The Curse Keepers (Curse Keepers series) (4 page)

Daddy sat back in his chair and rocked for several moments, both of us sinking into our own thoughts. It was like old times, when we wallowed in the murky limbo between Momma’s death and Myra’s entrance in our lives. When it was just Daddy and me, suffocating in our grief and our guilt.

“A storm’s a brewing, Ellie.”

Daddy was right. Clouds had begun to churn and darken in the short time since I’d walked over from the restaurant. “I’ll make sure the trash cans are put away before I leave.”

His hand covered mine and squeezed. “No, a
storm’s
coming. I feel it in my bones.”

A chill ran up my spine. “That’s called arthritis, Daddy.”

“Be ready, Elliphant. You’re the Keeper now. You’ll have until the beginning of the seventh day and not a moment longer.”

That’s what worried me.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

Sometime between leaving Daddy and slathering my hair with conditioner, I’d convinced myself that I’d gotten myself worked up over nothing. From what little I remembered of the curse, nasty things were supposed to happen as soon as it was broken. Here it was over four hours since my encounter with
that man
, as I’d begun to refer to him, and the worst thing to happen was I couldn’t find my new sandals to wear with my thrift store–find sundress. Honestly, that in itself was a tragedy.

But the misplacement of my sandals had everything to do with the fact my closet was a mess and nothing to do with evil spirits. What were evil spirits going to do with strappy sandals?

When Dwight knocked on my door promptly at 6:45, I answered barefoot and breathless. “Hi.” I’d crawled out from underneath my bed and my just dried, long hair was a mess, negating my five minutes of styling.

Dwight stood on my porch wearing his work clothes—gray dress pants with a pale blue shirt and yellow tie. I loved me a man in a tie. “Ready?”

I opened the door wider to let him in. “I was just looking for my shoes. Give me a second.”

“We don’t want to be late.” I heard a slight tone of worry in his voice. “All the good seats will be taken.”

Good seats
in relation to the Manteo Pioneer movie theater was a relative term. “I’ll just take a second.”

As I disappeared into my bedroom, I noticed Dwight glancing around my apartment. He’d only been inside once, and this time I made sure that it was picked up. Especially since I hoped to come back here later.

I grabbed another pair of sandals and stepped into them as I walked back into the living room. “See? All ready.”

Dwight stood next to the door and eyed me up and down, taking in my pink, sleeveless dress. “The air conditioning tends to run cool at the theater here. Aren’t you worried you’ll get cold?”

I gave him a coy smile. “That’s what I have you for.”

Confusion flickered in his eyes. “I don’t have a jacket to share with you.”

I fought a groan as I picked up my purse. This man was dense. “That’s okay. I’ll take my chances.” I followed him out and locked my door. As we descended the steps from my third-floor apartment, a weird tingling tickled my palm. I felt as though someone or
something
was watching me. I shook it off. All this curse nonsense was getting to me.

We walked to the theater, and I snagged Dwight’s hand. The streets of Manteo were filled with tourists going to dinner and walking around the town and by the pier. The shops that lined Queen Elizabeth Boulevard, the main street downtown, stayed open late in the summer, snagging more sales of beach trinkets and Roanoke souvenirs. We passed Poor Richard’s Sandwich Shop, a small restaurant and bar.

“Do you want to grab something at Poor Richard’s? I didn’t have a chance to eat.”

He scrunched up his nose. “But we’ll be late for the movie.” In the few times I’d been out with Dwight, I’d learned he was a creature of habit who didn’t like the rules changed midstream. He’d asked me out to the movie, not dinner. To throw in dinner was like derailing a train.

“We’ll only miss the previews.” I gave him a sweet smile. “Or we could skip the movie and just talk.”

His eyes bugged as though I’d suggested we set his pants on fire. “But I really want to see this movie.”

I forced a smile as we passed the restaurant and turned the corner at the old courthouse.

“Do you ever get tired of all the chaos?” Dwight asked as we stepped around a family who’d stopped to pick up their kid’s fallen ice cream cone.

I shook my head. “No. It’s so quiet the rest of the year that I like the reminder that there’s a whole world out there outside of this little town.”

“Why not go out there and see it yourself?”

Now didn’t seem like a good time to bring up the fact that I found it physically difficult to get too far from Roanoke Island. “So what’s playing tonight?” I knew it was an action movie, one that had been out several weeks. There was one small movie theater in town, and it only had one screen.

Dwight didn’t notice that I’d avoided his question and told me that the special effects were supposed to be spectacular. He was excited that the theater had recently added digital so he wouldn’t lose all the great CGI. I nodded and smiled, hoping this evening would end up with an entirely different kind of action.

The movie was loud and packed with explosions. The theater was freezing, and Dwight was too dense to catch any hints about putting an arm around my shoulders to keep me warm. To top it off, a kid sat behind me, kicking my seat the last half of the film. When we left the theater, I was cold, hungry, and cranky. I was cursed all right.

We walked through downtown on the way back to my apartment. The sky was still overcast and the clouds churned overhead as if they were angry. The wind had picked up, and I grabbed the bottom of my dress to keep it from blowing up. Not that Dwight would have noticed.

The crowds were thinning, but I loved the excitement of the people who wandered the streets during the summer months. Wondering where they’d come from. The places they’d seen. Since I could never get more than a couple hundred miles away from Roanoke Island without a crushing pressure on my chest—which Daddy always declared was a byproduct of the curse—I had to fulfill my desire to see the outside world with the Internet and cable TV. That and the stories of home the tourists shared with me from time to time.

When we reached the bottom of the wooden steps to my apartment, Dwight leaned over and gave me a peck on the lips. “Thank you for a wonderful evening, Ellie.”

My eyes flew open. “Wait. Don’t you want to come up?”

Dwight glanced at his watch. “Well… I have work in the morning.”

It was barely nine o’clock. He sounded like an old geezer. I cocked my head and gave him a tiny smile. “Just for a little bit? Please?”

An inner battle waged on Dwight’s face, and I wondered how he found the fortitude to deal with really difficult decisions. I stood on my tiptoes and wrapped my arms around his neck. “Just for a little while?” I kissed him long and slow, and I felt his arms encircle my waist before he pulled away.

“Ellie, not out in public. Anyone can see us here.”

We were surrounded by buildings, and it was getting dark. Sighing, I let my arms drop and took a step back. “We were only kissing.”

Dwight licked his lower lip. “I have a professional image to maintain.”

He was an insurance adjuster from Michigan. A northerner. He was pretty much at the bottom of the Manteo professional image ladder, but my desire to get him in my apartment kept that fact from leaving the tip of my tongue.

I took his hand and tugged. “Then come upstairs.”

He sighed before a shy smile lifted his mouth. “Okay, but just for a few minutes.”

I stuffed down my excitement as I practically dragged him up the two flights of stairs. Unlocking the door, I caught movement on the porch out of the corner of my eye, in the shadows cast by the street lights.

Standing upright, I whirled around. “Did you see that?”

“What?”

“Something moved over there!” I pointed to the dark shadows behind my flowerpot.

Dwight danced in place, his feet skipping like he was jumping rope. “What was it? A rat?”

Irritation bubbled in my chest, and I put a hand on my hip. “No, it wasn’t a rat. We don’t have any rats here.”

“Are you sure?”

I counted to three, reconsidering inviting him in. He wasn’t very bright, and more than a little boring, and apparently not very courageous. But he had a steady, good-paying job and was a mostly attractive man. Sure, he
wasn’t anything like
that man
in the New Moon, but Dwight had his own quiet version of attractive. So his light brown hair was thinning and he had a slight paunch. There was more to a man than muscles, and dark, brooding eyes, and rough-looking three-day-old stubble. I hoped that buried deep inside all that mundaneness was a man who was capable of great love. Love like my parents shared. My daddy hadn’t been an exciting man, and he’d loved my mother almost more than life itself.

In the end, there was no question. Right or wrong, I was desperate for some physical attention.

Once I closed the door, I kicked off my shoes, tossed my purse on the kitchen counter, and went to the refrigerator. “Would you like a glass of wine?” I sure needed one.

“Um… yeah.” Dwight wandered around the living room, investigating my family photos.

I would have preferred a little more enthusiasm since I was going for a full-blown seduction here. Apparently, it was going to take more effort than I was used to. Far be it from me to back down from a challenge. I pulled a bottle out and set it on the counter, then found a corkscrew in the drawer.

Dwight picked up a picture frame. A nervous twitch made his hand shake. “Is this you when you were little?”

I craned my neck to see which photo he was looking at. “Yeah, that was taken when I was seven.”

“Who’s the woman?”

“My mother.”

“She looks a lot like you.”

I smiled, but it was forced. “So I’ve heard.” We both shared dark red hair, fair skin that burned instead of tanned, and bluish-green eyes. And an aversion to believing in the curse.

I’d spent the last fifteen years standing by my assertion that four hundred years of tradition and folklore was a lie. For the first time since I was a kid, I was reconsidering.

Dwight set the frame down and moved to the other side of the counter, watching me open the wine. “So you’ve lived here your entire life.”

“Yep.” I jerked the cork out of the bottle, then poured wine into the glasses. “My family’s always lived here. I’ve never left.”

“What about when you went to college?”

I handed him a glass. “I didn’t go.”

His hand froze in midair. “You didn’t go to college?”

I shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. “I could never figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up; no sense wasting money on all those expensive college hours.” Not to mention I couldn’t afford it, even if I could live with my phobia of being too far from Manteo.

“So have you figured out what you want to do with your life now?”

I walked around the counter, carrying my glass along with the bottle. “I’m only twenty-three. I’ve got time to figure it out.” I sat down on the sofa and took a sip of wine. This really wasn’t going well.

Dwight followed me, frowning as he sank into the cushions next to me. “In theory, by this time you should have some kind of inkling. Do you?”

I fought to keep from scowling. “If you’re asking if I’ve found my purpose in life, the answer is no. But Myra says I’ll figure it out when I’m ready.” The truth was that my situation bothered me more than I liked to let on. It wasn’t so much that I hadn’t found my purpose, it was more that everything I tried felt so
wrong
. As though I were forcing my feet into shoes that were too small and tight.

“Myra? Your stepmother?”

“Yes.”

“Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but isn’t she enabling you?”

I leaned back as my eyebrows rose. Leave it to Dwight to show some backbone when it came to insulting me. “Excuse me?”

“It’s just that—”

“I live in my own apartment. I own my own car. I’m completely self-sufficient. How is she enabling me?”