Page 19 of Haunted Heart (Things that Go Hump in the night #1)

NINETEEN

The dust hasn’t fully settled. But something more powerful stirs in me. Relief, perhaps. But more likely… Love.

The spell requires two witches. I drift over my heart and feel the way it tugs at me. It wants me to sink into the ash and dirt with it. It wants me to stay… To be whole in decay.

“Do you want me?” I ask, holding out my hand.

She takes it. “I do.”

“Both consenting, two witches stand joined together hand in hand.

“One living, one dead, one goal in their head.

“Where once one was chained, no trace will remain, and these witches will be both one and the same.”

My heart beats, each pump breaking away the hardened crust of centuries rotting in this dark and desolate place. It lifts from the ashes, rising through me until it floats in the space in front of my breast.

Genevieve offers me a soft smile as she continues the spell.

“I offer my heart as an anchor to you.”

“I promise to haunt you in all that you do.”

Genevieve grips my hands tighter and gasps when the beating black mass flies into her chest, leaving a shadowed smudge in the shape of the heart on her shirt.

Eyes wide, she jerks, shoulders tight for a moment, and then, she exhales.

“Given to me,” she says, finishing the spell, “your heart and soul can finally be free.”

The sharp brightness of her touch makes me gasp. My hands jerk in hers, but she holds me tight.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can… feel you.” I brush my thumb across the back of her hand. And then reach up to pass my fingers across her lips. “I don’t remember the last time I could feel anything.”

“There are so many things you can do now that you couldn’t before…” She raises my hand to her cheek and rests her cheek in my palm. “Would you like to go outside?”

I look past her, through the cellar door. “Yes.”

She leads the way and I float behind her, tugged by both her heart and her hand gripped tightly in mine.

And when we are out in the darkness of predawn, I am glad I cannot drop to my knees.

Letting go of my hand, Genevieve walks a few steps away before sitting in the grass.

“There are too many of them,” I tell her. “How is it possible there are more stars in the sky now than there were before?”

Genevieve isn’t looking up at the stars. She watches me with a soft smile, and when she lies back in the grass, I do too.

“You haven’t been able to feel anything?”

“No.”

“What about when we kissed?”

I don’t want to tell her no. It wouldn’t be a lie, but it wouldn’t be the complete truth, either.

“When we kissed, I remembered what a kiss felt like, but I couldn’t feel the pressure or softness of your lips. I only knew that I longed for you. I only knew that kissing you was something I needed to do so desperately, there was no choice but to ask you for that permission.”

“Would you like to kiss me again?” she asks me. “Would you like to feel it, this time?”

I swallow, the motion and flex strange. I don’t really have a throat anymore, and yet…

“I would like that more than you can imagine.”

“If it’s more than I wanted our first kiss, I don’t know why you’ve waited for me to ask.” She smiles up at me and licks her lips.

One hand on my cheek, she guides me down to her and when my lips touch hers… they are soft. They are sweet and strong and so sure of herself and of me.

I want to weep, I want to sing, I want…

I sink into her body as my desires and needs swirl, and a moment before I know what’s happened, I am inside her and those desires and needs mingle with hers. They dance around each other, twining together and coalescing into something perfect.

I rise out of her with a gasp and blink down, floating barely inches above her.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know, but I liked it… so I think we’re going to find out. Don’t you?”

Julia closes the door when we make our way back upstairs.

I’m tired, and now she can feel it.

I check my phone before I lay down.

One message from Minnie: Don’t go into the barn.

She doesn’t know how much I never want to again.

Rose texted too, hours ago. She and Margie want to meet up for coffee and conspiracies tomorrow afternoon—this afternoon. I’ll check in when I wake up.

An email pops up from my communications professor. He wants to discuss my final project… he can definitely wait.

No one has asked about Dylan…

If we’re all lucky, the world will move on without him. We are all, no doubt, better off.

Lying down, with Julia wrapped around me, I can’t find it in me to regret what happened tonight. The mistake that sent us to hell brought her to me.

I wouldn’t give up our haunted heart for anything in this world, or the one Below.