Curse of the Granville Fortune (15 page)

“Thanks for the pancakes, Mom. They’re great, but I think I need to take a walk and clear my head. That’s okay, isn’t it?” I asked, getting up and heading to the door.

Mom looked hesitant to let me go, but Dad said, “Sure, champ. Just don’t go too far. You’ve been through a lot and must be exhausted.” He looked guilty. Normally, I would’ve been glad he understood what he’d put me through, but the fact that I was lying to him made
me
feel guilty, too.

“Wait a minute!” Mom said, picking up two wrapped presents on Holly’s desk. Birthday presents…I forgot it was my birthday.

“Happy birthday to you,” Mom sang, as she handed Holly and me the gifts.

Holly dug right in. Not even traumatic experiences could ruin a birthday for her. My parents were staring at me, so I unwrapped my present, too.

“A cell phone! Finally!” Holly shrieked.

Dad smiled. “We weren’t sure if you were ready for this responsibility, but, given recent events, I think we made the right decision.”

“No way would you get cell phone reception in that forest,” Holly said. She didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut, but hearing her talk about the forest reminded me I had somewhere to be.

“Thanks, Mom and Dad. This is great. I think I’ll go for that walk now.” I put the box down on Holly’s desk.

Dad picked up the phone and handed it to me. “It’s already programmed, so take it with you in case you get tired and want us to pick you up.”

I smiled. “Sure, Dad.”

“I’ll go with you,” Holly said, kicking off the covers.

“Actually, I kind of want to be alone.” I felt bad blowing off Holly, but what I had to do, whatever it was, I had to do alone. “I won’t be long,” I said. I started running the minute my foot hit the stairs. I bolted through the front door, letting it slam behind me. I was worried Dad or Holly would look out the window to see where I was heading, so I took a detour to the park.

The police tape hung across the entrance gate, so I climbed over it like last time. I headed straight for the forest. My body was on autopilot, which was good because I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Was I really going into those woods again? Armed with nothing more than a cell phone that probably wouldn’t get reception?

A squeaking sound broke my trance. The merry-go-round moved. Noelle gracefully jumped off it, landing a few feet in front of me.

“Right on time,” she said.

On time for what? I was about to ask when Edward came walking over to us from the woods.

“
You
? I thought you and your family would be halfway to France by now,” I said. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about Edward.

“Why are we all here? I mean, I knew we’d all meet here. I saw you both coming,” Noelle said. “I must’ve fallen asleep on the merry-go-round, and I had a dream we’d all be here.” She blushed. “Does that sound silly?”

I shook my head. “No. I felt like I
had
to come here. Like something was pulling me in this direction. You had another one of your dreams? Do you have them a lot?”

“Not a lot.”

“You’re not the only one who has them,” I said. “But they’re not dreams. They’re visions. I’ve had them since I was little.”

Edward stepped closer, but he was staring into the distance. “I’ve had them, too.”

“Why are we here?” Noelle asked, looking at me as if I somehow had all the answers.

“I think I know,” Edward said, finally making eye contact with us. “I had a vision about Aristede, Jean, and Sebastien getting cursed by an old woman wearing that necklace.” He pointed to a blue-green stone dangling from Noelle’s neck. She reached up and brushed her fingers against it. She hadn’t been wearing it in the forest.

“I found this in the attic. It belonged to one of my ancestors. It’s supposed to be really old.”

“It is,” Edward said.

It was my vision! Edward had seen my vision—the curse, the old woman, feeling like I was floating yet connected to something at the same time. I should’ve been totally freaked out, but I felt at ease for the first time. I felt…complete. We weren’t drawn to the forest. We were drawn to each other, like we had been since we’d met. Somehow, Noelle and Edward were answering questions I’d had for years. It gave me a strange idea. “This may sound crazy, but I think you can show us your vision.”

“What?” Noelle and Edward asked.

“I think that if we all touch—you know, like make a connection for the vision to travel through.”

“Man, I am
not
holding your hand,” Edward said.

I pictured my vision. “We can put our hands on each other’s shoulders. We’ll make a sort of triangle with our bodies. What do you think?”

“I’ll try it,” Noelle said with a shrug.

Edward nodded. “I guess.”

We moved closer, awkwardly reaching our hands out and resting them on each other’s shoulders. My fingertips began to tingle, and the hair on my arms stood up. Edward and Noelle must have felt the same way because they stared at their hands. I’d thought the forest had somehow been creating the static electricity between Noelle and me, but it was something else altogether.

“What do we do now?” Noelle asked. “I’ve only ever had visions when I was asleep.”

I’d never seen our faces in my vision, but somehow I knew what we had to do. “We close our eyes, and Edward pictures his vision in his mind. If he sees it, we should see it, too.”

“How do you know that?” Noelle asked.

“I saw us doing it,” I answered. “It’s the vision I’ve been having since I was four.”

I expected Noelle and Edward to be confused by this, but there was something weird about the three of us together. It was doing something to us. We were sharing the same emotions. We, as a group, held the answers to our questions. “Ready?” I asked, eager to try this.

Edward and Noelle nodded and closed their eyes. I closed mine, too. An intense warmth passed through my body. The same warmth I’d felt every time Edward and I touched back in the forest. An image immediately popped into my head. I’d thought calling up the vision would take some practice, but it came as easily as breathing.

It was dark, but I could see three boys about seventeen or so. They crept through the night, dressed in black. One of them had wavy hair that was kind of long and shaggy. He led the way to a stone tower. It looked like they were outside a giant castle. They reached a large wooden door, and the shaggy-haired one pulled a key from his pocket. He slipped it into the lock and opened the door.

The tallest boy pushed his way into the room. He opened the sack in his hands and began stuffing silver coins, jewelry, and other expensive objects inside.

“That’s enough, Aristede. We don’t have time to take everything. The party will be ending soon, and the guests will be heading this way,” the skinny one said.

“Jean’s right. I’ve already bagged the most expensive things. This should be more than enough to get us overseas,” the shaggy-haired one replied.

Aristede nodded, but he continued to grab things on his way to the door. They were stopped by a hunched-over figure in the doorway.

An elderly woman with long flowing gray hair pointed a bony finger at the boys. “You three who bring disgrace to your families shall suffer great misfortune. Your lives shall be cursed until you return what was taken this night.” The blue-green stone dangling from her neck sparkled in the darkness. A brilliant white light shot from the woman’s eyes. She let out a painful cry and collapsed on the ground.

The shaggy boy rushed to her and whispered, “I’m sorry, Grandmother.”

“Sebastien, let’s go before anyone else comes,” Jean urged, pushing him through the doorway.

The warmth left my body as the vision faded away. I opened my eyes and met Edward’s stare. He had seen this before, but he looked shocked, sharing Noelle’s and my response.

Noelle shook her head. “That was…” She couldn’t finish her statement, but she didn’t need to. Edward and I nodded.

“So that’s how it all started,” Edward said. “The curse.”

Noelle had tears in her eyes. “It makes sense now. Sebastien’s grandmother.”

Before I could ask what she meant, I understood. In Edward’s vision, Sebastien hadn’t looked surprised by his grandmother’s power.

A strange tingling, like static electricity, shot up my arms, and I was warm all over. From the looks on Edward and Noelle’s faces, they felt it, too. Instinctively, we closed our eyes as another vision flashed before us.

The old woman was sitting in her room, talking to another woman about half her age. The old woman’s eyes were almost white. She was blind.

“The sight is gone.” She bowed her head and sighed. “I don’t know what went wrong. The boys have stolen our great fortune. They’ve separated, and now none of them has any of my power. It will remain in their bloodlines until three who are ready to use it come along. Three who will restore what we have lost,” the old woman said.

“Mother, surely you can talk to them. Make them see,” the younger woman replied.

“It’s useless. Sebastien has left. He has shamed this family and taken our most precious gift with him. We are at a loss.”

The vision faded away.

“That was intense,” Noelle said, breathing heavily. “I don’t know if I can handle much more of this.”

Edward looked down at his arms. “You’re going to have to,” he said.

Our eyes shut, almost like an involuntary response to the vision flooding our thoughts. This one was different. A hospital maternity ward. Three babies born on the same day, at the same time. Jack Beaumonte, Noelle Granville, and Edward Grimault.

The tingling stopped, and the vision ended as abruptly as it had started. We stared at each other in silence.
We
were the three, the ones who’d inherited the old woman’s gift of sight.

“We have the same birthday?” Edward looked frazzled. He dropped his arms to his sides and glanced away.

My new cell phone vibrated in my pocket. Probably Holly wondering where I was. She wouldn’t have understood this. I ignored the call.

“Happy tenth birthday. Some present, huh?” Noelle giggled nervously.

“Holly isn’t going to like this,” I said. I could imagine how she’d react to finding out she had to share her birthday with Noelle and Edward. Holly didn’t even like having to share the day with
me
, and it’d been my birthday first.

“You can’t tell her. We can’t tell anyone. At least not yet.” Noelle looked scared, and I couldn’t blame her. We weren’t like other people.

I nodded. “You’re right. Our dads don’t seem to know about this part of the curse. I’m not sure we should tell them, not until we figure out what this means.” Dad had tried to keep the curse a secret to protect me. I had to keep
this
a secret to protect him. We had more in common than I’d thought.

“My dad took off in the middle of the night,” Edward said. “He didn’t even tell Garret or me where he was heading.” I could hear the disappointment in his voice, and I knew how he felt.

“You can’t tell Garret or Trent, either,” Noelle said.

Edward nodded. “We don’t tell anyone.”

“Good. We all agree.” It seemed odd saying it aloud. We weren’t exactly three people
I
would’ve put together, but we seemed to see eye-to-eye somehow.

Noelle met my stare. “We
share
the woman’s gift.”

I nodded. “That’s why we each see something different. Edward sees things that have already happened, you see things as they’re happening, and I see things that haven’t happened yet.”

“The past, present, and future,” Noelle said.

There had been a purpose to the curse. It wasn’t meant to simply punish the boys for stealing the Granville fortune. The gift of sight that went with it was meant to change them, to make them see the error in the path they’d chosen, and to correct it. Only they didn’t do that. They’d split up. The only way the gift of sight truly worked was if the three—now us—stayed together. I wondered if Noelle and Edward understood that. We couldn’t split up the way Sebastien, Aristede, and Jean did or the curse would never end. We had to fulfill what the old woman wanted our ancestors to do. “In the vision, the old woman said we have to use the gift to return what was lost on the night of the curse.”

“My family’s fortune,” Noelle said.

“Right, but it was split up. Isn’t that what Sebastien’s grandmother meant when she said the boys separated?” I asked.

“Probably,” Edward said. “Aristede’s fortune wasn’t exactly as big as my dad thought it’d be. There must be more out there somewhere.” He looked toward the forest.

“I don’t think it’s in there,” I said. “Sebastien and Jean would’ve hidden their portions of the fortune in other places since they separated.”

“We have to find those places if we want the curse to end,” Noelle said, but she didn’t sound as eager as she’d been before. We didn’t have any maps or other clues to help us find what Sebastien and Jean had stolen, and not even Edward had a clue where
his
father had run off with the fortune. We were still missing all three parts.

“So we work together?” Edward asked, looking back and forth between Noelle and me.

“It looks that way,” Noelle answered, giving us both a half smile.

From this moment forward, we were all changed. Like it or not, we were the ones who had been chosen to break the curse.

I looked at Edward and Noelle, my second family of sorts, destined to be linked forever by this shared sight. “It’s up to us,” I said. “We are the three.”

There are so many people I want to thank because this was actually the very first book I ever wrote. The book went through several major changes, including a genre change and age level change. It’s been a crazy but fun journey with J.B. and the gang. First I have to thank my mother, Patricia Bradley, and my sister, Heather DeRobertis, for encouraging me to pursue my dream of writing a novel and reading countless versions of this story. A huge thanks to my critique group, Shauna, Katrina, Katie, Terrie, Cindy, Taurean, Leslie, and Londy for all your amazing feedback. Lauren Hammond, thank you for believing in this book.

To Georgia McBride and the team at Georgia McBride Media Group, thank you for seeing the potential in this series from the start. To my editor, Ashlynn Yuhas, thank you for helping me polish this story and making it that much better. To Nicole LaVigne and Kerry Genova I appreciate your careful attention in making each word count. To my cover designer, what can I say but wow! You brought J.B. and Holly to life, and I couldn’t be happier with your portrayal of them.