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Olivia gave me an odd look at that. “The curse has already done its worst. You couldn’t have got the book out without breaking through the spell. Didn’t you feel it?”

Grandma Josephine had her head down, muttering to herself, knees drawn up before her. I didn’t understand any of the words. It could have been Latin, maybe.

“What’s she doing?” I asked the others, keeping my voice low.

“Keeping us safe,” Olivia said. “I hope.”

“Safe?” Xavier asked.

“What does it say?” I nodded toward the book.

Olivia struggled through the faded black-on-gray lettering. “ ‘May you live a thousand years.’ ”

“What does that mean?” Xavier asked, looking as thoroughly out of his element as I felt.

“It’s the curse,” Grandma Josephine said in a hoarse voice. “Open it, girl, quick as you like.”

I felt it close around me, like shackles snapping shut around my wrists and ankles. Around my heart.

“Wait, that’s the curse?” I reached out to stop her, then hesitated. “I mean…it doesn’t sound too bad…does it?”

“I’ve lived eighty years,” Grandma gasped as if in pain. “And more mornings than not, I think it’s too many.”

“Are you all right, Grandma?” Xavier looked properly worried for the first time. “Is it your heart again?”

The old woman shook her head.

“Leave her be.” Olivia stopped Xavier reaching for his grandmother. “She’s fighting the curse. Trying to help Red.”

“But I’m fine—”

Olivia shushed me.

“Doing. What. I. Can.” Grandma Josephine grunted past gritted teeth.

Olivia used Xavier’s knife to cut the cords and unbind the disturbing wrapping, revealing a battered black book with thick, hand-trimmed pages.

I reached for the cover. I’d felt the curse fasten itself around me. There was nothing more left to fear. My fingertips made contact, and the writing Rose had left on my skin flowed away down my fingers to be absorbed in the greater darkness.

Chapter 20

Rose

The white witch clawed and beat and screamed against the inner surface of the crystal as if she were trapped beneath thick ice and drowning in black waters. A cold hate lay in her eyes, and when her face came in close, her wicked stare fixed Rose like a lance.

An impact ran through the cave as if a great hammer had struck from below. Behind the facet, the witch stopped her struggles and set her palms, deadly pale, against the surface. The next impact made Rose stagger. A fracture line ran the length of the crystal with a retort that made Rose’s ears sing and left her feeling brittle.

“Don’t!” she shouted. “Don’t let her out.”

But the hammer fell a third time, and the crystal blew apart. Jagged chunks the size of Rose’s head flew past her on all sides, but somehow the razor-edged explosion left her untouched. Wraiths or imprisoned souls blew around her in the aftermath, their banshee wails piercing even the roaring deafness left behind in the wake of the detonation.

And then…nothing.

Where the crystal had been was a black hole in the rock—a deep, lightless gullet that looked to have been there as long as the cave itself. Rose stepped closer, nervous, imagining a white hand snaking up to grasp her ankle and yank her away like a trapdoor spider pulling down its prey to devour in the dark.

“Why does it have to be like this?” Rose asked the cave as a whole in lieu of an audience.

The glowing crystals made no reply. She wished she could have stayed by the Riverbank in the idyll that must surely have sprung from the mind of someone who had great need of such peace in their own life. She wished she had never left the garden that her mother had written her into. She wished the muse that her mother had written to watch over her were here in this lonely cave, watching over her still. She wished, and surprised herself in doing so, that Red were here with her, that they had not let go of each other’s hands and instead could face this terror together, each bracing the bravery of the other.