Page 60 of The Witching Moon Manor
A tingling along the skin beneath her ears just before a crescendo.
The hot sting of bourbon sliding down her throat.
These memories didn’t belong to her, but Anne found herself sinking deeper and deeper into them anyway, lured by emotions that were yearning to be touched, tasted, and heard.
“Don’t get lost,” she heard Vincent murmur as he tightened his hold on her hands, reminding her that she was a creature of the present, not an echo of the past.
The urge to fade into the memories was still tempting, though. At the same moment she was savoring the first drops of honeysuckle in early summer, Anne was enfolded into thebittersweet sensation of a final embrace. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the beauty of all the wonders that made up a lifetime, and so she remained still as they brushed against her body.
But then Vincent’s magic touched hers again, as gentle as a finger tapping lightly on her shoulder, and she remembered what needed to be done.
With great effort, Anne turned away from the sensations that the spirits were trying to share and offered one of her own: the warmth of the gold ring as it drew in the heat of her and Vincent’s clasped hands.
In what felt like an instant, the ghosts latched on to the sensation, eager to show Anne moments of their own lives that were linked to the one in the present.
And among the feeling of pearls being draped across her neck and the flashes of wedding bands passing between hands, Anne saw her again, the woman with the mismatched eyes from the night she’d fallen under the spell of the heartsong.
But Anne was peering through a keyhole now instead of standing across from her at a ball, watching as she stood and reached for a wrinkled hand rising above a pile of quilts atop the mattress.
With a shock, Anne realized that the woman’s hair was completely white, from the roots to the tips of the curls that swayed against the small of her back, just like Vincent’s. Before, it had been hidden beneath ribbons and roses, but now Anne could see the startling hue.
And then Anne’s attention was gripped by the quick flash of gold as the person in the bed placed the ring in the woman’s upturned palm and whispered a single word that carried through the keyhole.
Legacy.
In the rough texture of the vowels and consonants, Anne was pulled even deeper into the past, the ring growing at the center of her vision as it was handed from one palm to the next and the next and the next.
She suddenly felt Vincent’s magic tugging at her own, a reminder not to drift too far into recollections, and in the instant his power touched hers, Anne snapped away from the past and toward the future, as abruptly as a string that had been holding too much weight.
As she shifted into what was yet to come, Anne was consumed by the scent of myrrh and magic, her gaze coming to rest on a single image: Vincent grasping the ring from a hand touched by time and slipping it onto his own finger.
Her eyes flew open then, startled to find the face she’d seen in her inner vision so close to her own now, the lines and grooves of it etched with concern and curiosity.
“What did you find?” Vincent asked, the rapid beat of his pulse reverberating against Anne’s skin as he waited to hear what she would say.
But instead of giving him an answer, Anne pulled away abruptly, releasing his hands and taking a step back so that she could put some distance between them.
The movement broke the bond tethering their magic together as well, causing it to snap back so painfully that Anne gasped and reached for her chest.
“I don’t know,” she finally replied as she caught her breath.
The different threads of what she’d seen, heard, and touched were coming together now, though, as quickly as a spider weaving a web. As she took all the pieces that had been reflected in the mirrors and placed them alongside one another, she saw the answer, so simple and improbable all at once.
“I don’t know,” Anne murmured again, but the words this time were laced with the distinct burnt sweetness that exposed them for what they were.
A sinking sensation gripped Anne’s stomach as she watched all the softness in Vincent’s face start to harden.
“You don’t know, or you won’t tell me?” Vincent asked, his voice cutting through the thick silence of the room.
Anne turned away from him then, but his narrowed eyes were reflected in every shard of glass scattered across the walls and floor, making it impossible to escape them.
“I need some time to put it all together,” she said as she raked a hand through her curls. “I have to be sure of what it all means first.”
“You won’t let me help you even now,” Vincent sighed, “when you’ve already seen what we can do if we let one another in?”
Anne paused, but as his question echoed through the room, she blinked and saw the edge of a hawk’s wing flutter from one mirror to the next, leaving feathers across the glass that looked so real she nearly leaned forward to pick the closest one up.
She whirled toward Vincent, the suspicion that had slipped into the back of her mind rising to the surface again, so strong and unexpected that she could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks.
