Samuel Dias was a practical man, yet in his travels he had seen astonishing things he would never have believed could exist. Such miracles had changed him, convincing him that anything was possible in this world. He had seen golden lions sunning themselves on the rocks of the Barbary Coast, whales with long twisted horns floating under the sea, stars falling from the sky, parrots that could speak as well as a man, clouds of pink birds on the coast of Africa all taking flight at once, a woman with dark hair whom he wanted no matter what the cost.

“A curse can be broken,” he told her, convinced that miracles were not so difficult to find.

She shook her head and refused to agree. Causing him harm was not a risk Maria was willing to take. “Sell the house or keep it. I can find somewhere else to live.”

Dias talked for an hour, then two. He was good at it, and had learned from the best. He told her what it was like to stand in the woods and watch her on Gallows Hill; his heart had been ready to explode, it was a bird, he said, struggling to be free of the cage of his ribs to be beside her. But she told him that what was done could not be undone. A witch who cast a spell upon herself could not escape its chains with her own magic. No ritual she called forth could undo the damage. It had happened to her mother and now it had happened to her. There was only one woman she had known who would have been capable of undoing such damage, and Hannah Owens wasn’t there to break the curse.

“If your answer is no, then you stay here,” Samuel told her. “I’ll go.”