Spell Bound (Darkly Enchanted) (29 page)

The second time she’d found him, his soul had been reincarnated three hundred years later as Charles Smithson, a farmer in 1820s New England. Losing Charles had hurt just as much as losing Niccolo.

If she committed her heart and something happened to her beautiful Quinn… She knew her heart would not survive this time.

Sliding off the bed without jarring her head or her stomach, she went to the kitchen and mixed a virgin Bloody Mary, adding mint for her stomach and rue for her head. She felt a little better after finishing the glass, enough to banish all thoughts of the physical and concentrate solely on the spiritual.

Down the hall, she knelt before her altar, the familiarity of the tools comforting. The wand from the walnut tree in Benevento, the black cauldron she hadn’t used to cook food for centuries, the athame her father had made for her.

After lighting the candles she made from beeswax, she opened the circle.

 “Great Mother Goddess Uni, from whom all gifts emanate. I give thanks for your blessings.”

A whisper of power brushed against her
arus
, like a cat rubbing against her legs. It soothed her jangled nerves, gave her a sense of serenity she sorely needed.

With a tiny yank, she pulled the nail, in its key form, from around her neck and held it in her hands. Wrapping her fingers around it, she felt it transform, then placed it on the altar.

“Goddess Menrva, whose wisdom is all-knowing, I am humbled by your faith in me to watch your most precious gift. Accept my humble words as offerings, Great Mother Goddess Uni. Grant Your protection to my children and my loved ones. And give safe passage to those no longer with us.”

Poor sweet Tullia. Why her?

It was a question she knew better than to ask the Goddesses because, sometimes, there were no answers.

And in her darkest moments, Serena thought maybe, just maybe there were no answers because the Involuti, the founding deities of the Etruscan pantheon, had deserted them.

After she finished the prayer and banished the circle, Serena fell to the floor and let herself weep for Tullia’s death, her tears pooling in front of the altar. Another offering.

Several minutes later, after she’d worn herself out, she dried her tears and took a deep breath. She had work to do. She couldn’t put it off any longer.

In the office, she picked up the heavy black phone on the desk and called Madrona and Furia first. Her daughters would have only a vague notion of what had happened. Their Gifts, arrested at the time of the curse, were spotty.

The phone rang once before Maddie picked it up, her brisk hello erasing the lingering memories of her daughters’ screams.

“Hello, sweetheart, how are you today?”

“Mama! I was going to call you today. We haven’t heard from you for so long and we both felt something last night. How are you? Are you okay? What’s going on?”

Goddess, Maddie could heap the guilt thicker with just a few words than Serena could ever hope to. Of course, they’d had five-hundred years to perfect their technique. But she wasn’t ready to answer her daughter’s last question yet.

“I’ve missed you, Maddie. What trouble are you and your sister getting into now?”

“Nothing much lately. Donal is a more-effective watchdog than the others you’ve sicced on us before. The bookstore is doing well, and Furia’s finally agreed to close that burlesque club and open a respectable business. How is everything up there?”

She couldn’t avoid it any longer. “Tullia’s gone, honey. Last night. I don’t have details yet, but…”

The silence from the other end of the phone throbbed with unspoken questions. Maddie always thought things through before she spoke, looked at all the angles.

“Brian, too?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart.” So much I don’t know.

“Do you want us to come?”

Oh, Goddess, yes. She missed her children. “Not yet. Soon. And Gabriel will be calling you. He’ll explain why.”

“Mama, is there something going on that we need to know?”

“I miss you, Maddie. You and Furia. I’ll see you soon.”

She hung up before she broke down again. She had other calls to make, calls that wouldn’t be as easy.

Sophia and Nerina would need to be contacted wherever they happened to be in Europe at the moment. She wouldn’t be able to notify Amalia. She had no idea where that girl was, though she’d tried for years to find her. She’d been the strongest after Dafne. She should have been the one to lead, not Serena. Serena didn’t have the strength.

But Amalia had deserted them almost immediately.

Serena would have to find her this time. Amalia needed to be told about Shea. The rest of the
boschetta
needed to be told about Shea.

But not yet. Not until she’d met the girl.

Then hopefully, together they could figure out how to break this miserable curse.

* * *

It took Shea a few minutes to open her grandfather’s journal.

She had the ridiculous sense that her life was about to change. The knowledge lay so heavy on her chest, she could barely breathe.

Get a grip, it’s just a book. No harm ever came from reading a book. At least not in real life.

“Just open it already,” she chided. “Do you really think you’re going to find a page titled ‘How to Break the Curse’?”

Forcing her fingers to obey, she cracked open the cover, nose wrinkling at the musty smell. Probably hadn’t been opened in decades.

She gasped as the first few pages slid away from the rest of the book, thinking the damn thing was going to crumble before she got to read it. Then she realized the journal was more of a folio. The outer leather covers enclosed several paper notebooks, each labeled with a range of years. The first was 1941-1950.

She read every word of the first few pages, brief entries that talked about his days in boot camp, preparing for World War II. Those pages were fascinating glimpses of a time long gone but not what she needed.

After a while, she started skimming pages, looking for key words—Kyle, Celeste, son, curse.

Her grandfather hadn’t been a real dedicated writer. He’d skipped whole years completely, wrote only a few passages for several years in the late ’40s and early ’50s.

Her dad’s birth in 1960 started a slew of entries that continued through the last journal, dated 1990.

Just the sight of her dad’s name made her chest tighten. Damn, she missed him.

Taking a deep breath, she wanted to read everything her grandfather had to say about her dad, but knew it would have to wait until she had more time. Now, she was supposed to look for answers.

She forced herself to skim her dad’s early years, his training as a
grigorio
, searching for anything that might have something to do with the curse. And then she found an entry from 1972.

Kyle had the dream again last night. Woke up screaming so loud, thought he’d wake the neighbors. Third time this week.

Rina and I haven’t talked about it, but she’s probably thinking the same thing I am. It’s been almost five hundred years since Paganelli’s curse took the streghe out of the natural order of life.

Still no sign of the daughter foretold by D before her death. The daughter to break the curse.

Unless K’s dream is a vision.

He described Dario perfectly, down to the mole on his cheek. K says he sees Dario stick a knife into his chest then into the chest of a dark-haired girl. The girl screams in agony and K wants to stop it but he can’t. It’s like he’s watching it on television. He can see what’s happening but he’s not there.

 He says he doesn’t recognize the girl but I don’t believe him. Asked him to describe her, but it made him cry. Figured it wasn’t worth it. There’s so much pain in his eyes. He’s hiding something.

Was it at dream? Or a vision of things to come?

Maybe I don’t want know.

Flipping through the pages with shaking fingers, she searched for any more references to the dreams, anything else her dad might have told his father.

Was it her mother he’d been dreaming about?

Or her?

She found her answer several pages later.

C&K stopped to say goodbye. They’re disappearing. They want the girl to have a life before K’s dream comes to pass. Before the curse is ended.

A low drone buzzed in her ears and her temples throbbed, the start of a headache imminent.

Setting the journal on the table in front of her, she swallowed a few times, trying to keep her stomach from revolting.

That was her destiny? To die with a knife in her heart? At the hands of the monster who wanted her brother?

No. That couldn’t be it. It was too…gruesome.

But if that wasn’t how to break the curse then why had her parents run?

And why hadn’t they told her about the curse? Had they been trying to protect her? Or had her parents been biding their time until she was old enough to be sacrificed?

Her breath started to come in shallow pants, and her gaze fixed on the book in front of her.

No. It’s not fair. It’s not…

Vaffanculo
. She couldn’t breathe.

She sat there, trying to calm down, trying not to panic. Not to give in to the feeling that she was fighting a losing battle.

So many questions. Too many questions. But she knew one thing for certain—her parents had believed she could break the curse.