Page 128 of She Haunts Me Still

Penelope nods, fiddling with her long black braid. “Your mother wanted you to have a normal life, Mallory. She entrusted me to give you that.”

Mallory does laugh this time—a sharp, bitter sound.

“Normal?What about my life has ever been normal?”

“And for that I apologize.” Penelope flattens her palms on the table. “But I was firmly against you attending Shore, knowing the ties the Pierce family has to that school, that your attendance would make you easy to find. It wasyouwho insisted on going. I did my best to keep you safe there, but clearly it wasn’t enough.”

Mallory turns over her words. “You’re the one,” she realizes, “who requested Ruth Golden be my advisor.”

“I needed someone to look after you,” Penelope says. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“Howwasit supposed to be, then?” Mallory leans forward. “Enlighten me.”

Penelope pulls in a breath. “This cottage has been in my family for several generations, dating back to the sixteen hundreds, when my ancestors moved to Rhode Island out of fear of persecution. Most people who were accused of witchcraft in Salem and surrounding communities weren’t witches, but some were.” She leans back in her chair. “The world’s idea of witchcraft is hardly accurate, you know. My magic, for example, is rooted in nature. Healing spells with plants, manifestation rituals with whispers of a fire, the occasional incantation—I’m not a satanist, and I certainly can’t play God. But a lot of people think that’s what witches are.”

“Isn’t that what you did, though?” Mallory asks. “I should be the one trying to cut out my own heart, but it’s Saskia. Because ofyou.”

“You have to understand something,” Penelope says. “I met your mother when she was around your age, while she was at Shore. My parents owned a crystal shop in Bristol, just across the bay, and your mother came in, looking for all sorts of strange things. We got to talking and became friends.Goodfriends. She was different from the girls I knew. She was smart. Bookish. Curious. She told me she’d learned about the exhumations, this cult, the way her own mother died. How she feared she’d die that way, too, and how she was trying to stop it.”

Mallory swallows, looking at her untouched tea. She can’t help but feel like a marionette, everyone else holding the strings.

“I explained to your mother that a curse like this one, rooted in a ritualistic tether to a demonic entity, cannot be broken.” Penelope clasps her hands. “It can only betransferredwith a very specific ceremony and the consent of the other individual. Your mother let go of the idea for a while—after all, who would agree to take this on? She started spending a lot of time with a man after she graduated, to distract herself from the inevitable. Dorian Abrams, an artist from West Hartford.”

Mallory bites her lip at the name of her father. A man she’s never even met.

But then Penelope adds, “They loved each other fiercely.”

“My mom wanted to raise me alone,” she says. “Youtold me that.”

“That’s true,” Penelope replies. “She told Dorian she didn’t love him, kept her pregnancy a secret so he wouldn’t try to help. She lied to protect him—and to protect herself, too.” Penelope narrows her eyes. “At a certain point, she learned about the trigger for the curse. She thought she could avoid it by running away from her own heart.”

“Trigger?” Mallory frowns. “You mean thereisone? Something that causes the curse to take effect? What is it? What…” She trails off as she remembers Saskia, a knife inher hand one moment, whisperingI’m yoursthe next. Her stomach drops. “It’s love, isn’t it?”

Penelope’s nod is somber. “It’s a cruel, merciless curse,” she says. “It takes hold at the onset of first romantic love. But your mother wasn’t the only person to figure that out.” She reaches behind her, pulling a leather-bound journal from a shelf before handing it to Mallory.

Mallory opens the journal, skin pebbling as she recognizes the careful cursive on the weathered pages. “Rebecca. Lily’s sister? How do you have this?”

Penelope’s gaze falls to the diary. “Rebecca wrote letters to a former high priestess who lived on Mercy Island. Catherine. When she never responded, Rebecca became impatient, journeyed to the island herself. She stayed for years. I think she felt safe here.” Penelope looks at Mallory carefully. “Your mother didn’t come into my family’s crystal shop merely looking for spell ingredients. She came looking for me. Forthis. Rebecca documented everything in this diary, including the death of Lily’s daughter, Rose. And Rose’s daughter thereafter. Both women died shortly after falling in love.” She points. “Rebecca’s book isn’t just a journal; it’s a story of the curse itself.”

Mallory falls quiet, too many thoughts rushing together. Rebecca, on a boat alone, fleeing the blood-soaked greed of her hometown, journeying through mist and fog toward something new. She thinks of her father, imagining a tall man with glasses, paint smudged on his hand, unable to understand why the woman of his dreams walked away. She pictures Saskia, opening her heart and then nearly being forced to carve it out.

Her gaze lands on the open journal in her lap, catching sight of a page toward the end.I still see Lily in my dreams,Rebecca had written.The way she was before. Happy. Laughing. Alive. I thought her death would be the worst of everything, but in truth, it’s her life. What little there was of it. Knowing we can’t go back, knowing she’ll never grow old, knowing how much was taken from her. The scariest ghost I’ve seen isn’t a ghost at all—it’s the sister I won’t ever hold again. She’s haunted me my whole life; she haunts me still.

Mallory swallows, chest heavy, and closes the journal. She raises her gaze back to her aunt. “Okay. Tell me the rest.”

“Once Jasmine became pregnant with you,” Penelope continues slowly, “her determination to break the curse increased tenfold. She might have ended things with Dorian, but her heart still belonged to him. It was only a matter of time before she admitted it to herself. At some point, she accepted her fate. Succumbed to it. But she was hell-fucking-bent on making sure it didn’t happen to you.”

At that, a sudden, terrible thought occurs to her.

“Hold on.” Mallory wipes her palms on her thighs. “My mother and Saskia’s mother—they were already friends before I was born, right?”

Penelope takes a long sip of her tea. Too long.

Mallory sits a little straighter in her chair. “Right?”

“No,” Penelope finally says, and the floor seems to drop away. “Your mother volunteered at a children’s hospital. While she was there, she sought out Saskia’s mother. And befriended her.”

“What?” The room spins. “That—thatcan’tbe true. I remember. We went on vacation together every year—”