The Bride's Curse (16 page)

“Yes, he did. And he’s taking me to see his aunt Mary.”

“There, then. Isn’t that good?”

“Just keep your fingers crossed. And watch the store this afternoon while I’m gone?”

“Sure thing.” Noelia turned back to her display work, a smile hovering on her lips.

“And Noelia—stop looking so smug. I can see you. Remember, you only read the books out loud. Even Marina Cove’s famous author, Mimi L’Amour, couldn’t second guess Cupid, you know.” Kelly slammed the door behind her.

“So, you’re the one who has my favorite nephew in a tizzy these days.” Mary Atwell gazed at Kelly over her half-moon eyeglasses as if she was examining some new species of life. The older woman was holding court in her small private parlor in the Atwell mansion, with Kelly and Brett seated before her like supplicants, on a loveseat opposite his aunt’s recliner.

“I am not in a tizzy, Auntie,” Brett snapped. “And I’m your only nephew.”

Kelly enjoyed watching the faint pink flush rising from beneath his finely starched shirt collar up into his cheeks to join the slight blond stubble that was gathering there. How amazing was it to watch a big strong man bullied by his tiny relative.

Mary treated him to an amused raised eyebrow then turned her attention back to Kelly. The scrutiny concluded, she closed the book on her lap and nodded to herself. Dressed in a lavender twin set and double strand of pearls, Mary looked every inch more like a debutante from the 1950s than a woman from the hippie-love-beads-free-love generation. She certainly didn’t look like anyone’s idea of a witch. “I can’t say I blame him. You look like a gal with a bit more substance to her than the bimbos he usually finds himself with.”

Kelly grinned as she heard Brett’s outraged snort. It amused her that this diminutive little lady could get her tall, blond, and handsome nephew in a state of spluttering speechlessness with a few well-chosen words.

And it pleased her more than she’d admit that the older lady thought she compared favorably to the other women Brett had dated.

Except they weren’t exactly dating, were they? More like fencing with each other, dancing around just out of reach, trying to avoid getting wounded.
“Well, I think Wayne must have been crazy to let you go.”
Had he really said that, or had she misheard? Kelly realized the room was silent and shook herself out of her reverie.

“Ms. Atwell, I believe Brett has told you how I came to purchase your wedding gown. I am so sorry there has been such a misunderstanding about it, but I’m afraid I have bad news. The young woman who purchased it from me just loves the gown and is not willing to return it. I explained the situation to her, but she is very taken with the dress and wants her wedding day to be perfect.

“What worries me is that three other couples have returned that dress. There’s a silly rumor that it’s cursed. I know you’ll find that ridiculous, perhaps even offensive. But I do have a liking for the young woman who wants to wear it and I don’t want to see her heart broken over some silly dress. I was wondering … ” Kelly stopped and chewed her lip. Would Brett’s aunt have hysterics if she made the request she wanted to make?

“Go on my dear. Spit it out.” Mary’s voice indicated that she had guessed what Kelly wanted but was going to make her speak the words out loud.

Kelly took a deep breath, one hand smoothing the fabric of her best dress slacks. “Let’s just suppose for now that there is such a thing as a curse, and you had cursed that dress while you were so upset about the ruined wedding. If you had cursed it, could you lift the curse?”

She heard Brett snort derisively.

“Brett, dear,” Mary said firmly. “Would you please go and get us some coffee and ask Mrs. Patrowski if she has any of that nice chocolate banana bread? After all, we can’t have an all-girls discussion with a big lump like you hovering over us,” she added, making Brett blush again. His mouth thinned to a tight line, thinner still when he saw Kelly grin, but he rose to do his aunt’s bidding.

Kelly fixed her gaze on Brett, trying to telegraph a plea not to leave her alone at Mary’s mercy. All her senses were warning her that this was no guileless old lady but a formidable woman. After all, someone who could put a curse on an inanimate object and have that curse still be strong enough to wreck several relationships years later, well, she was probably not someone to cross.

Maybe she’d turn Kelly into a toad if she said the wrong thing. Brett either didn’t catch her unspoken plea or ignored it out of spite. The door closed firmly behind him.

As if she could read her visitor’s mind, Mary said, “Does the idea of magic frighten you?”

“I really don’t believe in magic.” She didn’t add that she did believe in ghosts. And, lately, curses. Some things were better kept private.

“Well, you should.” Mary looked quite smug. “I did curse that gown, using a curse from a book inherited from my mother, who got it from her mother.”

Despite herself, Kelly felt a little shiver of unease run coldly down her spine. “You really think … ”

“It’s not what I think, Kelly, it’s what I know. And I know that Troy and I had a solid relationship—and a passionate one—otherwise I wouldn’t have wanted to marry him. So I wasn’t jilted, as you put it, because there was something wrong between us.”

“But that was before the curse. So why did he not turn up for the wedding? There has to have been a reason.” Kelly gulped.

Mary’s eyes, so like Brett’s, had turned a rusty brown, the color of dead autumn leaves and just as emotionless. A tiny wisp of lace handkerchief in her hands was being slowly twisted and tortured by those thin, surprisingly strong fingers.

Kelly braced herself, prepared to beat it out of the room if lightning bolts of magic started flying. Then she took a deep breath and reminded herself she had faced enemy fire in the desert, and if she could handle that, she could handle Brett’s old aunt Mary.

She braced her shoulders and stared right back into the depths of Mary’s chilly dark gaze.

The older woman seemed to pull herself back from somewhere far away—a place Kelly was sure she herself didn’t want to go—and she managed a gentle smile as if shaking herself from some distant memory. She leaned forward and patted Kelly’s hand.

Her touch was icy cold. “Now, dear, let’s get to why I wanted to see you.”

“I was hoping it was because you’d decided you didn’t want the dress back and were going to lift the curse.”

With eyebrows raised in that peculiarly smug manner, Mary replied, “You are one of the gifted, aren’t you? Oh, don’t try to deny it.” She raised her hand as if to quell any objections.

Objections Kelly was far too stunned to raise. It was one thing to think that maybe a head wound had led to her seeing ghosts and talking to dead people, but it was quite another to find yourself being put into a category of the sisterhood of witches. Kelly was not at all sure that she liked this idea.

“Ms. Atwell … ” she began, but the other woman was just getting into her stride.

“Now, dear, don’t try to deny it. I knew the moment I saw you that you were one of the gifted. What is your specific gift? Can you read the future? Are you able to read minds? Can you translate the tarot? Or … or maybe you can talk to the dead?” Mary Atwell could not conceal the feverish excitement that flamed in her eyes and flushed her thin face as she looked closely into Kelly’s eyes. “That’s it, isn’t it? I knew there was a reason why all this is happening. You have come to help me find Troy, haven’t you?” She leaned forward and grasped Kelly’s hands in her own cold fingers. Kelly shivered. Mary’s hands felt as fragile as the bones of a small bird, but she had a grip of iron.

She pushed to her feet, feeling that she had to escape from this room as her imagination ran riot. The very air seemed oppressive, filled with magic and witchery. “Ms. Atwell, I don’t know what you expect from me but I am afraid you are sadly mistaken.” She was lying, but the weight of what the other woman was asking lay across her shoulders like a mantle of ice.

The door to the room opened as Brett came in carrying a tray of coffee things. At that same moment, across the room, the Old Man on the Bench materialized, a wavering almost-not-there vision that set Kelly’s world whirling around her. Her vision blurred as the pain began to throb under the wound on her temple.

She heard Brett exclaim from an impossibly long way away, “Good Lord, Kelly, what has happened? You’re white as snow. Aunt Mary, what did you say to her?”

“Nothing to get her this upset. I just asked if she could communicate with the dead, if that was her gift.” Mary sniffed to show how offended she was.

“You said what?” There was no mistaking the shock in Brett’s voice, but whether it was that he truly thought his aunt was off the wall or if he thought she had simply violated the rules of good hospitality, it was hard for Kelly to tell. She couldn’t take her eyes off the wavering, ghostly figure in front of her.

The pathetic loathsome jerk seemed to be going into some sort of dance motion, his whole body swaying as his thin, claw-like hands reached out toward the chair where Mary Atwell sat, as if to grasp her in his embrace.

“No! Leave her alone!” Kelly screamed as she sprang backwards toward the door. She knew with sickening certainty that she had brought the ghost here, that it was in some way attached to her because she could recognize it. She swallowed, fear a hard ball in her throat. What would happen if the apparition from beyond the veil succeeded in touching a very live Mary Atwell? In horror movies, it would mean her death … and that seemed to make perfect sense to Kelly at that moment…

It was a pretty sure bet that Brett would never forgive her if she was the one who let a ghost lead his favorite aunt into the afterworld. Come to think of it, she’d find it hard to forgive herself. The only way to save Mary was to leave and hope she was right that the ghost would have to follow. She turned and pushed past Brett to rush from the room on legs rubbery with panic, and stumbled through the ante-room and the short hallway toward the big double doors. Freedom beckoned outside and she had to reach it before disaster struck.

She dimly heard Brett calling her name, but his deep voice couldn’t still her panic. Outside, she bent over at the waist, gasping air into her aching lungs as she struggled for breath. Brett caught up with her, his face pale as he managed to capture her and pull her tightly against him into the protective circle of his arms. “Jeez, Kelly, I don’t know what my aunt was trying to do, but whatever it was, you’re in shock, you’re trembling.” He hugged her even closer to him. “I never would have brought you if I’d known this would happen.”

Kelly snuggled into his warmth, breathing in the scent of him, grateful to have a flesh and blood man to lean on. Brett’s solid presence emanated the safety she so badly needed, anchoring her to the real world. She kept her eyes tightly closed, afraid if she opened them she’d see the Old Man on the Bench gazing down at her from Mary Atwell’s parlor window. A chill breeze swirled past her then, and she knew she had lured the ghost away and Mary was safe. At least, for now.

“Take me home, Brett … I … I need to get out of here.”

• • •

The pain in her temple had subsided, but it took most of the drive back from Derry to Marina Grove before Kelly stopped shaking. Brett turned the car heater on full even though it was a mild evening. His warm strong hand lay on hers, and every few moments he shot her a worried glance.

Finally, they pulled into the parking spot in front of her house. He turned off the ignition, left the heater running, and pulled her toward him.

Kelly had to bite her lip to stop from howling and sobbing into the strong sanctuary of his chest. She hadn’t cried since, well, since a Taliban bomb changed her life. Not even when she got that Dear Jane letter from Wayne.

This whole restless spirit gig was starting to wear on her. The moments of sheer terror she had felt when she saw the ghost reaching out as if to embrace Mary Atwell … even now, the idea of that shimmering essence pulling a living, breathing woman into its arms was enough to set off another round of shivering. Nausea rose in her throat, but she swallowed it back.

When she finally relaxed in Brett’s arms, he dropped a gentle kiss on the top of her head and then asked, “So, are you going to tell me what really happened at my aunt’s house tonight?”

Kelly swallowed hard around the warring emotions that had set up shop in her throat. “You know how Noelia told you I can see dead people?”

She couldn’t see his nod in the darkness of the vehicle, but she could feel his chin gently brush against her hair. “I know you don’t believe in this whole spirit thing, that you think they really are just hallucinations. But do you think you could keep an open mind and hear me out?”

He was silent for so long, she thought she’d lost him. It was asking a lot for someone, especially someone as grounded as Brett Atwell, to believe in ghosts and other strange goings on.

His reply surprised her. “You know, I work for a non-profit charity overseas in some of the most primitive areas of the world. Areas that are deeply rooted in superstition and what to us are weird beliefs. I learned not to dismiss them out of hand because of some of the things I’ve witnessed. I guess what I’m thinking is, if strange phenomena can occur there, perhaps I’m wrong to think they couldn’t occur here. Especially when I grew up with a weird aunt like Mary, who had us convinced as kids that she really could cast magic spells. I just didn’t expect to find something like this, right here in good old Maine in the U.S.A.”

The smile in his voice brought one to Kelly’s heart and slowed her shaking. And so she told him everything.

Kelly had finished her story and was enjoying a quiet moment with her head cuddled against Brett’s chest when her mobile phone trilled. She had chosen the Wedding March as an appropriate tune for incoming calls and she could see Brett’s smile in the light from the screen as she pressed the answer key.

Noelia’s panicked voice came through loud and clear. “You’d better get to the store, fast.” The shrill scream that came down the line galvanized Brett into action. He had the ignition turned on and the car in motion before Kelly had even managed to assimilate the words.