Chapter 37
Penelope drives Mallory and Saskia to a fishing dock in North Kingstown, about ten minutes from Shore’s campus. Mallory sits silently in the back seat the entire ride, her chest bandaged, cradling Saskia’s head in her lap as she sleeps.
At the wharf, Mallory can only stare in stunned silence as Penelope leads them along creaking planks of wood toward a narrow brown boat at the far end of the dock.
With an arm hooked around Saskia’s waist, Mallory watches Penelope climb aboard and retrieve the anchor.
She thinks of the aunt she’s known her entire life—the spa appointments, the delicate nails, the frilly dresses—and blinks at this unfamiliar woman at ease on a fishing boat.
Tugging the engine start cord with trained hands, effortlessly coaxing the vehicle to life.
As though Penelope has also been playing a role this whole time.
Disappearing into a life that isn’t her own. We don’t have to be ourselves today.
Maybe everyone is hiding something. Maybe it’s easier to assemble an outward-facing version of yourself that feels safe.
But a person can disappear that way. Become invisible. Mallory thinks of how freeing it’s been to let go of her secrets lately, and wonders if Penelope has ever let someone truly see her.
Penelope looks over her shoulder at Mallory, noticing her expression. Something unspoken passes between them, a wordless acknowledgment of all the lies that made up Mallory’s upbringing.
“I’ll explain everything,” Penelope says. “But right now, we need to go.”
The bay is a sheet of black silk as Penelope drives the boat east. Mallory holds Saskia the entire time, barely flinching at the bitter wind biting her skin. Saskia slips in and out of sleep, breaths shallow.
Mallory threads Saskia’s limp fingers in hers, and déjà vu overtakes her—that same sense of familiarity that’s accompanied the feel of Saskia’s hand in hers again and again. Only right now, she understands it, can give it a name.
Because Saskia’s hand is Kiki’s hand. A hand Mallory held countless times during the years at the blue house, a beacon of light in a collection of otherwise-warped memories.
The knowledge should offer reassurance, but all Mallory feels is a dull, pervasive fear.
This whole time, Saskia’s touch has felt like retreating someplace safe.
But now it only feels like a place she’ll be forced to leave again.
Mallory swallows the thought and focuses instead on the approaching shoreline, the smattering of lights beyond.
The scenery slips into focus: a pebble-crusted beach, bunches of switchgrass, a thick line of trees in the distance.
And when she spots the green-painted cottage overlooking the bay, recollection takes hold.
“Mercy Island,” Mallory whispers to herself. A place she once thought was a fairy tale but has been her aunt’s secret home this whole time.
The cottage is long and narrow, with a modest porch glowing under a flickering lamp. Its sloping roof has a tilted window on one side, and a rocky path snakes from the front door to the flower-engraved docks.
Penelope brings the boat to a smooth stop, the bay swishing around the hull in gentle waves. Guiding a drowsy Saskia, Mallory climbs onto the dock, listening for a wild horse’s whinny. But the night is still; the only sound is the crunching of her boots in the sand.
“This way.” Penelope leads Mallory and Saskia toward the cottage, where they’re immediately greeted by a flurry of women in the candlelit entryway. They’re dressed in white, hair pulled back in different-colored ribbons.
Without hesitation, Penelope loops an arm around Saskia’s waist and motions for a pair of younger women to come forward, one with warm-brown skin and curls, the other a pale blonde.
“Take Saskia to the orchid room,” Penelope says to them. “Someone will need to keep watch. There’s to be nothing sharp around her.” She gives them a stern look. “And she may need to be restrained.”
“Hold on,” Mallory says as the two women reach for Saskia. “Where are you taking her?”
“Someplace for her to rest.”
“Rest?” Something seems to snap inside Mallory, breaking through her bottled silence. “Aren’t you going to do something? A spell? Don’t you…know magic or something? You did this—can’t you fix her?”
Ignoring her questions, Penelope nods at the two women, and they start leading a barely conscious Saskia down the hall.
“Wait.” Mallory rushes after them.
Wordlessly, she throws her arms around Saskia’s neck, digs her fingers in her hair.
She fleetingly thinks of what might have been if Saskia hadn’t been taken from her the first time.
Mallory can easily imagine them at ten, making beaded bracelets on the floor of her bedroom; at thirteen, weaving through crowds at the mall.
At fifteen, doing theater together and archiving memories in the shape of post-rehearsal diner trips.
At seventeen, wrestling with the curiosity of what Saskia’s kiss would taste like.
At eighteen, finding out and deciding she doesn’t want to be anywhere but with her.
“Mine,” Mallory whispers into Saskia’s ear. “Mine.”
But, this time, Saskia doesn’t say anything at all.
Mallory stares after them for a long time until Penelope’s hand finally closes around her arm.
“Mallory,” she says. “We need to talk.”
Mallory sits with Penelope in the darkened kitchen, untouched teacups between them, candlelight flickering around a collage of unearthed memories. Shelves teeming with flowerpots and crystals. Antique furniture and mystical artwork. The cottage looks the same as it does in her dreams.
“I imagine you have a lot of questions,” Penelope says, and Mallory nearly laughs.
“I hardly know where to begin,” she says. “You’re—a witch? This is your house? Your other house?”
Penelope nods, fiddling with her long black braid. “Your mother wanted you to have a normal life, Mallory. She entrusted me to give you that.”
Mallory does laugh this time—a sharp, bitter sound.
“Normal? What about my life has ever been normal?”
“And for that I apologize.” Penelope flattens her palms on the table.
“But I was firmly against you attending Shore, knowing the ties the Pierce family has to that school, that your attendance would make you easy to find. It was you who insisted on going. I did my best to keep you safe there, but clearly it wasn’t enough. ”
Mallory turns over her words. “You’re the one,” she realizes, “who requested Ruth Golden be my advisor.”
“I needed someone to look after you,” Penelope says. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“How was it supposed to be, then?” Mallory leans forward. “Enlighten me.”
Penelope pulls in a breath. “This cottage has been in my family for several generations, dating back to the sixteen hundreds, when my ancestors moved to Rhode Island out of fear of persecution. Most people who were accused of witchcraft in Salem and surrounding communities weren’t witches, but some were.
” She leans back in her chair. “The world’s idea of witchcraft is hardly accurate, you know.
My magic, for example, is rooted in nature.
Healing spells with plants, manifestation rituals with whispers of a fire, the occasional incantation—I’m not a satanist, and I certainly can’t play God.
But a lot of people think that’s what witches are. ”
“Isn’t that what you did, though?” Mallory asks. “I should be the one trying to cut out my own heart, but it’s Saskia. Because of you.”
“You have to understand something,” Penelope says.
“I met your mother when she was around your age, while she was at Shore. My parents owned a crystal shop in Bristol, just across the bay, and your mother came in, looking for all sorts of strange things. We got to talking and became friends. Good friends. She was different from the girls I knew. She was smart. Bookish. Curious. She told me she’d learned about the exhumations, this cult, the way her own mother died.
How she feared she’d die that way, too, and how she was trying to stop it. ”
Mallory swallows, looking at her untouched tea. She can’t help but feel like a marionette, everyone else holding the strings.
“I explained to your mother that a curse like this one, rooted in a ritualistic tether to a demonic entity, cannot be broken.” Penelope clasps her hands.
“It can only be transferred with a very specific ceremony and the consent of the other individual. Your mother let go of the idea for a while—after all, who would agree to take this on? She started spending a lot of time with a man after she graduated, to distract herself from the inevitable. Dorian Abrams, an artist from West Hartford.”
Mallory bites her lip at the name of her father. A man she’s never even met.
But then Penelope adds, “They loved each other fiercely.”
“My mom wanted to raise me alone,” she says. “You told me that.”
“That’s true,” Penelope replies. “She told Dorian she didn’t love him, kept her pregnancy a secret so he wouldn’t try to help.
She lied to protect him—and to protect herself, too.
” Penelope narrows her eyes. “At a certain point, she learned about the trigger for the curse. She thought she could avoid it by running away from her own heart.”
“Trigger?” Mallory frowns. “You mean there is one? Something that causes the curse to take effect? What is it? What…” She trails off as she remembers Saskia, a knife in her hand one moment, whispering I’m yours the next. Her stomach drops. “It’s love, isn’t it?”
Penelope’s nod is somber. “It’s a cruel, merciless curse,” she says. “It takes hold at the onset of first romantic love. But your mother wasn’t the only person to figure that out.” She reaches behind her, pulling a leather-bound journal from a shelf before handing it to Mallory.
Mallory opens the journal, skin pebbling as she recognizes the careful cursive on the weathered pages. “Rebecca. Lily’s sister? How do you have this?”