Caitriona and her poor baby, who’d have to grow up without a father.
She took out the onyx bracelet and jingled it in front of her eyes as a revelation shot through her. She’d known the Mercurial Crystal wouldn’t need to be a crystal at all, but it had turned out to not even be an object.
What if the Witch’s Heart—the very heart of the witch who cursed Caitriona, the one thing needed to break the O’Connell curse, the one thing impossible to get—wasn’t an object, either?
What if, like Chris, it was a person?
Chapter 25
“But if that witch was only angry with Caitriona, why are we still cursed?” Shanna asked. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Sometimes, that’s how the world works,” Gran said. “The innocent can get punished, too.”
***
In the rainy morning, wispy clouds of mist coalesced around the single tower of Gran’s Victorian home, crowned with an ever-watching metal raven. Even above all the emotions swirling inside her and all the trepidation of the events possibly to come, Shanna was glad to be back home, in a place where she wasn’t forgotten.
The door opened, and Jinx rushed to her, leaping up with his front paws.
“Who’s my best boy, huh?” Shanna energetically petted him behind the ears and down his back as he wagged his tail incircles. One of these days, Jinx was either going to take off, becoming the world’s first flying dog propelled by his tail, or the said tail was going to fall off.
“Honey.” Gran followed and hugged Shanna, disregarding her apron, smudged with flour. “You’re just in time. I made pie!”
“For breakfast?”
“Any time of day is a good time for pie.” With a hand around Shanna’s waist, Gran accompanied her inside. “Why did you come here, though? Why didn’t you go to him?”
Shanna swallowed a lump in her throat and sat on the sofa. Perhaps she should have stopped in San Francisco, but her heart and overexcited mind urged her on. “I think I’m onto something, and I need to resolve it first.”
“Do tell.” Gran sat next to her.
“Do you remember the exact wording of our family curse? Do you have it written down?”
Gran went to fetch the book, and they rifled through it together.
“Here.” Gran pointed to a page. “For every ache you wished away, the memory will lose a day. There will be no help from your art, unless you find forgiveness from the Witch’s Heart.”
“And Caitriona begged for forgiveness from the witch, but it didn’t work,” Shanna said.
“Which is why we came to assume the heart would have to be literal. A heart is the center of the being.”
It all made sense. Many dark rituals involved hearts—usually animal ones, but if one wanted to venture truly deep, human hearts could also be used. Shanna would never do such a thing, and she didn’t blame Caitriona for not trying to kill the witch and use her heart, either.
However …
“You know how I told you the Mercurial Crystal turned out to be a person. Chris,” Shanna said. “The description of the spellmakes it sound literal, but only if you don’t look at it from another perspective.”
“What are you getting at?”
“What if the Witch’s Heart isn’t her actual heart, either?”
“But that brings us back to the start,” Gran said. “Having to seek forgiveness. And it didn’t lift Caitriona’s curse.”
“Because the person hinted at by the Witch’s Heart isn’t the witch herself.” Shanna leaned in over the book. “It’s her child. That’s her heart.”
Gran’s jaw slowly dropped, and she nodded. “Seek forgiveness from her child. Or that child’s child, or—”
“The latest descendant becomes the Heart.” Shanna got up, excitedly pacing around the coffee table. “We don’t know what happened to that witch’s line. If we’re still around, they might be as well!”
