16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

I don’t know what I had expected from Mallory’s book. For it to feel wrong, maybe. For the book to open and for a cloud of dark smoke to come out of it, like in a cartoon of an evil book. For there to be signatures in blood or invocations to The Evil One. Instead, it is just a book.

Old, yes. The binding is starting to come loose, and it’s clearly a well-used little tome. The pages are thick in places, as if the text has been pasted over with a new page. Very little of it is typed; mostly, it’s written by hand.

“A family book of spells and curses,” the interior declares in blocky, handwritten text. Under that was a list of names, but they were in ink just like any other signature, not rusty from any sort of wicked ritual. Mallory’s name is there, the last on the list.

After I’d calmed myself down from the discovery of the book, I’d spent the afternoon looking at page after page. I took careful photos of each page with my phone as if copying it for a digital archive, and I made notes on what I thought could have been the spell used to curse him.

I tell Henry about this process as he flips through the book himself, past spells for making someone fall in love or sleep better, to live longer or look younger.

“Which do you think it is, then?” he asks, looking up at me from where I hover over his shoulder.

“About halfway through the book. I stuck a little ribbon in there—yes, that’s it.”

The title of the page reads “CURSED TO THE VEIL” in all caps.

For those who dare to tip the scales

And for those whose fate will share

A curse for sending someone to the veil

Snip of the hair

Flame to bind them there

These simple words:

“I curse you to the veil

Breath, Life, Love to no avail

Moored firm until reverse prevail.”

Henry frowns after finishing it. “It’s very….”

“Cheesy?” I finish.

“Yes. Surprisingly so.”

“I had no expectations of what the curse might be, so I suppose I’m not surprised,” I tell him. “But this is just the curse. Flip to the other little ribbon bookmark.” Henry pages there, towards the front of the book. “There isn’t a clear counter-curse on the page we just read,” I point out. “But this page talks about counter-curses, generally, and I think it can help.”

“REVERSE and COUNTER-SPELL WORK” is the title of the section. I’m quiet as Henry reads, waiting for him to finish before I say anything. I know what he’s perusing: a bit of a ramble, but with a very important paragraph in which the writer notes that “reversing a curse is as simple as performing the ritual again but switching language polarity.” Want to reverse a spell for falling in love? Change the wording so that it’s falling out of love.

“This seems… too easy,” Henry says.

I shrug. “I’m not exactly a good person to comment on it. I mean, don’t you think it was too easy that those few lines of rhyme and a cut of your hair managed to kill you and make you a ghost in the first place?”

“Good point.” He taps a finger on the book, contemplative. His russet hair is dark in the lamplight, but the gold ring around his neck glows in the warm light. He looks serious and studious and I wish we were two different people, that I could pull the book from his hands and slide onto his lap and hold his face in my hands until he pressed his lips firmly against my own.

But we’re not. And Henry has made it very clear that he is determined to do the emotionally healthy thing as much as we both can bear it—no hair caressing, lap sitting, finger trailing, and definitely no kissing.

“So, we need to write a counter-curse, then,” he says.

“Yes, exactly.”

“And we need to do the ritual, just like it was before.”

“Correct.”

“So, a piece of my hair, then?”

“Weird, but yes.”

He looks up at me then. “Great. Let’s do it. We have the baby hair from the box we found in the barn we can use. We’ll rewrite the curse, burn the hair, and then… it’s done.”

“Then it’s done,” I echo.

It will be done, and Henry will be gone.

We spend an hour or so writing different potential versions of the counter-curse. By the time we have a counter-curse we are satisfied with, it’s midnight. I stifle my third yawn of the evening and Henry snaps the book closed.

“Tomorrow, then. In the evening? We can try it out.”

My heart stops at the idea of saying goodbye so soon, but I nod anyway. “Okay, yes. Tomorrow. Why wait?” I hope it doesn’t sound as sad when I say it out loud as it does when I think about it. I promised Henry I would try to live my life. I don’t want him to know how much this will hurt me. What good would it do? It would only hurt him like I am hurting .

We pack up the little box and I hold it out for him. “Take it with you,” I tell him. “It’s yours, anyway.”

Henry hesitates, hands at his sides. “I think it’s better that you keep it here. Things that I’m connected to emotionally have a tendency to get pulled into the veil faster and faster these days. I don’t want them to disappear. And after I’m gone, I don’t know how anyone would ever access that layer of existence. If it would disappear with me or remain… I’m unsure.”

I set the box down on my dresser. “Do you want the letters, at least?”

“No. I want them to stay here, even after I’m gone. So no, keep them here for me, yeah?”

“Of course.”

We creep down the stairs, the pair of us not making a sound as we ghost down the steps. When I open the door for him, he pauses, expression soft.

“You can read the letter if you’d like, Rency.”

I know exactly what he’s talking about. “I don’t think I will,” I say.

“But you can. There isn’t anything between Florence and me. She’s dead—dead and gone and buried—and I loved her when I was alive and couldn’t help but love her while she lived without me, but it’s been three lifetimes since then. Besides, the letter wasn’t what you think. It’s not a love letter. It’s actually—well, why don’t you read it yourself?”

I shake my head. “It feels wrong.”

Henry sets his hand on my shoulder and I love the weight of it—the solid realness of the contact—more than I want to. “Then don’t do it,” he says. “Just know that you’ve been given permission. That I don’t want anything between you and me.”

“Nothing is between us,” I say. “Except the veil.”

He nods, expression serious. “Except for the veil between us.”

I drink a glass of water after saying goodnight to Henry, contemplating if I should read the letter or not. The water tastes strange in my mouth, coppery and sour, and I dump the rest of it into the sink before putting the glass into the dishwasher.

I’m making a pros-and-cons list in my mind as I climb the stairs, and for a moment, in a trick of light, I walk past the hallway mirror and it doesn’t bounce the light quite right.

Doesn’t show me in its reflection.

It makes me startle, do a double take. I back up, but no—there I am. My slightly frizzed curls, my brown eyes, and the few freckles on my nose clearly reflected back at me.

Sleep , I tell myself. That’s what I need.

But even sleep doesn’t stop the churn of my mind, the worries weighing on my soul. Instead, it draws me into the dreamworld of the little house in the woods. Except, instead of the version of the house in my dream when Henry is cursed, back in 1929, it’s Henry’s house as it is today, filled with all of the items of his existence that he’s deemed worth becoming attached to.

I drift through the small space, from the greenhouse to the kitchen to the hallway. I’m in the living room, looking into the mirror but not seeing myself, when the reflection of Henry appears behind me.

Strange , my dream-self thinks. Henry is the one who shouldn’t be in the mirror. He’s the one who is a ghost.

I’ve never spoken in any of my dreams before, but now I try, and I hear the disjointed sound of my voice.

“Henry, something strange is going on,” I say.

Henry’s eyebrows pull together in a frown, and he looks right through me, past me. “Rency?” he says, eyes not seeing me at all as he tips his head, listening. “Where are you?”

“Here.” I wave a hand in front of his face, reach out to touch him. “I’m right here.” My hand goes through him, and he shivers.

“Rency,” he says again. “I can’t see you.”

“I’m right here. Right here!” The panic I feel in my chest is clear in my voice. “Henry, I’m right here,” I nearly yell.

He spins and then says: “Where are you? I can’t see you, Rency. You’re a ghost.”