Late Night Research

Amy didn't react like someone who had just slipped up. She continued to enjoy the show obliviously while caressing Holly's leg with one hand, sometimes venturing up a little further and finding her way under her girlfriends shorts and panties, while the other hand occasionally reached into the grab bag of chips the pair were sharing or for her can of Dr Pepper. Yet Holly felt sure Amy hadn't meant to say that. Whenever she had tried to pin down where her partner was from originally, the answer had always been either "not too far from Manchester" or "You wouldn't have heard of it"

But Holly had heard of Lincoln, and that was probably why Amy was being so secretive about her birthplace. It was all too coincidental - Holly's family, the wretched curse and now Amy all originated from the same small town, with a population of barely a hundred thousand, on the other side of the world. There were other things Amy had said before that also bothered Holly now - that she had come to Chapel Hill to find someone she had never met before, who she was linked to but who would not want to see her, about the terrible things she had done in the past that she wanted to make amends for, about her past catching up with her. On top of that was the bizarre timeline of Amy's life. When she spoke of all the places she had lived there was too much legitimate sounding information for it to be a lie, but there was no way it could all have happened in thirty years. And sometimes she talked about incidents from her past that didn't sound at all recent. "Fresh off the boat"?

"You've gone very quiet Hols, have you got bored of interviewing me?" Amy teased.

"Actually, I'm feeling quite sleepy" Holly fake yawned "Shall we call at a night?"

---

At around 3 AM, Holly crept back downstairs. She hadn't been able to sleep at all. A thought had been playing on her mind all night. A crazy, impossible, theory that she was nonetheless going to have to eliminate if she wanted to get any rest before morning.

She booted up her work laptop, not wanting to leave any trace of the searches she was about to make on the PC she shared with Amy, and placed it on the coffee table in front of her. Holly had exhaustively researched the curse before she had been **** into triggering it by her sisters actions, and knew the name of the witch, from Lincoln, England, who had started it wasn't Amy. Perhaps she could be a distant descendant, though?

Refreshing her memory about Rosalind, the witch who it seemed to be widely accepted was responsible for the Petersen curse, did little to assuage Holly's concerns. She was described as a "flame haired beauty" who was "both charming and charismatic" and said to be a "phenomenal lover". Even spookier, it was said that she had left England around the time the witch trials hit Lincoln and headed to the new world "Most likely Boston or New York". There had been no record of her **** and some believed she was still alive and keeping a low profile. Holly was starting to get goosebumps. She could barely bring herself to, but she scrolled further down the page to where she knew there was an artists impression of Rosalind that had been commissioned at the time. Once she reached it, her heart nearly stopped.

That was Amy. Not a distant ancestor of Amy. It was her. There was absolutely no mistaking it. Holly stifled a gasp, shut down the tab and slammed her laptop shut. She then turned around in horror to see the witch from the four hundred year old painting she had just been looking at standing right behind her, albeit not wearing a cloak and hat but an oversized Portland Trail Blazers T-Shirt and nothing else, as if having appeared from nowhere.

"I was going to tell you soon enough" Rosalind assured her calmly.