The Curse Girl (6 page)

“Bee?”

“It’s me.” I crept close to him and then reached out for his hand in the darkness. “Are you in a lot of pain tonight?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m changing. Every night I change into a creature. An animal. Just like everyone else in this cursed place!”

His hand was hot in mine. A shiver ran up my arm. “A creature? Like . . . a monster?” Suddenly the chains made sense.

He hesitated. He probably sensed my fear. “…Yes. Please don’t be afraid.”

“Will you hurt me?”

“No. I’m chained like a dog so I can’t hurt anyone or break things. So I can’t hurt myself.”

That sounded horrible.

“Bee?”

“I’m here. How are you feeling?”

“It’s not so bad now,” he said. “It’s nice to have company.”

“Yes—” It was nice to have company. Someone to talk to who wasn’t going to yell and snarl. My throat squeezed tight with unshed tears, and I drew in a quick breath.

“Are you all right?” Liam asked.

“No.”

“Tell me.” His tone was gentle, despite being laced with pain. It uncorked emotion in me, and I poured out the story to him. I left nothing out—my father, the Beast and his horribleness, the crazy house and the whispers in my room. Drew. My friends. How I was afraid I’d come out and find them all fifteen years older than me.

He listened carefully. I could hear him breathing in the darkness near me, and it made me feel better.

“My father didn’t want me,” I concluded, giving a broken ending to my broken tale. Just saying those words felt like I’d swallowed a bunch of rocks. Hurt hung in my chest, weighing me down. My heart was one mass of raw, throbbing pain.

“Your father is clearly an idiot, because you’re a brave, amazing girl. Right now you’re holding the hand of a werewolf in the dark, just because he’s lonely and in pain.”

I squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back.

“I want to get you out of here.”

“That’s not going to happen,” he said. “Not unless you break the curse.”

“Are you dangerous if you’re let free?”

He just squeezed my hand again. I wondered if he was a servant, condemned to this for some unpardonable sin like opposing the witch when she’d pronounced doom on everyone. I thought of Will—did he even care that Liam was down here, suffering?

“I’m trying to figure out what to do. The pompous jerk in charge isn’t helping matters at all. I call him the Beast, which I don’t think he likes very much.”

Liam just laughed a little, and it sounded bitter.

He’d probably had similar problems with Will, I supposed. Especially if he were chained down here in the dark like this.

“Liam?”

“Yes, Bee?”

“Will you be my friend? I don’t have any friends here.”

He squeezed my hand again. I took the gesture as a yes.

~

“Good morning, Beauty.” Housekeeper tiptoed into the room with a worried smile. I wondered if she’d heard about the conversation between me and her Master last night—was anything private in a house that whispered and muttered in the darkness, possessed by a curse that made deals with evil fathers about their daughters’ lives?

I turned over on my side and stared at the wall while she filled up the water basin and fussed with the dirty clothes at the foot of my bed. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to breathe.

“You must not blame the Master,” she said after a long silence that she probably interpreted as me sulking. “He’s angry a lot, because of the curse. He’s changed since it happened.”

“I should think so,” I mumbled. It was hard to focus on anything except the feelings of betrayal that simmered in my stomach. “It’s his fault.”

“I don’t remember the details,” she murmured. “The curse, you know, interferes with our memories . . . but I remember him. He wasn’t a bad person. He was a good boy. Kind, honest. Very friendly. But he’s very angry now, very hurt.”

Kind . . . honest? I almost laughed, but I swallowed and it came out a sob. The curse must have really messed with her head. Thinking I was crying or something, Housekeeper drifted to the bed and patted my shoulder awkwardly.

“There, there,” she said. “It will work out. You’ll see. You’re the Curse Girl. You’re here to help us now.”

“What I am supposed to do?” I burst out. “Am I supposed to know what I’m here for? The curse doesn’t say. I’m just supposed to ‘give aid.’ It doesn’t give any—” I yanked the covers back and shoved my feet over the side of the bed. “—Directions! Just some crap about pearls and moonlight and letters—” I froze.

Letters?

An idea flared to life in my head like a struck match. I’d assumed—as had Beast Boy, I guess—that letters mean ABCs and such. Letters of love and fury, it said. But what if they meant letters as in paper? As in correspondence, as in instructions, or maybe even explanations?

I turned to Housekeeper. “Beast B—er,
the Master
said the witch used to live in this house. Where was her room?”

Housekeeper touched a hand to her cheek. Her thin mouth worked like she was trying to decide whether to tell me or not. “I don’t know if I can . . .”

“Please,” I said. “This will help him. This will help you. Don’t you want to remember your name?”

“All right,” she said. “Come with me while I do the dusting. I’ll show you what it looks like. But I don’t know when we’ll find it. The house is very fickle in the morning.”

~

To Housekeeper’s surprise, we found the room right away.

“Maybe it wanted to be found,” she said, surprised.

I took several steps inside the room. Dust lay over everything. A four-poster bed dominated the space and dwarfed a fragile-looking writing desk in the corner. Velvet curtains covered the windows, blocking the sunlight.

Everything seemed dead.

Housekeeper lingered. “The room’s been sad ever since she left. Like the soul went out of it. I suppose you could say a room’s soul is its resident, couldn’t you?”

“I guess so.” I needed to think. If there were letters hidden in this room, where would they be?

I started with the writing desk. All the drawers were empty of everything but dust. My fingers left little trails in it, like tears. Something skittered away from my fingers in the recesses—a roach? I drew back, startled, and then I gritted my teeth and kept looking. I didn’t have time to be worried about bugs.

I spent hours searching the book shelves and poking in dusty corners. The sun traced a shining path across the floor. Finally I sat back on my heels, exhausted and frustrated beyond words. I had spent almost all day looking and had nothing to show for it.

Maybe Will was right.

I glared at the sunlight playing over the floorboards. If only stupid time wasn’t rushing past out there at quadruple-normal-speed or whatever, I would have a lot more leeway with this. But the sunlight just sparkled over the wooden slats, oblivious to my glare . . .

Wait a second. Sparkled?

I crawled over to the spot. Something glinted in the sun. A flash of metal. There was something shiny stuck in the floorboards.

My heart started beating triple time, filling my ears with a roaring sound. I stuck my fingernails in the crack, trying to reach it. This might be something important, or it might be a total bust, but either way I was going to get it out.

A shadow fell across my hand. I didn’t look up. I was so close . . . the shiny thing slipped a little further away. I hissed in frustration. “Crap!”

“Housekeeper said you were in here.”

I blew the hair out of my eyes. Will. He was the last thing I wanted right now.

“Is there something you wanted? Because I’m busy breaking your stupid curse.”

“Oh really?” The scorn in his tone infuriated me, and I dug deeper for the thing in the crack. “Because it looks like you’re just pawing around on the floor.”

“If you’ll hold on a second, I’ll show you . . .” My fingernail hooked the bit of metal—a chain—and I dragged it up and caught it in my waiting hand. A necklace? I brandished it at him.

“It was hidden in the floorboards. Maybe it belonged to the witch?”

He crouched down, cupping his hands around it. His eyes flickered with recognition, and the scorn on his face had evaporated into astonishment. “Actually, yes. This was hers.”

No pearls, though. My heart fell a little.

“Look,” he said. “In the crack.”

Paper. I pried it out with my nails and held it up. “A letter.” Triumph rose in my chest. See? I was useful. Apparently Beast Boy was too good to “paw around on the floor” and find things.

“Let me see.” He snatched it from my fingers and unfurled the paper. I leaned over his shoulder to see, and he gave me a look that said he didn’t like my being so close. I didn’t care.

My dearest love,
the letter began.

The Beast mumbled something under his breath.

Your last letter upset me deeply. I cannot tell you how saddened I am by your opinion on this most important matter. If we cannot agree on this matter, can we agree on anything else?

Last letter? How many letters were there? Which one did the curse mean? And what had they disagreed about?

I deeply desire your happiness, my love, but even more so I desire you to have goodness. If being happy prevents you from being good, then I’d rather you were miserable. Misery breeds repentance, after all.

“That’s cheerful,” I muttered.

He crumpled the letter in both hands and threw it across the room. “I don’t want to read any more. This is sickening. She thought she could play God with other people’s lives. She thought she could cast a few spells and that would fix everything. She was wrong. Her spells ruined us and turned her into a monster. Magic like that corrupts until the user is just dead and rotten inside.”

I went to get the letter. “Is that what the curse was about? A lesson?”

“In a way,” he said. “In a way it was revenge. I think she liked to pretend her motives were altruistic. It soothed her conscience if she thought she was teaching something instead of just punishing.”

“What was in the last letter, the one she was talking about?” I asked, picking up the paper he’d crumpled and smoothing it out with my fingers.

“How should I know? I haven’t read it.”

“But you wrote it.”

He stared at me. “No I didn’t.”

“You didn’t?”

“No. That was Robert, my brother.” He took a step back and laughed in disbelief. “Wait, are you telling me that you thought this whole time—that I—that was the one who—” He laughed again, bitterly. He rubbed one hand across his face and shook his head. “That explains a lot, doesn’t it?”

“What?” I demanded.

“You think the curse was put on
me
.”

‘Wasn’t it?” I thought of the house. I thought of the screams. Was the curse put on the house, the servants? It was on everyone. “You said you were cursed. I didn’t dream it up!”

“Well, I mean, I am.” He started pacing. “But it wasn’t supposed to be me. It was supposed to be Robert.”

“Her husband?”

“Yes.”

I sat down hard. This changed everything.

“Wait,” I said, waving a hand. “But why are you cursed? Why is Rose cursed?”

“Here’s the thing about magic,” Will said. “It has a way of getting out of hand. She was really angry when she set the curse. It got too big and too powerful. It swallowed the whole house, and everyone inside. And once she’d done it, she couldn’t undo it. And then after a while, she didn’t want to. The magic ruined her too.”

My head was spinning. So he hadn’t … nobody here had … “You should probably tell me the whole story,” I said. “Since I’m part of this lovely little soap opera too now.”

“Soap opera?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll explain. When you join me at dinner.”

“Why are you so obsessed with my eating with you?”

“Rose likes it.”

I was so sick of his little traps, but I agreed anyway.

Because at least I was finally getting the story.

~

“Marian was in love with Robert from the day they met,” he explained as we ate. The letter lay on the table between us. I was sitting on his right hand now instead of at the opposite end of the table. Rose was seated across from me. This way we could see and hear better. But it didn’t mean we were starting to get along or anything. Absolutely not.

Will was getting into full-blown storytelling mode. His face was flushed and his eyes glittered with inner life. He almost looked like a normal person, instead of a cursed recluse from a hundred years ago.

“Robert, on the other hand, has never been in love with anything but the sound of his own voice.”

“Why’d he agree to marry her?”

“Well, Marian was rich when they made the arrangement. She later lost her fortune, and Robert began to lose interest. There were too many other girls for him to stay faithful to one for long.”

“That’s sad,” I muttered. Wickedly depressing, really.

“Our brother was a consummate cad,” he agreed. “Anyway, Marian didn’t know at first. Or didn’t care. She loved him, even if his affection was waning. They were married in the town, and she lived here with us. She had her own suite of rooms after Robert began to drift in his affection.”

“Was she, you know, a stereotypical witch?”

I wasn’t sure how to ask if she was a horrible, horrible person.

He shook his head, looking puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Okay, so maybe evil witch wasn’t a stereotype in his day.

“You know, was she evil?”

His expression wrinkled. “No, not at the time. She was lovely.” Rose nodded, her eyes downcast. I wondered if Marian had been like a sister to her at one point. What a betrayal that must have been. Of course, I could relate.

“Then why’d she put a curse on Robert?”

Will sighed. He cut a swift glance at Rose, who was staring steadily at her plate. He rubbed his hands together and looked back at me.

“Once upon a time, as they say, my brother, my sister, and I lived in this house. I was fourteen years old, and Rose was almost twelve. My older brother, Robert, managed everything after our parents died. He was ten years older than me.”