The Curse Girl (10 page)

His mouth twitched. “You’ve been a lot less selfish than me,” he admitted.

I shrugged. I wasn’t going to get into an argument about who was more selfish. I just wanted us to work together so we could get out of this mess.

“Shall we?” He gestured at the table. I went for my chair, and he stumbled trying to pull it out for me first. I almost snickered, but held it in. I guess we really had a truce now.

“I know you’re laughing at me.”

“I’m sorry! It’s hard not to sometimes.” I looked up and saw he was almost smiling. Wow, he looked much nicer when he smiled. The corners of his eyes crinkled up and his mouth split to show straight white teeth.

He was really, really handsome.

I dragged my mind away from that idea. No way was that happening.

Will pulled out a chair for Rose, who had joined us now that the apologies were over. She beamed at me like I’d just handed her a million dollars. I noticed a few rosebuds sprouting in her hair. Were those new? Had I just never noticed them?

A sick feeling of foreboding filled my stomach at the thought that she was becoming more and more Rose-like as the days went on. Time was running out.

“So . . .” I gestured at her, trying not to look at the new flowers growing out of her head. “Did you tell Rose about what Marian said?”

“Yes. I told her about your idea, too.” He sat beside me, picking up the bell to signal the servants and giving it a shake. “And I was thinking about the letters. Robert and Marian wrote dozens of them while she was away settling her father’s estate. When she returned to marry my brother, she had those letters bound up in a book. I don’t know what happened to it. It might be in the library somewhere.”

I thought of the endless shelves. “Aren’t there like, five thousand books though?”

“Twenty thousand,” he said.

My mouth dropped open.

“We can find it if we work together.”

I wasn’t so sure. “Are we going to fight every step of the way?” I was still slightly skeptical about this whole apology-and-truce thing.

He gave me another charming smile. “Maybe. But I promise to be a gentleman this time around. By your definition.”

“It’s not
my
definition,” I grumbled. “As if this is all part of my capricious whims or something. It’s modern society’s.”

“Whatever. I’ll be the epitome of it, no matter where it comes from.”

I raised one eyebrow. “You aren’t going to act like the Beast Boy I’ve known?”

“I give you my word.”

I sighed. This was good. Really. We needed to get out of here. Working together was our only chance, wasn’t it? And he’d been a lot nicer lately. Minus the smirking and the fighting. He’d been almost decent. Almost.

I sighed. Fine, whatever. I’d give him another chance, then. “Are you sure searching the library is the best use of our time?”

“Not really,” he said. “But it’s the only thing we’ve got right now.”

Unfortunately, I knew he was right.

TEN

The sun was just beginning to brighten the horizon when I dragged myself into the library to join Will.

“Tea?” He held out a cup, which I accepted gratefully. The fresh scent of mint filled my nose.

As I sipped it, I realized I had never wondered where stuff like this came from, if we were all trapped inside the mansion. “Where does all the food come from? If nobody can leave the house, I mean. Does it come from the supermarket? Do you have a secret food-growing lab in the basement?”

“Magic. Part of the spell is that we’re kept alive in here. The food is always waiting in the kitchen in the morning.”

I took another sip of the tea. It tasted ordinary enough. “Magic food? Do you think you could request some mint chocolate chip ice cream for me, then?”

He laughed. “It doesn’t work that way. The magic is impartial. Unknowing. It’s just a force, like sunlight or air or water. It’s not a person. It can’t think.”

“Oh.” I frowned. “Then how does it know when we’ve successfully broken the curse?”

Will hesitated. “Magic isn’t sentient, you know, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be set up like a machine.”

I didn’t understand, but I let it go. Magic was probably going to be as Greek to me as diagramming sentences. I put both hands on my hips and surveyed the rows and rows of books spines that snaked around the room, crammed onto every shelf. “Where do we start?”

“Anywhere you’d like.” Will drained his teacup and set it down on a side table. “Look for anything that mentions Marian or Robert—not just the book of letters. A diary, a journal, anything handwritten. Anything that could perhaps offer clues about the curse.”

“Got it.” I pulled the first book off the shelf and started flipping. History textbook. Nope. I put it back. Will started searching through the books on the shelf above me, at the opposite end of the row. I tried the second book, but it was a guide to herbal medicines. I sighed.

This was going to take forever.

“So did you have any other brothers or sisters, besides Robert and Rose?” I asked. Anything to fill this deafening silence.

Will looked up from the book he was scanning. He closed it with a snap. “No. Just the three of us, until Robert passed. My parents are both dead too.”

“Of course,” I said, before I realized that although the curse had been cast more than eighty years before, for him it had only been four years. “I mean, I’m so sorry.” Oh, my stupid mouth. Sometimes I could be so thoughtless.

Will shook his head. He didn’t look offended.

“They died when I was very young. I barely knew either one of them. Robert was both brother and father to me. He was my guardian, you see.”

I was quiet, thinking about it. He’d been betrayed by his father figure, and I’d been betrayed by mine. We had that in common at least.

“What about you? Any brothers or sisters?” The moment he spoke a chagrined look crossed his face, like he was afraid he’d said the wrong thing by bringing up my family. He was probably thinking about my father and his abandonment of me.

“Don’t worry,” I said quickly. “I like talking about them. And yes, I have two stepsisters—Mindi and Jessica.”

For a moment the only sound was our hands rifling through dusty pages. I thought about everyone out there, in the town. They might seem a million years away, but they were so close. Only a few miles. Did they think about me? Were they worried?

“They’re pretty cool, I guess,” I continued. “We fight sometimes, of course, and they don’t talk to me at school. But I love them. I realized that for real once I came here.”

He was watching me, maybe looking for some sign that the topic was going to make me sad. “I can tell,” he said finally. “Your eyes lit up when you said their names. How old are they?”

“Mindi is a couple of months older than me, and Jessica is two years older.” Just saying their names made my throat feel tight. In my mind’s eye, I saw their long white-blonde hair, their big blue eyes, their smiles. And I missed them so much my whole body ached.

“I bet you really miss them.” His tone was surprisingly gentle.

“Yeah, I do.” A thousand emotions filled that single sentence. My chest tightened, and I swallowed back a sudden sob.

Will studied my face, digesting my sadness. He clasped and unclasped his hands, hesitating. “So you’re the youngest.” He said it like he was confirming a suspicion.

He was pretty clearly changing the subject to try to cheer me up. It was sweet. So I let him. I played along, scowling in mock outrage.

“What are you saying, Beast Boy?”

“Well,” he said, innocently. “My brother always told me that as the youngest, I was doomed to dramatic displays of fury when I didn’t get my way, and an insatiable desire for attention—”

He ducked, and the book I threw sailed over his head and hit the wall. “I’m teasing, I’m teasing!”

“You’d better be.” But I was giggling. The laughter warmed me like a cheerful fire. How long had it been since I’d really laughed? Weeks? It felt like years.

Still smirking, Will grabbed the book I’d thrown and flipped through it. He put it back on the shelf with a sigh. The cheerful mood faded back to seriousness again, like someone had flipped a switch. There were just so many emotions churning inside us both, I supposed. We were so morose today.

“I wish I’d had a brother,” I said, after another short silence. “I always wanted a brother. Or a really fierce, protective sister. Somebody to look out for me at school when I was bullied . . .”

“You were bullied?”

“Of course. I mean, look at me.”

“I’m looking at you. Am I supposed to see something that validates bullying?”

I made a useless gesture. “You said yourself that my being called Beauty was a mistake.”

“I didn’t say it like
that
, and we’ve already established I was being a, how do you say it? A jerk.” He studied me, an honest up-and-down assessment. “And I was horribly wrong. You’re very pretty, you know.”

I buried my face in the book in my hands. Did he just say that? Awkward! “Uh, thanks. But the cheerleaders at my high school didn’t exactly agree.”

“Idiots.” Will dismissed their opinion with a sniff.

“I think so too. But they were popular, and really pretty, and energetic. I’m not very energetic. Or popular. I’m more of a quiet wallflower type.”

“No? I seem to remember otherwise. Especially last night. You yelled at an insane witch. And you’ve spent the vast majority of our acquaintance slamming doors and storming out of rooms. You seem pretty energetic to me.”

“Well.” I curled a piece of hair around my finger, sheepish. “But I’m not normally dealing with a crazy curse and a jerkish Beast Boy.” I softened my words with a smile, and he looked up from the bookcase in time to catch it. Our gazes held. His blue eyes startled mine with their soft expression.

Something tugged in my stomach, and I busied myself with the bookshelf. What was that? Was my heart beating faster? Did I just feel a flutter of excitement?

No, no. We were simply feeling solidarity. A connection, a mutual understanding of two cursed prisoners. Right? Not
attraction
.

Hmm. That was a load of bull, and I knew it. I was attracted to him.

The realization made my skin prickle with cold sweat. I liked Drew. I practically loved Drew. I couldn’t think about the incredibly handsome and—shockingly—sympathetic boy standing next to me. I couldn’t.

As if in response to my mental panic, Will moved closer and leaned over my shoulder.

“What about your other friends—what were their names? You mentioned one named Drew,” he said.

“Uh,” I gulped. “He plays soccer and runs track. He goes to my high school.”

“Are you . . . I’m not sure how it works now. Are you seeing each other? Courting?”

“Er, dating?” I shook my head. “Not really. Sort of. It’s complicated.” I wondered why I was telling him this. The words were just spilling out.

“Dating.” He tested the word, and then smiled. “It sounds weird.”

“Hey now. Weirder than courtship?”

Will ignored me. “What do modern people do when they date? In my time, Robert used to take Marian on carriage rides and walks in the forest. Or they’d sit in the parlor, or write letters to one another. Sometimes they’d go to plays.”

“That’s kind of like something we do, only a lot less boring stuff,” I said. “Things like plays. Except they’re movies. Do you know what movies are? Motion pictures?”

He pointed to a shelf, and I saw a dusty collection of newspapers. “They get delivered with the food. I’m not a complete idiot when it comes to everything that’s happened in the last several decades. And yes, there were picture shows when I wasn’t cursed.”

Picture shows. He was kind of adorable. I swallowed a snicker and just nodded instead. It seemed the most diplomatic thing to do.

“So you go to movies when you’re dating,” Will prodded.

“Yes, movies. Restaurants sometimes, if we can afford it, or the park. Or bowling. But Drew doesn’t have a lot of money. So we usually just hang out at the lake or at somebody’s house.”

“Doesn’t have a lot of money?”

Was that a smirk on his face? It definitely looked like a smirk. So I rushed to qualify my statement, defensive about making Drew look bad in front of Beastly Will Moneybags, who had probably never had do work for anything in his life.

“But he works hard at one of the fast-food places in town, Burger Barn. It’s new. For the longest time we didn’t have anything, you know, being out in the middle of the woods like we are. You’d have to drive half an hour into Russville if you wanted to buy anything other than farmer’s market produce. Now they have a supermarket and two hamburger places and an ice cream place.”

I thought about that last bit for a moment. “Mmmm, ice cream.”

“Is it that good?” Will’s forehead wrinkled as he watched my blissful expression.

“Ice cream? You’ve never had ice cream?” My voice shot up in disbelief. “I didn’t think it was that new of an invention.”

“It’s not. But you said yourself the town only recently got an ice cream shop.”

I shook my head. Apparently money wasn’t everything. “Ice cream is the best thing you’ll ever taste in your life. It’s sweet and creamy and delicious . . .”

We had steadily worked out way down the rows from opposite ends and now we were meeting in the middle. His hip bumped against mine as he reached up to pull another book off the shelf. I scooted away. I couldn’t tell if he noticed or not. His eyelashes flickered a little, but he was just looking at the book.

“Is there anything else you miss?” Will asked.

“My stepmother.”

“Really? I thought—”

“That I hated her because of my father’s betrayal?”

He shrugged.

“Don’t get me wrong—what my dad did was horrible. Horrible. I don’t even want to talk about it. But my stepmother . . . you’d have to know her. She’s one of the nicest people you’d ever meet. Her smile lights up the whole room.” I imagined her, red hair strewn across her pillow like seaweed floating on a wave, her skin paper-thin and so fragile to the touch. The purple bruises that formed so easily on her these days. Her gray-green eyes, shut against the pain of her treatments. “And she was really sick, Will. Really, really sick.”