The Curse Keepers Collection (26 page)

“That’s three things, not two. Come over, and I’ll tell you everything.”

“I’m on my way.”

She must have been sprinting out her front door when she hung up, because she knocked on my door in record time. In fact, she was still wearing her pajamas. “When was the last time we had a slumber party?” she asked, walking past me at the door and flopping on the sofa. “And yes, I noticed that you’re still shirtless. Are you dying to show me a hickey? Because I have to tell you that hickeys are so high school.”

“No.” I pinched my lips into a frown. “I don’t want to show you a hickey. Disgusting. Give me some credit, will you?”

“Then what’s with the striptease?”

I turned around to show her my back.

“What the hell is that? You got another tattoo? The girl who would rather pierce her nose than get inked?”

“Yes, I mean no. I mean it’s a tattoo, but it’s henna, and technically, it’s not
another
tattoo because the one on my palm isn’t a tattoo.”

“Where and when did you get it?”

“Collin did it. After I got off work.”

She leaned back and crossed her legs. “Let me get this straight. Hotter-than-hell Collin came into your apartment, took off your shirt . . . ” She paused, raising her eyebrows and waiting for confirmation.

I nodded.

“ . . . and then proceeded to give you a henna tattoo.”

“Pretty much. Yeah.”

“Okay.” Her face twisted in confusion. “I think you need to start from the beginning.”

So I did, telling her everything. About going to the pawnshop in Kill Devil Hills, going to Buxton, my run-in with Marino, breaking into the warehouse, Rosalina, Collin drawing on my back to counteract the god’s hold on my soul, getting the cup back, and finally, my embarrassing situation with Collin tonight.

“I don’t know why you’re embarrassed,” Claire grumbled. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You can’t help it if Collin can’t man up.”

“Oh, he manned up all right. I felt the proof.”

Claire’s eyebrows rose and she smirked. “See? That’s an improvement over your last date.”

“Little good it does me.”

She folded her arms over her chest. “You’re not giving up, are you?”

“
Giving up
? The man doesn’t want to have sex with me, Claire. What is there to give up?”

“Of course he wants to have sex with you. But something is holding him back, which I admit, is incredibly hard to believe with that generic white bra you’re wearing there.” She faked a yawn.

I threw a pillow at her. “Shut up.”

“Really, Ellie? That’s the best you could do?”

“I never expected to be shirtless with him. He wasn’t interested in me.”

“Yeah, I got that in front of the New Moon when you two were practically dry humping.”

“We were not!”

“Maybe not, but you were well on your way. I got so hot watching you two I had to go home and have sex with Drew within two minutes of walking in the door. I’m sure you can imagine his confusion.”

“Yeah, poor Drew,” I chuckled.

“The point is that while the flesh is willing, his spirit hesitates. We both know that he’s not a man of principles when it comes to sex. It wouldn’t take much to break him, so the question is do you want to?”

I shot her a look of surprise.

“You have to admit he isn’t your usual type, Ellie. You go for dry, boring, and predictable. Collin Dailey is none of those things.”

“Tell me about it. Collin Dailey is not boyfriend material.” I still had no doubt that once we performed the gate-closing ceremony, I’d never see him again.

Claire leaned over her crossed legs and held her hand out. “Maybe you don’t need a boyfriend. I mean, look how well that route has gone. You’ve spent your entire romantic life searching for the fireworks and romance you think your parents had, and you’ve barely lit a match with all those other guys. Maybe you should go for a fling and get the need for fire out of your system. Sometimes fire’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

I remembered Collin’s hands on my skin and how alive I’d felt beneath his touch. He was like a drug I couldn’t resist. But everything came with a price. “Sometimes people get burned playing with fire.”

“But they sure have fun before they do.”

I sighed.

Claire rested her hand on my knee. “Look, I’m not telling you to do it. I’m just saying think about it, but don’t get your heart involved. You and I both know the most you’ll get from a guy like that is a few rounds of hot rolling in the sheets, but sometimes there’s nothing wrong with just a hot roll in the sheets.”

I nodded. The wind howled again, and I tensed. “Did you mean it about having a slumber party? I really don’t want to be alone. But I understand if you don’t want to. Those things out there are real, Claire.”

“What? And miss the chance to see a real live spirit? Pull out the chick flicks and pop some popcorn. If you’re lucky, maybe I’ll give you a pedicure. You never know, Collin might be a foot man.”

I shuddered. I hoped to God he wasn’t.

“But you’re on your own with a bikini wax. I gotta draw the line somewhere.”

“Not to worry. I don’t want you anywhere near my bikini line.”

Claire got off the sofa and patted my head. “Good girl. Playing hard to get just might be the way to get someone in your panties after all.”

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

Pounding outside my door and the sound of someone shouting my name woke me from my troubled sleep around four in the morning. I’d been dreaming of animals again, all of them crying out to me.
Curse Keeper, daughter of the sea, help us.

At first, I wondered if the noise outside was Collin, although I couldn’t figure out why he’d come back this late. I’d been sleeping face-first on the sofa, trying not to lay on my henna tattoo. I propped up on my elbows, checking on Claire who was stretched out on the overstuffed chair and ottoman, covered in an afghan.

Maybe I was imagining things. I started to lie back down until I heard it again.

“
Curse Keeper
.” The title was slurred as an insult, which could only mean one thing—an evil spirit was outside my door.

Shit.

The markings around the door would keep the spirit out, and the tattoo on my back would keep it from sucking my Manitou like a slushy from the Stop and Go, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t hurt me. However, I doubted ignoring it would make the thing go away.

I reached over and shook Claire’s leg. “
Claire
.”

She startled, bolting upright. “What? What is it?”

“Listen.”

Her eyes widened in the dark room, the only light coming from my closed bathroom door. I hadn’t slept with a nightlight since a few years after Momma died. Maybe it was time to rethink that one.

We waited, our ears straining. The wind blew against my door and my windows. That was the only sound for several seconds until I heard it again. A banging on my porch and a voice. “
Curse Keeper
.”

Claire’s eyes bugged even more. “
Shit
.” Her mouth hung open, and it took her a second to recover. She leaned toward me, whispering, “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think it will just go away. I should see what it wants.” But I didn’t want to see what it wanted. I wanted to hide in my room. Under the covers. With a flashlight. But I reminded myself that that wasn’t what Curse Keepers did. They didn’t cower in the dark. Dammit. Someone needed to rewrite the job description, whatever the hell it actually was.

Claire waited for me to do something.

Swallowing a lump of fear, I climbed off the sofa, realizing I was still wearing my bra and the short pajama bottoms I’d changed into earlier. I could put on a shirt but the last thing I wanted to do was screw up the symbol on my back, especially given what waited outside my door. I highly doubted it mattered what I wore to face an evil spirit.

I moved next to the door and leaned into it. “What do you want?”

“I wish to have an audience with you.”

Didn’t that sound polite and civilized? “No.”

The wind beat against the door in a frenzy.

Was it a wind god or Okeus or his messenger or some other mean and nasty thing? “Who are you?”

“I am Kanim, the messenger of the rightful creator god!” it shouted with more wind effects.

The stupid thing was going to wake up my neighbors, and then it would probably suck out their Manitou. Did I want to be responsible for that?

“Can’t we have this audience through the door?”

“
No
.”

I took a deep breath, working to steady my nerves. I had to face this messenger, but I wasn’t dumb enough to just open the door. “I’ll open the door, but I have to have your word that you won’t hurt me.”

I figured the request was pointless. Even if it said yes, could I really trust it? No honor among thieves, and all those other platitudes. But this wasn’t a thief in the traditional sense, although I was sure you could count stealing people’s life force and sending them to Popogusso as thievery. Even so, I was probably about to meet the messenger of a god, who probably had some sense of honor, if I could go on what little I knew of Greek and Roman mythology. Sure, the Native American pantheon wasn’t the same thing, but I couldn’t help but wonder if they all came from some god/spiritual motherland.

Claire jumped out of her chair and rushed forward, grabbing my arm. “Ellie, you can’t be
serious
. What’s to keep that thing from hurting you anyway?”

“I have to, Claire. If I don’t face it, it will hurt someone else. I know it.” Despite the Collin-centric portion of the ceremony there at the end, I’d been left with a bigger realization. It was my responsibility to protect other living beings—animals and humans alike—and that sense of duty was firmly embedded in my head.

“
You have my word,
” the spirit answered.

“Claire, stand out of the doorway.”

“Ellie!”

“Look, you wanted this thing to be real and it is. So step aside and let me do what I have to do.”

She backed up a couple of feet, moving to the side. I knew part of it killed her. She was dying to see what was behind the door.

I took another deep breath. Collin had faced the wind god yesterday and sent it away. I could protect myself from a messenger if I needed to. Of course, Collin knew the Manteo line words of protection. I knew two words of the Dare portion. That wasn’t going to me any good. I shook my head. No sense dwelling on the negative. I was going into this with a positive can-do spirit.

Boy, was that stupid.

The moment I opened the door, a gust of wind blew me backward, onto the sofa. I had to roll to the side to keep from smearing my mark.

“How dare you question the messenger of the god of creation!” the voice boomed.

The spirit shimmered, still a black fuzzy blob, but bigger and denser. I thought for a few seconds that I could see a human face and form.

“Ellie!” Claire screamed.

“I’m fine. Stay where you are!” I shouted, crawling to my knees.

“I warned you, pathetic Curse Keeper. Okeus’s patience is thin.”

The wind continued to blow, but I wasn’t backing down to this egotistical supernatural asshole. I climbed to my feet, fighting to keep my balance against the blast. “Haven’t you heard that patience is a virtue?”

The gust increased, but I bent my knees and grabbed hold of the chair.

“Have you made your decision?” Kanim boomed.

“What was the question?”

The wind screeched, an angry sound that made my skin crawl. Last night I knew that Kanim was too weak to kill me. Tonight I wasn’t so sure, not after the wind god almost did me in at the warehouse. The gods and spirits were stronger at night, and I suspected this thing was responsible for a large portion of the animals that had been killed—and probably for the creepy birds on my porch the past two mornings. Still, I wasn’t going to let him think I knew that.

Kanim’s form shimmered. “Will you keep the gate open?”

I lifted my chin in an attempt to look brave. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Every night you refuse to accept Okeus’s offer, a sacrifice will be made. Do you still refuse?”