Cursed Hearts (A Crossroads Novel) (39 page)

“Does your cousin really own this place?” Aria
asked, stepping onto the sidewalk and reaching for the glass door. A sensor
beeped as she crossed the threshold, alerting whoever was manning the counter
that they had customers. Jesse nodded.

“He owns the Laundromat next door, too. But
don’t go and try to wash any clothes there,” he laughed. Aria seemed confused.

“Eh Johnny, ya favorite cousin’s ‘ere,” a man
shouted up the stairs.

Rome drifted through the shop, touching a few
items as they approached the counter. The store was crammed with wall to wall
shelves, and almost every available inch of floor space was occupied by tables,
dressers, and other large items. Smaller
objects and knickknacks littered their
surfaces. Some of the items
looked new, still in their boxes or plastic
but covered in a light layer of dust. Others had obviously been pawned.

It was an eclectic mix, to say the least.

“Does he ever actually sell anything?”
Christian asked.

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” Johnny said,
stopping on the last step with a creak. He took a drag off the cigarette
pressed between his lips, blowing the smoke out towards the ceiling. “Who’s
your friend?” he asked, nodding at Aria. Jesse went around the room introducing
them all.

Johnny’s eyes never left her.

Ariahna coughed lightly, trying to stifle the
sound as he walked
closer, bringing his
cloud of smoke with him.
The thing she noticed first was
his eyes. They were dark, almost devoid of color,
and fiercely
intimidating.
The
burning cigarette reflected in those dark eyes, making them glitter as he
stared back at her. Sharp, slanted eyebrows accentuated his strong bone
structure, making the widow’s peak along his hairline seem somehow even more
attractive. In several subtle ways, he reminded her of Jesse. He had the
same black gauged earrings, tattoos
stretching down both arms, and a
similar
shaven haircut with a longer length of hair atop his head. Unlike Jesse though,
who swept his hair up and out, Johnny’s hair was smoothed suavely back. A few
loose strands fell near his temples, and like his eyes, his hair was also dark.
Something about it just looked entirely touchable, and she felt her fingers
itching with the desire to find out if it was really as soft and healthy as it
looked. He was smiling at her. She’d definitely been staring too long. She
covered her mouth, turning to let out another cough as he stopped beside her.

“This bothering you?” he asked, flicking some
ash onto the floor.

“No,” she choked.

Johnny stubbed the cigarette out on the rough
denim of his jeans, smirking as she followed the motion with her eyes. She
blushed a second later, apparently realizing she’d nearly been staring at his
crotch.

Jesse cleared his throat. “We’re here for those
books.”

“They’re in the back room,” he said, “with all
the other fun stuff.”

No one had moved to go retrieve the books yet,
and Johnny was still hovering too close to Aria for Christian’s comfort. He
stepped up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and hugging her possessively
to his chest.

“Worried?” Johnny smirked, staring back at the
kid.

“You’re at least in your early twenties,”
Christian said. “She’s underage. I think it’s you who should be worried if you
don’t stop hitting on my girlfriend.”

Rome’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Excuse
me?”

“Did he really just use the G-word?” Jesse
mumbled.

Ariahna was too stunned to speak for a moment.
She grabbed Christian’s wrists, throwing his arms away from her in annoyance.
“I’m not your girlfriend,” she muttered angrily, “and he wasn’t hitting on me.”

“Don’t know how to keep a girl happy?” Johnny grinned.

“Hey, Johnny,” Jesse
interjected.
“Why don’t I go give you
your cut?
I
needed to talk to you about some stuff anyways…
in the office
.”

Rome took Aria’s hand and led her into the back
room. Several large stacks of books were sitting on an otherwise lonely table. This
room was
larger and less cluttered, and
seemed to house only items of a magical variety.
Strange sounds coming
from behind a folding screen in one corner of the room suggested the presence
of some kind of exotic creature as well.

“We should just get what we need and go,” Rome
said. “I don’t care if I have to pay for them. I just want to get out of here.”

“
Wow,” Aria
breathed,
admiring a gigantic stone statue sitting in the center of the
room. It was a life-size effigy of a weathered old man. A short, knotty beard
curled around his chin, and his face was set in a hard look of determination.
Gripped in his hand was a spindly staff made of solid wood.
The staff curled into a wide half-circle near the
top, and a gorgeous green
gem was wedged between the two ends.

“
Azbadon and the Emerald Staff
,” she
mumbled, reading the placard near his toes. She ran her fingers over his cold
grey cheek, surprised to feel the thrum of magic pushing back at her. Her mouth
fell open in disbelief. “This… this has to be a fake,” she insisted. “There’s
just no way.”

Rome frowned at her as she regarded the hunk of
stone with reverence. “What, was he some famous witch or something?” he asked.

“A legend,” she replied. “
And Azbadon,
saddened by the descent of witch and mortal, shed his last tears, and then
stood atop the hill, unmoving, unseeing, untouched by the falling of the stars
.”

“He turned himself to stone,” she said.

“
Never again, shine on mine face, sun. Never
again, moon, light mine nights. The waters will swell with the blood of the risen.
When the hour is darkest shall I then return to fight
,” Johnny whispered.
He moved from the doorway, coming to stand by her side.

“You know your history,” he said. “It’s real,
by the way.”

“Who would want to buy that big gaudy thing?”
Christian asked.

“A lot of people. But it’s not for sale.”

“I don’t even know how you could put a price on
this,” Aria said. “Something like this—how did you even get it? I’d expect to
find it in a museum, or locked away in someone’s private collection. Not sitting
in the back of a pawn shop.”

“That’s a long story,” he smirked, placing a
hand on her lower back. “Maybe you’ll have to stop by sometime and I can tell
you.”

“Yeah, I think not,” Rome said. “How much do I
owe you for the fucking books?”

“It was my understanding that you and Jesse had
a deal.”

Rome could tell that Johnny was aroused, and it
was more than pissing him off. “Then let me make you one. Get your hands off of
her, and I won’t beat your face in.”

“Mm,” Jesse squeaked, shaking his head
imperceptibly behind Johnny’s back. “Rome, you’re such a comedian,” he said,
walking over and punching him on the arm. “Why don’t we grab those books and
go?”

“You should listen to him,” Johnny intoned,
feeling Ariahna slip away from his touch. His eyes turned to follow the curve
of her body, admiring the gentle sway of her hips. He traced his tongue along
the edge of his teeth towards his lips and then over the roof of his mouth.

Her ass, those jeans… now that was art.

Rome’s eyes snapped over to Christian. He could
hear the soft growl starting to bubble up his throat, see the muscles in his
neck stretching
taut.
The look in his eyes
and the change in the air told him Christian was dangerously close to shifting.
Rome crossed the floor and threw an arm over his shoulders, dragging him out of
the store.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Christian seethed,
glaring over Rome’s shoulder at the shop. “Now she’s in there alone with him.”

“You need to calm down,” he grit out. He hooked
his fingers in Christian’s shirt, demanding his attention and obedience with a
single look. “The first thing you need to learn is control.”

“I thought you said I was on my own?” he
countered, feeling the beast inside him still at the sight of Ariahna through
the window. She and Jesse were headed outside, each holding a stack of old
tomes.

Rome sighed, shoving Christian a little as he
let go. “Clearly I can’t
do that. Especially
when I know how you really feel about her. Maybe if I
can teach you how
to be a gentleman, you can work your way back from this hole you’ve dug
yourself into.”

“Why would you do that?” he squinted. “Don’t
you want to be with her? Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”

“You have a lot to learn about wolves,” Rome
whispered.

Christian was about to ask him what that meant
when Jesse stumbled out the door, losing a few books in the process.

“Some help here,” he
called, glancing around the heavy pile of dust
in his arms. “This
wasn’t a part of our deal. I have a strict, ‘no holding books unless they
belong to a hot girl’, policy.”

Rome smiled at him and popped the trunk,
helping Aria and Jesse place them in the back. A tabby cat jumped up on his
hood and Rome nearly growled. “Shit,” he whispered tightly. “Get it off my
car.”

Christian felt his mouth shaking into a smile.

“Oh my god. Are you seriously afraid of cats?”

“No,” Rome lied. “Just get it away from me.”

Christian snickered as Rome nearly backed up
around the block.

“It’s okay,” Aria said, scooping the cat up in
her arms. “He’s not going to hurt you. Look, he’s even wearing a collar,” she
said, scratching gently under its chin. The cat purred and pushed off her
forearms, bumping the top of its head against her neck.

“See?” she said. “He’s a total sweetie.”

Rome pursed his lips, shaking his head tightly
as she approached.

She set the feline back on the sidewalk, watching
as it ran off down the street. But not before stopping to hiss at Rome as it
went.

“I think he knew you didn’t like him.”

“Cats
hate
me,” he breathed, climbing
into the car.

Thanks to that little encounter, Rome was
forced to recount the time he’d been ‘viciously mauled’ by an alley cat when he
was a child. Aria had been the only person in the car who hadn’t laughed at him.
Christian kept making soft meowing noises from the back seat the entire way
back.

Chapter 33

The
sound of cellphones going off erupted from every corner of the hall as
Christian followed Rome and Ariahna up to the library. His phone vibrated in
his back pocket and he shifted the books in his arms, slipping it quickly into
his palm and unlocking it. He had one new text. It seemed like a lot of people
had one new text.

The
drinks were spiked. It’s not your fault.

“Huh,”
Christian said. Had Adam sent that? He’d never thought too intently on it, but
he was almost certain Adam didn’t have a conscience. He watched Aria trying to fish
her phone out of her jeans and she dropped two large books in the process. They
tumbled down the stairs as she cursed softly.

“Did
you get the same thing I just did?” she asked.

“I’m
assuming so.”

“That’s
strange… I just got this phone the other day. Only three people have my number.
Do you recognize the sender?” she asked, passing him on the stairs to retrieve
the books she’d dropped.

Christian
shook his head.

“What’s
it say?” Rome asked, craning his neck to look back at them over his shoulder.
“I don’t have a phone. Though if I did, no one would probably text me anyways,”
he laughed.

“It
says there was something in the drinks at the party.”

“There
was,” Christian confirmed. “Adam did it.”

They
stepped onto the second floor and Ariahna walked up to the doors that separated
the magical section from the rest of the library. Resting the books carefully
on the inside of her forearm she reached slowly for the handle. It was a
dangerous balancing act that nearly ended in
catastrophe
when the door swung suddenly open.

“Whoa,”
Jason said, steadying the stack of books. “Aria?”

Ariahna looked away from him. He was just about the last
person
she wanted to
see. “Excuse me,” she said politely.

“Jason,
you know about the library?” Christian said sarcastically.

Matt
shot him a look.

“Know
what?” Jason replied.

Christian
snickered.

“Hey Aria,” Matt said. He caught the insistent glare Rome
was
giving the two of
them. It wasn’t needed. He wanted to apologize. “About last night,” he drawled.
“I’m sorry. I was manipulating the bottle.”

“And
I was a perverted jack-hole,” Jason admitted. “But in my defense,” he added,
holding up his phone and shaking it, “I had a lot to drink.”

“It’s
fine. It was my fault for going to the party in the first place,” Aria said
softly. She paused. “…These are sort of heavy.”

“Oh,”
Jason said, grabbing the pile of books from her without warning. Matt took half
the stack.

Christian
started growling softly and Rome nudged him in the side
with his elbow. “You’re complaining like a puppy. Stop acting like
someone stole your favorite chew toy,” he advised, following Ariahna back to a
secluded table.

“I’m
telling her you compared her to a chew toy,” Christian whispered with a smirk.
“So, are we really going to read all of these?”

“I
was kind of hoping one of you would tell me there was some magical way to cram
all this shit into my head. Like press a palm to the cover and… bam,” Rome
laughed. He was only half joking.

Matt
smirked. “There is a limit to how lazy you get to be in life, even as a witch,”
he said.

“It smells like pot in here,” Christian commented. “Did
you two
really light
up in the library?”

“How
do you know what pot smells like?” Jason countered.

“I’m
fifteen, not stupid. Why didn’t you guys just stay in your rooms to do that?”

“The
neighbors are getting suspicious,” Jason whispered.

“Or
you’re just getting more paranoid,” Christian muttered. “Wait, isn’t
my
room right next to yours? And what about the woods? Wouldn’t that be a better
place than the library?”

“Ha,
yeah,” Jason said. “I don’t freaking think so. I saw wolves out there last
night. Forget that shit.”

“Is
that so?” Christian smirked, glancing over at Rome.

“You
two aren’t going to… start offering me things, are you?” Aria said, trying to
change the subject. “Jesse was high yesterday, and he was acting really weird.
He kept trying to give me things.”

“I’ll give you something,” Jason grinned. Matt slapped him
over the
back of the
head, jarring an apology out of him.

“Yeah,
so the booze only amplified his personality.”

“Psh,
girls love me,” Jason said.

“Not
classy ones,” Matt retorted. He caught Aria smile at that. “So what’s with all
the ancient paperweights? These things look older than dirt, and they smell
like death.”

“Oh,
you know, we’re cursed,” Christian said casually.

“What?” Jason laughed. The three of them didn’t even
crack a smile.
“Is it too soon for them to have a contact high?”

“They’re
serious,” Matt replied.

“Huh.
It wouldn’t happen to be the limp dick curse, would it?”

“That’s
not what it’s called,” Matt said quickly.

“That’s
what I’m calling it,” Jason mumbled.

“And
how would that be effecting her?”

“Well,
it could be a problem for her if
they
can’t get it up.”

Rome was trying desperately not to laugh. After everything
he’d
been through
the last week, these guys were actually a breath of fresh air.

I
might keep them around
,
he thought.

“Would
it be possible for you guys to get off this tangent so that we can just read?”
Christian asked. He was surprised when Jason and Matt actually sat down and
picked up a book. Jason’s wasn’t even upside-down.

They
sat there silently with only the sound of turning pages filling the air between
them. A good thirty minutes had passed before Jason frowned suddenly, looking
up from his book. “What are we even looking for?”

Rome
laughed without sound, slapping a hand against his forehead. “Really?” he
grinned. “You’re just asking that now? How many pages have you even read?”

“Mm…
six,” Jason said.

“Six
more than I expected,” Christian breathed.

“You
guys don’t have to help us do this,” Ariahna added.

“I’m
actually a little intrigued,” Matt admitted. “From what I gather, you all think
you were cursed by the Artisan, am I correct? I’ve heard the conspiracy that
the wands were supposedly hexed.”

“Yeah,
anyone from the six families,” Rome said.

“What
makes you think that?” Jason asked.

“It’s a long story,” he sighed, slapping his book shut. “These
are all just about the version of history The Collective knows, or wants us to
believe.
Ariahna,
can we talk for a minute?” he asked, standing from his chair
and gesturing for her to follow. Rome led her back
a few rows, stopping in a hidden nook of the library near a spacious window. He
had intended to talk to
her in private about the Artisan’s journal. Instead,
he caught the soft, colorful glow of the sunset bursting through her hair. It
reminded him of that
first night, that near perfect
kiss. The way the streetlights had traced
elegantly over her silhouette,
leaving her soft pink lips begging to be taken.

“Do
you know how beautiful you are?” he smiled.

Ariahna
bit her lip, letting it slowly slip away from her teeth. She was
looking up at Rome from under thick eyelashes,
barely registering the way
the shelf was biting into her spine. “No,”
she breathed. Aria wanted to see
herself
through Rome’s eyes. And more than anything, she wanted to hear
his
voice, she wanted to feel it wash over her skin like a tender embrace.

Rome drug his lips over her neck, his breath hot against
her skin.
“It’s
only when I look at you,” he whispered, “that my
world stops spinning
– that I don’t feel dizzy. Everything else around
me ceases to exist, and I’m left with this sensation of weightlessness. In your
eyes, there’s no judgment, no fear.
There’s
no hatred or pain.” Rome felt his throat constrict. “I’m
convinced that
there’s nothing more beautiful than how you make me feel. Because when I look
at you, it’s the only time I don’t feel broken.”

Ariahna
had never truly cried before – not like this. And neither had he. His blue eyes
were shimmering with tears just waiting to paint his face, and yet she’d never
seen a man look stronger than he did, right now, in this moment. She wrapped
her arms gently around his neck, leaning up to press her lips tenderly to his.
And just like he’d said, the rest of the world was slipping away, until all
that remained was the way they felt about each other.

The salty taste of tears mingled between them as they
kissed. This felt
like one of those moments in life that never seems to stop, that you can close
your eyes and be transported back to without effort. It was the kind of moment
you hoped for, the kind you dreamed about. It was a kiss, with a
phenomenal girl – a girl who had, in an instant,
captured his heart – a girl
that could make him happy for the rest of
his life, if he let her—if he was lucky enough to earn her love. And it was
then that Rome realized this was more than just a perfect moment, more than
just a kiss. It was the beginning of something incredible. “I love you,” he
whispered. He closed his eyes, smiling as tears streamed down his face. He’d
finally said it. He’d finally told her what was in his heart. And it felt…
indescribable. “I love you.”

Ariahna
let out a soft laugh, crying tears of joy as she leaned against his chest.
She’d never imagined she’d feel this way, about anyone. She’d never imagined
she’d ever get here. And now that she was, she couldn’t imagine never knowing
this feeling.

“I
love you too,” she declared. “More than I can handle. More than I know what to
do with. Rome, for the first time in my life, I don’t have to wonder why I was
put on this earth. I know now. I was put here for you. All this time, I’ve just
been waiting for you to find me.”

A
soft flickering light above them made Rome look up. The air felt suddenly
electrified. His attention was being drawn towards the window, pulled
physically as if by a magnet.  He placed his fingers on the cool glass, staring
out at the darkening world below.

The
grounds were unnaturally still.

“This
isn’t good,” Rome muttered. “Can you feel that?” he asked, turning his head
back to look at her. Aria drifted closer to the window.

“Rome,”
she whispered fearfully, “look.”

A man stepped away from the shade of a tall tree, his
mouth
twisted
into a sinister smile. The wind swept by him,
whipping silvery hair around his
ears as the disappearing sun painted
his back in oranges and pinks. The skin on his face looked dull and gray under
the overcast sky, and the school eclipsed him in its shadow.

Rome
knew what was coming – he knew why the Artisan was here, and he was tired of
being afraid. But looking at him was like feeling death breathing down his
neck. The restless spirit of a very jaded man was staring back at him, and what
it wanted, the only thing it wanted, was for him to die.

“We
have to warn the others,” he said. Rome cringed as the lights began to burst
one at a time, creeping steadily towards them as shards of glass showered down
from the ceiling like hail. They were crackling out more
and
more rapidly as they neared, painting the edges of the room
in a
saturated darkness. Rome grabbed
Ariahna’s hand, feeling his heartbeat in his fingers as
they raced away
from the engulfing shadow. They swung around a row of shelves, coming to a halt
as the others turned to look at them in perplexity.

“He’s
here,” Rome shouted. “We need to get out, now!”

Christian stood swiftly and his chair screeched back
across the floor. He inhaled, gasping painfully. A solid figure was edging
around the corner, ambling unhurriedly towards them. Thin, boney fingers and
long nails scraped
against
the wall, leaving deep scratches in their wake. His body felt weighted down,
limbs aching as he bolted away from the table. The others were at his back,
feet pounding against the floor as the sound of frantic breathing occupied the
space between them. An angry crash exploded at his back, shaking the floor and
nearly knocking him off his feet. One of the
shelves
had collapsed, and he watched as another tipped, nearly crushing
Aria as
it fell. He raced back to her, grabbing her by the arms and hauling her towards
the exit. Matt was kicking at the door as Jason guarded his back, hands shaking
and knife drawn.