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31

Haven

Friday

“W here are we?” Mal asked.

I turned off the Vespa and grabbed my cross-body bag. “Enzo’s mom’s house,” I said under my breath. “Savina is her name.” Above us, a canopy of trees hung ominously low.

“Is Enzo here?”

I eyed the driveway, not seeing his scooter. “Doesn’t look like it. And if I’m being honest with you, I hope he’s not. He’d ask too many questions.”

“Haven,” Mal said, grabbing me by the elbow. “What’s going on?”

“Look,” I said, relenting. “I know this sounds absurd. But his mom, she’s—” I stopped, not knowing where to begin. “Something about her unnerves me. The other day, she was horrified—angry, even—that we’d been diving in Li Galli. She begged us not to go again. Then earlier today, at a coffee shop, I overheard her and a friend talking about the yacht going down. They mentioned the Amalfi Curse. And streghe . And they were looking at…” I grimaced, feeling more foolish by the moment. “They had printed out a bunch of oceanography graphs. Highlights and notes everywhere.”

“And this is unnerving…why? Everyone is talking about the yacht, about Vesuvius.”

“The article about the Aquila sinking,” I went on. “The end of it mentions stregheria —witchcraft—twice. I asked Enzo to translate the article for me, and he completely left this part out. Just glossed right over it.”

“So you think Enzo’s mom is a—” Mal laughed, looking away. “I can’t even say it. My God, what has Positano done with my rational, science-minded friend?”

“I know, I know,” I said, turning away and walking toward the villa. “But at the coffee shop, Savina and her friend also mentioned a memorial for Asher. And now there’s been another incident in Li Galli, during the memorial?” Twigs and leaves crunched beneath my feet as I walked. “Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s something. Just humor me.”

My pulse quickened as we neared the house. Ahead, through the trees, I could make out the light of a single lamp in the main living area.

“Follow me,” I told Mal, making my way along the side of the villa. I peeked in through one of the windows. An open bottle of wine sat on the counter, alongside a half-eaten plate of antipasti.

I grabbed Mal’s hand, pulling her forward. We kept close to the exterior, approaching the terrace from behind.

As we walked, I pulled out my phone, navigated to the audio-recording app, and clicked Record before tucking my phone back into my front pocket.

Then, hearing a voice, I stopped where the terrace met the house.

“What the hell,” Mal whispered, running into me.

I placed my fingers over my lips, shushing her. We’d paused behind a trellis exploding with plum-colored clematis. Through the gaps in the lattice, I spotted Savina. She leaned over the railing, whispering into her cell phone.

Behind her, in the shape of a circle, were more than a dozen pillar candles flickering in the night. Beyond the terrace, with its extraordinary view of the Tyrrhenian Sea, the silhouette of the largest Li Galli islet rose up from the sea.

Countless boats bobbed in the water, red lights flashing. Police boats.

Around Savina lay a few books and disorderly piles of paper. Every so often, she reached to touch something against her collarbone.

I wanted badly to tell Mal what I’d read last night about the cimaruta necklaces. But I couldn’t breathe a word now, not so close to Savina.

Not knowing what was at stake here—not knowing what I was seeing, if anything at all—I couldn’t watch, or wait, a moment longer.

“What are you—” Mal reached for me, but I moved quickly toward the stairs leading up to the terrace.

“Savina,” I said, forcing a wide smile as I took the last stair. “Pardon my trespassing, but I was just showing my friend your villa, then I saw you standing here. I thought we’d say hello.”

Savina whispered something into the phone, then hung up. She looked back at me, her expression a mix of shock and dismay.

“Haven,” she said slowly. “Is Enzo with you?”

“He’s not,” I said, “but this is my dear friend, Mal.” The two nodded at one another while I motioned toward the candles, keeping my voice cheerfully oblivious. “What’s this?” I asked her.

“Ah,” Savina said, fumbling for words. “Well, I…”

“Excuse me,” Mal said, “but Megan has called me six times. I’ll be right back.” She slipped off quickly. Though, knowing Mal, she would be only steps away, keeping a close eye on us.

Savina knelt down next to the candles, and I was able to get a better look at a few other objects around her. Including, to my surprise, a strange-looking comb, resembling a saw or teeth.

I’d seen this on the website I’d perused earlier, with the register of sea spells. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought this saw-looking object was the tool required for the incantation that altered the composition of water.

This could not be a coincidence.

“This is nothing,” she said, finally answering my question. She tidied a few of the papers while I looked out at the water, the flashing lights.

“It’s not nothing,” I disputed. Here we go. “The hydrothermal vent readings, the changes in the carbon dioxide levels.” I nodded to the comb. “This is one of the tools needed. I know all about stregheria , Savina.”

She raised her eyebrows. “There’s only one reason you would have researched that,” she said, voice hoarse. “You’re looking for something in Li Galli.”

If I wanted her honesty, I needed to do my part, too. “Yes.”

She stepped close, placing her hand lightly around my wrist. “Then let me help you. I can read the water—the ocean.” She pointed to the black expanse of ocean beyond. “I can make the sea…do things. I can make it reveal things. I can lead you to precisely whatever it is you’re searching for.”

I kept silent. Only hours ago, this would have seemed an absurd notion, the claims of a lunatic. If not for all I’d uncovered.

Savina took my left hand in both of hers, toying with my empty ring finger. “Haven,” she finally said, “you are a beautiful, accomplished young woman. Why have you not married yet?”

I balked at the affront. “I’ve been focused on my career,” I replied, even though it was none of her business. “And I haven’t met the right person.”

She leaned in. “Might my Enzo be the right person?”

I didn’t see where this was going, what Enzo had to do with stregheria or the flickering candles around our feet. “I only just met him.”

“Ah, but think how perfect it could be,” she said in an urgent whisper. “My son, owner of a dive shop.” She stepped to the terrace railing, gripping it with both hands. “My Enzo has what is needed to get you into the water, into the wrecks. You have the skill required to explore them, to search them for riches.” She paused. “And I, well, I can lead you right to them. This is how it is supposed to be. The moment he brought you to the villa, Haven…it was all the proof I needed.”

I peered at her in the darkness. “Proof of—what?”

“Proof that what Renata and I are doing is working. The misfortune following me around for my entire life, well, I finally know why . And, more importantly, I know how to fix it.”

“I’m not following,” I said. “Fix what?”

“We are streghe ,” Savina said, “much as Renata and I wish we weren’t. Growing up, my grandmother and mother tried to teach me about it. They shared the legends and lore passed down through history—everything about Li Galli, the mythological sirens, the women who lived here for thousands of years. They taught me the incantations, too.”

She lifted one of the books at her feet, showing me the open page. It was a diary, written in a child’s hand. Incantesimo di riflusso read one entry, next to a sketch of a bullet-shaped fossil.

“I refused to listen to my mother and grandmother,” Savina explained. “I wanted nothing of such silly stories. Renata, too. We were friends even then, as our families have long known one another. Her mother had been teaching her the same things, but like me, Renata was more interested in dolls and boys than seashell spells.”

I looked around, peered in through the tall glass windows. “Where is Renata, by the way?”

Savina motioned to the water. “She took one of the Jet Skis out.”

I suspected as much.

Savina went on, “As I grew older, my mother told me that by rejecting my lineage, my inborn powers, I would be haunted by misfortune. Even on her deathbed, when I was eighteen, she pleaded with me to accept the truth, to accept who I really was. This is dark witchcraft , she said. But still, I refused. I scorned the whole idea of it. We Italians are mostly Catholic, you know. My friends, their parents, a potential husband—what would they have thought of me if they knew I practiced witchcraft?”

Savina closed her childhood journal, clutched it to her chest. “I nearly burned this but decided to stash it away in a closet. And as the years went by, I became convinced that bad things happened more often to me than they did to others. My husband, Enzo’s father, died in a car accident. I was dismissed from job after job, despite working diligently, always showing up on time. Our apartment was burglarized, twice. For years, Bria dealt with ear infections, and Enzo, I swear he broke every bone a young boy can break. Still, I refused to believe any of this was related to my rejection of stregheria . Until the very worst happened…”

“Bria’s passing,” I said.

“Exactly.” She nodded. “That, at last, convinced me that what my mother had said was true. If I did not embrace—and more importantly, use —my powers, this curse would continue to weigh upon me. She once told me that rejecting my gift was like cutting circulation from my limbs. My lineage, whether I like it or not, is my lifeblood. Cut it out, and every part of me will perish. Including my own children, it seems.” She gently set her journal on the ground. “This dark witchcraft has made me victim enough. I lost Bria. I will not let it take anything more from me.”

How strange, I thought, that she called it dark witchcraft . Given the research and incantations I’d uncovered online, it didn’t seem that stregheria was inherently sinister. “What about Renata?” I asked. “Does she believe this witchcraft is tied to misfortune in her life, too?”

“Yes,” Savina said, nodding hard. “When I reached out to her last year—she and I had remained acquaintances over the years, though she’d moved to Milan—I told her about my theory. She was speechless, then she broke into tears. All she ever wanted was to have children, she told me, but she could never conceive. Not once. Now, it is too late for her, but when I told her what happened to Bria—and so suddenly, too—she swore she would help me. Neither of us want to resist the curse of this lineage any longer. Neither of us want to lose anything more than what we already have.

“I dug up my childhood diary with the incantations, then Renata and I uprooted and moved here, together. This villa has always been shared between our two families, though, as you know, it has been uninhabited. As it turns out, we have done very well practicing as a pair. This location is perfect, too, overlooking Li Galli. With its history of maelstroms and sinkings, it is not a waterway likely to rouse suspicion. It is witchcraft,” she concluded, “masquerading as natural forces.”

She watched my reaction for a few moments, then, “You do not believe me, do you?”

I didn’t know how to answer this. It all seemed so farfetched. But then again, I’d been the one to drag Mal out of the house and onto Savina’s terrace to investigate further.

“Let me show you,” she said. She pulled out her phone once more and dialed a number. “Renata,” she said into it, before sputtering off something in Italian.

“Watch the waterline,” Savina said to me then, “just there.”

I followed her gaze, eyeing the place where the waves met the vertical cliff side. At once, the surf in that place began to swell and spin in a counterclockwise motion.

“Make it stop,” I challenged her.

“ Fermate ,” she said into the phone.

At once, the water grew still. Impossible . I placed my fingers over my lips.

Savina hung up the phone and turned to me. “Now every sea spell we perform gives me great comfort—like I am chiseling away at a lifetime of ignorance.”

“The yacht,” I said. I motioned to the circle of candles behind me, then turned to face her head-on. “You two are responsible for it, aren’t you? And whatever else is happening out there tonight.”

She looked away as though ashamed. “It was not what we intended. Had they not been ubriaco , on drugs and in a stupor, they would have gotten out…”

“Eight people died,” I reminded her, feeling disoriented. “You will be found out. The police, they will get to the bottom of it, someday.”

Savina shook her head. “No, they won’t. They will attribute it to the currents around Li Galli, which have always been unpredictable.”

Unless they hear what I’m recording on my phone at this very moment , I thought.

I bent down and picked up the sawfish comb. “What about this?” I asked. “Is this related to Vesuvius concerns, the hydrothermal readings?”

“Yes,” she said, taking the comb in her hands.

“So there is no risk of eruption at all.”

She shook her head. “No. None at all.”

I ran my hand over my forehead, astounded at her selfishness, her cruelty. She and Renata were responsible for the yacht sinking and whatever boat incident had unfolded tonight. They were the reason why tourism to the Amalfi region had plummeted overnight. And why Savina’s own son was now at risk of losing his business.

She was also why I’d been yanked from Project Relic, and why Conrad was but an inch away from finding something that was never his to find.

“I’ve seen the list of incantations,” I said. “Spells as simple as making water ebb or flow. Why sink a yacht, then, or terrorize an entire region? Why not sit by the water and perform the spells privately, safely?”

“Because I am making up for a lifetime of denial,” Savina said, her voice louder now. I’d angered her: she clutched the comb so tightly between her fingers, her knuckles were white. “I will not sit by the water , as you say, and do little hexes like a child might. I have much to prove, to fix. I am years behind. I don’t know how this witchcraft works, but now I’m listening. Now I’m on its side.”

Her gaze on me had turned cold as ice. “I lost my daughter,” she hissed. “She is dead because of me, her entire life cut short because I would not heed my mother’s warnings. What about Enzo? I cannot lose him, too. I will do anything to keep him safe—even witchcraft.”

She tucked the comb into her pocket, huffed a breath of frustration. “You aren’t a parent, but if you understood this pain, you’d do it, too. Any mother would.”