Page 43 of Haunted Heart
Julia waits for me, staring down at the black and smoldering lump that still beats, despite everything. “Yesterday was the first day I’d come down here since I died.”
“I don’t like this place either.”
I hold her hand. “We don’t have to do this today. We have plenty of time. You already haunt my heart. And I’ll haunt you right back. Forever.”
“Forever.” Her hand flickers, but it’s completely solid when she touches my cheek. “Starting now.”
NINETEEN
The dust hasn’t fully settled.But something more powerful stirs in me. Relief, perhaps. But more likely… Love.
The spell requires two witches. I drift over my heart and feel the way it tugs at me. It wants me to sink into the ash and dirt with it. It wants me to stay… To be whole in decay.
“Do you want me?” I ask, holding out my hand.
She takes it. “I do.”
“Both consenting, two witches stand joined together hand in hand.
“One living, one dead, one goal in their head.
“Where once one was chained, no trace will remain, and these witches will be both one and the same.”
My heart beats, each pump breaking away the hardened crust of centuries rotting in this dark and desolate place. It lifts from the ashes, rising through me until it floats in the space in front of my breast.
Genevieve offers me a soft smile as she continues the spell.
“I offer my heart as an anchor to you.”
“I promise to haunt you in all that you do.”
Genevieve grips my hands tighter and gasps when the beating black mass flies into her chest, leaving a shadowed smudge in the shape of the heart on her shirt.
Eyes wide, she jerks, shoulders tight for a moment, and then, she exhales.
“Given to me,” she says, finishing the spell, “your heart and soul can finally be free.”
The sharp brightness of her touch makes me gasp. My hands jerk in hers, but she holds me tight.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can… feel you.” I brush my thumb across the back of her hand. And then reach up to pass my fingers across her lips. “I don’t remember the last time I could feel anything.”
“There are so many things you can do now that you couldn’t before…” She raises my hand to her cheek and rests her cheek in my palm. “Would you like to go outside?”
I look past her, through the cellar door. “Yes.”
She leads the way and I float behind her, tugged by both her heart and her hand gripped tightly in mine.
And when we are out in the darkness of predawn, I am glad I cannot drop to my knees.
Letting go of my hand, Genevieve walks a few steps away before sitting in the grass.
“There are too many of them,” I tell her. “How is it possible there are more stars in the sky now than there were before?”
Genevieve isn’t looking up at the stars. She watches me with a soft smile, and when she lies back in the grass, I do too.
“You haven’t been able to feel anything?”
