, and the one she’d healed, Charlotte, looked pale and a little dazed.
“Thanks to your good timing, we are,” Patti said. “He wanted to drain them, the same way he drained those witches and warlocks of yours,” she said, sounding exhausted. “I’m sorry for your loss, by the way.”
Sophie nodded, and Calder stepped out of the bathroom. His jeans were mostly okay, if a bit ripped, but his shirt was a lost cause.
“And thank you, as well,” the other Shadow sister said to Calder.
“I’m only sorry we didn’t get here a couple minutes earlier,” he told her, and the witch nodded.
“Light, he looks just like Luc,” Patti said, staring at Calder, and her sisters nodded.
Calder and Sophie exchanged a glance. “Is it all right if we sit for a moment? We wanted to ask you something, which was why we showed up here this morning.”
“Yes, please,” Patti said. “Can we get you coffee or anything?”
“No, thank you,” Sophie and Calder both said, settling onto the loveseat, which was directly across from the sofa on which the witches sat, a narrow coffee table between the two.
“He looks just like Luc, you said,” Sophie said to Patti. “When you first met me, you were convinced that I was Migisi reborn, and that he must be Luc.”
Patti nodded.
“I still don’t think we are. But we have questions,” she said quietly.
“If I can answer them, I will. It’s the least I can do. But I have a question of my own first.”
Sophie didn’t answer, just looked at Patti and waited.
“How did you do that?”
“I have no idea,” Sophie said quietly.
“That wasn’t Light healing,” Patti pressed.
“I know.”
“Shadow doesn’t heal.”
“I don’t know that that was healing. It was more like, there was a speck of her Shadow power still in her, and I refused to let it go. It’s hard to explain.” Sophie felt uncomfortable with all three older witches looking at her like she was a bug under a microscope.
“Bizarre,” Charlotte said. “But I’m grateful for it. I’ll take bizarre over dead.”
Sophie gave her a weak smile.
“Your question, now,” Patti said.
Sophie took a breath. “I still don’t believe we’re Luc and Migisi reborn. I believe that Migisi may have ranted about coming back, but the last thing she focused on, at least in writing, was ensuring that her descendant could break the curse.”
“I’d guess that Migisi wrote this curse-breaking secret. What language?”
“Ojibwa,” Sophie said. “My friend helped me translate it. And it was right. It worked.”
“I don’t doubt that it did. He’s here, and he’s very clearly sane,” Patti said gently. “But you could have mis-translated something about who it would be to break it.”
“She wrote ‘daughter of my line’ or something like that. Not ‘self of my self’ or ‘me, reborn.’ Daughter of my line.”
Patti gave a nod. “All right. You seem pretty confident in that. So what’s the problem?”
Sophie and Calder exchanged a glance. “We’re having memories that don’t belong to us,” Calder said.
All three sisters stared at them.
“Memories that could only have belonged to Migisi and Luc. Private moments between the two of them,” Sophie added, recalling the terrifying memory they’d shared by the falls.
Patti looked like she was thinking.
“So you’re remembering things obviously from Migisi’s life, and you don’t think you’re her?”
Sophie shook her head. “I’m me. Calder is more open to the possibility than I am.”
“I mean, I’m not thrilled with the idea. But with all the weird sh—, stuff, that has happened, it wouldn’t surprise me,” Calder said, and, after a moment, Sophie nodded.
“Migisi would never have tried to heal anyone,” Charlotte said. “Even in the moments when she wasn’t insane, she never would have even considered it. It wasn’t the way she thought.”
Patti nodded. “Reborn wouldn’t mean the same, though. Maybe she’s learned things in this life that she didn’t learn back then. Things that changed her.”
“Her personality is totally different,” the other Shadow witch sister, whose name Sophie couldn’t recall, said. “Migisi was brash, cocky, and forceful. I haven’t seen any of that the couple of times I’ve talked to Sophie. And that’s not the reputation she has around town.”
“What was Luc like?” Calder asked.
Charlotte smiled, a sad smile. “Quiet and withdrawn, mostly. He never seemed comfortable in his skin.”
“Yeah. The curse has a way of doing that to you,” Calder said.
Understanding dawned on Patti’s face. “You were the one who had the curse this generation.”
Calder nodded. Sophie knew it was still something he didn’t like thinking about. He didn’t like remembering what it felt like, how out of control he was with that rage and insanity clouding his mind. She’d had it, though not for as long. She still felt ashamed of the person she was at times under the curse.
The sisters seemed to be deep in thought, and Patti finally shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s just not enough to go on. When I said that, I was going by your appearance and your voice and the fact that being reborn was something Migisi used to rant about. But they’re right: you don’t act like her at all. And though Migisi and Luc loved each other, it always seemed different than what I see in you two.”
Sophie tilted her head. “How so?”
She shrugged. “There was a desperation there between them, almost bordering on obsession. They loved each other, in their way. But it always struck me as a fraught relationship.”
“And us?” Calder asked.
Patti smiled. “You two seem as natural and at ease together as two people I’ve ever seen. The exact opposite of how things looked between Migisi and Luc.”
Sophie felt something in her loosen. She recalled her fears, about whether it was just the curse that made her want Calder, that drew her to him. She’d feared that none of what she knew was real.
But she knew they were real. She’d known it then, even when she was drowned in doubt.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. Calder squeezed her hand.
“So we don’t know whether you’re Migisi reborn or not. I shouldn’t have spoken of it. I was so sure, but after all of this…” Patti shook her head. “I think my anger and hatred of Migisi clouded my reasoning when I saw you. Maybe it’s less important to know whether you’re Migisi or Sophie. Maybe the only thing worth worrying about is who you are inside
, regardless of your name.”
“We knew so little of her final days,” Charlotte said. “We were gone by then. As soon as she gave us custody of Claire, we left here, determined to run before Marshall even thought to look for us. We kept her safe for twenty years. I only wish we had managed longer.”
“And her child?”
“We raised her, too. Marie,” she added. “When she was sixteen, she fell in love with an Irishman and moved with him back to his mother country. We heard a few years later that she’d passed, but we couldn’t afford passage to Ireland for the funeral.”
“And she left a daughter behind,” Sophie said. Patti nodded.
“She grew up in Ireland, but then came to America. New York. And her daughter made her way here. And now you’re both in Copper Falls. What are the odds?”
They sat a few minutes longer, and then parted with the sisters, each of them receiving hugs from the three elderly witches. Sophie still felt more than a little freaked out by the way she’d felt, both fighting Marshall and after, when she’d healed Charlotte, but she felt lighter, too.
“We’re not them,” she told Calder as he took her hand. “I don’t know why we’re remembering these things, but I know I’m not Migisi.”
Calder smiled. “We’re us.”
Sophie nodded, and took a step, and in the next instant they were in her living room.
“Where the fuck have you two been? I have the shifters out looking for you!” Esme shouted in greeting. Sophie and Calder exchanged a glance. “I’ll call Bryce,” Calder said. He bent down and kissed her cheek, and then walked out the front door, pulling his phone out of his pocket.
“So?” Esme demanded.
Sophie shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe me if told you.”
Chapter Eighteen
April 12, 1878
Seven months since she’d given her daughter up. Seven months of feeling like she wanted to die.
Seven months of her madness growing worse. She’d spent entire weeks frozen, blacked out. It was only when she finally came to afterward that the true terror began.
She wished, every time it happened, that she just wouldn’t come out of it this time. And yet, she always did.
She hated Luc. In her angriest moments, she blamed him. He was the reason she’d sent Claire away, afraid that Luc might hurt her. Of course, she knew better. She was just as likely to hurt Claire as Luc was, and the warlock would find a way to torment Migisi through her daughter, if he could. She refused to let him hurt Claire.
Still, it was easier to blame Luc. In blaming Luc, though, all the blame ultimately came back to her.
April 30, 1880
“I’m determined for us to find a way to be born again. To start over new,” Migisi told Luc. He sat on the other side of the wooden gate outside her yard. He’d spent the night raging, battling Migisi, and now that the sun was up, he was exhausted and in pain. He’d gotten a couple of swipes in at her, and she’d sent him crashing into the forest more times than she could count. She may have broken a few things in him.
Just now, she couldn’t feel too badly about that.
“All I want to do is die. Why in the hell would I want to come back?” Luc growled. “I’m not asking you for the world here, Migisi. One bullet between the eyes, and I’m done with this misery.”
Migisi’s stomach twisted. “You know I cannot do that.”
“It would hardly be the worst thing you’ve ever done to me,” Luc said quietly, his voice devoid of emotion. “I don’t want to come back. I can’t tell you what to do with your own life, but I definitely don’t want to live again after I’m finally freed from this life. This just shows how insane you really are.”
“But what if the way forward was without all of this pain?”
He was quiet for a moment. “I would still have memories, if nothing else. The memories are painful enough. It is enough to know all of the horrible things I’ve done.” He paused. “Why won’t you just end me? It would be a mercy.”
She didn’t answer, and her silence eventually lead to an outburst from him. “Are you really that selfish? You finally have me here again, all to yourself, and that is all that matters to you. My suffering, my shame, are nothing as long as you get what you want!”
Migisi closed her eyes, blinking back tears.
He would always think the worst of her, now. Even knowing that the warlock had been behind everything, in the end, it had still been Migisi who had uttered the curse that had reduced Luc to this. Telling him the truth, that she could not kill him because it would remove the last shred of humanity left in her, would lead to more anger on his behalf.
She would find a way. And she would convince him to go along with her.
July 6, 1887
“I’ve figured out a way, I think,” Migisi said. She threw up another shield as Luc raged at her. His jaw was open wide, baring long, sharp teeth. Teeth that, without her shield, would have closed over her throat. “There are old spells, ones used by witches so long ago that they are considered to be nothing more than stories.”
Another lunge at her, and she focused, determined to hold her shield.
“But we both have to be willing and able to take part in the spell. We both have to be sane.”
He roared again and slammed into her shield.
There was the crux, of course. Luc’s sanity, the time he even bothered to switch back to his human form, was down to an hour or two per day. He spent the rest of his time either hunting, sleeping, or trying to kill her. She’d been afraid, at first, that he’d take off during of her blackouts and hurt someone in one of the nearby settlements. But he seemed content to stay near her, whether he was sleeping or trying to destroy her. It was one less thing to worry about, at least.
The only problem was her own growing insanity. She’d found, strange as it seemed, that sitting quietly, breathing deeply, and focusing on nothing but her breath, was the surest way to stave off an episode of freezing or blacking out. Of course, she had to be in her right mind to remember to sit and breathe, and a few times over the last several years, she’d not managed it in time.
One of those times, Luc had nearly killed her.
She rarely slept now, but when she did, memories from that night, a night that had started out like a dream and ended like a nightmare, flooded her dreams. Luc had been sane. She had been sane. They’d talked, and walked down to the falls. He’d kissed her, and it was everything she’d been craving since they’d fallen apart. Kissing turned to so much more, and she’d nearly cried in relief when he’d settled on top of her, when his body had joined with hers…
His windows of sanity never lasted for long. She could see the change in his eyes, the moment he began losing himself to the curse again. Their moment of tenderness became a nightmare, and she’d been forced to fight him, yet again.
He remembered none of it, and she had no desire to think about it more than she had to.
“I know you do not believe me, but I love you,” she said as he let loose a deafening growl. “And I know that despite everything, you love me. We were never meant to be apart.”
October 15, 1889
Luc opened his eyes, and for the first time in a long time, he saw the world, not through the haze of rage and madness he was accustomed to, but as the way it had once been, when he was whole, and sane, and loved the life he’d made for himself.
He was on the ground. Naked, which meant he’d been his bear and finally passed out. He sat up and looked around.
He was outside of their house. Of course. That was where he always was, now.
He’d never been able to think of the little home he’d built as only Migisi’s house, even after he’d ceased to live there. It was theirs. They’d built it together. They’d made love here, delighted in the promise of Migisi’s swollen belly, and had their hearts broken time and time again.
Migisi sat on the top step, leaning against the front door. Awake, but exhausted. Guilt washed over him.
&
nbsp; “I seem to have my wits about me this morning. May I come sit with you?” he called to her.
Migisi gave him a tentative nod, and he opened the gate and walked toward her. There was no shame in Migisi seeing him unclothed. She knew more about him than anyone else. He needed to tell her a few things, while he still could.
He looked at the gate. The gate was merely a formality. The thing that kept him away from her when he was lost in insanity was Migisi’s power. Which was why she looked so exhausted now.
He sat on the step beside her, the cool air and cooler stone of the step making him shiver, just a little.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, looking out over the forest. It had been a warmer than usual autumn, and the leaves were at their peak color now, the woods a riot of orange, red, and yellow for as far as the eye could see.
“It is,” Migisi said softly. “It is nice to see you, Luc.”
He reached over and gently took her hand, meeting her dark eyes. There was a look of what was almost fear there, and he hated that he’d put that there. He could only imagine the things she’d dealt with, as the object of obsession for his bear. His beast. This thing he was when he shifted was no longer the valiant, strong creature he’d once been.
“I am sorry for all I have put you through. I am sorry for blaming you for all of it,” he began, and tears flooded Migisi’s eyes. “I want you to know that, while I can still tell you. This was not your fault.”
“I cursed you.”
“I believe we both know who manipulated that situation,” he said bitterly. “No. Your mouth may have formed the curse. Your magic may have made it so. But the warlock is to blame.”
Migisi was crying now, tears streaming down her face. Luc reached up and gently wiped her tears away with his thumbs, then cradled her face in his hands. “Despite everything, I love you,” he said softly, and it only made her cry harder. “I could no sooner stop loving you than I could will my own heart to stop beating. I have tried. You have been part of me for almost fifty years,” he said, realizing with some surprise just how long it had been. “I want you to know this, because we both know that these moments, when I am sane and whole, will cease to exist before long.”
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