“No,” he said, finally. “Imogen wasn’t my soulmate. She was…beautiful and strong, caring and determined. But she wasn’t the love of my life. What happened between us never would have happened had it been real. Her husband never would have died by my hands. She never would have cursed me.
“We would have supported each other while we worked to be together. What happened back then was a tragedy. It was star-crossed and burdened with the darkness we each felt. Philip wanted to control everything around him. Imogen wanted nothing more than her own freedom, that same drive that perhaps brought her to me. All I wanted was her happiness. Great fool that I was.”
Samantha had no words. Ciaran let the story enter the darkness of her bedroom. It stretched like a cat curled up too long. It was a time Samantha would never see. Ciaran could have been twisting her perception of him and she might never know.
Actually, she realized, there was a way she could know for sure.
She did not want to ask Ciaran to relive it, but she did ask his permission to peek into the past. His past. Her family’s past. She wished she’d done it sooner. If she’d done it before Ciaran walked into her life, she would have had a better grasp on the truth.
Ciaran nodded, but chose not to follow her. He stayed, sprawled out on her bed and staring at the ceiling. There was something playing behind his eyes, perhaps the very scene she wanted to find. While she went in search of it, the night haunted him like a ghost determined to tear him piece from piece.
She wrapped a robe around her naked body and crept downstairs to the table in the parlor. The crystal ball that had entranced her the other day sat waiting. It swirled with an unnatural glow. The light danced along the table, shifting like the northern lights in the sky.
Samantha sank into her chair and placed her hands on either side of the glowing crystal ball. It had offered her an image the other day, not quite a warning but an inkling of what was to come. She asked it to show her what had already happened. It was clear the orb wanted her involved, and so she thought it might oblige her request.
The image inside the crystal ball did not change. Samantha thought, breath held, that she might have to give up. It would not help her tonight. Then, colors and shapes began to appear. Her vision narrowed, and sounds touched her ears.
***
Ciaran watched shadows shift in the darkness of Samantha’s bedroom. He did not want to admit the fear curled in his chest. Holding her, touching her, had completed him in ways he had not felt before in his life. He’d thought he knew what it meant to love and be loved, but Samantha had changed everything.
She held him and made him feel wanted, a sensation he had not felt since before the curse gripped him. She fought against the screams he could have pulled from her if only so that he would remain challenged. So they could fall together once again.
Before that, she’d tended to his wounds. It had been a strange experience. He was not used to seeing others worry about him. Not even Imogen had ever spared a moment of concern for him. He was a man, back then, and seen as strong and independent. Now, as a monster, he was stronger than ever. Still, Samantha had cared for him and seen to the disease that had been slowly weakening him.
Now, she was downstairs seeking answers for a time that should have been buried forever. He was not proud of that night. It haunted him. It wrecked him. Once she saw the truth, she would leave him, too.
The impending end of what had blossomed between them twisted his gut. He wanted to run downstairs and knock the ball from the table. Once it crashed and cracked, the truth would be buried forever. He wouldn’t do that. She deserved to know the truth about him.
He wanted to stay with her, more than he should have admitted, but not if she was trapped behind a wall of lies.
Ciaran pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and waited while worry gnawed at him from the inside out.
Chapter Nine
The tower room was different than Samantha remembered. The vision had a strange sepia tone to it, like an old photograph stored somewhere deep in the attic. Shelves lined the walls, bottles hidden behind panes of glass. Herbs hung from the ceiling and a cauldron sat on a table in the center of the room. Time had rewound itself and planted Samantha in the middle of a day long gone.
Behind the table stood a woman in simple clothing. Her hair was pulled tight into a bun and a lace collar flared around her neck. As the woman leaned over the cauldron, a locket swung away from her chest. It twisted and caught the light. The surface was unmarred, as it was before the crystal Samantha knew had punctured it.
The woman’s head snapped up. A door flew open, making Samantha jump even though she wasn’t really there. A man stormed in. His head was bald, and his mouth opened wide with anger. It was a caricature of a face she knew. Her great grandfather, Philip.
The sound was soft, but she caught bits and pieces. He thought he’d beaten the witchcraft from her. Why couldn’t she learn to live without the devil? On and on his berating went. She stood before him, the table and cauldron between them, while her jaw tightened. Samantha watched the defiance slide over her eyes.
Magic crackled in the room. It was familiar, seeping into Samantha’s bones even through the vision as if it could find her years apart. The idea of feathers fluttered at the edge of Samantha’s vision. The curse boiled inside that cauldron, waiting for its intended target. Imogen held her hand over the cauldron’s mouth and started whispering.
The man snarled. He grabbed her wrist and reeled back when her magic attacked him.
This wasn’t what Samantha expected. Her fingers tingled with cold. From the vision or from her own panic, she wasn’t sure. So little had ever been said about her great-grandfather, but this was not the history she’d been told. It was as if this part of him had been scrubbed from the Carver name.
Soft footsteps entered the room, a sweet and familiar voice searching for Imogen. Samantha turned to watch Ciaran enter the room. He seemed younger, even though she knew he hadn’t aged since then. Perhaps it was the youthful fear on his face or the short cut of his hair that flew wild as she lunged forward.
The bald man reached for a nearby crystal and raised it. Imogen screamed as he brought it down. The locket leapt through the air and caught the tip of the crystal before it could hurt her. The crystal broke just as Ciaran tackled the bald man. They fell to the floor together.
Fists flew, the two men tumbling over one another to win the fight.
Samantha wanted to scream when the bald man raised the hunk of crystal over Ciaran’s head. Then, as fast as it happened, Ciaran moved, and the crystal slammed into the floor.
Her stomach flipped, recognizing the hole in the floor. It had been repaired when she was young, but she’d had such fun watching everything in the room below from the hole as a child. Now that she knew where it’d come from, she felt sick.
Philip’s hands tightened around Ciaran’s throat. Her knees shook. She could do nothing as the scene played out, even though her heart fought against her and demanded she do something. Anything.
Behind her Imogen worked. This time, she gripped the mouth of the cauldron, head bent as she quickly uttered the incantation. Samantha forced herself toward the table, scanning the ingredients spread out around the cauldron. Even though her entire body fought against her, she managed to take note of what Imogen used to create the curse.
Wolfsbane, Verbena, Hemlock.
Twisting and changing the truth of things. A single raven’s feather sat on the table beside the cauldron. Imogen dipped it into the cauldron’s contents and raised it like a pen in the air. With it, she carved a hole between the worlds. The stifling air of the inbetween rushed out like a sigh.
Just as Imogen was about to finish her curse, Ciaran snatched the crystal from the floor. The fight shifted. Ciaran was on top. His lips twisted with a vicious scowl as he brought the crystal down. Unlike Ciaran, Philip was not fast enough. The resounding crack echoed through the room. Even Samantha felt it, divided by the
years between the scene and reality.
Imogen faltered, gaping at what had happened. She bent and clutched her heart, staring at the scene with helplessness. It didn’t last long. Imogen gathered herself once more and turned to Ciaran.
“I can’t have a man like you around my family,” she told him.
He looked up with astonishment. In his eyes, he’d saved her. Then, his gaze dropped to the bloodied crystal in his hands and what he’d done. The crystal dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. His eyes darkened. He said nothing to defend himself as he stared at Philip’s corpse.
The curse hit him. It wrapped him in feathers and dragged him toward the rip in the worlds. His eyes met hers, filled with anger and betrayal. Imogen gripped the table before her, almost crumpling beneath the weight of what had occurred, beneath the part she had played in it.
When she looked up, it was almost as if her gaze met Samantha’s. Then, Imogen straightened and closed the portal. Ciaran was gone. Philip was dead.
A small child yelled up the stairs, jolting Imogen into action. Her face shifted from guilty witch to scared mother as she rushed from the room. Below, Samantha’s grandmother was only a babe.
***
The dark parlor came back into focus. Nothing had changed. The orange glow of the streetlamp outside illuminated crooked rectangles on the living room walls. The crystal ball darkened, the magical glow fading once its job was done.
Samantha had a feeling, of being watched. When she looked again, a familiar face looked out from the darkening surface of the ball. Imogen’s regret-filled eyes watched Samantha. The spirit of her ancestor had done what it came to do, showing Samantha the memory of a story her family had worked so hard to alter.
Shame had colored it, made Imogen want to hide what happened. In a single night, the lives of two men, one good and one bad, had been changed forever.
It was all as Ciaran said.
She staggered away from the table. Her body trembled, an after effect from the vision or the result of her astonishment, she wasn’t sure. What she did know what that no matter what she’d seen and how she should have felt about it, she was still ready to forgive Ciaran.
Her heartstrings pulled taut as she tried to yank him out of her mind, but they held on to him. He was going nowhere, and she knew it.
Step by step, Samantha climbed back upstairs. She lingered in the doorway, watching the naked man covering his eyes with his hands. He knew what she’d seen and waited for her reaction. What happened weighed on him. Samantha could see how the years had warped him. He was no longer the same man from the vision.
The curse and his own guilt had morphed together and bound him. It made him feel as though he might never be free.
Samantha slowly crossed the room. She said nothing as she climbed atop the bed and laid herself down beside him again. What happened could not be changed, but they could stop hell from taking him. In the morning, she would ask him about it. For now, Samantha settled in and enjoyed the moments of peace they had been given.
Chapter Ten
Samantha could barely believe herself.
She’d fucked the man her family cursed.
It hadn’t been a dream, but reality. She could feel the evidence of what they’d done as she slowly lifted herself. The ache it left in her body felt right, as if what they’d done was meant to be. That was hard to believe, considering the history between their families.
It was a jaded history, she knew now. An acceptance had gripped her. Perhaps it was because she wanted a man in her life that didn’t look at her as though she might curse him. To be fair, a Carver witch had already done her worst with Ciaran. Seeing the truth cast him in a new light.
Samantha didn’t know if it was the light of truth, or the one she wanted to see.
She knew fate was a thing. It commanded the lives of so many, but it wouldn’t thrust the two threads, Samantha and Ciaran, together like that. This wouldn’t last forever. Ciaran and Samantha would go their separate ways, especially after he’d gotten what he wanted from her. That was all he was in town for.
The end of his curse.
Of course, she knew there were other reasons behind it. Someone hunted him, someone from hell if the wounds in his shoulder were any indication. Ciaran must have thought that if she ended his curse then the person after him would lose interest. If anything, it just made him easier to kill.
She wished she knew what it was the person after him wanted. If Ciaran had opened up to her and told her the truth, she would be able to help. She would twist the curse to make him stronger. She would find a way to help him survive.
Truth be told, she wanted a future in which they didn’t have to go their separate ways. Ciaran didn’t treat her like the town disease. She was just Samantha when she was with him. Not a pair of tits to leer at or the person visited when all other options had been lost.
She groaned when she realized that was exactly what he’d done. His options had run out. The only way out of the mess he was in had been to break the curse on him and so, he’d come to her doorstep.
Samantha turned onto her side, trying to make sense of the chaos in her mind. Every new thought had her pinging back and forth. She wanted to believe that Ciaran was a good man, but a stronger, smarter part of her knew the truth. He was just going to use her.
Well, she could play that game, too. While he stayed, she would continue to use him for sex and fun. He would help her with the haunted house so that she could win a new car.
Samantha managed to roll out of bed, shower, and put on a bit of make-up to keep her advantage over Ciaran. Yet, when she stepped out, he was nowhere to be found. She padded from room to room, peering out each window to check for a raven.
It was possible that the inbetween had claimed him and his bird body had flown away, unknowing of what it was leaving. The thought left her stomach in knots. While it wouldn’t have been by choice if that happened, she still felt a sting of betrayal. Once she realized the house was empty and there was no bird waiting in any tree, she threw her hands in the air.
She couldn’t stand around, mourning whatever might have been. Instead, she decided to treat herself. She folded herself into the crappy car and forced the engine to turn over so she could get herself a chai and another bag of cider donuts from the market.
***
When Ciaran returned to Carver manor, there was something off. Coffee and donuts weighed down his hands. He had to fight to keep from breaking the Styrofoam cups as tension rippled through him. He couldn’t figure out what it was at first. Everything looked fine and yet, a feeling churned deep in his stomach. The door sat wide open, as if Samantha had wanted to feel the autumn breeze. It felt wrong.
He dropped what he was carrying and ran inside. There was no sound, no sign of anyone around. He called out, trying to calm the fear rising in him. No one answered.
When he turned, something caught his eye. The frame of the door had been shattered. The sigils that once wrapped around the doorway were fractured. Without the extra sigils in the pumpkins, someone had managed to get inside.
Ciaran wanted to howl, but he swallowed the sound. Dropping the coffee and donuts on the counter, he turned to leave. Something small caught his eye. A small note sat on the white, marble counter. He snatched it up, expecting the worst.
On it was nothing more than an address.
Committing the address to memory, he crumpled it in his hand and let the raven overtake him. He surged out the broken front door and into the sky. His mind tumbled over and over, filling him with visions of Samantha in pain. She was in the hands of a demon.
He wished he’d told her about what hunted him. He wished he’d let her finish the pumpkins. Instead, he’d been a fool. What made him think he was enough to protect her? What made him think he could keep anything safe?
He’d failed a hundred years ago and that was what put him in this situation to begin with. Imogen had needed him, and he’d been unable to help her. Now, he was going to fai
l her great-granddaughter.
Losing Samantha cut him deeper than his previous failure ever had. It could have been the years he’d already spent repenting for what he’d done. He swallowed back another idea that fought its way to the surface.
He didn’t deserve Samantha. He could not claim her the way he wanted. She would go on to have a better life without him. Because, if he stayed, her life would be tormented. Ciaran brought trouble with him no matter where he went.
The address appeared beneath him. It was a crumbling warehouse, a remnant of an age where water powered everything. Bricks fell into the nearby river as he flew over. He circled, listening for Samantha’s voice. When he could not hear her, he figured she must be in more trouble than he thought.
Immediately, Ciaran swooped lower. He aimed for a hole in the wall, a corner where the bricks tumbled onto the banks. Darkness swallowed him. Slowly, his eyes adjusted. Boots hit the floor after the shift rippled over him. The change between raven and human was quick, the flash of an eye.
The room he entered was empty. Old machinery gathered dust in the corners. Broken glass glittered on the floor. Yet, no one waited to ambush him. Ciaran moved toward the nearby staircase. The curse swallowed any sound his heavy boots might have made.
Still he could hear nothing. Nerves tingled in his stomach. His mind conjured images of what Samantha must have suffered while he was gone. The longer he hesitated, the worse it became, until he could no longer bear it.
The shift rippled again, and he surged down the staircase, wings spread wide. He tilted and flew onto the lower level. He thought he’d surprise whoever was there, but the floor was empty once more. He beat against the air before dropping to land on the floor.
No one jumped out at him.
Darkness filled the corners, but it was nothing more than shadows. He waited for something to jump out of them. Tensed, he strained to hear Samantha’s snarky voice. There wasn’t even an inkling of her magic in the air.
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