Chapter 4 #2
“Gran!” Shanna shot up. “We’re not …” She colored to the tips of her ears as she glanced at Simon and back at her grandma. “Simon doesn’t remember me.”
Simon had expected Dolores to be as confused as he was regarding the memory issue, but after a moment of silence, she widened her eyes and said, “Ohh. I see.”
Shanna sat back down, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear and avoiding Simon’s gaze.
“I’m sorry, dear,” Dolores said. “I didn’t know it would happen so quickly.”
“Perhaps the years his soul was inside the locket did it. His ghost form, whether contained or not, might not have counted as contact.”
“Wait.” Simon reached out a hand. “What do you mean, happen so quickly? What didn’t count?” He looked from one to the other.
“You didn’t tell him?” Dolores said.
“Why would I? He’s got plenty of problems already. This one wasn’t particularly relevant.”
“Didn’t tell me what?” Simon tried again.
“About the curse,” Dolores said.
“No, she told me—about how she causes accidents all around her.”
“Psssh.” Dolores blew a raspberry. “That one’s nonsense, and you know it.” She directed a pointed look at Shanna. “It’s only happening because you keep believing it will happen.”
“Gran—”
“Besides, that’s not the curse I’m talking about.” Dolores turned her attention back to Simon. “I mean the forgetting curse.”
Simon tilted his head, looking at Shanna. “You’re cursed with … forgettability?”
“Our entire bloodline is,” Dolores said.
“He doesn’t need to know,” Shanna murmured, wringing her hands in her lap.
He was curious, but with Shanna’s growing discomfort with the situation, Simon decided to get them back on track. “Uh, Dolores.” He shot her his best presenter’s smile. “I’m sure we can discuss all that later. How about we focus on the bond for now? Can it be removed?”
Dolores inspected Shanna’s wrist. “A rope design, huh? Could be Hel’s bond.”
“Hell?” What in the world has he been dragged into?
“Hel,” Dolores pronounced more clearly. “As in the goddess of the dead. The bond is not as severe as that, though—it connects two people so they can’t get far away from each other. Legend has it Orpheus put the same bond on Eurydice when he tried to bring her out of the underworld.”
Oh, her. Simon had heard of Hel in a documentary he’d watched about Iceland. “Then why is it named after a Nordic goddess?”
“To mess with people like you.” Even though Dolores’s tone was sharp, her eyes glinted with mischief. “It can be created on a pair that was once connected romantically, if one of the pair dies or comes close to death. The bond appears as a side effect of tampering with said death.”
“That makes sense,” Shanna said.
“How do we break it?” Simon asked.
“Sweet Caitriona, you really are impatient, aren’t you? I’ll have to dig through some books.”
“I have this, if it would help. It’s where I got the first resurrection ritual from.” Shanna brought a book out of her bag—purple cover, with nothing but a golden rhombus on it.
“Brenda’s book. So that’s where it was! You sneaked it out of my library, didn’t you?”
Shanna blushed. “I wanted to see if there was something in it that could help me fix the mistakes of the first ritual, since we got that one from it.”
“Hmm.” Dolores stood and weighed the book. “I don’t think the process to break Hel’s bond is in this one, but I’ll find the answer somewhere. In the meantime, why don’t you two get comfortable?” As Simon opened his mouth, she quickly added, “I won’t have the answers until tomorrow.”
“Come,” Shanna said. “I can show you a spare room.”
***
Night had fallen, and after ensuring Jinx was content with his choice of sleeping quarters for the evening—he went with Gran’s bed—Shanna slipped out to her favorite spot: a small balcony on the narrow third floor, tucked under the house’s gabled roof.
But before she could take in the view of the darkened, forested slopes, something shifted in the corner.
“Evening,” Simon said.
Shanna twitched. “Sorry. I didn’t see you here.”
“You can assume I’ll always be within a hundred feet of you.”
She chuckled. “True.”
“I was breathing,” he said.
“That’s a good thing to do.”
“I mean …” He stepped forward and leaned on the balcony’s railing. “It’s strange, but since I came back, I appreciate it much more. Especially where the air is nice, like this. Cool, but not cold, and the smell of pines …” He shook his head. “I’m rambling.”
She didn’t mind it. She didn’t mind him being like this, either—more easygoing, conversational. But it didn’t change the fact that it was all still pointless. “I’ll go.”
“By all means, stay. It’s your house.” He shuffled a step away, to the farthest side of the balcony. Shanna moved to the other, drumming her fingers on the wood.
An owl hooted in the forest.
She made a popping sound with her lips.
“You want to know what the curse is, don’t you?” she said.
“I—well—I know it’s not relevant.” He posed it almost as a question.
“It is relevant. It just doesn’t matter anymore.” Leaning on the railing with one hand, she turned to him. “My distant ancestor, Caitriona, was a heart healer. She put spells on people to make their heartaches go away. With their permission, of course.”
Simon nodded for her to continue.
“One day, a man from a wealthy family came to her. He was in love with a poor woman, and because of the differences in their social statuses, they could never be together. The man begged Caitriona to help him forget his love—his pain—and she did. He didn’t know that the woman was expecting his child. ”
Shanna swallowed, closing her eyes. She’d heard the legend so many times—Gran sometimes used Caitriona’s name in place of curse words—but it still gripped her.
“Caitriona wasn’t aware the poor woman she’d made him forget was also a witch,” she continued. “She knew Caitriona’s actions caused her to become abandoned, lost—her, and her poor baby who’d have to grow up without a father.”
Simon leaned forward. “Did she reverse the spell?”
“No. Perhaps she couldn’t. Instead, she cursed Caitriona with a spell of her own.
‘If I’m to be forgotten,’ she said, ‘then so will you.’ And she made it so that everyone Caitriona loved would forget her in time.
” Shanna tilted her head. “Don’t know if it was fine print or an unintended side effect of the spell, but it didn’t apply only to Caitriona’s loved ones, and not even only to Caitriona.
She’d cursed our entire family line so that everyone we meet eventually forgets us. ”
Simon scrunched his nose. “But that’s …”
“That’s the night in Las Vegas.”
“You’re saying I forgot you because of a curse?” He faced away, ruffled his hair, and turned back. “That’s silly.”
“It’s not silly to me, or Gran, or any of our ancestors.”
“But how can it even work? Does it work within the family as well? Can you forget your grandma? Can she forget you?” He tapped his finger on his chin as he moved closer.
“How soon do people forget you? Is there a clean cut-off, or does it happen gradually? And once they forget, how do people rationalize—oh, wait, I can figure that one out …”
Morose as the topic was, she had to laugh at his animated interest. Feeling like she was a business trend to be studied should be demeaning, except that Simon, as a CEO, would love business trends.
“We can forget each other. I could forget Gran, but I make sure to call her every day and see her as often as possible. Seeing someone in person is the best way to keep the memory going, but if nothing else, hearing their voice will do. Texting, to a lesser extent. As for how soon … it varies. Some people forget me within days. At most, without refreshing the contact, they lasted three weeks. Most often their memory will start to slip in about a day, but at that point, I can still refresh it. If I were to call someone whose memory of me is only starting to slip, they’d remember me again. But if they have already forgotten …”
She looked out into the forest, pressing her lips together. “Then there’s no way back. They’ll never again remember what was lost.”
“Like me.” His tone had turned back serious.
“Like you.”
“So when we break the bond tomorrow and I leave for San Francisco, I’ll forget you in a few weeks, at most. Again.”
“Yup.” She gripped the railing. Oh, how she wished he’d say he wouldn’t let it happen again.
That he’d invite her with him, and they could start anew.
But he didn’t, and she didn’t blame him.
That was why she usually didn’t tell people about the curse.
Who on this Earth would ever want her, knowing?
She was a chore. She was the definition of clingy if she wanted a serious relationship—and anyone would grow tired of that eventually.
“But it’s okay.” Her voice shook. “I’m used to it.”
“Shanna …”
Please, no more pity. “Now you know. See you in the morning.” She slinked back inside.