The Curse Keepers Collection (10 page)

So why don’t you feel any better?

Fifteen minutes later Collin stood at my front door, calmer but more distant than before he left. “If you pawned it a few months ago, they should still have it.”

I nodded. I hoped so.

He looked into my eyes. “What’s your relic? What are we looking for?”

My breath caught in surprise. “You don’t know?”

“While I obviously know more than you, I don’t know everything. So no, I don’t know what your artifact is. But I do know we need it if we want to perform this ceremony. What is it?”

“A pewter cup.” I couldn’t believe Collin Dailey was admitting he didn’t know everything. That meant I could admit I didn’t know what his artifact was without looking like an idiot. “So what’s yours?”

“That sounds like a bad pickup line.”

I snorted. “If anyone would know about bad pickup lines, you would.”

His eyebrows rose, and he gave me a sardonic smile. “You think I need pickup lines?”

Cocky Collin was back. I wasn’t sure whether I preferred him to angry Collin or not. Damn my mouth. I knew for a fact this man didn’t need pickup lines, but I sure wasn’t going to admit that to him. “You didn’t answer my question. What’s your artifact?”

“A wooden bowl.”

That made sense. I did know the relics were part of the ceremony. I only knew that because when Daddy had realized he was losing his memories several years ago, he handed me the cup and told me it was the Dare relic and was essential to the ceremony. I took it grudgingly, but refused to listen to any more nonsense. “So what do you want to do?”

“It’s a little after four o’clock. Let’s go to the pawnshop and see if it’s still there.”

“Together?”

“Of course together. I could send you alone but honestly, I think we need to stick together as much as possible until this thing is done.”

“What? You don’t trust me to get it?”

“I don’t trust you to not get killed. Spirits are on the loose, and they don’t want to return to where they came from. They know we plan to send them back and they’ll do anything they can to keep that from happening.”

My breath caught in my chest. “And the only thing that can send them back is us,” I wheezed out. I hadn’t considered that aspect. How would the spirits even know who we were? How did one defend oneself against an angry spirit? I wasn’t about to ask the angry human in front of me.

He looked grim. “While I think you’re an irresponsible slacker, unfortunately, I need you. So get whatever you need and let’s go.”

Was he suggesting we’d be gone for the next six days or only for the evening? “To the pawnshop?”

A disgusted look crossed his face. “No, the moon. Of course the pawnshop. Are you always this dense?”

“Are you always this rude?”

He shrugged.

I could have countered but what was the point? I left Collin at the door and grabbed my purse. I wished I had time to talk to Daddy. But that would only help if he was having a good day, and those were becoming rarer and rarer. Wishing was wasted effort, something I’d learned years ago, on a cold stormy night when I was eight years old. Instead of wishing, I was putting my life in the hands of the stranger in front of me.

Why did I worry that I’d live to regret it?

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

I climbed into Collin’s beat-up pickup truck, wrinkling my nose as I shut the rickety door. The windows were down and the red vinyl seats were hot and tacky. I was putting my life into his hands with all the curse nonsense, and apparently that also meant I’d literally be putting my life in his hands with this rust bucket. “We can take my car.
Really
.”

The engine sputtered, and he turned to me and smirked. “Oh, ye of little faith.”

Why did I think his words had a double meaning?

The truck jerked backward as I tried to fasten my seatbelt. “Can you wait?”

“No. We don’t have time to waste.” He pulled onto Sir Walter Raleigh Street and I cast a glance at the inn as we passed by. Myra’s car wasn’t parked next to the house, not that I expected her to be there. I hoped Daddy’s home care nurse could stay longer. If I wasn’t working at the New Moon, I usually filled in for Myra when she couldn’t get home in time.

I turned my attention to the road. I didn’t want to explain Daddy’s situation to Collin. A wave of melancholy washed over me as I tried to remember Daddy as the vibrant man I knew from before my mother’s death, but it was so long ago that the memory had become fuzzy. I definitely did my best to block out the year after her death. Mostly what I remembered of Daddy pre-Alzheimer’s was after Myra came into our lives, filling our days with hope and love. I preferred not to think of Daddy as the broken shell he was now, and I didn’t like others thinking about him that way either. The man with the vacant stare wasn’t my Daddy.

“Well?” Collin asked.

I shook myself out of my stupor. “What?”

“So where are we going?” Collin asked.

“Kill Devil Hills.”

His eyebrows rose as he turned to look at me. “Kill Devil Hills?”

I shrugged, staring out the windshield. “I didn’t want anyone in town to know that I pawned it.”

His mouth pursed, and his brow wrinkled in disapproval. I shouldn’t care one way or the other what he thought, but to my annoyance, I did. Still, Collin Dailey didn’t get to stand in judgment of me. He didn’t know what I’d been through.

“So if my relic is a pewter cup and yours is a wooden bowl, what does that mean?”

Collin shifted in his seat and he gripped the steering wheel. “We use them in the ceremony.”

I’d already gathered that part. “I don’t know anything about the ceremony—”

“That’s a surprise.”

“So we get the relics, we perform the ceremony, and we shut the gate.”

“Something like that.”

“Care to elaborate?”

He shot me a nasty grin. “Not really.”

I was going to see Daddy the minute I got back. I’d learn to perform the damn ceremony without Collin Fucking Dailey. Well, maybe I couldn’t perform it without him, but if I knew more about the curse I wouldn’t be so dependent on him for answers. I got the sense that he’d only dole out information on a need-to-know basis. “So, if we can’t get my relic back, can we use something else?”

“We could try, but I doubt it would work.”

My stomach twisted. “I really hope the cup is still there.”

“Wait. How long was the contract for? Ninety days, right? So then you have an additional sixty to pay it off.”

I glanced at my lap and twisted the hem of my T-shirt.

“Ellie?” Collin sounded desperate. “Tell me the contract was for ninety days.”

I suddenly found the dirty gas station at the corner fascinating. “I could, but that would be a lie.”

“How long was the contract for?” His voice was strained as his knuckles wrapped around the steering wheel turned white.

“Thirty days.”

“And when exactly did you pawn it?”

I bit my lip. “Let’s just say my time is up.”

Collin pulled onto the highway and with the windows down, it became too loud to carry on a conversation without shouting, although I was pretty sure that Collin felt like yelling anyway.

Every time I left the island my chest tightened and today was no exception. The waves crashing in the sound calmed my rising anxiety, and I focused on their rhythm as Collin drove over the bridge linking Roanoke Island to the Outer Banks and then north through Nags Head and toward Kill Devil Hills.

June was high tourist season, and the traffic was brutal. We sat at a few stoplights in Nags Head, the heat near stifling in the unair-conditioned truck cab. Collin’s face was expressionless. It was hard to tell if he was still irritated with me or if he was stewing in silence. Still, the silence drove me batty. I couldn’t stand quiet, and the rumble of car engines around us didn’t count.

I put my elbow on the edge of the open truck window and snatched it back inside when I made contact with the hot metal. Rubbing my tender skin, I turned to face him. “So where’s your wooden bowl?”

He hesitated. “Somewhere safe.”

“If it’s
safe
, then I know it’s not in this truck.”

To my surprise, the corners of his mouth lifted into the barest hint of a smile.

“So where is it?”

His smile fell.

The truth dawned on me, and I sat up in excitement. “You’re not telling me because you don’t have it!” So much for Mr. Smugpants.

His eyebrows rose in disapproval. This look had become all too familiar in the short twenty-four hours or so I’d known him. “While it’s not in my immediate possession, I do know where it is.”

“And I know where mine is, yet you had a hissy fit over it.”

He shook his head with a smirk. “No, you have no idea if your cup is at the pawnshop or not.”

“So where’s your magical bowl?”

He paused. “Safe.”

“You said that already. Safe where?”

“The North Carolina Outer Banks Museum in Morehead City.”

“A museum? What? Has your family loaned it to them?”

“Something like that. And it’s safe behind glass in a display case. Who knows where yours is?”

His explanation sounded perfectly logical, but he wouldn’t look at me. He was hiding something. He said, “Your pawnshop is in Kill Devil Hills?”

Way to change the topic, Collin
. I’d let it go for now and pull this out later when I needed leverage. “It’s not
my
pawnshop, and I already told you that the cup was there. The place is just off the highway. On the western side.”

We drove the rest of the way in silence, and I was glad that we made it with an hour to spare before the shop closed at six. I took a deep breath and I opened the door to the store, praying that the cup would still be there.

“Hey, Ellie!” Oscar called from behind the counter.

Collin leaned toward me with a smirk. “Not
your
pawnshop, huh?”

I shot him a glare. “It’s like
Cheers
here. Oscar knows everyone’s name.”

“You know
his
name?”

“Shut up.” I left him at the door and approached the store owner, dread burrowing in my gut. “Hey, Oscar, how’s it going?”

“Not too bad, Ellie. Business has been picking up after all that Hurricane Noreen mess.”

I stopped across from the burly man who stood on the other side of the case. Oscar was probably in his late forties or early fifties and had a full head of graying brown hair that went past his shoulders. He sported a bushy beard that rivaled the frizzy mess of hair hanging down his back. Rumor had it that Oscar had been a surfer in his youth, and the deep crow’s feet around his eyes helped substantiate the claim. Every time I came in he was wearing heavy metal band T-shirts and jeans, but despite his rough exterior, Oscar had a heart of gold.

“You got something new to pawn, Ellie?”

I cast a glance at Collin, who was poking around the store. Oscar kept an eye on him while talking to me.

“No, I was checking to see if you still had my cup.”

Oscar’s smile fell. “I held it as long as I could, Ellie.”

My stomach balled into a knot. “You sold it.”

He nodded.

Now what were we going to do? I didn’t really have a plan to get the relic back if Oscar did still have it, but it didn’t matter now. We were sunk.

Collin moved next to me in his quiet stealth. “How long ago?”

Oscar looked from Collin to me. “A friend of yours?”

“Kind of.”

Oscar kept his attention on me. “I sold it last week to a collector. I’m sorry, Ellie. I held it back two weeks longer than I should have.”

“That’s okay, I know. Thanks.” My breath stuck in my chest when I caught Collin’s ugly glare.

Oscar noted it as well and tensed.

I turned my back slightly to Collin. “Any chance you can tell me who bought it?”

Oscar shook his head. “Sorry, Ellie. I can’t tell you. Confidentiality laws.”

I knew it couldn’t be that easy, but had to ask anyway.

“Where’s your restroom?” Collin asked in a gruff voice.

Crossing his arms, Oscar gave him a condescending stare. “The restrooms are for customers only.”