Page 142 of The Sister's Curse

I wondered at the influence of the forest on the Kings of Warsaw Creek. They dabbled in the occult as teens…but had they managed to connect with my father’s Forest God? Where did they get the idea that they could force him to do their bidding? And was what Sumner said about the place being full of spirits true?

I didn’t know enough about magic to say. All I knew about the supernatural was what I felt, what I saw in dreams and in reflective surfaces, like Viv’s scrying mirror. None of it seemed real in daylight.

My parents had shown me the terrifying magic of this place. I wondered about my connection to it. Was it because I was their daughter, and I shared their delusions? Or did I have a spiritual connection to the supernatural? I had so longed to separate myself from my father, to hide from his influence, to cast off everything that he’d given me as a gift of evil.

My mother taught me to kill. Maybe she was evil, too. Where my father’s killings had been cold, distantly calculated, my mother had killed in rage, for her loss. I listened to the water, as she showed me how to do, and felt that ages-old desire for revenge. Maybe she was a witch in her own way, and I had inherited that sense from her.

But maybe some of what my parents showed me justwas. Maybe we heard things nobody else could hear. But maybe there were others who could hear those things, too.

Maybe we all were under the thrall of Bayern County’s spell. Maybe we were trapped here, in our way, never able to leave, never able to escape our pasts or the sins of our fathers.

I exhaled and stared at the ring on my finger.

Maybe I could leave it behind.

Maybe I could be who I needed to be at the moment, and right now, I needed to be Anna, the person who loved and was loved in spite ofdarkness.