The Curse Girl (9 page)

Had she just given us a hint?

“I’m going to break this curse,” I told her.

Her expression slipped from intensity into boredom. “Good luck. I’m not even sure I know how to break it. It’s taken on a life of its own, you know.” She yawned.

“Yeah,” I said. “So I noticed. I hope you have trouble sleeping at night, knowing what you did to a sweet girl like Rose.”

Marian just lifted her eyebrows and turned back to her drink.

Will dragged me to the first mirror he saw. The trip back wasn’t as bad—at least I remembered to hold my breath the second time. My head was spinning with what Marian had said to me. When we stumbled onto the rug of Will’s study, I picked myself up and turned to him in triumph.

“She gave us a hint!”

Will, on the other hand, was ashen. “That was a pretty terrible idea, taking you there. I shouldn’t have done it. Marian is extremely unstable. Who knows what she would’ve done if she’d gotten really angry…”

“But she gave us a hint!”

“Maybe. You saw how she was. She’s insane. And she said herself she isn’t even exactly sure how to break the curse.”

“Is that why she never lifted the curse after she found out it was you and not Robert who had it?” I asked.

Will rubbed a hand over his face. “First of all, anyone can curse someone, but once it’s said and done the rules are binding. You can’t just hastily pronounce a curse and then run around reversing things afterwards, and whatever she might have meant at the time, well, the magic can twist things to suit its own purposes. So she didn’t lift the curse because she couldn’t. And second of all, she wouldn’t because the magic has made her crazy. Well, that and the fact that she loathes our entire family now. She killed her own child because it looked like Robert. She still wants me to suffer, just because I’m his brother.”

I paced. “She mentioned letters. What she said to me—remember? She talked about letters.”

He nodded, still distracted by his frustration. “They wrote letters while she was away, during their engagement.”

“Do you think maybe these letters mention some of the things in the curse? Like where the pearls are, for instance.”

Will gazed at me for a full thirty seconds before speaking. “That’s the best idea I’ve heard yet. Well done, Beauty.”

His praise pleased me more than it should, especially since it basically amounted to a pat on the head. What did I care if he thought I’d done a good job? Still, I smiled.

Will’s eyes dropped to my dress, which he hadn’t commented on before.

“You look very attractive tonight,” he said. “A beauty and a Beauty.”

Well. I didn’t know what to say to
that
.

He didn’t seem to know, either. He looked startled at his own statement. Turning away, he fumbled with something on his desk while I stood there struggling for a reply.

A knock on the door startled us both.

“Will? Beauty?” Rose’s voice came through, muffled. “Are you all right?”

“We’re all right,” Will called. He gave me a look. “We should probably talk about this in the morning. It’s getting late.”

I didn’t understand at first what he meant. Who cared if it was getting late? We could stay up and try to figure out the curse. We didn’t have a curfew.

Then it hit me. Oh right, the curse … at night …

“See you tomorrow,” I said, feeling lame for not remembering. His comment about my appearance was still hanging in the air too, and neither of us wanted to meet each other’s eyes. “And uh, thanks for taking me to see Marian. I know that must’ve been hard for you. With your history with her, and all …”

He nodded.

Feeling dumb, I let myself out and went straight to my room. I was so tired I forgot to go to see Liam that night. I fell into my bed and slept like a rock for the first time since I’d come to the curse house.

~

When I slept, I dreamed about my friends, eating ice cream in the summer sun. In my dream I was there too, watching them while the summer before our senior year disappeared like water through my fingers. They didn’t see me, and I couldn’t speak or even whisper to alert them that I was there.

I woke in a cold sweat, shaking.

The memories of such nightmares spurred me back to Marian’s room the next morning, and I turned over the feather mattress and peered between every crack in the floorboards. But there was nothing to find. The room was empty as a water bucket in a drought. Finally, I gave up. If there were letters, they weren’t in her room.

Will found me sitting in the middle of the room, dust motes floating around my head and tears running down my cheeks. He turned his head and looked down the hallway instead of straight at me, and I glared hard at a speck of sunlight coming through the window. The silence hummed between us. For some inexplicable reason, things were weird around him now. Unsettled.

He spoke first. “I . . . I want to show you something. To make up for last night.” His dark hair was combed out of his eyes today, and it made him look older. Nicer, somehow. Like the kind of boy you’d take home to meet your mother. The kind of boy you’d get a milkshake with after school.

He helped me to my feet, and I trailed after him through the open doorway. We stepped into a long hallway lined with windows.

“Where are we going?”

“Just follow,” Will said, his old self surfacing for a moment despite his good intentions. He opened a door and muttered something under his breath, grimacing. “If the house will cooperate, we’ll be there in a minute.”

The magic seemed willing. We only passed through the conservatory and three bedrooms before we reached the room he was looking for. The library.

I’d been here only once before, in the very beginning. Sunlight streamed through stained glass windows and made patterns on the rug. A few dried roses were scattered on the carpet in one corner, and they gave off a fragrant, musky scent. The hush of the book-crammed space enveloped me like a hug. It was lovely.

I remembered the last time I’d been here. We’d had a fight, of course. This was like, his secret hiding place, and I’d violated it with my stranger germs or something. This was his inner sanctum. And now he’d let me come here. He’d brought me here.

I could barely believe it.

“Soothing, isn’t it?”

He was watching me like he was trying to figure something out. It made me vaguely uncomfortable, but I couldn’t put a finger on why. Maybe I just didn’t like being scrutinized like an exotic bird. Maybe I just didn’t like him, no matter how nice he tried to be. To hide my discomfort, I ran my finger along the spines of a shelf of books.

“A lot of people think libraries are soothing,” I said. Talking was easier than standing the suddenly awkward silence. “Books have a special magic, I think.”

“Are you a reader?”

I shrugged. “Not really.”

“Oh.”

He seemed disappointed, so I hurried to explain. Why did I want to explain? I didn’t care what he thought. Or did I?

“I like books, but I always got in trouble because I would tear out the pages and make origami with them. My grandmother taught me. My mother was so angry with her too, because I ruined every book in the house when I was small. My mother—” A painful prickle in my chest choked me, cutting off my words. What could I say about my mother? Words couldn’t capture her essence. She had been everything in my life, and when she was taken away I had withered inside. I couldn’t voice what I felt about her.

I made a helpless gesture with one hand. “When my mother died, it was like the sun stopped shining. You know?”

He nodded once, just a jerk of his head like he found the conversation a bit awkward. But his expression had softened. He seemed to understand.

We fell silent again.

I wandered to one of the windows, peering at the stained glass. The scene depicted a thunderstorm. Sunlight sparkled through the dark blues and the yellow lightning and made rainbows on the rug. It was beautiful. Many things in the house were beautiful, more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen in the town . . .

“What’s he like?” He asked, breaking my reverie.

I turned my head. “Who?”

“This guy you’re so desperate to get back to.” He had settled in the one of the chairs by the fireplace, and he laced his hands behind his head, giving me a challenging look. He almost sounded jealous, but that would be ridiculous and he clearly wasn’t.

Feeling defensive for no good reason, I grabbed a book off one of the shelves and started flipping through it to hide my flustered emotions.

“Be careful with that book,” he said. “It cost more than your dowry.”

My dowry. Hmmm. I decided to leave that little gem alone, and focus on the conversation at hand. But—we were totally revisiting that some day. A
dowry
?

“Drew is amazing,” I said. “For one thing, he’s the perfect gentleman.”

Will’s eyes sparkled like I’d called his mother something awful, but his mouth turned in a smirk. “As I recall, my brother and I were the only gentlemen in the region.”

Har har
. “Not that kind of gentleman. I mean a nice person, not someone of noble blood.”

He laughed. “Are you suggesting I’m not a nice person?”

“Are you kidding?” Now it was my turn to laugh.

He sobered when I didn’t follow up the statement with anything else. “You’re calling me a cad.”

“Really,
Beast Boy
, your acting is excellent. I can barely tell you’re joking.”

“I’m not joking. I’ve been a perfect gentleman to you in every sense of the word, Beauty.”

“Listen,” I said. “You were an absolute jerk the first day I came. Can you deny it?”

“I—” He paused. “Perhaps I wasn’t at my best that day. Your presence was unsettling. And it had been a rough night for me. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

He drew himself up stiffly. “I’d rather not.”

I hated it when he pulled out the old-style crap.
I’d rather not
and such. He looked almost dignified saying it, like he was twenty years old instead of the right age to be in eleventh grade with me. He looked, well, like a gentleman. Not that I would ever, EVER tell him that.

“Maybe if you explained yourself more,” I said, “We’d make a better team.”

“Maybe if you pried less into my personal affairs, you’d find me more of a gentleman,” he shot back.

“I’m not prying. Trust me, I’m only trying to break the curse and return us both back to normal.”

His eyes narrowed. “No, you’re not. You’re trying to annoy and irritate me like you’ve been doing for days. I’ve decided your nickname—
Bee
—is completely appropriate. You’re like an infuriating insect.”

That snarky comment was the last straw. I snapped shut the book I was holding and stormed to the door. So much for bonding in his secret lair. So much for working together.

“Beauty,” he called behind me. “Wait, I—”

I slammed the door in his face and looked around. I was in the conservatory.

I called him everything—jerk, monster, cretin, bastard, turd. I ripped every single page from his precious book and made fifty origami roses with them. When I got tired of roses, I made a sailboat and a dozen birds. When the folded pieces of paper formed a pile beside me, I finally stopped.

My insides were throbbing, but the anger was ebbing away into something else. Sadness sucked at my soul. Why was I marooned in this awful house with Will and his curse while Drew and the rest of my friend lived their lives and enjoyed their junior year? Oh yeah, because I martyred myself for my family, who turns out did it on purpose anyway. Now I was going to miss prom. I was going to miss basketball games and sleepovers. I was supposed to start my first job working at the movie theater with Violet on the weekends. I was supposed to go to the lake with Drew, and be kissed under the stars, and . . .

Tears were splashing on the paper birds, making the paper wrinkle and soften. I stuck out one finger and stroked the nearest one like it was alive. I thought about my grandmother. What would she tell me now?

Be strong, probably. I was sick of being strong. Right now I just wanted to be weak. Weak and weepy. I wished I had some ice cream to eat.

“Miss Beauty?”

Housekeeper stood in the doorway, her eyes wide and her hands tucked behind her apron. I scrubbed the heels of my hands across my face to get the tears off and then pushed up into a standing position. “I’m here, Housekeeper.”

“The Master wants to know if you’ll be coming to dinner.”

I was not up to facing him at the moment. I was sorry about Rose, but she could deal with it. I couldn’t. Not right now.

“No thanks. I’ll be in my room.”

She looked down. “Miss Beauty?”

“Yeah?”

“All of the servants, we . . . we believe that you are going to help him break the curse.”

The words hit me in the gut like a punch. I’d been so selfish. This was about more than just me and Drew, or even Will. This was about a lot of people whose lives had been messed up.

“Thank you,” I said. “And, uh, Housekeeper?”

She waited.

“Never mind what I said before. I’ll be coming to dinner.”

She beamed. “I’ll tell the Master.”

~

When I got to the dining hall, Will was waiting by my chair. Rose was standing at the door, trying to look like she wasn’t listening, while he looked at me with a new expression in his eyes that I couldn’t decipher.

We both tried to speak at once, and laughed nervously. He held up one hand.

“Allow me to speak first, please.”

I nodded, letting him go ahead.

“You were right. I thought about what you said earlier, and I’ve been a true, er, beast. I’ve been a royal cad and a horrible host, and I am ashamed of myself. I’ve treated you terribly, and you’ve actually be really helpful to both me and Rose. Please forgive me.”

My mouth had dropped open a little. I stared at him until I realized he was waiting for me to speak.

“Er, yes. I will. Me too. I mean, I’ve been selfish. I’ve only wanted to break the curse for myself. I forgot about all the other people involved in this. Rose, Housekeeper, Butler, all of them.”