“The Crowley magic is fading,” Vincent replied, the confession rough.
“I don’t understand,” Anne said. “Your family is one of the most powerful in the coven.”
“It started when my uncle died,” Vincent explained. “After his passing, it felt like something cracked in the foundation of our magic.”
He paused then, clearly trying to find the words to describe something that must have felt so visceral and abstract all at once.
“We’ve always been able to do so much more than other witches of our sort,” he continued. “The spirits gravitate toward us like moths to a flame, in need of soothing. But ever since my uncle died, we have to call to them, and they don’t always answer. No one understands why. It’s as if something slipped out of place that day, and the further it drifts, the more we lose.”
“Then why didn’t you want to help me?” Anne asked, more confused than ever as she remembered just how eager Vincent had been to get her to leave the house during their first meeting. “Didn’t you think there was a chance all of this was tied to your uncle’s Task?”
“I thought the ring was cursed,” Vincent admitted, raking a hand through his hair in frustration. “No one in the family had ever seen the band before my uncle started wearing it. Then I went to his grave and saw the blackthorn, and I knew that he’d hidden his power so that he could be with Philip. When I asked my family when they first remembered seeing my uncle with the ring, I realized it was around the time Philip had died. I thought he’d found a hex witch to enchant the band so it would draw away his abilities so he could be with Philip in the end and that when he’d passed, the curse latched on to us, drawn by the same kind of power that he’d asked it to dampen. Why else would it have an hourglass etched on its surface? It’s the symbol of our death magic. I was convinced the ring must be attracted to our power, draining it from us once my uncle was no longer here to provide what it needed.”
As Anne glanced down at the hourglass carved into the ring, her mind went to another sign, the entwined snakes that she’d seen imprinted on the windowpane just before a flash of a man’s coat sleeve caught her attention.
“It was you that day,” she murmured as a jolt of realization settled into her bones. “You were outside the shop. That’s why you didn’t look surprised when I told you my name that first night at the manor.”
“I needed to learn more about the ring,” Vincent said, lifting his hands in a way that told Anne he was trying to make her understand. “After I moved into the manor, I started to hear the sound of sand shifting against glass, and when I followed the noise, it led me to the ring . . . and you. I hoped that you might give it to me when you learned just how dangerous it was to us.”
Vincent said the word “dangerous” in the same tone that a gardener might use when talking about a sprig of English ivy that needed to be burned at the roots to keep it from spreading.
“You wanted to destroy it,” Anne whispered, gooseflesh rippling across her skin as she realized what Vincent’s intention had been from the beginning.
“I had no choice,” Vincent said, taking a step closer. “My family’s magic was slipping away, and all signs pointed to the ring.”
Anne’s thoughts swirled as she listened to what he was saying. She could understand why Vincent suspected the ring was cursed after learning just how much his uncle had been willing to sacrifice to be with Philip. But he still hadn’t explained why he’d been so adamant about refusing to help her when she first appeared at the manor.
Anne must have furrowed her brow while trying to put all the pieces together because Vincent began to speak again, this time with an urgency that suggested he feared she may come to the wrong conclusion before he had a chance to reveal the truth.
“I knew that my uncle had left his Task unfinished because of Philip,” Vincent explained. “But I didn’t know what, exactly, that entailed. He never told us what you’d revealed in your session with him, remaining tightlipped about it until the very end. Imagine how I felt when you showed up in the manor and told me that you were intent on giving away the very thing that I needed to save my family’s magic.”
Anne remembered how he had looked that afternoon in the house, his panic and frustration barely contained beneath a stony mask.
“You seemed so certain that the Task was to give the ring to someone else,” Vincent continued. “But the idea of a curse made me consider another possibility: that my uncle’s Task was to destroy the band so no one else could be harmed by it. That perhaps where it belonged wasn’t with a person but nowhere at all. I knew that if I told you the truth then and there, you’d ensure I never came close to the ring again. And so I did the only thing I could: refuse to help you.”
Anne wondered, if that was indeed the case, though, what had changed? Why had he appeared at the Crescent Moon the next day offering his help?
A gasp escaped her lips as the final piece clicked into place.
“You didn’t want to help me after all,” Anne murmured, stepping back to keep the distance between them. “You just wanted to see how much you could learn about the ring through me, and before I could give it to someone else, you planned to snatch it away.”
“But I changed my mind!” Vincent insisted. “When I pulled you into the clock room and felt your powers stirring, some of my old abilities started to awaken. They’d begun to fade, making it nearly impossible to so much as hear a spirit’s whisper. But suddenly, their voices were clear again, even stronger than they had been before. I was still intent on destroying the ring, butI wanted to help you along a bit more to understand why my magic was flickering to life again. And then, on the night I showed you the heartsong, I realized that I was mistaken about the ring being cursed.”
“Why?” Anne demanded, trying to remember the details of that night to find an answer.
“You told me about a woman with eyes that didn’t match, the one who wore the ring in the vision that the spirits pulled you into,” Vincent replied. “That description matched my grandmother. She was one of the most powerful witches my family has ever known, so I realized that the ring couldn’t have been cursed. And that it had been with us before my uncle was even born.”
“You realized it was an heirloom,” Anne whispered.
“Yes,” Vincent said with a nod of his head. “And that the ring might be the source of our power instead of something that drew it away. Whenever you came to the house, bringing the band along with you, it seemed to come to life again, and so did my own magic. And since the doors only opened for me and no one else in the family, I began to suspect where the ring might belong.”
“But you didn’t tell me,” Anne replied as she clenched her hands and tucked them into the folds of her dress, where it felt like the ring was protected. “You must have still been planning to take it away.”
“No,” Vincent insisted, surprising Anne by reaching out to rest his hand against her temple, in the same way he did that night he’d led her into the mirror room and asked her to trust him. “That isn’t why I kept the truth from you.”
“Then why?” Anne asked in disbelief. “What could you possibly care about more than completing your uncle’s Task and saving your family’s magic?”
Vincent glanced down at the ring then, and an unmistakable expression of raw longing settled across his features. His attention lingered there for only a moment, though, before traveling upward to rest on Anne. As their gazes met, she realized with a start that the desire burning beneath those amber eyes had only intensified.
