The Curse Girl (11 page)

“That doesn’t make what he did right.”

“I know.” I grabbed another book and thumbed through it. My throat squeezed, making talking hard. “It hurts to think about how . . .” No need to finish that statement. Will didn’t want to hear my sob stories.

I expected him to change the subject or let my words dangle awkwardly, but to my surprise he touched my shoulder. “I’m really sorry that it happened to you.”

“Thanks.” I looked from his hand to his face. My eyes traced the scar.

“How’d you get that?” I asked softly, before I lost my nerve. Since we were confessing all kinds of secrets today …

Will’s eyes clouded over. “Marian,” he said, the muscles in his jaw tightening.

I knew enough to drop it. We resumed our work, avoiding each other’s eyes.

“Any luck?” He asked, after a short silence.

“Nothing. You know, this would be a lot easier if these books were sorted into some kind of order. I blame you, Will. It’s your library.”

“Duly noted. The lady wishes I was more organized in the past. Anything else you want to add? A dislike for my hair color, my height, my nose?”

“Being organized is a lot more controllable than a physical attribute—hey!” I squealed when he deliberately bumped me out of the way so he could get another book. I fell backwards onto the carpet in a fit of giggles. Will swung around, laughing.

A retort jumped into my head, but when our gazes caught I couldn’t speak. The laughter in his eyes faded into an intensity. My brain stumbled.

Seriously, this was not good. I did. Not. Have. A. thing. For. Will.

Did I?

Will reached down to help me up, and when our hands touched an electric shock jumped between our fingers. I didn’t know what to do or say. I wrenched by hand free as soon as I was on my feet and I took a few steps back.

“Jerk,” I said, trying to tease him but sounding breathless and far too excited instead. My whole body flushed. I itched to move towards him instead of away. I put a hand to my cheek. Will stayed by the bookshelf, his blue eyes puzzled. I took another step back.

“Are you all right?”

“I think—er—I’m going to go,” I managed.

“Really? We haven’t been working that long.”

“Yes, but, I’m tired.”

He looked skeptical, but thankfully he didn’t push it. “All right. We’ll work on it more tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” I agreed, and practically fled the room.

~

“I think I’m attracted to him,” I confessed to Liam. He’d become like my priest, listening patiently in the dark to all my problems and fears. He’d become my friend, offering advice and encouragement.

His chains clinked as he moved. He sounded almost amused. “And?”

“You’re not shocked? Horrified? I mean, isn’t it his fault you’re a prisoner?”

“It’s not his fault I’m here. It’s the curse’s fault. And no, I’m not shocked or horrified. You’re a girl. He’s a boy. These things happen.”

These things happen. Um, okay. “Well,
I’m
shocked and horrified.”

“Why?”

“Well, I’m sort of dating this guy, Drew. You remember. I told you about him.”

“Your high school friend.”

“Yes. Well, he’s more than a friend. But not quite a boyfriend. And anyway . . . I like Drew. Not Will.”

“So he’s Will now? Not Beast Boy?”

I smiled in the dark to myself. “Oh, he’s definitely still Beast Boy. But he’s more than that too, I guess.”

“It’s progress,” Liam said.

Sometimes I wondered whose side he was on.

ELEVEN

I was awakened the next morning by a pounding on my bedroom door. I rolled over, squinting in the early morning sunlight.

“Whoizit?” My words came out gargled. Sleep clouded my eyes. What time was it?

“Beauty, wake up! You have to come see this!”

I rolled out of bed and staggered to the door. I put my lips to the crack. “Will?”

He practically knocked me over as he came inside. I realized too late that I was only in a tank and shorts. Probably way too much skin for an old-school gentleman like Will to handle without embarrassment. I mean come on, they barely showed their ankles in those days. But he didn’t even seem to notice, he was so excited.

“Look!” He waved a handful of fresh white roses in my face. The scent tickled my nose, and I sneezed.

“Flowers. Very nice,” I managed. I was too sleepy to puzzle through the reasons he was offering me roses. I just wanted to put my head back on my pillow . . .

“No, listen.” He grabbed me by both shoulders as I tried to turn back for the bed, smooshing the roses against my shoulder. “These are
fresh
roses!”

“So?”

“There haven’t been fresh flowers in this house in four years!”

“Not true,” I mumbled. “There were roses in the library the other day. Can I go back to sleep?”

“Nope, you lazy bones, you have to see this first.” He steered me for the door. I made a whimper of protest and pointed at the bed.

“Sleepy. Me. Bed. Now.”

Will just pushed me through the door and into a musty study.

“It’s, ah . . . very dark?” Actually, that was nice. I could sleep here, maybe.

“Not this room. C’mon.” He crossed the carpet and threw open the opposite door. “Aha! Here we go.” He swept one hand down in an elegant invitation for me to go first. I pushed past him with a growl. I was
sleepy
.

The noise died in my throat as I stepped into the conservatory and saw what all the fuss was about. My jaw dropped in shock.

“It’s a boat.”

A massive sailboat filled half the conservatory, the mast stretching up to the top of the ceiling and the hull resting on the flagstones like a giant wave had deposited it there. Mounds of white roses surrounded the boat and hung over the sides. I heard a rustle of wings, and looked up to see doves fluttering high above us in the sunlight, trying to get through the windows to the world outside.

“What the—?” A tickling sensation started in my brain. I was supposed to remember something. This was all very familiar, somehow. “What is going on?”

“It’s some kind of magic,” Will said, hushed reverence in his voice. He ran to the sailboat and rapped his knuckles on the hull. “Maybe it means we’re close to breaking the curse?”

Realization rushed over me like a splash of cold water. “It’s my origami,” I whispered, stunned.

“What?”

“The other night I came in here after our fight. I folded a bunch of papers into origami. Some roses, a boat, some birds . . .”

He looked from me to the sailboat. There was no denying its existence. “This is unbelievable,” he said. “This has never happened to me before, in four years of the curse. You . . . made these things appear?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I have no idea.”

“That’s never happened before?”

“Heck, no. But this is sort of my first experience with a cursed house too.”

One of the doves landed on his shoulder. Will touched the feathers with one finger. “Did you make them docile, too?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t try to do it. I don’t know how I would have given instructions to a piece of origami.”

The dove took off again with a rustle of wings. Will’s eyes met mine.

“Do you think you can do it again?”

~

In the library that afternoon, I folded roses and stars while Will searched through the books alone. I made boxes and lilies. I attempted a piano.

“I’m afraid I don’t know how to make tons of things,” I said, after failing to make a very good tulip. “I know mostly flowers. And boats.”

“Don’t make another boat,” Will said, looking nervous at the idea. “It would take up the whole room. I really like this library, you know.”

“Do you think the color of the paper affects the color of the object? I used blank white paper for the doves and the roses and the sailboat. And they’re all white.” I gazed at the piano in my hand, thinking.

“But those things are normally white anyway.” Will shrugged.

I looked around the room. “If we find some colored paper, we can experiment.”

“Hey, look at this.” Will dragged a book from the shelf, breaking my train of thought. “I think this is something we’re looking for!”

I jumped up. My heart squeezed with hope. “Is it the letters?”

“It’s a diary.” He flipped through the pages. “Marian’s. No letter. But who knows? It might tell us where the letters are. We should read it anyway.”

I took it from him and flipped to the first page.
I have met the love of my life
, the first entry began.

“That’s sort of tragic, considering how everything ended.”

“Very,” Will agreed. He put his chin in his hand and watched me as I turned the page. My skin prickling from his attention, I dropped my eyes to the written words. Marian’s words.

Robert took me riding today. The fields were yellow with daisies, and the village children were playing in the creek. I’ve never experienced such happiness or such love. I shiver to think that I might marry this man, that our own children might one day play in that creek.

I skimmed through the entries while Will continued searching the library for the book of letters. Most of the entries were about the herbs she’d gathered or the spells she’d learned. Or Robert. A lot of the diary focused on Robert, actually. It was borderline ridiculous how obsessed she was.

“She really cared about your brother,” I commented, after finishing another paragraph that described his flawless face and deep brown eyes. “She writes about him constantly. And I mean, constantly. If you look up
obsessed
in the dictionary, you’re going to find a picture of Marian and Robert.”

“Marian was like a thunderstorm,” Will said. His voice sounded muffled—he was crouched in front of the lowest shelf, checking the books buried behind a compilation of encyclopedias. “Her every emotion was amplified because of the magic. If she tore the hem of her dress, she cried about it. She was very passionate.”

“Or psycho,” I muttered.

“I felt sorry for her,” Will continued. “She burned like straw—quickly ignited, but no endurance.” He lifted his head to look at me, and I giggled when I saw a smudge of dust on his nose.

“You have a . . .” I waved my hand to indicate my nose.

“Where?” He rubbed at it with his hand and only succeeded in making things worse. I laughed. He was like a child sometimes.

“Here,” I said. “Allow me.” Will dropped beside me, and I wiped off the dust with my sleeve.

“Thanks.” Instead of getting back up, he stretched out on the floor and folded his hands behind his head. His gaze flicked over my face. “Marian was nothing like you.”

“Not a workaholic kill-joy, you mean?” I lifted one eyebrow, pretending to be insulted.

“No,” he insisted, serious. “She was beautiful and fiery, but she was insubstantial. And now she’s completely crazy. But look at you. You’re strong. You can still laugh after everything that’s happened. That’s probably the most admirable thing in the world. You do things. You don’t give up. You’re brave.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, my teasing smile fading. At the moment I felt anything but brave. I wasn’t a hero, and I wasn’t admirable. I was simply stubborn enough to keep going even when everything seemed to be falling apart. My father had always hated that about me. He liked it?

“I admire you more than anyone else I’ve ever known,” Will said. He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. His hand lingered there. A shiver ran down my spine, and I looked away.

“I should, um, keep reading.”

“Yes, of course.” He dropped his hand. I went back to my place and opened the page back to where I’d left off. Silence filled the room like a flood. I was drowning in it.

I tried to think of Drew, but my mind kept seeing Will instead.

TWELVE

When I shambled into the library the next morning, Will was sitting at a glistening white piano waiting for me. He didn’t say anything, just spread his hands to indicate all the things that had changed in the night and grinned like he’d produced them himself.

“It worked,” I mumbled, still astonished at the sight of the origami pieces transformed before my eyes. White flowers were scattered across the carpet. A sturdy-looking white box sat to the left of the piano. It looked large enough to store a bed inside.

“I can’t quite figure out the size ratio,” Will said. He played a series of chords. “The flowers are small, but the box is big. By the way, this piano is magnificent. Well done, Beauty.”

I hadn’t realized how much I liked hearing him say my name before now. I flushed. It sounded good coming from him. He said it warmly, like it was true. Like it wasn’t some cruel joke played on me by my parents.

“Can you play?” I asked, to distract him from my blushing.

In response, he launched into a Mozart concerto. I curled up on one of the chairs by the empty fireplace and closed my eyes, letting the music wash over me like rain. I almost wanted to cry at the sound. I’d forgotten how wonderful music was.

When the song stopped, I opened my eyes and found Will watching me.

“That was wonderful,” I whispered.

He just smiled, and his smile was like the sunshine coming through the window above him.

~

The days changed far faster than normal. The tip of my nose starting feeling chilly when I woke in the mornings, and I began to wear sweaters to dinner with Will and Rose while we continued our search for the book of letters. Leaves began to trickled off the trees and cover the lawns in gold and orange, and the days began to get shorter.

I felt sick just thinking of all the time that had probably passed outside. I’d only been here for a month, maybe two—but it was already fall? I’d come to the house in May. Was it September outside? October?

Alone, I sat on the deck of the sailboat and watched the fall changes creeping across the landscape through the windows of the conservatory, and my whole insides ached. Were we ever going to figure out how to break the curse? Will and I had searched through a little more than half the library with no luck other than the diary. I was still reading it, trying to find clues. But so far, I’d found nothing there either.