16. Freddie #3
She narrows her eyes, drifting back a foot. “Which memory?”
“You choose,” I tell her. “Whatever moment you want. But I’m warning you, I’ve never actually done this before. I just know my Resonance is capable of pulling it off. And it’s short. Thirty seconds, max. Maybe less.”
She stares at me. “Will it be real?” she whispers like a heartbroken girl instead of a monster. “I can…touch him?”
I give the smallest nod my stiff neck allows. “Yes.”
“Freddie,” Callum snaps in a warning from where he’s still pinned ten feet away. “Don’t.”
“Shh,” I hiss out of the corner of my mouth, keeping my eyes locked on the ghost. “Go get whatever you have of his, Genevieve. Bring it here.”
She looks between Callum and me one last time, her expression a mix of desperate hope and dark suspicion, before she turns and dissolves straight into the woods.
“Are you insane?” Callum rasps, his jaw working hard as he tries to fight his binding. “What if you can’t pull that off?”
I am, indeed, freaking the fuck out, I think wildly. Because if I mess this up, my ass is going to be buried under this mud and moss for good.
I’ve known I could project memories through Resonance since I was nineteen—my mom tried to teach me after reading about it in some family journal—but every single time I tried it back then, I’d panic, lose my grip on the thread of my magic, and end up with a blinding migraine and a nosebleed.
I’d never had enough adrenaline to push through the barrier of reality and the past.
“It’s our only shot at getting out of here alive, Callum,” I tell him, my eyes scanning the trees. “So pray that my magic can somehow do it.”
A second later, the air turns frigid again. Genevieve materializes out of the mist, floating toward us with her hands cradled gently against her chest.
In her translucent palms rests a small, tarnished brass pocket watch, suspended by a faded ribbon. It’s solid—a real, physical object—held afloat by the stubbornness of her spirit’s attachment to it. She must have clung to it the entire night she froze to death.
She glides right up to me, her eyes dark and threatening as she glances over her shoulder at Callum. “You better not be lying to me, little witch. Or the consequences will be dire. Starting with him.”
I swallow hard, forcing my face to stay completely blank. “I’m not lying.”
Genevieve flicks her wrist.
The pressure that’d been crushing my limbs instantly falls away, and air floods back into my lungs so fast I stagger forward, taking a gasping breath. My knees are weak, but I force myself to stand tall, roll my shoulders and hold out my hand.
“Give me the watch,” I say quietly. “And let’s go see Francis.”
Genevieve hesitates as she stares down at the tarnished brass in her palm. Slowly, skeptically, she extends her arm and lets the pocket watch hover an inch above my open palm. Cold radiates off the metal in biting waves, freezing the moisture on my skin.
“For this to work,” I say. “I need your hand, too.”
She glides closer, placing her other slim hand over the watch. I lay my palm over hers, sandwiching the icy watch between us and close my eyes, forcing my shoulders to drop.
I reach down, hunting for that deep well of Resonance magic. I try to coax it upward, trying to mold it into a bridge between my mind and the ghost’s residual memories.
But nothing happens.
Just my fucking luck.
Genevieve lets out an exasperated sigh, her grip tightening on the watch. “You’re wasting my time, little witch.”
“Winifred,” Callum murmurs from a distance.
“Shh,” I snap softly, not opening my eyes. “Give me a second. I’ve never done this successfully before.”
I take a slow, deep breath through my nose, smelling wet pine needles and old frost. I stop trying to force the magic and just let it spill over.
And then the air around us snaps.
Suddenly, the cold vanishes, replaced by the heat of late summer.
The smell of moss turns sweet, rich with wildflowers and earth.
I open my eyes, and I’m still standing in the Witch Wood, but the canopy overhead is full with lush green leaves, the sunlight filtering through the branches in golden beams.
Genevieve is standing right in front of me and she’s alive and vibrant.
She couldn’t be older than twenty, her skin glowing with youth, her long blonde hair gathered in loose, soft waves that spill over the shoulders of a high-collared cream dress.
The lace at her cuffs is slightly frayed, dirty around the hem from walking through the brush.
She’s holding the hand of a man with a broad chest and a thick mop of curly auburn hair catching the sunlight. When he turns his head to laugh, my eyes nearly bulge out of my skull.
Freckles dusted across the bridge of his nose. Indigo eyes, with rings of aquamarine. A stubborn jawline. The cleft in the chin.
It’s eerie how much he looks like Callum.
Francis pulls Genevieve in by the waist, burying his face in the crook of her neck, and she lets out a laugh that sounds nothing like the ghostly wail I heard just minutes ago.
As they sway together, kissing heavily beneath the shade of an oak, little white flowers bloom around her feet, opening up in their wake like a silent celebration of her magic.
“We shouldn’t be out here this late,” Francis murmurs against her lips, his fingers tangling in the lace at her waist. “If my father’s hands catch me sneaking back onto the estate, he’ll have me clearing timber in the south hollow until winter.”
“Let him,” Genevieve says, a playful, stubborn smile on her lips. “We’re getting married in three weeks anyway. He won’t own you then.”
Francis pulls back, his blue eyes softening as he tucks a stray strand of blonde hair behind her ear.
“He doesn’t own me now, Ginny. I don’t care if my family turns their backs on us.
I don’t care about their titles or their money, or what they think about your blood. I love you. That’s the end of it.”
Genevieve’s smile softens, turning sweet and slightly nervous. She reaches up, laying a hand flat against his chest, right over his heart. “It needs to happen sooner than three weeks, Francis.”
He brows furrows in confusion. “Why? What’s wrong?”