How to Break an Evil Curse

by Laura Morrison

  “Warren, you shouldn’t have taken that stuff,” Corrine muttered at him, not wanting their guides to hear.

  “I know. I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

  “Well then, get rid of it.”

  “Let me talk to it first,” Warren stalled, for though he wasn’t sure he trusted the magical pool of raven blood, he did think it had the potential to be a very convenient item to bring on this adventure. Back at Farland’s place, the magical pool of raven blood had pointed out to Warren that if he took it along, it could inform Warren when Farland finally got back to his apartment. Warren just couldn’t toss the blood aside on a whim when it was capable of giving him that sort of information.

  “Okay. Whatever. Talk to the magic blood,” Corrine muttered, not bothering to get in a fight with Warren about this, since she was planning to swipe the vial at her first opportunity and toss it into the street anyway.

  “I’ll see if it can present a compelling argument for why we should keep it,” he said to Corrine, then thought at the magical vial of raven blood, How do I know I can trust you?

  After a long, awkward pause, the raven blood finally said, Are you thinking at me, bro? I can’t read your mind, man. Just speak. You’ve got a mouth.

  “Oh. Uh, you can’t—okay.” He swallowed, cleared his throat, and said to the vial, “How do I know I can trust you?”

  Unfortunately, you don’t.

  “Why are you offering to help me? You’re Farland’s magical pool of raven blood. Don’t you want to help him?”

  Dude, just because he created me, that doesn’t mean I’m his. Like, do you belong to your parents just because they made you? No, you are your own person. And I am my own magical pool of raven blood, it squawked defiantly. Farland is evil, man. I only help him when he does a future spell—the magic makes it so I have to answer him. And when he uses me as an ingredient, well, it’s not like I can stop him doing that. But whenever I have a choice, I totally don’t help him.

  Warren said apologetically, “While I do find that admirable, I can’t help but think you might be lying. What’s to stop you from telling Farland where we are?”

  Keep me in your pocket and I won’t hear a thing!

  Warren doubted it was really that simple, but kept his mouth shut as the raven voice continued, And if I steer you wrong, or you begin to doubt me, just drop me.

  “A valid point,” Warren said, then caught sight of his sister watching him. She was not liking the one side she was hearing of this conversation. He shrugged at her and said, “I think we should keep it. For a bit at least.”

  Corrine was going to respond, but she caught a curious glance from Myrtle, and gave Warren a warning look that ended the conversation.

  Corrine, Warren, Charles, and Myrtle walked on in silence, winding their way through the city streets to the Sign of the Dawdling Donkey, where the innkeeper’s wife, Mary, was hopefully going to be able to give them a place to hide for a few nights.

  Charles and Myrtle were impressed that these newcomers to the city were able to navigate the streets without slipping in the muck, but Corrine pointed out that after growing up walking on the uneven, slippery decks of various ships, the city roads were a piece of cake. Warren made a dumb joke about how that wasn’t a piece of cake he would want to eat, ha ha ha. And then, there they were going down a dark alley and stopping at the servants’ entrance to the inn.

  Myrtle knocked, and Mary herself answered a few seconds later, exclaiming happily, “Myrtle! What a surprise!”

  They exchanged a few more pleasantries, then Myrtle explained what they were doing there. Mary looked past Myrtle and Charles at the siblings. Then, she looked uneasily over her shoulder. “I will be able to take them in for a few nights,” she told Myrtle. “But, er, Galt can’t know who they are. I’ll try to hide them in the basement out of the way, and hopefully they won’t even cross paths with him. If they do, we’ll just call them by different names. I’ll move them on to the next place as soon as possible.”

  Getting a bad vibe, Myrtle wanted to ask if her friend was having trouble with her husband, but that wasn’t the sort of question one could ask out of the blue and then hurry on one’s way. Especially if the answer was in the affirmative. And they were in a hurry. So instead, she just said, “Let’s get together for tea soon,” and gave Mary’s hand a chummy squeeze.

  Myrtle found herself wondering whether she felt comfortable enough to leave the siblings there when there was apparently something fishy going on with Galt18. But in the end, she decided if a lady couldn’t trust one of her oldest friends then who the heck could she trust? So, Charles and Myrtle said goodbye to Warren and Corrine, and they went on their way with only mild misgiving.

  Myrtle should have paid more attention to that misgiving, but if she had heeded the warning bells in her head, then the story from here on out wouldn’t have been as fun.

  Mary quickly ushered the siblings in and was just shutting the door when she heard a voice down the dark hallway to their left. Mary cursed and tried to push them in the other direction, but then Galt rounded the corner. He was complaining to someone following him, asking, “How could you have been so stupid as to attract so much attention?”, but stopped short when he saw Mary, Corrine, and Warren. “Who are these people?” he asked Mary suspiciously as he eyed Warren’s banjo case. “We don’t need any music here.”

  “This is nothing to do with you,” Mary said shortly, since he’d happened upon her so quickly that she hadn’t had time to formulate a lie about the siblings.

  “Something to do with those women’s rights pals of yours?” he sneered as though the idea of women and men being equal was laughable. If only Julianna, who was trailing behind him, had been paying attention instead of thinking about Mortimer and his dreamy blue eyes, she might have begun to form a different opinion about whether she should be helping Galt steal the box with the orange star. But she was in the beginning stages of her very first crush that wasn’t on a character from a novel, so we shall forgive her for her preoccupation.

  Corrine, however, was mentally fully present, and looked disdainfully right back at Galt, pegging him immediately as a pathetic loser who thought the key to retaining what little power he had over his life was picking on whoever else he could. She was an excellent judge of character.

  Warren was thinking things much along the same lines as his sister but was in addition also pondering whether he should try to jump in and defend the honor of their kind hostess.

  However, Mary, too tired of dealing with Galt to waste more breath on him, was already walking down the hallway. Corrine and Warren realized she’d gone, and they scampered to catch up, leaving Galt behind. Warren looked back, wishing he’d had the chance to impart some of the scathing comments he’d been formulating in his head; he saw Galt usher through a door the very pale, dark-haired girl who had been walking with him. Galt said something in a cranky tone of voice to her, slammed the door shut, and stormed off the way he’d come, grumbling.

  When Warren caught back up with the ladies, Mary was in the midst of apologizing about her husband. “Sorry about him. His friends and mine don’t really get along. It’s driven a bit of a wedge between us over the years.”

  “That looked like more than a bit of a wedge,” Corrine said, then continued with her skill for getting in other people’s business by saying, “Why are you with that guy?”

  Mary didn’t seem annoyed by the question. She handed Warren the lantern she’d been holding and said as she unlocked a door at the very end of the long basement hallway, “I’m a part owner of the inn. It’s my only source of income. And if I left, the place would fall apart. My daughters work here too, so it’s not just me who’s dependent on the money this place brings in.” She pushed the door open and said, “Believe me, if I had a choice I’d be out of here.”

  Corrine gave Warren a warning look, because she kne
w he was probably trying to think up some way to help this lady. His desire to help everyone he crossed paths with had been all right back on the pirate ship where there weren’t too many people, but in this city, you could barely take one step without crossing the path of a person who had a problem that needed to be solved. Already they had promised to help Jane get away from the pirates, and Corrine didn’t want Warren making any more promises until that one was taken care of.

  “Okay,” Mary said as she showed them into the dark, windowless room. “Here’s your room. I know it’s kind of dreadful, but you’ll only be here a few nights.” Warren walked in, and the lantern he was holding shed light on a cramped little damp room furnished with two cots and not much else. “We only rent this room out as a last resort when the inn is really packed, or when someone is really desperate for a room but doesn’t have much money. You’re lucky you showed up before the King’s hunting party, because once that’s started even this room will be rented.”

  “We’ll manage in here just fine,” Warren said, setting the lantern down on the hard dirt floor. “Thank you so much for your help.” His broken arm was starting to ache something fierce, and he was more than ready for a nap; he didn’t care how gross the bed was, just as long as he could sleep on it.

  But Mary wasn’t quite finished talking yet. “Let me show you the one nice feature this room does have,” she said with a sneaky smile, and walked over to the bed that was against the outer wall. She knelt down and indicated a big block of stone that was part of the wall. “This stone is loose. If you push it back, it leads to a secret room. We used it in the old days to hide women on the run from witch-burning mobs.”

  “Do you think we’ll need to use that?” Warren asked, inclining his head toward the stone.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “No. But just in case. Can’t hurt to have a hiding place on hand if you’re on the run, I always say. If Galt hadn’t seen you, I’d actually have suggested you stay in there right from the get-go. But now it would look odd to him if you up and disappeared completely.”

  “Should we be worried about your husband? He looked pretty suspicious about us.” Warren didn’t want to sound too suspicious himself when Mary had been kind enough to take them in, but he wanted to get a good handle on the situation. It was his life, after all, that was at stake.

  Mary shook her head. “No, he’s always mistrustful about my friends. It’s nothing to do with you two personally. And he has no way of knowing who you are anyway.” This last part was true enough. If Jane’s calculations were correct, Farland would be unconscious for at least another half day, so he was currently in no position to start asking around in whatever evil circle of friends he might have to see if they had any leads on Warren.

  “So why show us this secret room?” Warren persisted.

  She shrugged. “Just walking you through all the amenities we have to offer. I’ll bring some food down at dinner time. Bathroom’s first door on the left down the hall. You’ll want to stay out of sight as much as you can. And lock the door when I leave.”

  Corrine nodded. Warren, who was already lying down on one of the beds, said thank you to Mary as she walked out. Corrine locked the door behind her and turned to look at Warren, whose eyes were already shut. “I don’t feel safe here.”

  “Me either,” he said with his eyes still shut. “But I trust Jane to have a good idea of how long she can keep Farland unconscious. So I figure we don’t have to start worrying for at least ten hours. Probably more. That’s plenty of time to get some rest.” He opened his eyes and gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “We’ll be fine. Take a nap.”

  She gave him a doubtful look, but in the end decided it was, indeed, sensible to sleep. She flopped down on the awful mattress.

  Julianna stood where Galt had left her in a closet full of cleaning supplies. He’d given her a lantern, which she was now holding up to examine the items on the shelf before her. While she had been right in saying she was good at cleaning, she had not known until this moment just how much specialized knowledge maids must have; so many products and tools! Big brooms, little brooms, mops, and scoopy things; yellow liquids, blue liquids, and green liquids; yellow powders, blue powders, and green powders. “Geez Louise,” she muttered.

  “Just fill up that bucket with some stuff and let’s get moving,” suggested Dexter. “You’ll look authentic enough as long as you’re holding a broom and a mop and a bucket.”

  “I guess. There’s so much more to this maid thing than I would have thought,” she said with irritation as she grabbed some bottles and jars at random and set them in the wooden bucket at her feet. She threw in a little broom and a scoopy thing for good measure, put the bucket over her elbow, then transferred the lantern to the bucket arm. She opened the door, then grabbed the broom and mop, already getting annoyed with how much work it was to carry all this stuff. As she proceeded awkwardly along the hallway, which seemed a lot narrower now that she was laden down with so much stuff, she hoped Mortimer Perkins’s room was not too far. It was a good thing she had developed strong muscles through years of tunneling, otherwise all the supplies would have been even more of a problem for her.

  As she bumped her way along the narrow staircase, she said, “I hope I get a chance to bump into that Mortimer fellow again before I swipe that box from his room. He’s pretty gorgeous, don’t you think?”

  Dexter stared. “You’re hoping to get a chance to flirt with the guy you’re stealing from?”

  “Again I say, he’s gorgeous,” she explained patiently. “I’ve never seen a real live gorgeous guy before.”

  “I thought you were in the city to mingle with commoners and try to solve all their problems or something. Are your lofty ideals so easily thrown by the wayside for the first halfway attractive guy you bump into?” he asked with a smirk.

  “He is a commoner, Dexter,” she said. At this point, she reached the top of the stairs, which meant her side of the conversation was at an end. She looked at the door before her and took a deep breath. Time to do some stealing.

  * * *

  18 Which didn’t surprise Myrtle; she’d known Galt was bad news from the first time Mary had introduced her to him back when they were teenagers.

  Chapter Seventeen

  As Julianna juggled mop, broom, and bucket while trying to open the door to the barroom, Dexter floated annoyingly right through the obstacle. When she finally opened the door to the bar and got all her cleaning goods through, she was horrified to see that Dexter had floated right over to Mortimer and was hovering in front of him. Mortimer, oblivious, was leaning over a newspaper that was spread out on the table before him. “He really isn’t so great looking,” Dexter hollered over the ruckus. “Is he?”

  Well, Julianna thought, perhaps not classically good looking, but he had an air of excitement about him, and the rugged look of an adventurer. She sighed like a teenager staring at the lead singer of her favorite band. Or maybe the drummer of her favorite band. Yes, the drummer. Julianna wasn’t a lead singer kind of girl. Lead singers were too polished and obvious, a lot like the nobles’ sons she’d known.

  Then Mortimer looked right up at her.

  And he smiled.

  And he waved.

  And she smiled back.

  And she waved back.

  And she didn’t even care that Dexter was floating above him pretending to poke Mortimer in the eyes with his ghostly fingers, and then pretending to cut off his head by making chopping motions through Mortimer’s neck with his hand, and then doing pretty much anything he could to make himself annoying.

  Mortimer stood and began to weave through the tables scattered all around the room. The room had gotten a lot fuller since Julianna had been in there earlier, and most of the chairs were now occupied, so Mortimer had to do quite a bit of weaving, but she got the feeling that his general trajectory was in her direction.

/>   And sure enough, at last his winding journey through the tables and chairs came to an end in front of her.

  Dexter, growing tired of being annoying since he was not getting a response or making her flustered, floated off Mortimer’s shoulders where his feet had been resting as he’d sat on Mortimer’s head, and landed near Julianna.

  “Hi,” Mortimer said in a rather scratchy voice.

  “Hi,” Julianna responded, heart all of a flutter.

  “This your first job day on the job?” he asked.

  “Er, yes, how did you know?” she asked, hoping that Galt’s worries weren’t turning out to be well-founded after all.

  “Your dress when you came in. It was covered in street sludge. A sure sign you’re new in town.”

  “Er…” This was not how she had been hoping this conversation was going to shake out. Was he on to her?

  He mistook her awkward silence for embarrassment. “Nothing to worry about,” he said reassuringly. “You’ll get your footing soon enough! Listen, the reason I’m asking if you’re new in town is, I’m a union organizer.”

  “Pardon?” she asked. This was at least not what she’d been fearing.

  “A union organizer. Specifically, coal miners’ unions. But I have a friend whose thing is organizing unions for maids and other hospitality-type workers; I can give you her contact info. In my experience, people coming from the villages to work in the city don’t usually know about unions. So I thought I’d bring it to your attention.” He studied her for a moment, apparently trying to discern whether she’d understood him. His study of her face seemed to tell him that she didn’t fully get it yet, so he persisted, “Some bosses take advantage of out-of-towners, you see. And, just from what I’ve seen of your new boss tonight, I imagine he might be the type.”