“Why?” Vincent asked, his question urgent and laced with worry.
“I heard music,” Anne answered, startled into confessing the truth by the sudden earnestness of his tone.
Vincent’s arm snapped around her waist then, as if she were on the bow of a ship about to be pulled into the sea by a force greater than her own.
“Have you lost your senses?!” Anne cried as he pulled her away from the door and down the hall.
“You shouldn’t have been able to hear it,” Vincent murmured, though he seemed to be speaking more to himself than to her.
Anne braced her hands against his chest and pushed just as Vincent opened the door to the room where the clocks dangled from the walls. It was the same moment that he loosened his hold, the unexpected release causing Anne to stumble backward.
“What, exactly, is it that I shouldn’t have been able to hear?” Anne asked as she regained her footing and ran her hands along the sides of her skirts, trying to brush away the feeling of his hands against her waist.
But Vincent ignored her question again, his full attention riveted on Anne’s face. He was staring deeply into her eyes, as a physician does when trying to determine if someone’s beeninjured by a blow to the head. The scowl that had already become a familiar sight was softened by a genuine look of concern that instantly loosened some of the strain in Anne’s clenched hands. It was strange, really, how such a simple change transformed his entire face, and for the barest second, she wondered what it would be like to see that stony mask fall away entirely.
After a few moments, he seemed satisfied that no permanent damage had befallen her. But then his expression shifted into something far more alarming: raw curiosity.
“I knew that you were an unusually powerful witch,” Vincent said as he took a step closer to Anne. “I wonder . . . ”
An insistent voice in the back of Anne’s mind told her to move away, but she refused to give Vincent the upper hand and defiantly stood her ground instead, a pleasant prickling sensation skittering across her collarbones as she dug her heels deeper into the floorboards.
“What, exactly?” Anne asked as her magic whipped to the surface and the distinct scent of peppermint and early morning dew saturated the room.
“If you can see more than the future,” Vincent said, his reply sending ripples of shock down her spine.
Anne had told no one about her ability to slip back into the past. It was so new that she hadn’t wanted to speak to the rest of the Council about it, not when she didn’t have full control yet. Though Anne had worked hard to secure her place among the coven since becoming Diviner, she knew that as a witch grew more powerful, so did the consequences of showing the slightest sign of weakness. She couldn’t let anyone else know about her abilities until she’d harnessed them, or the coven would grow uneasy, shaken by the thought that the person who’d kept them on course could lose her own way.
“And why would you think that?” Anne asked, trying to keep the surprise out of her voice.
“That music can only be heard by those who’ve walked beyond their own pasts,” Vincent said slowly, clearly wanting Anne to take in the underlying meaning of every single word.
“You mean . . . ,” Anne murmured, her mind drawing toward the obvious conclusion only to skitter away from it as quickly as possible.
“Yes,” Vincent replied. “Only the spirits can hear it.”
“But your magic is tethered to the past,” Anne insisted. “You should be able to hear it too.”
“No,” Vincent answered with a shake of his head. “My magic is tied to the parts of the past that cling to the present. It isn’t the same.”
“I’m not a ghost,” Anne said in confusion.
“That you most certainly are not,” Vincent replied, his hands twitching at his sides as if he were remembering how solid she’d felt beneath his hands only a few moments ago. “But you’ve found a way to drift back nonetheless.”
Anne felt heat rise to her cheeks again, torn between frustration over having her new powers exposed and a strange temptation to reveal the truth to the one person who might be able to help her understand them. Vincent was right, of course. He couldn’t see the past in the same way she could, but his magic was intimately woven to spirits who were still tethered there, the echoes of what came before beating at a constant tempo beneath his everyday.
For a moment, Anne let herself consider what it would feel like to have one fewer burden to keep in the shadows. There were so many of them stacking atop her shoulders now that everything she said needed to be weighed with careful deliberation. As irritated as she’d felt during her conversations with Vincent, it had been thrilling in a way to find herselfforgetting to keep each word and gesture in check. She wondered how he managed to do that, make her feel fully in the present even when so many of her responsibilities were rooted firmly in worries about the future.
But before Anne could let herself drift away from the sense of prudence that had always steadied her before, she managed to hold herself back.
“What does it matter?” Anne said warily, hoping to bring the conversation to a close instead of driving it forward.
“It matters a great deal,” Vincent murmured, softening his voice the barest fraction while making it clear that he refused to shy away from the point. “If you can slip into the past, the spirits will be more attracted to you. They’ll see you as a kindred soul.”
Anne’s thoughts flashed back to the first time she’d entered the house and heard the whispers drifting down the hallway, an undercurrent of longing so strong that it had pulled her forward.
“I’m not like you,” Anne insisted. “I can’t call on ghosts.”
“Of course you can’t,” Vincent conceded. “But I wonder what would happen if I opened the way.”
