The Curse Girl (15 page)

My feet slowed as I reached his front lawn. Drawing a deep breath, I started up the front walk. I reached the front door and pressed the doorbell.

Footsteps thumped in the hall. I heard the sliding of the lock. I tried to compose my face. I didn’t know if I should smile or look serious. I felt clammy and sick.

The door yanked open, and there he was.

“Hi,” I tried, shyly.

“Hi.” He was staring. “Bee?”

I kicked the ground with my shoe. “I know I’ve been gone a long time, but—”

He came out of his trance and grabbed me in a hug before I could say anything else. I froze in his arms, and then relaxed into him. A huge smile stretched across my face, and I hugged him back.

He was happy to see me!

Drew wanted to know everything. He ran inside and called Violet and the others to tell them to come over, then led me to the living room couch and made me sit. “Do you need anything? A drink, something to eat?”

“Maybe some water,” I suggested. I was pretty thirsty from my run through the woods.

He nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. I looked around his living room. I’d only been in here once before. Dark curtains shut out the sunlight, and faded wallpaper gave the room an old, Victorian feel. Almost like the curse house.

My stomach lurched at the memory of it.

Drew came back with a glass of water. He sat next to me and watched me as I drained the glass. He keep staring at me like he was afraid I’d vanish in a poof of smoke.

“How have you been?” I said.

He laughed in disbelief, as if such a mundane question were unthinkable. He rubbed one hand through his hair and then reached for my hand. He stopped before touching, though, and mumbled something.

“What was it like?” He asked after a long pause.

I shook my head. How could I talk about it? What could I possibly say that would sum up everything in a way he could understand? “Weird. Crazy. Nightmarish. Well, parts of it were almost nice, in a way, as weird as that sounds.”

“Nice?”

“Well, parts of it.” I thought about Rose and Housekeeper and the origami roses and the pumpkin soup. Those parts had been nice.

“Are you okay?” He continued. “You aren’t hurt or anything…?”

“I’m fine.” I smiled as wide as I could, hoping that would convince him.

“What’s in your hand?”

I glanced down and saw I was still holding the key. It had turned back into paper, though, probably when I left the house.

“Oh. It’s origami.” I unfolded it. I’d used one of the pages from the book of letters. Scrawl covered the paper in dark strokes. My eye fell down the paragraphs as I spoke. “I made a key and used it to escape…”

The words jumped out at me. Marian’s words. And my heart froze.

On the strands of our soul we hang the greatest of human virtues—bright gems that glitter in our hearts as we seek to polish them through use.

I scanned the rest of the paragraph, absorbing her words. My heart skipped a beat and then stumbled, beating faster. Sweat broke out across my palms. Was this the answer? Was this what she’d spoken of in the curse? We’d had it all wrong, hadn’t we? Then I thought of something else, something Marian had said to me the last time she’d seen me—

Drew was still talking. I dragged my mind back to him. I could barely hear him above the roaring in my ears. His face wavered in my vision.

“ . . . still in shock. We thought you were never going to—well, we were worried. Your father said you were in the city, but we knew you’d never leave without saying goodbye. There were rumors, and I was so afraid that you weren’t safe.”

The words of the curse hummed in my brain, making it hard to listen. I licked my lips. “Drew—”

"I came to see you,” he burst out. “I wanted to know for sure if you were there. I wanted to speak to you.”

“I know,” I said. “He told me later—yesterday, actually. I didn’t know that you’d come. I’m so sorry I didn’t get to see you—”

I heard Marian’s voice, intruding in my head, drowning out my own voice.
“You do not understand the depth of guilt, do you? The agony of betrayal?”
I still couldn’t believe that the curse had been so misleading. Nothing to do with necklaces at all.

“That’s okay,” Drew said, his voice cutting through my thoughts again. “It was good to know for sure where you were, at least. But I was pretty disappointed that I didn’t get to see you. I would have gotten a kickin’ grade on my journalism report if I could have cracked open the story that you were really at the curse house. There’d been so many rumors, you know …”

“Wait a second.” I blinked, trying to swim through the swirl of emotions and thoughts to what he was saying. “You came to see me for a school project? Not to rescue me?”

He nodded, his smile freezing like he had just realized he’d said something wrong.

I struggled to speak normally. I was shaking. “I don’t know what the rumors said, but I was trapped in the curse house and possibly in grave peril, and you didn’t do anything about it? Didn’t you think it was a bit odd that I just disappeared? You weren’t even, you know,
worried
about me?”

Drew frowned. “Of course I was. We all were. But that guy said you were there of your own free will. You chose to go. It wasn’t like you were forced or anything. You got to live in that swanky place while the rest of us were all worried about you. It was kind of selfish, actually. If you’d wanted to run away from your dad, you could have come to me or Violet or any of your other friends.”

It was getting hard to breathe. I felt like I’d just run another mile, but at the same time my mind was clear. I’d been so stupid about him. “I wasn’t running away from anyone! I was a prisoner, Drew! Of course I was forced … I mean, I went of my own choice, to save my family because of my dad’s dumb mistake, but then I didn’t have a choice. You didn’t even try to find your own girlfriend?”

“You’re not my girlfriend,” he said quickly. “Not anymore.”

“I was at the time!”

Drew shifted. “I figured … I thought you wanted to break up, since you just ran off. I’m dating somebody else now.”

“What?” I thought I was going to explode.

Drew was looking equally stunned. “So you didn’t run away?”

“No, genius! And then we were working so hard to break that stupid curse—”

“We?”

“Will! The … the beast from the legends.” Two thoughts hit me hard. First, how stupid that name sounded. Will wasn’t a beast. He was just a guy, lonely and idealistic and stuck in a horrible place. Yeah, he was pig-headed and cranky and really stubborn sometimes, but he was also sweet and funny and generous and romantic.

Second, I didn’t feel that sad about the news that Drew had moved on. Betrayed, yes. Enraged, yes. Hurt? Yeah. But sad?

Oddly, I was almost relieved. Here I had been feeling guilty because of my attraction to Will, and he hadn’t even been worried about me!

I felt a stab of worry and concern about Will. He was my friend, and I cared about him. Deeply. And I’d abandoned him in probably the most crucial moment of his life.

He’s my friend, and I care about him
. That realization reverberated through my mind, freezing me in place and throwing every other feeling and thought into complete chaos. What was I doing? I’d left Will alone, with no way to break the curse without me, and barely any time. And now I knew the answer!

Sure, I was mad, but this was his
life
we were talking about. Mad could wait.

Suddenly I had a really, really bad feeling about this. How much time had been left in the hourglass? A few days? Weeks? Why did I suddenly feel as though I had no time at all?

“Look, I’m sorry about the breakup thing.” Drew put his hand over mine. “Are you okay?”

“No, Drew. I’m not okay. Oh my goodness, you are an idiot. But I don’t have time to even get into that now. I need to go. Because I’ve been a complete idiot too.”

“But the others are coming over to see you! What’s going on?”

“I’ll see them later. I don’t really have time to explain.” I jumped up. Where was my stuff? Had I brought stuff? I grabbed my backpack off the floor. “Do you have a bike I can borrow?”

“Uhhh, sure.” He stood too, looking like he wanted to argue. But he didn’t. “It’s in the garage.”

I ran for the door.

“Wait, Bee! Where are you going?” Drew followed me into the garage.

“Back to the curse house! There’s something I need to do!”

“Are you crazy? Why are you going back there? I thought you just said you’d been a prisoner!”

“Maybe I am crazy.” I grabbed his bike and threw one leg over. “Tell everyone I love them and that I hope to see them soon, okay?”

“Bee! Wait!”

I didn’t stop to respond.

I had to get back to Will before something terrible happened.

~

I reached the curse house much faster on the bike. When the faded stone and crumbling columns swung into sight, I let out a sigh of relief. I jumped down from the bike and let it fall. I ran across the leaf-strewn lawn and up the steps to the door.

The knob turned easily under my hand, just as it had the first day I’d entered the house. I rushed inside, my footsteps echoing loudly.

“Hello? Will? Rose?”

The house was still and etched with shadows. Nothing stirred in the crystal silence that confronted me. I hadn’t realized how much the walls breathed, how much every corner and shadow and crack had been stuffed with strange, slithering magic until it was gone.

Now the walls were like bones, the rooms like empty, airless lungs.

I ran to the first door and wrenched it open, praying for the library, or Will’s study, or any other place he might be. Instead I found a dusty music parlor. I shut the door and opened it again, trying for something else.

But it was just the same room again. A few dust motes drifted in the air, stirred up by my frantic slamming and opening.

What was happening? Had the curse been lifted? I sucked in a breath, trying to think. Why did I have such a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach? Why did the house feel more like a corpse than anything else?

And most importantly, where was Will?

I went to the next door and found a hall. I took it. It was weird to be opening and closing doors normally again, instead of playing Russian roulette with them.

I came to the ballroom, massive and filled with smothering shadows. “Will? Housekeeper? Anyone?” The only answer was the echo of my own voice. I ran on. The next room was a parlor, with faded blue wallpaper decorated with roses and scrolls. Like Housekeeper’s skin. I got a good look around, but didn’t see anyone there either. I started to move on when something on the wall caught my eye and made me pause.

Was it just a shadow? I stepped closer, and my heartbeat stumbled. A water stain covered the wall beside the window. It almost looked like a person—there was the head, the shoulders, the arms . . .

“Housekeeper?” I whispered, stricken. Had she just melted into the wall? “Housekeeper!”

I heard no response. I stood there another moment, my mouth drying up and my heart hammering, and then I started running.

“Will? Rose?”

I had to find Will. I had to find them all.

His study was empty too. The hourglass lay in the middle of the room, shattered, the sand scattered across the rug in an S-shaped drift. It was no longer glowing.

“Will!” I shrieked, dropping to my knees. I scooped up handfuls of sand and tried to pour them back in the hourglass. What had he done? What had happened?

The mirror. Maybe he’d gone through it, maybe they’d all gone through—I whirled to look at it. My own face, drained of all color, gazed back at me like a startled animal.

I didn’t want to go there alone again, but what else could I do?

On the floor I saw the book of letters. He’d been reading it here probably. Had he discovered an answer to the curse? Or had he given up because I’d left? Grabbing the book, I tucked it under my arm and took a deep breath.

Then I stepped through the mirror and into the Fey Lands.

SEVENTEEN

The cool rush of magic swept over my skin like a curtain of water. I held my breath, and the flashes of fire and ice rippled harmlessly over my skin. My head tingled, and then the world materialized around me in a burst of noise and color. Someone shouldered into me, pushing me forward. Another person pushed me back as they shoved past.

It took me a second to get my bearings. I was in the market place.

Clutching the book of letters to my chest, I scurried out of the stream of pedestrians and into a makeshift alley between two tents selling magic wares. An old elf woman leered at me.

“Want to sell your voice, Pretty One? I’ll give you a good price for it!”

Will probably hated me right now, if he was even still alive. I wasn’t sure what Marian was planning to do with him, if he was here. I needed to find them quickly.

“Um, no thanks,” I said. “But you wouldn’t happen to know where Marian the Witch is right now, would you?” I had this sinking feeling that if I found Marian, I’d find Will.

She shook her head vigorously. I fumbled with my clothes for something to offer as a bribe. Jewelry? Nope. A memory? Definitely not.

The book of letters! I tore out a sheet of paper and folded a rose. The old woman watched with amazement as it transformed in the palm of my hand.

“Amazing,” she whispered. She reached out her hand, but I pulled the rose away.

“Where’s Marian?”

“In the Hall of Roses,” she said, her eyes still on the rose. “But you didn’t hear it from me.”

“Got it.” I was already moving.

As I ran, I tried to formulate some kind of plan. What if I got there and Will was already permanently cursed, or worse, dead? What if Marian couldn’t be talked down? Could I fight her? What would that entail?

I had this sneaking suspicion that a fight with her wouldn’t involve hair-pulling and face-slapping. Call me crazy.

I tore a few more pages from the book and shoved the rest into my backpack. I needed my hands free. I stuffed the loose pages in my belt. A very hazy plan was started to take shape in my head. It was probably suicidal.