Fall in love whenever you can.
The Owens family Grimoire had been copied into this slim journal, and although Sally recognized Franny’s handwriting she couldn’t for the life of her fathom why that would be. She grabbed on her clothes in a terror, leaving Ian to sleep and noticing that now, with her gone, he had sprawled out to take over the entire bed, one more sign she should stay away. She went to Franny’s room to find the bed unslept in. There was also a small black book left behind on the pillow. A white sheet of paper had been left beside it, marked by Franny’s familiar scrawl.
The curse is broken. Live your lives as you please.
Sally ran up to Kylie’s attic room where Gillian had taken over the vigil from Margaret and had fallen into a restless sleep while keeping watch in a chair. Sally went directly to the bed, and as she did, Kylie opened her eyes. Sally felt relief deep in her bones. She touched her hand to Kylie’s head. No fever. No blistered marks on her flesh. No sign of the Red Death.
“Mama,” Kylie said, sitting up, completely recovered. “What’s happened?”
Gillian had awoken when she heard Kylie’s voice and she quickly came to perch on the edge of the bed. “I feel it, too,” she told Sally. “Something has changed.”
The walls in the room were patterned with paper decorated with lilies and leaves. If Sally wasn’t mistaken, the walls were damp, with drops of water falling down. The clicking began again out in the hall.
Gillian and Sally stared at each other, both cold as ice. They both knew what that dreadful sound meant. “No,” Gillian said. “It can’t be. Kylie’s fine.” Sally threw open the door and she saw the beetle climbing into the wall to its nest in the rotted rafters, for its work had been completed.
That was when the phone rang. They expected bad news, but it was a gleeful Ariel Hardy calling to say that Antonia’s baby had arrived and all was well. There was even more news. Ariel had stopped by Gideon’s room at Mass General and he was now sitting up in bed, talking to his mother, with a group of doctors surrounding him, amazed by his sudden recovery.
Kylie wept to hear that Gideon was recovered, but she didn’t understand. “How is it possible? It’s a life for a life. For the curse to end, someone has to give up her life.”
That was when Sally knew who the deathwatch beetle had come for.
* * *
Sally left them to race out of the inn without a word. Bees swarmed around the chimney and crows were circling in the distance. She knew what had been was no longer. What was done had been undone. Her beloved Franny who never showed her heart, unless you looked carefully, unless you understood what she was willing to do for you. Sally was barefoot as she made her way through the inn’s parking lot, waves of panic driving her to race down the street, her pulse beating fast. It was always water that they feared and water to which they were drawn. It was quiet as she reached the far end of the High Street. No birds sang here, no bees gathered in the blooms. Sally met a man walking his dog, who was startled when he spied her running down the road without shoes, her hair shorn. Even the dog, an old spaniel, was too surprised to bark.
“Is there a pond nearby?” Sally asked in a ragged voice. Every word was glass, each one cut her throat.
The gentleman nodded, concerned, and gestured down the High Street past Littlefields Road. “Go to the end of the street and there’ll be a dirt road round the bend. There’s a huge old oak we call the Pondman’s Oak standing there. You have to head toward the fens.”
Sally went off, surprised that she could no longer pick up the scent of water as witches always could. There was always a price to pay, she knew that. You didn’t have to be cursed in love to know that when you loved someone you were open to great loss. The path became grass and the scent rising reminded her of the house where she and Gillian had grown up in California, before their parents died, victims of love and fire and of the curse. She remembered arriving at the airport in Boston, holding Gillian’s hand, afraid of the two old ladies who had come to meet them, especially the tall one with red hair. But Franny was the one who knew that Sally secretly cried over the loss of her parents. She was the one who said, You’ll be safe here.