Melanie, Amelia, and I had a great time at the hospital last night, despite the circumstances. We all love the Fourth of July, and being together again, the sound of fireworks booming and crackling and popping outside the windows, provides a kind of magic even though our conversations are less than helpful. Mel hadn't realized her Granny's boxes were in storage, so she'd have to wait until morning to get to them, and Amelia couldn't remember drinking or eating anything that would have contained those random herbs. Even so, the three of us gossiped, caught up on the past five-plus years, and even though rekindling their friendships hadn't been part of my plan when returning here, it's starting to feel as though it's just what I need.

Between the two of them, Anne, and Beau, I might as well give up on a damn thing going as planned.

I'm up by seven thirty, which is obscene even considering my bedtime of 10:00 p.m., but stumbling half blind into the bathroom to find Anne sitting on the closed toilet seat startles me fully awake, nose first. I clap my hands over my mouth to muffle my shriek, even though there isn't anyone else around to hear now.

"Do you pick the places you show up based on which will be most likely to make me shit my pants?" I growl at her, still trying to coax my heart out of my ass. She doesn't reply, per usual, but the sparkle in her typically pissy gaze confirms my suspicions. "I can't say I approve, since it's my shit, but I suppose there isn't a whole lot that amuses you these days."

I turn on the shower, then eye her. "Are you going to watch?"

She cocks an eyebrow but doesn't move, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Making me uncomfortable isn't going to make Mel find the other half of your diary any faster. Did you know your son became a politician? I would love to have heard what he had to say about the Civil War." Her expression changes from one of mild interest to rapt attention, and guilt at my scant details pinches my cheeks until they burn. I should have thought to research him further. "I don't know details, but I can look them up if you want and tell you later."

She looks satisfied, at least for now, and when I check on her again after testing the water temperature, she's nowhere to be seen. Which is good, because I'd love to not smell like rotting wood during breakfast with Beau.

A shower, makeup, and fresh clothes—Amelia did my laundry—help me achieve that goal, and the cool morning air puts a smile on my face when I step out the front door, locking it behind me. If reasons exist to get up early, sunrise might be one of them.

"Where's Miss Amelia?" Mrs. Walters rocks on her front porch, two houses down, and squints as though the sun ought to slink away because it's inconveniencing her.

The reply that it's none of her damn business shoots onto my tongue, but I bite it back at the last second. It's not the way people respond to prying conversation, not in Iowa and not in Heron Creek. "She'll be along soon, Mrs. Walters. I'll be sure to tell her you were worried about her. So kind of you."

"Humph. And your aunt and uncle, they going to sell the house now that Martin's passed on?"

"I don't know, but I'm sure they'll want to do what's best for the community when the time comes." My steps take me past her porch, and I force a smile, too bright and perhaps a little on the sneery side. "I hope you have a lovely day, ma'am."

She humphs again, but it's almost not strong enough to follow me. The sun climbs higher in the sky, which abandons its pastel hues for a bright, cloudless blue. The walk to Beau's takes about fifteen minutes, and it's a pleasant one, with the scent of salt on the air. I take a path that trails along the marshy portion of the riverfront, deciding to carry my shoes so they won't get muddy. It's a toss-up, muddy feet or muddy shoes, but if Beau doesn't like me with dirty toes, we were never going to work out, anyway.

The feeling of the squishy ground relaxes my soul. The sound of a car creeps up the street behind me, but I don't turn around. I'm twenty feet off the sidewalk, so no need to worry, and I'm simply not concerned with the humans that live in Heron Creek this morning. Right now, the blue herons, great egrets, and hawks command my attention and hold it captive with their elegance and chatter.

They take flight all at once, the birds gathered nearest to me in the trees and along the marshy bank, at the same moment that the sound of footsteps registers, followed by an impossibly strong grip that pinches my elbows together behind my back. I get an impression of a smallish, black-clad figure before it twists my arm, hard, and kicks my legs out from underneath me. The scream that gathered in my chest wheezes out in a pointless gasp as my face hits the marshy ground. The weight on top of me seems far too much, the strength an insane impossibility for how small the figure seems.

I'm not much of a fighter, but my assailant blocks every attempt at bucking them off, thwarting twists by delivering a crazy amount of pain to my twisted shoulder, and I give up and lie still, listening to the sound of my breaths fill the quiet morning.

"What do you want?" I manage to gasp between stabs of pain.

The person doesn't answer, and my heart accelerates. Sweat drips down my temples and into my hair, dampens my armpits, and pools between my breasts. There's dirt and moss on my lips. It tastes earthy as I lick it away, then bite down to manage the pain. I could scream, but if no one's close enough to see what's going on, no one's close enough to hear.

The ninja-person drags me into the waist-high grasses closer to the river. Every lecture my mother ever gave me about paying attention to my surroundings plays in my ears, and I have a feeling now that she didn't mean watching birds. I whimper as the person wrenches my arms again, then kicks my ribs when my noise level rises toward a shriek.

Waves of pain shoot out from my center, jangling all the way to my fingertips. At first, I think the sound of voices must be coming from my own mind, but when the black figure jerks up and listens like a dog in the dark, I know they're not. The person stops moving me and, in one swift movement, reels back and cracks me in the face.



I'm a puddle of sweat and pain when my eyes peel back again, starting in my face and ending in my midsection. Nothing hurts worse than my shoulder, a fact that presents itself when I attempt to move and find it tied behind me, my back pressed against something warm.

My arm throbs, making my stomach sour, and I gag on the meager remnants of last night's dinner. This is the second time in a few weeks that I've cracked my face—or had it cracked for me—and I'm sure now that professional boxing is not a missed career opportunity.

I don't know who happened by and startled off my assailant, but I know in the pit of my stomach, without the shadow of a doubt, that, uninterrupted, they would have killed me.

I bite back a groan and try wriggling, anything to readjust my position to relieve the pressure on my arm, but freeze when something soft and silky tickles my cheek.

It's followed by something heavy flopping onto my shoulder, and I manage to crane my neck enough to discover a head attached to light blond hair. We're tied together, sitting up on the floor of a room that looks familiar but I can't quite place because the room is so damn dark.

Wait. Why is the room dark? It's morning, or at least it was, but the complete blackness suggests the entire day has come and gone. It doesn't seem possible that a punch to the face could have knocked me out for so long, or that there's anywhere in Heron Creek that could hide me for hours when Beau surely called out the dogs after I didn't show up for breakfast.

Anger lights a hot, quick fire in my belly. Someone felt as though they had the right to put their fucking hands on me, and I don't know who is tied behind me, but I bet they don't deserve to be here, either. My fight response kicks in, along with more fear than anything, because as hard as I try to act as though I'm handling this shit, I'm so not. I've been attacked. Kidnapped. Tied up. No one but the kind of psychos in the movies does things like that, and from what I can recall, they're not much for letting people go.

I work harder at getting loose, until I've worked up a sweat and bloodied my wrists, but make no measurable progress aside from earning a harder throb in my shoulder. The form bound to my back groans and shifts, coming awake. I'm not sure if that counts as progress.

"Gracie?" The voice is groggy, confused, and shakes its head a couple of times, which is as long as it takes me to place it.

"Mel? What are you doing here?"

"I got a text around nine p.m. on my way out of class, asking me to meet you at the library. You said it was a matter of life and death, then didn't answer when I tried to call."

"I didn't text you."

"Well your phone did, then. Maybe it was Anne Bonny's ghost."

It's good she can joke, even if her voice is a mass of broken crystals. Someone, most likely the person who attacked me, kidnapped Mel, too, and the two of us lapse into silence as we consider our own failures, lured her here. It's not my fault, or hers, except it's kind of more mine. I didn't tell her that getting involved in this whole historical hide-and-seek seems to be hazardous to health and property. After the warnings I've gotten, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding Amelia's contractions, I'm almost convinced of the curse in Anne's journal.

"Are you okay?" My own voice trembles, skitters. She's got to be okay.

"My head's killing me, and I'm tied to your dumb ass in the dark, but other than that, yes."

The darkness has faded to shades of gray punctuated by shadows, and I realize why the room looks familiar. "We're in Mr. Freedman's office."

"At the library?"

"Yeah." Something about this doesn't add up. I mean, several somethings, but one in particular. "Didn't you know I was missing?"

"You were missing?"

"I got jumped on the way to Beau's house this morning, around eight thirty. I've been gone all day. He didn't report it?" Because of the situation, my brain comes up with a million reasons why, but not one that doesn't include him being involved somehow.

"Not that I know of, and I can't imagine not hearing about it all day." She slumps against me. "If whoever did this texted me, Gracie, who's to say they didn't send the mayor a message, too?"

It's possible, but no one knew about our breakfast date except Amelia and Mel. I don't think.

"Who wanted us here together?" Mel's mind seems to be fine, at any rate.

"I don't know, but I wish they'd stop acting like a cowardly shithead, playing the note-leaving, smack-me-in-the-face game, and tell me what in the hell they want. So I can spit in their face and tell them to go to hell."

"I'm not sure that's the best course of action," she replies, sounding more like the dry Melanie I know and might still love. "Did you see their face?"

I shake my head. "No. Whoever it is wears a mask, anyway. Like the lily-livered oaf he is."

"I didn't, either. I was on the phone with Will, waiting for you when someone got in the passenger door. I thought it was you, but they thunked me before I could turn and look."

I remember the softness of the person's chest, combine it with the small stature. The only thing that seems off is the strength, but what kind of feminist am I, assuming it's a man? "I think it might be a woman."

"Let's get the hell out of here and discuss later."

We work together on the bindings around our wrists, but all we do is cut more of our flesh until hot blood smears us both. We could try scooting toward the door, but we can't get all the way out of the locked library that way, and every time we move the pounding in my head makes me retch.

Mel sits up straighter, her fingers tightening around mine. "Do you hear that?"

I turn off my racing thoughts and focus, picking up the sound of approaching footsteps. They're shuffling along the thin carpet in the corridor, then the lock snicks open and they cross the threshold. It's the same dark-clad figure, small and wiry, and—close—definitely a woman. It rounds us and bends down, looking into my face, and even though my anger doesn't leave, my fear burns far hotter.

This isn't real life, being attacked and bound and threatened by ninja women. I'm a recently dumped archivist from Iowa, not a super sleuth ghost hunter. I don't think.

Despite my trembling limbs I don't blink. "Listen, asshole, what do you want? And you can let her go, she has nothing to do with anything."

"You haven't the slightest idea whether or not your friend is important, just as you haven't the slightest idea why you've been caught in the snare, either. You're a disgrace to your heritage, and that's pretty pockmarked to start with." The accent is familiar to me, in the way that Shakespeare makes sense if you don't listen too hard.

I've heard a version of it before, but not so thick and lilting. It leaps over rolling hills and tumbles into deep valleys—too pleasant a tone to forget. Maybe I am a disgrace. All signs point to yes.

I wish Anne would show up. The sight of her might give this bitch a good scare, at the least. A solid heart attack at most.

"No use wishing for Anne Bonny to help you. Getting you to see her takes all of the energy she can muster in this world. She can do no more."

Shit, she's some kind of mind reader.

Melanie tenses but stays silent. The woman wanders into the shadows over by Mr. Freedman's desk. She pulls off the mask and stretches, too much in the darkness to be identified. My mind races, trying to put the pieces together, to figure out for the hundredth time what any of this has to do with Anne.

"It all has to do with Anne Bonny, daft child. Have you not realized that none of your troubles began until she started to plague you? The fruits of her womb must never be allowed to multiply, not as long as me and my kind are around to ensure the curse. I tried to warn you to stop looking. But you convinced your poor little friend to find the other half of that journal. And now we're here."

The journal?

"You're talking about the curse on Anne and Jack's lineage," Melanie supplies, her shoulders still tight.

Mel must have read the other part of the diary. She knows what Anne found out about her husband's mistress before Jack Jr. left for Virginia. Which apparently contains the ghost's worst fears—an island curse.

Come to think of it, this woman's accent sounds suspiciously like one from the Caribbean.

Kind of like a full-blown version of Mrs. LaBadie's thin trace.

"Mrs. LaBadie?" Her name slips off my tongue before I can check it, but there's too much going through my mind—not the least of which is that I've been right about her this entire time.

If I get out of here alive, Beau is so going to eat his words.

She steps into the small patch of moonlight coming from the tiny window near the ceiling. It illuminates the whites of her eyes, her bared teeth, but leaves the rest of her in shadows—a ghostly figure more terrifying than Anne ever dreamed of being.

It all clicks into place—the reasons she didn't want me near the archives, the foul-smelling dirt in Amelia's purse after she spent twenty minutes researching, her eavesdropping on Mel and I discussing the diary. The one thing that doesn't make sense is why she cares about Anne Bonny or some made-up curse from two hundred years ago.

"Think harder." The creepy old librarian smirks and pulls a long knife from a sheath on her belt. It's a dagger, maybe, and the edges glint in the soft moonlight.

Mel gasps, but as I twist my head to reassure her with words that don't mean dick in the face of our imminent death, I see that she's not afraid. She's surprised.

A figure that I would recognize anywhere slides through the door, still ajar, on his belly. It's Will. It makes sense, since his wife was talking to him in the parking lot when she got knocked out.

We need to distract the crazy lady.

The thought stutters through my head as Mel starts talking. "So, you're, like, related to the mistress? The voodoo priestess from the kitchens on the plantation or whatever?"

"I am part of her line, yes. Not blood of the body, but of the soul. We are bound to the curse."

Zaierra. Her strange name snaps into place, similar to the one Anne wrote in her journal. I keep Will in my peripheral vision and work on my bonds, ignoring the chafing pain, as Mel keeps chattering.

"I don't believe in that crap, personally. Curses and the like. Bunch of nonsense if you ask me."

"Yeah, and you've been mean to me since before Anne even visited me the first time," I add, trying to keep her attention. "You didn't know I'd listen to her."

"I have been charged with keeping this curse. It is my duty to watch over your family in this town, and when you returned, that included you." She frowns. "Along with the curse, the hatred continues, undiluted. Zolarra called on great power, and the strength with which she despised Anne for tossing away all Zolarra ever wanted, formed a curious but unbreakable line."

"That's what you meant the other day in the library? About our roles being cast?" It takes all of my willpower not to check on Will's progress.

"Yes. The nature of the curse is binding, passing from true witch's blood to true witch's blood. We can never be released, not while the combination of Anne and Jack's blood runs in living veins." She sounds tired, so tired, raising the question of her age in my mind once again. "When I heard the two of you talking, it became clear you'd found the diaries, or were about to find them. We've searched through generations on the spirits' insistence they be destroyed."

"You've never read them?"

"Anne might have been a murderer and a whore, but no one can claim she wasn't clever. Especially so when it came to protecting her heathen child."

More clever than you, by half, I think, just to watch her snarl.

It's a duty, she said, but also that it's unbreakable. Binding. What if she's helpless but to carry it out?

I decide I don't give a shit. She doesn't have to be so mean, and she certainly has no right to assault me or my pregnant friend. The memory of Amelia's hand covered in stinky dirt after coming out of the archives—where Mrs. LaBadie served her herbal tea—makes it clear the crazy witch is behind the almost-miscarriage, too.

"So, you're a baby killer?" I spit at her.

"I do what must be done."

"And you call Anne heartless," Mel scoffs. "Dr. Pot, paging Dr. Kettle!"

"The witches are tools, no more. The spirits ensure the curse stays intact, and use earthly servants of their choosing, willing and unwilling alike."

She is creeping me the fuck out, but I also feel as though she's on the verge of revealing a detail that can help us make sense of her crazy. Whether or not there's an actual curse, we're dealing with an actual insane person who believes there is, one who's already tried to kill Amelia's baby.

Before she can say any more, Will misjudges the space between a chair and the bookcases. His toe catches on the foot of the wingback, sending it toppling over, and a smattering of books crash to the ground.

Mrs. LaBadie—or whoever she really is—whirls as he bursts from his compromised hiding place. They crash