‘Help me,’ she gasped. ‘I cannot come yet, I have not avenged you.’

But they were insistent that her mortal work was done. She had wreaked havoc, and yet still she had failed.

The villagers had been right to blame Shona. Their ills had been her doing and if it had not been for Bridget McAndrew, the village seer and holder of powers almost as strong as her own, she would have completed her task long ago. But the priest and Bridget had been too much for her now she was an old woman, and they plagued her still. She’d seen in her crystal ball as they’d come into Tarabeg the all-knowing face of Bridget watching them arrive.

Shona’s shoulders drooped and as she slipped a few inches down the wooden frame, the willow as sharp as a knife against her spine, the wind lifted the tarpaulin and she saw her mother on the steps. The night was clear, but her mother’s hair was dripping down her face, just as it had on the day they were driven off the land, when a fierce rain had pelted the sorry band of evictees. There was no mistaking the message as her lips moved and her eyes burnt with a fire deep within.

‘Come, Shona. It’s time.’

‘I can’t, not yet.’ Shona gasped, lifting her hand towards her mother and wanting to look to see had Jay woken. But there was no turning back. She felt a shift in her core, a lifting of the pain, a lightness, and she knew that the passing over had begun. It was all beyond her now.

That old fool Daedio, he had outlived her. The image of his great-granddaughter, Mary Kate, came to Shona and it occurred to her just what her last curse must be. She smiled. Bridget could not reach her here; it was her parting gift from the twilight.

She closed her eyes and felt death envelop her. The icy hand of her mother slid into her own. ‘Wait,’ she whispered. ‘I am not done.’ And with the rattling wheeze of her last breath, she uttered her final, deadliest curse.

Chapter 2

Liverpool, two years later

His starched shirt collar stood upright and his cuffs hung down, waiting to be secured. Breathing in, shoulders rising, a slight lift onto the balls of his feet – she could never understand why he did that – he tucked his crisp white linen shirt deep into the front of his trousers. She nuzzled her face into his pillow, pulling the recent warmth of him closer, and smiled up at him lovingly. She adored watching him dress. Even after two whole years of sharing the same bed, it was still a novelty, a pleasure that she never wanted to end as she gazed upon her total undoing.

He smiled back down at her, equally adoring, and the quizzical look that crossed his brown eyes told her that he was curious to know what she was thinking. His face was morning pink and freshly shaven and as he dropped a kiss onto the top of her head her space filled with the fresh aroma of his favourite Old Spice aftershave and the soap from his recent bath.