We were weightless, like the moment when a roller coaster reaches its peak, when you hang suspended in midair, right before you’re sent plunging down through the atmosphere.
I clutched at Charlie and Ms. MacAllister’s hands as my stomach lurched back down to earth. Wind screamed around my ears and tugged my hair from its ponytail, causing it to whip against my face.
And then, as suddenly as we had started, we stopped falling, and the ground slammed into my feet. I stumbled forward, and would have fallen, if not for Ms. MacAllister’s firm grip on my hand. Beside me, Charlie swore, his voice hardly rising above the howling wind.
“Keep your eyes closed,” Ms. MacAllister yelled. “We’re almost there.”
“Almost where?” Charlie shouted back.
If she answered, her reply was swallowed by the wind. The howl had decreased to a low roar, but it still drowned out everything else within earshot. I kept my eyes closed tight as the wind battered us in place, like ships in a storm. Finally, after what could have been hours or seconds, the wind quieted, an eerie stillness descending in its place.
“The question isn’t where, Charlie,” Ms. MacAllister said. “It’s when. Open your eyes. You’re both in one piece?”
“I think so.” I opened my eyes. We still stood in Ms. MacAllister’s living room, but it wasn’t the room we’d left behind us. Heavy velvet draperies shrouded the windows, and dark patterned paper lined the walls. Ms. MacAllister’s photos were replaced by two of the stern-faced portraits that hung in the hallway during our time. Her furniture was missing as well, replaced by a tiny camelback sofa upholstered in forest green, where a small, dark-haired girl sat, twisting her hands in her lap. A Basset Hound that looked remarkably like Minion lounged at her feet.
My breath caught in my throat. Ms. MacAllister smoothed her skirt over her hips and followed my gaze. “Don’t worry, she can’t hear or see us.”
“How?” Charlie kept his hand wrapped around mine. “We’re invisible?”
“Not quite. All of this—” she waved her hand around the room, “—is the past. It’s a memory. We can’t alter it or interact with it. We can only watch. And listen.”
“Who is she?” Charlie asked.
“My aunt,” Ms. MacAllister said. “Pretty, isn’t she?”
The girl was more than pretty. She was strikingly beautiful, her heart-shaped face pale, her bowed lips pink, her eyes ringed with thick black lashes. She wore a light blue dress, short-sleeved, that tied around her waist in a bow, and a cameo at her throat—the same cameo that Ms. MacAllister had pulled out of the metal box. The girl stared at the door behind us, tapping her foot against the oriental rug that covered the wooden floor.
“This memory that we’re in…” Charlie trailed off, rubbing his hand along his chin, like he was searching for the right words. “Is it hers?”
“Partially,” Ms. MacAllister replied. “It’s been stitched together from several sources other than Winnifred’s—my father and grandfather both worked to create this.”
My head snapped up at the name. “That’s Winnifred MacAllister?” I asked before I could stop myself, my mind’s eye flashing to the statue in the cemetery, the girl wrapped in the angel’s arms. “Were you the one leaving the flowers?”
Ms. MacAllister nodded. Her eyes were sad. “It’s a beautiful statue, isn’t it? Her parents loved her very much.”
Somewhere behind me, a door slammed. I swallowed over the lump in my throat as Winnifred stood, very much alive. I thought of the dates carved into the granite slab, fifteen years apart.
“What year is it?” I asked, even though I knew deep in my heart what the answer would be. This girl looked to be just about fifteen.
“Just listen,” Ms. MacAllister said, ignoring my question.
“Freddie!”
The girl and I whirled around at the same time. She let out a little cry and launched herself at Ransom, who stood in the doorway. The dog leapt to his feet and growled, his fur bristling, inserting himself between Winnifred and her brother.
“Back, old boy,” Freddie said, stepping out into the hallway and closing the door in the dog’s face. He whined and scratched at the door, but we were moving again, the room whirling and melting around us as the heavy wallpaper gave way to the dark wood paneling in the foyer, where Winnifred and Ransom stood staring at each other.
Ransom looked nearly identical to the boy who’d lived in my house all summer, almost impossibly so. But the Ransom I’d known had been poised, polished—nothing like the half-crazed boy in front of us. His hair stood on end, his coat torn, his face smudged with dirt. He wrapped his trembling arms around the girl and hugged her close, then pushed her back to look into her face.
“Son of a bitch,” Charlie swore beside me. “This can’t be real.”
“Where have you been?” Winnifred demanded. “Father has been looking for you all night. He’s really angry, Ransom. He says that you’re the one who killed those girls.”
“And you believe him?” Ransom asked. He glanced over his shoulder. “I need your help, Freddie.”
“I can’t,” she said. “If he sees you…” She followed his gaze. “You have to leave.”
Ransom seemed to crumple. “He’s wrong about me, and about her. I’m your brother, Freddie. You have to trust me.”
“Ransom, please,” she said, her voice pleading. “You have to leave. He’s going to kill you.”
“Just get me the ring, and I’ll go,” he said. “You know I’m right about her. She needs me.”
Freddie closed her eyes. “I—”
“I’ve never lied to you,” Ransom whispered, his voice fierce. He gripped her shoulders and shook her, none too gently. “I need you to do this for me.”
He released her, and she stumbled backwards. “You swear to me that you’re doing the right thing?” she asked him. “You swear that if we do this, we’ll be done with her? Done with this curse?”
“I swear on my life,” Ransom said. “Everyone has been wrong about her.”
Freddie closed her eyes and let out a soft sigh. “I trust you,” she whispered as the room dissolved around us again and we began to fall. “I’ll meet you in the woods at sunset.”
***
Almost immediately, a new scene began to form around us, even before my feet hit solid ground. Orange-tinged sky peeked through the trees as Winnifred hurried through the forest. We seemed to race alongside of her, even though our feet stayed planted on the ground. The entire world whipped past us, like we were a camera zooming through a movie scene. Winnifred moved surely over the path that Mark and I had taken over and over again, though now it was wide and well-tended, unlike the overgrown trail it was in my own time.
She was heading to the ruins.
Charlie gripped my hand tightly, like he was afraid of what would happen if he were to let go. I didn’t blame him—I was afraid of the same thing.
Ransom sat on the remains of a low stone hill, his leg bouncing wildly, passing a small, shiny object from hand to hand. He leapt to his feet the moment his sister entered the clearing, and shoved whatever it was into his pocket. “It’s about time,” he snarled. “Were you followed?”
His sister shook her head. “No one suspected a thing.”
“Good.” He held out his hand, palm up. “The ring?”
A sick feeling took hold in my middle and spread throughout my veins. “Don’t do it,” I said, even though she couldn’t hear me. Ms. MacAllister sent me a sympathetic glance.
Freddie hesitated. “Ransom,” she said, her voice wavering as she lifted her hand and pointed across the clearing. “Is that… is that her?”
Beside me, Charlie’s breath caught in his throat as the clearing spun around us until we could clearly see what Winnifred was pointing at.
Who Winnifred was pointing at.
Marin waited beneath the thick branches of the gnarled oak tree, her feet hovering a few inches above the ground. She looked the same as she had last night in the clearing—almost solid, almost human, almost alive—except last night was technically a century removed from Winnifred’s memories.
Ransom slid his arm around his sister’s shoulders and pulled her closer to the tree. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”
“She looks different.” Winnifred struggled against his grip.
“She’s almost ready to transition,” Ransom said. Marin’s glow reflected in his eyes, which were wide and wild. “I’ve—we’ve—worked so hard to get to this point. You have no idea the things I’ve had to do.”
Terror flashed across Winnifred’s features, and she froze. “Ransom,” she said. “You didn’t…”
“I did what I had to.” He tilted his head to look down at his sister. “You understand that, don’t you? If it wasn’t for Father’s stupid rules…”
“The rules exist to keep us safe,” Freddie said.
“They exist to keep us weak. Don’t you see that? We could have anything we wanted, Freddie. Do anything we wanted. We’re the powerful ones.” He spread his arms wide. “They should be cowering before us. They should be serving us. Not the other way around. Why should we weaken ourselves by using our own magic, feeding off our own souls, when there’s a whole world out there of people who could help us?”
Freddie didn’t flinch. She lifted her head, the wobble of her chin the only sign of her fear. “He was right. You murdered those girls.”
“It’s not murder, little sister. It’s survival. They are the antelope, and I am the lion.”
“Even Rachel?” Her reply was choked. “You were supposed to love her.”
“How could I love one of them?” His voice was bitter.
“She trusted you.”
“Until the very end.”
Freddie’s gaze slipped to the ghost behind Ransom. She reached up, touching a tiny bump under the bodice of her dress in a familiar gesture. My fingers drifted to my own chest, where the ring usually hung.
“She’s turned you into a monster,” Freddie whispered, “and I’ll have no part of it.”
Ransom’s gray eyes turned to flinty steel. He too looked at Marin, who only stared back at him.
Slowly, the ghost nodded, and Ransom sighed.
“She warned me about this.” He sounded resigned. “She said Father was going to turn you against me.”
Freddie lifted her hands and held them, palm out, towards him. “Don’t come any closer,” she said. “Father didn’t turn me against you, Ransom. You did that the second you murdered my best friend and betrayed everything our family has worked for.”
He raised his eyebrows and motioned towards her upraised hands. “You can’t stop me. You’re too weak.”
“Like hell I can’t,” she spat at him. “I can’t let you do this.”
He sighed again. “Freddie, sweetheart. Just give me the ring. Please.”
She swiped her hand toward him in response. Blue sparks leapt from her fingertips and arced toward him, but he didn’t even flinch. The sparks fizzled a few inches from his face.
“Freddie.” He stepped across the clearing towards her. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
And then she was in the air, her hands trapped at her sides, the same way I’d been only a few hours ago. Her feet kicked frantically against the air, but she didn’t scream or beg or plead. She just stared down at him with a look of disgust scrawled across her face, even as he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the object he’d been fiddling with earlier. The low evening light bounced off the knife’s wickedly sharp blade. “Stay still,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
And my heart sank—I knew what was coming. I turned and buried my face in Charlie’s shoulder, unwilling to watch. But Ms. MacAllister tugged at my other hand. “Eyes open, Amelia,” she said, her tone leaving no room for argument.
When I dared to look again, Ransom stood in front of his sister, knife tucked in his belt, while Marin floated a few inches behind him. He reached up and wrapped his fingers around the chain hanging from Winnifred’s neck, and with a sharp tug, he tore the necklace free.
“You won’t get away with this,” Freddie whispered. “It’s not going to work.”
“Shut up,” he said. He let the chain drop to the forest floor and held the ring out towards Marin, chanting words low under his breath. The Latin was unmistakable—I was nothing if not my mother’s daughter. “Aliquid est latet. Absconditis tuis sciri, Aperi pro me. Ego dimittam te. Ego dimittam te. Ego dimittam te.”
I release you.
The ghost extended her hand and let Ransom slip the ring over her third finger, the place where a wedding band would sit. The moment the metal touched her skin, the blue-white glow around her dissipated, and she drifted to the ground.
She took in a deep breath and smiled at Ransom. He bent low over her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “My love,” he breathed. “It worked.”
“Not quite.” Marin’s voice was musical and light. “There’s one more thing you must do for me.”
He raised his head, his question written in his eyes. “My love?”
With her free hand, Marin pulled the knife from Ransom’s belt. “The spell isn’t complete,” she practically sang. “There’s one last thing I need.”
“No!” I cried.
“Eyes open,” Ms. MacAllister commanded again. It was unnecessary. I couldn’t have looked away.
He took the knife from her and turned it over so the hilt rested against his palm. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“I think you do,” Marin replied. “Blood of my blood.”
Now Freddie started to struggle. She kicked her legs harder, and the scream that tore from her lungs was so loud and sharp that it startled a flock of birds from a nearby branch. “Ransom,” she begged. “Please, no.”
Her brother turned toward her, seemingly in a trance. “Blood of your blood,” he repeated. “And then you’ll be free?”
Marin nodded, eyes bright.
Beside me, Charlie took a deep, shuddering breath.
Ransom drew closer to his sister, his footsteps crunching over the forest floor, knife gripped in his fingers.
“Ransom,” Freddie said again, looking even younger than her fifteen years. “Don’t do this.”
“I need you to do this,” Marin called out. “For me, mon coeur.”
Ransom lifted the knife and looked his sister right in the eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Freddie closed her eyes, tears rolling down her face. “Please,” she said again. “Ransom.”
He didn’t hesitate. He plunged the knife into her chest. Her eyes flew open, and she screamed again, the sharp sound mixing with my own. He pulled the knife out, her blood thick on his hands, and plunged it in again. And again. And again. He hacked at her until he was drenched in her blood, until it mixed with the tears running down his face, until she hung limp and pale in the grip of his magic.
Finally, he dropped the knife to the ground at his feet and turned to face Marin.
But she was already gone.