The fabric feels stiff and cool to the touch. Maybe a little damp. I pull it out of the floor where it was stuffed and sealed sixty years ago.

“The dress,” Carmel breathes. “What—?”

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. I walk toward Anna. I have no idea what effect the dress will have on her, if anything. Will it make her stronger? Will it heal her? If I burned it, would she evaporate into thin air? Thomas would probably have a better idea. Together he and Morfran could probably come up with the right answer, and if they didn’t, then Gideon could. But I don’t have that kind of time. I kneel and hold the stained fabric before her eyes.

For a second she doesn’t do anything. Then she struggles to her feet. I move the bloody dress up with her, keeping it at eye level. The black has receded: Anna’s clear, curious eyes are there inside of the monstrous face, and for some reason that’s more disconcerting than anything. My hand is shaking. She’s standing before me, not hovering, just looking at the dress, crumpled and red and dingy white in some places.

Still not sure what I’m doing, or what I’m trying to do, I gather it up by the hem and slide it over her dark and writhing head. Something happens immediately but I don’t know what. A tension enters the air, a cold. It’s hard to explain, like there’s a breeze but nothing is moving. I pull the old dress down over her bleeding one and step back. Anna closes her eyes and breathes deep. Streaks of black wax still cling to the fabric where the candles dripped during the curse.

“What’s happening?” Carmel whispers.

“I don’t know,” Thomas answers for me.

As we watch, the dresses begin to fight each other, dripping blood and black and trying to merge together. Anna’s eyes are closed. Her hands are in fists. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but whatever it is, it’s happening fast. Every time I blink I open my eyes to a new dress: now white, now red, now blackened and mixed with blood. It’s oil and paint and things sinking into sand. And then Anna throws her head back, and the cursed dress crumbles off, cracking into dust to tumble to her feet.

The dark goddess stands looking at me. Lengths of black tendrils die in the breeze. Veins recede back into her arms and neck. Her dress is white and unstained. The wound from my knife is gone.

She puts her hand to her cheek in disbelief and looks shyly from Carmel to me, and over at Thomas, who backs up a step. Then she slowly turns and walks toward her open door. Just before she walks through it, she looks over her shoulder at me and smiles.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Is this what I wanted? I set her free. I’ve just let the ghost I was sent to kill out of prison. She’s walking softly across her porch, touching her toes to the steps, staring out into the dark. She’s like any wild animal let out of a cage: cautious and hopeful. Her fingertips trace the wood of the crooked railing like it’s the most wonderful thing she’s ever felt. And part of me is glad. Part of me knows that she never deserved anything that happened, and I want to give her more than this broken porch. I want to give her an entire life—her whole life back, starting tonight.

The other part of me knows there are bodies in her basement, souls that she stole, and none of this was their fault either. I can’t give Anna her life back because her life is already gone. Maybe I’ve made a huge mistake.

“We should get out of here, I think,” Thomas says quietly.

I look at Carmel and she nods, so I walk toward the door, trying to keep myself between them and Anna, even though without my knife I don’t know how much use I’ll be. When she hears us come through the door, she turns and regards me with an arched eyebrow.

“It’s all right,” she says. “I won’t hurt them now.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

Her eyes shift to Carmel. She nods. “I’m sure.” Behind me, Carmel and Thomas exhale and awkwardly move out from my shadow.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She thinks for a moment, trying to find the right words. “I feel … sane. Is that possible?”

“Probably not completely,” Thomas blurts, and I elbow him in the ribs. But Anna laughs.

“You saved him, the first time,” she says, looking at Thomas carefully. “I remember you. You pulled him out.”

“I don’t think you would have killed him anyways,” Thomas replies, but some color comes up to his cheeks. He likes the idea of playing the hero. He likes that the idea is being pointed out in front of Carmel.

“Why didn’t you?” Carmel asks. “Why weren’t you going to kill Cas? What made you choose Mike instead?”

“Mike,” Anna says softly. “I don’t know. Maybe it was because they were wicked. I knew they’d tricked him. I knew they were cruel. Maybe I felt … sorry for him.”

I snort. “Sorry for me? I could’ve handled those guys.”

“They smashed the back of your head in with a board from my house.” Anna is giving me a look with her eyebrow again.

“You keep saying ‘maybe,’” Thomas breaks in. “You don’t know for sure?”

“I don’t,” Anna replies. “Not for sure. But I’m glad,” she adds, and smiles. She’d like to say more, but looks away, embarrassed or confused, I can’t tell which.

“We should go,” I say. “That spell took a lot out of us. We could all use some sleep.”

“But you’ll come back?” Anna asks, like she thinks she’ll never see me again.

I nod. I’ll come back. To do what, I don’t know. I know that I can’t let Will keep my knife, and I’m not sure if she’s safe as long as he still has it. But that’s dumb, because who says she’s safe if I have it either? I need some sleep. I need to recoup, and regroup, and rethink everything.

“If I’m not in the house,” Anna says, “call for me. I won’t be far.”

The idea of her running around Thunder Bay doesn’t thrill me. I don’t know what she’s capable of, and my suspicious side whispers that I have just been duped. But there’s nothing I can do about it right now.

“Was this a victory?” Thomas asks as we walk down the driveway.

“I don’t know,” I reply, but it sure as hell doesn’t feel like one. My athame is gone. Anna is free. And the only thing that seems certain in my head and heart is that this isn’t over. Already there’s an emptiness, not just in my back pocket or on my shoulder, but everywhere around me. I feel weaker, like I’m leaking from a thousand wounds. That a-hole took my knife.

“I didn’t know you could speak Finnish, Thomas,” Carmel says from beside him.

He grins lopsidedly. “I can’t. That was one hell of a spell you got for us, Cas. I’d sure like to meet your supplier.”

“I’ll introduce you sometime,” I hear myself say. But not right now. Gideon is the last person I want to talk to, when I’ve just lost the knife. My eardrums would burst from all the yelling. The athame. My father’s legacy. I have to get it back, and soon.

*   *   *

“The athame is gone. You lost it. Where is it?”

He’s got me by the throat, strangling the answers, slamming me back into my pillow.

“Stupid, stupid, STUPID!”

I wake up swinging, popped upright in my bed like a rock ’em sock ’em robot. The room is empty. Of course it is; don’t be stupid. Using the same word on myself brings me back into the dream. I’m only half-awake. The memory of his hands on my throat is lingering. I still can’t speak. There’s too much tightness, there and in my chest. I take a deep breath, and when I exhale it comes out ragged, close to a sob. My body feels full of empty spaces where the weight of the knife should be. My heart is pounding.

Was it my father? The idea brings me back ten years, and the guilt of a kid balloons sharply in my heart. But no. It couldn’t have been. The thing in my dream had a Creole or Cajun accent, and my father grew up in accent-neutral Chicago, Illinois. It was just another dream, like the rest, and at least I know where this one came from. It doesn’t take a Freudian interpreter to realize I feel bad about losing the athame.