The Amalfi Curse

The narrative shifts to Mari’s perspective. Grief-stricken, she searches the sea for any sign of survivors and weeps for Holmes. When Mari returns home, she overhears her father and Corso discussing the situation with the Mazza brothers. Corso gave the Mazzas information about the sea witches out of greed and because he wanted to frighten Mari into fleeing with him to Rome. Corso spied on the village’s women and went through their garbage in search of something incriminating. Mari’s father was in on the plot, and they have yet to receive any money from Matteo. Her horror mounts when she learns that Matteo was not aboard the Aquila but is instead coming to the village on a ship with dozens of cannons named La Dea.

Mari rushes to the terrace and watches La Dea approach, despairing that she sank Holmes’s ship in vain. She doesn’t have time to gather the other witches to create another maelstrom and resolves to sacrifice herself to cast the vortice centuriaria instead. She leaves a note for Ami: “We sunk the wrong ship […], and I must make it right. After this, you will all be safe. Do not go near Li Galli again” (275). She takes Holmes’s letters with her and rows out to Li Galli, determined to save her village and put a stop to the Mazza brothers’ evil forever. Mari removes her protective talisman and ties herself and Holmes’s letters to an anchor.

The narrative moves forward in time. Savina bursts into tears and embraces Haven, protesting that she never wanted the power she possesses nor the burden that comes with it. Haven asks her about the Aquila. Savina tells her that the ship was sent to kidnap Positano’s women by the Mazza brothers, that the witches dispersed after the ship sank, and that Mari DeLuca drowned herself. Savina and Renata believe that they are the last two surviving witches, and Savina encourages Haven to have daughters with Enzo to carry on the family’s magical lineage. Enzo doesn’t know that witchcraft is real, which comes as a relief to Haven.

Savina believes that her power brought the couple together, and Haven must admit that they met because of the strange underwater phenomenon that led to her being replaced by Conrad. Savina swears that she will continue casting magic to protect Enzo if Haven leaves Positano, and she tries to tempt her into staying and giving her grandchildren: “I can find the greatest undiscovered riches […] Whatever you want to achieve, personally or professionally, can happen if you will let it” (280).

The narrative moves back in time. Holmes drifts ashore on one of Li Galli’s islets. Using a piece of wood as a flotation device, he strikes out towards the mainland. On his way, he encounters Mari’s rowboat. The lovers are astonished to see one another, and he unties her from the anchor. Holmes tells Mari that Imelda left Positano to protect her and her sister from the Mazza brothers and gives her the flask of seashells. The flask also contains a note and Imelda’s cimaruta talisman. In the note, Mari’s mother tells her how much she loves her and says that she will “assure Matteo’s demise” to keep Mari safe (287). Mari realizes that her mother cast the vortice centuriaria at the same instant that she and the other witches onshore created the maelstrom. Although Matteo was not on the Aquila when it sank, the vortex Imelda created will last for a hundred years, allowing it to sink La Dea as well. Mari mourns her mother, and Holmes comforts her.

A trio of dolphins cavorts around the couple’s boat, and the ocean gently guides them to land. Mari and Enzo hide behind a boulder and wait for Matteo’s ship to reach Li Galli. Mari says that they should go to Ischia with Ami and Dante to free the captives as soon as the vessel sinks. While they wait, Holmes writes a conclusion in his diary: “This voyage has come to an end, he wrote. Both of us are presumed dead. And yet we are terribly, wholly alive” (290).

The narrative moves forward in time. Haven reads the last lines of Holmes’s diary and is awestruck by the revelation that he and Mari survived. She wants to share this information with Savina because it means that Mari’s magical lineage didn’t curse her to a lifetime of misfortune and that there may be more sea witches than Savina realizes.

Conrad comes to the villa. He has a video in which Haven mentions HPI and Gage Whitlock, violating the confidentiality clause of her contract with the foundation. Conrad warns her that HPI will sue her if they find out, but he says he’ll delete the video if she leaves Positano. Furious, Haven confronts him about snooping through her father’s confidential files, which is how he learned of the sunken treasure in the first place. Mal encourages Haven to make her own decisions rather than worrying about fulfilling her father’s wishes. Haven resolves to unravel the mystery of the sea witches, and she tells Conrad that she’ll stop diving but will remain in Positano despite his threats.

With help from the Archivio Marittimo di Napoli, Haven learns that Matteo died when his ship sank near Positano in April 1821, the same month as Holmes’s final diary entry. The Fratelli Mazza business ended soon afterward. The diary was donated to an archive in 1842, and Haven wants to know what happened to Mari and Holmes after their supposed deaths. Through a genealogical database, she finds a possible descendant of theirs named Lucille Detti.

Lucille lives in Venice and has two daughters and three granddaughters. While researching her family tree, she learned that Mari lived in Treviso, had four children, and likely died along with her husband during the cholera pandemic that struck Europe in the 1840s. Lucille has “cousins all over the world” (303), meaning that Savina and Renata are not the last women to carry their magical lineage. Haven brings up the subject of witchcraft during a conversation with Lucille, but Lucille doesn’t want to talk about it over the phone.

Conrad posts that he had a “[o]nce-in-a-lifetime” dive that day (304), leading Haven to suspect that he found the treasure.

After leaving the archive in Naples, Haven goes to Savina’s villa and tells her that Mari survived.

She shows her the family tree that Lucille compiled, along with a message Lucille wrote about her witchcraft: “This lineage has been unspeakably rewarding, the greatest gift of my life” (307). These revelations overturn Savina’s understanding of Mari’s life as a tragedy and her own heritage as a curse. Haven feels certain that the witch will stop using her power in harmful ways. She feels grateful to her father for sending her to Positano, and she marvels at how Mari and Holmes’s love story is “powerful enough—more than two hundred years later—to save an entire region” (308).

A few days after Haven’s conversation with Savina, Conrad abruptly leaves Project Relic because he’s only after the gems and doesn’t care about the project’s archaeological goals. Gage Whitlock pleads for Haven to return to the project, and she renegotiates the contract so that it better serves her and her team.

Three months later, Haven returns to Positano. Mal proposed to her long-term girlfriend and won’t be joining her, but the rest of her original team is on the project. Shortly after her arrival, Conrad calls her and reveals that the blue gems he found were fake. He asks Haven if she has any leads and promises that he’ll cooperate with her this time. Haven doesn’t tell him about the pink and red gems that her father found, and she revels in Conrad’s comeuppance.

Haven realizes that the mysterious code she found among her father’s files about Li Galli refers to items in the Archivio Marittimo di Napoli. Following his notes, she finds three old newspaper articles about treasures concealed in the copper-plated bows of sunken ships that belonged to the Mazza brothers. Haven looks forward to searching the Aquila’s bow for the gems her father found.

Savina stops using her magic in dangerous ways and is instead learning how to use her witchcraft to fight pollution with Lucille’s help. Tourism to Positano returns to normal levels, and Enzo’s business is doing better than ever. He’s astonished when Haven comes to his shop because she didn’t tell him that she would be back in town. As they share a passionate kiss, Haven is certain that their love is authentic rather than the work of magic.

The narrative moves back in time. Mari, Holmes, Ami, and Dante rescue three of the captives from Ischia when Vivi sacrifices herself to reveal their location. To avoid painful memories and suspicions surrounding the Mazza brothers’ deaths, the sea witches leave Positano. Most settle in Treviso, including Mari and Lia.

When Lia is 16, Mari asks her to accompany a group of witches paying a visit to Positano and to bring back news of her family. Lia reports that Mari’s father is dead and that Paola and Corso are married but miserable. Mari is pregnant with her first child, and she and Holmes plan to name the baby Nico. Mari asks Lia to ensure that Holmes’s diary doesn’t “languish on a shelf to collect dust” after they are dead, and she says that love is the greatest treasure of all (325).

In 1841, Lia, now a wife and mother of three, sends the diary to the archives.