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“Help you?After all you’ve done?”
Linc put his hand on her arm, sensing she was ready to fly off the handle. He wasn’t far off. She shot him a look, but she wasn’t going to be quiet.
“Family? You think us being related gives you the right to ask me to pay for you to continue to live in this town and wreak cruelty on me and the people of Caisleán? You are completely out of your mind. Mary, I wouldn’t give you a scrap of bread if you were starving. Before I might have felt really bad about that, but I don’t anymore. Ask me why.”
The witch only screwed up her rigid mouth. “Well, go on, Bets. You want to tell me.”
She curled her fingers into her palms. “I wouldn’t, because in helping you survive that extra day, I’d be enabling you to visit more hurt or even death on others. On the people I care about, in particular. You knew where my son was—in jail unjustly—and you did nothing. You are a cruel and miserable person, and now I know you for a sheep killer like the rest of the people in our village. Mary, I’m glad you’re out of luck, because maybe this time we’ll be rid of you at last.”
The woman stared at her as the rain poured, her chest heaving. “And you say I’m cruel, as you speak such words to your own kin while living in the very house I was born and raised in. You give me no choice then. Linc Buchanan, you once offered to buy my house. I accept your offer.”
His brows hit his wet forehead. “Lady, that deal is dead and buried. I wouldn’t buy your house if it were the last shack on the planet.”
Bets wanted to kiss him, but Mary suddenly stepped forward and pulled something from her pocket. Danger filled the air, and Linc pushed Bets behind him.
“Your son didn’t think I had it in me to curse you and all of your kin, Betsy O’Hanlon, because in doing so, I would curse myself.”
Bets inhaled sharply as she looked around Linc’s big body. There was a dead rose with a long cane in Mary’s hand, the thorns dark with malevolence. One of her Black Magic variety. The kind she’d used in her chicanery to beat Bets out of the annual rose competition.
The whisper of something slick and dark touched her skin, like insects crawling on her. “Stop this, Mary! Stop this right now.”
“Mary, I’m calling the police,” Linc warned, pulling out his phone.
Fear had her breath halting in her lungs. She’d lived in Ireland too long to discount the old ways. “Don’t you dare.”
Mary pricked her finger with the thorn and smiled as water and blood flowed. “I curse you, Betsy O’Hanlon. I curse you and your kin and all of Caisleán.”
The wind gusted and rushed over the land. Bets heard a scream, and then she saw black ribbonlike forms streak by. Wraiths, she thought, the kind Bruce used to describe to her. “You take that curse back.”
Mary laughed eerily as she threw the rose to the ground, the rain carrying the blood into the soil. “Never! Not even if you beg me to.”
Bets watched as Mary turned with a triumphant smile and disappeared through the veil of rain. Looking down at the dead rose at her feet, Bets was aware of a bone-chilling cold spreading through her body. Linc caught her in his arms and grabbed her to his chest.
“For the record, that’s one thing I hate about Ireland,” he said, breathing harshly. “The Garda are coming—and Wilt— Sugar, I don’t know what to do here. My balls are still plumb shrunk, and I’m terrified to touch that dead rose on the ground. And I’m a rational man… Should we call Liam? Mary mentioned him, right? If anyone knows about this stuff, it’s Liam, isn’t it?”
She didn’t want Liam anywhere near this! She drew back and froze as Linc continued to rub her arms. Standing a little behind and to the left of Linc was Bruce. Her Bruce! The silver of his clothes appeared shot with white light, a light that also radiated from his familiar green eyes. He might still have the gray hair she remembered so well, but it was shiny and lustrous. He had never looked more handsome or content. This was the Bruce she had fallen in love with and followed across an ocean.
“Hello, Bets,” he simply said.
Linc turned his head at the sound and jerked in shock. “What the—”
“No, it’s all right,” she assured him as the cold left her, followed by a gentle peace she recognized. Liam could bring the same peace, because his father had taught him. The rain slowed to a halt, and a shaft of sunlight broke through the gray clouds, turning the lingering raindrops on the trees and plants to diamonds. The light grew until the gray completely disappeared, changing the skies and igniting a double rainbow.
“Holy—” Linc managed before trailing off in awe.
Bets could feel a slow smile beginning on her mouth, one Bruce returned before walking over to the dead rose and kneeling down. Holding his hand atop it, he whispered something in Gaelic. She remembered he’d done something similar for her ailing rosebushes on occasion—working his magic to bring the plants back, stronger and better than ever. She’d won with roses from the bushes he’d helped cultivate.
“I never gave you roses for romance,” he said, looking up. “I should have. Just as I should have pressed you to pursue what was truly in your heart. I’m sorry for that and more, Bets, as much as I am for never handling Mary properly. She’s my sister, true, but I will not give her leave to curse our family.”
Tears swamped her, and their eyes met once before he said the words, “It is undone. Never to be done again.”
White light flashed over the rose, blinding her. When she opened her eyes, Bruce was gone. The dead rose had turned from black to beautiful deep red with shades of chocolate, on a green cane with healthy thorns—as though it were freshly cut.
“Did you see that?” she rasped, sinking against Linc, who let out a shaky breath.
“You mean that man?” he asked, his drawl more pronounced than usual. “What he did to that rose was insane enough, but was that really your Bruce? In ghost form? I know Liam said he’d seen him, but the reality is way different. Whoa! I need to sit down.”
She pressed her hand to her mouth. An avalanche of feelings was thundering through her. She’d never thought to see her husband again. “Yes, that was Bruce.”
