Cursed Lines (A Peg Darrow Novel Book 2)

by Camille Douglass

  I’d just hung up with Bruce when my phone buzzed announcing Pammy’s call.

  “You’re keyed to the library.”

  “Huh?”

  “Turns out Alice likes you more than either of us would have thought. Of course sacrificing yourself to try to save her probably helped quite a bit.”

  My skin warmed in the sudden surge of pleasure I took at Alice actually giving me access to her library. It was almost unbelievable, but the surge of giddiness quieted as Pammy explained how to enter. All I needed to do was place my hand on the front door and use the pass phrase. Which made me hold back a snort. We hung up after that. Pammy’s plan was to make a list of all of the trailer parks in the general Phoenix vicinity. I got to go read books. Obviously I’d gotten the better task.

  Twenty minutes later, I walked up to the First Baptist Church in Phoenix, having parked a few blocks down the road. To the casual observer, it appeared to be a majestic ruin, its bell tower missing a good portion of its Saltillo tiles and the Spanish architecture looking well and truly abandoned. Stepping up to the front door, I felt as the magical facade dropped around me. The ruin had actually been restored to perfection, so while local politicians debated on what to do with the historically protected site, they had no idea that an “investor” had purchased the site decades prior and had gone about the restoration under the cover of magic.

  The facade that still stood kept those unwelcome or unknown to our magic away from the largest deposit of books regarding the arcane in the entire Southwest. Alice’s personal collection was a bit of an open secret. I’d been unaware of the presence of the library until last month and now I didn’t know how I’d missed it, but most witches living an ordinary life unhindered by the demands of politics and enforcement or uninterested in general scholarship wouldn’t know about it. And now I had an all access pass, at least until Alice returned.

  I placed my hand on the large wooden doors and uttered the pass phrase. “Little pig, little pig, let me in.” I managed to contain the laugh that wanted to escape with it. Magic surged from the door, trapping my hand against it. It traveled up my arm coating my entire body, pinning me in place. It became difficult to breathe as the magic searched me. It didn’t feel malevolent, just verifying who I was. One hell of a security measure.

  After what felt like minutes, the magic released me, and I nearly dropped the fountain soda I’d been clutching in my other hand. I gulped in air. On shaky legs, I entered the building. With a whoosh, the hanging candelabras ignited, casting a warm glow over the room. As with my other visits, I was momentarily awestruck at the grandeur of the space. The entry way was three stories high, done up all white in deference to the Spanish style. The ceiling sported long dark wood beams holding the magical chandeliers hung at various increments.

  Only magic powered the house, making it truly off grid in the human sense. A heavy wood staircase led to the second floor landing, an open space filled with shelves and shelves of magical books. A previous visit had taught me there was even a cozy reading nook with a fireplace among the stacks.

  Climbing the steps to the second floor, the stark quiet of the room and its vastness brought on a crushing sense of being completely overwhelmed. The tension that began to stiffen my shoulders multiplied once I stepped onto the landing and looked at the huge expanse filled with book after book after scroll. I swallowed. I’d only ever done research here with Alice present, and like the master librarian she was, she’d been able to traipse amongst the stacks, plucking titles with ease. The scary thing being that she didn’t appear to grab those books with any mind to order, which meant it all came from her head.

  Alice was endearingly referred to as bat-shit crazy. For my my part, I considered it to be a term of endearment for the genius if addled mind Alice held, others maybe not so much. Taking a deep breath I began to walk among the stacks. I wasn’t really searching as yet. Mostly I was looking to see if there was any rhyme or reason to the madness laid out before me.

  There were indeed labels on the shelves, but to me they were nonsensical. Each row of shelves had a letter engraved into the wood A through Z, but the labels for the shelves were labeled by strange “topics.” Some seemed logical enough if slightly odd, to label an entire shelf for that subject “Cats” or “Bread,” but then there were the truly odd labelings of “Oh No She Didn’t” and “Pay the Price.” All of these subjects appeared in no specific order, definitely not alphabetically according to the shelf row.

  I wandered down the length of the shelves, sure that this had all been a wild goose chase, then a little ray of hope hit me. At the very back of the shelves, nudged into a dark corner, sat an old-fashioned card catalogue. Thank the gods. It even had little scraps of paper and miniature pencils to write down locations. I pulled out the drawer labeled “M” and let out a breath of relief that it was alphabetical by actual subject and not the labels that appeared on the shelves.

  I didn’t hit the jackpot and find a subject labeled for the McAllister, so instead I looked under “F” for families. I found several books that were on the subject of famous witch families and noted the rows and sections they were in. A particularly interesting one was labeled the “Dark Ones.” Normally I’d think it was in reference to other vampires, but the description labeled it as giving a history of the dark witches of the Americas. I put a star next to the reference number I’d been listing my finds on. I continued on looking up various subjects, mainly curses and dark magic. When I had ten books listed, I figured that was more than enough to get me started.

  Finding the books took time because even though I had the rows and the subjects listed, as previously observed, the subjects weren’t in any order that made sense to my brain. I did laugh a little when I pulled The Dark Ones from the “Oh No She Didn’t” subject shelf and continued on grabbing the other books as I found them. By the end of my search, I’d located every book except for a small volume on curses. I gave up after twenty minutes because I had three volumes on the subject, it was already looking to be a long night, and all I’d brought by means of caffeine was a jumbo diet Pepsi that was now half gone.

  My finds were all gathered next to a wingback chair in front of the fireplace that had lit along with the candles, giving off cozy heat. I sat and pulled out a three-subject notebook I’d taken to carrying whenever I had my purse. Flipping the book to the final section, I grabbed my pen and pulled the first book from my stack at random, one of the curse volumes, and began my labors.

  Three hours later, I was tired, out of soda, and had to pee. I’d never used the bathroom here, and finding it might require a ball of string, a toll for a mystical creature, and my blood for all I knew, but I needed to make the quest because the night was not over. I was relatively sure I hadn’t encountered a doorway to a bathroom while I searched the stacks, so instead I went to the front of the landing to a corner with an entryway that led off to what I assumed was Alice’s personal quarters.

  “I’m not snooping. I just have to pee,” I said out loud as I entered the hallway. Silly though it may be, it never hurt to make your intentions known in a place as magically charged as The First Baptist Church slash Secret Witch Library. A light suddenly appeared in an open doorway. My magic jumped in my palms at the unexpected light.

  “Is anybody here?” I called out, “Like I said I’m just looking for a bathroom.”

  When no one responded, I warily continued down the hall toward the room. Back to the wall, I slid along cautiously as I looked in the room. Porcelain gleamed in the form of a toilet. I let out a sigh of relief. The house had just been directing me to my stated desire. I went in and closed the door. Paranoia had me looking behind the heavy shower curtain around the claw foot tub before I sat down to do my business because I didn’t need a Psycho experience to add to the atmosphere of the day.

  After relieving myself and washing my hands, I stepped out to the hallway, about to head back to my books, when a moment of genius hit me.

  “Any chance a
girl could get a cup of coffee?”

  Another light turned on at the end of the hall. Giddy, I walked down to the new light source. The bathroom light turned off as I walked away, which spooked me a little but not enough to stop my coffee mission. I walked into a kitchen that was set up a bit like an office break room given the smattering of tables and chairs on one side, but unlike offices, these were all heavy dark wood and not plastic, metal, and laminate.

  I imagined Alice holding study sessions in here, but really I’d need to ask her how often she needed seating for thirty at the library. Turning from the tables, I spotted the object of my desire on the stone countertop. A coffee pot sat in the center; walking over, I found that the cabinet above it labeled “coffee supplies,” no ambiguity here. The coffee maker was a standard model, and I easily placed the filter, grounds, and water before hitting start. Among the supplies there was sugar along with sweetener. Even better, I found a variety of flavored creamers when I opened the fridge.

  I selected a cinnamon chocolate number, and while the coffee brewing made its beautiful music of hisses and gurgles behind me, I felt I had hit the mother lode. Next to the fridge, sitting on a glass pedestal complete with cover, sat a loaf of cinnamon bread. I debated whether it was appropriate to pilfer bread along with coffee when I saw the framed sign above it. Help Yourself. Magical Minds Need Magical Bites.

  If rumors were true, the bread was magical in the sense of being delicious beyond reason, so I lifted the lid and ripped off a chunk of the pull-apart bread, taking a healthy bite. Butter, cinnamon, sugar, and bread, hit my senses in a combination that stood up to the hype. I set the remaining chunk down on a paper towel, determined not to eat the entire stash like a heathen and deciding to ration what I’d already taken.

  Back at the chair with my snacks, I went into overdrive. I found five curses that were likely candidates for the death bombs left at the rental, and as if reading my mind, my phone buzzed with a call from BBTT.

  “Hello,” I answered.

  “Hey, Peg, got your results on the mouse. Nasty business.”

  “Yeah, his death squeak led me to believe it wasn’t a pleasant death.”

  There was a pause on the other end. “Yeah, okay, so the mouse’s heart literally exploded.”

  “Cor Contractus,” we said at the same time.

  “Why’d you have the mouse autopsied if you already knew?” He sounded exasperated.

  “I didn’t know his heart exploded, but I have been researching death curses, so when you mentioned an exploding heart, I figured.”

  “Well, there you go. Please do me a favor and make sure Pammy knows I called you. I don’t need her calling my mom.”

  “Of course.”

  We exchanged goodbyes, and I hung up. I sent a quick text to Pammy, Craig came through. It was the Heart Break Curse. I translated the Latin.

  I got her response quickly. Good, I didn’t really want to call his mother, but you can never back down on a threat. Not so good about the curse.

  Pammy liked to pepper in little Fortune lessons here and there. I repeated “don’t make threats that you don’t follow through on” a couple of times. She also enjoyed pointing out when you failed to pick up on her subtle lessons. Really, I needed to add a section to my notebook and call it Pammy’s Tips and Tricks to Succeed at Being a Soldier of Fortune. I almost opened to a new section to add that but shook my head and dug back into the books.

  The curse books held no information regarding draining. So taboo was it in our society that I could learn how to literally make someone’s heart explode, but that book considered draining too hardcore. Draining was the curse that had led to our outing and the end of our thousand-year life span. One of our leaders in Salem, Massachusetts, had fallen in love with a mortal man. Rather than enjoy the years she had with him, she decided that draining other humans to stop his aging was a good idea.

  She might have gotten away with it if she’d gone after the old or the sick, but she wanted a more powerful life source and chose the children of her enemies. Not a shining pillar of witchhood. She got caught, hanged, and decapitated but not before she outed all of the witches because they did not defend her indefensible acts.

  The witches helped the villagers stop her, feeling safe behind the protection of being nearly immortal. She took that away from us because the most evil among us are often the most powerful. Before her curse, it would take a beheading or setting someone ablaze until nothing remained but ashes.

  It was easy to see why the spell had been pretty much erased from our history, but the problem with censoring something was that you limited the people who had access to the information. It did not sit well with me that McAllisters were the only family that knew of the spell. Pammy had thought that the counter-spell was lost, but if anyone had it, Alice would, so I continued to comb through the books.

  Well after midnight, my third cup of coffee from the pot had grown cold, and my eyes struggled to stay open, but I’d finally reached the last book in my pile, The Dark Ones; and eureka! Right in plain print were the histories of some less than savory witch “families.” The book implied that they were a cult with a turnover in membership given the longevity, but as I read, given what I knew I had a niggling feeling that the rotating cast of characters had simply taken on new names and not been replaced entirely.

  The family was always led by a matriarch and though that was the norm in witch culture, the descriptions of the leader mirrored each other, and they all noted reports of the woman losing decades of age seemingly overnight. This was often at a glance before the family moved on. One such encounter had been found in a journal had been excerpted in the book.

  Mary McGowan came and stayed with us for a summer. She claimed to be kin of our grandmother who had passed the year before. Her elderly and fragile appearance along with the stories she shared with us about our grandmother led us to offer the woman shelter, but she had odd ways about her. She was friendly, but after the initial stories, she became removed and cold.

  The only person she was still friendly toward was our youngest, Mary. Every day she’d play with that girl and tell her stories. Twice we found them out of bed going for late night walks to find fairy circles. We had to ask the woman to not do that anymore, as it always gave me a fright. Two months into her stay with us, I found her bag by the front door, and when I saw her come down the stairs, I was in for a shock.

  Gone was the fragile old woman with steel-gray hair. Her thick braid now a lustrous brown, her gait unfettered by age, her face unlined. If it weren’t for the piercing blue eyes, I would never have recognized her. I questioned her on it, and she admitted that her side of the family had a secret for a fountain of youth, and she’d simply needed time to gather her vigor.

  I wanted to question her further, but suddenly there was a wagon that held eight of her kin, all strong, young witches. I asked her if she wanted to say goodbye to Hillary, but she just replied that she already had her goodbyes with the girl and left in a whirlwind not even introducing her family.

  It was not until hours later that we realized the absence of our child. I knew in the heart of a mother what had happened, and I spread the story far and wide. I can only pray that the woman and her family met a miserable end because it is clear now that the story of being family was just another strand in the web of deceit and evil she weaved.

  Similar accounts spread throughout the book. The name changed, the mysterious youthful transformation was usually present as well. The matriarch was always present but it seemed her followers varied other than a man I assumed to be Michael and the total number of nine witches, three sets of three. Nine could be a powerful number allowing three circles at any given time.

  The final chapter ended as the others had with witches missing. The entire book focused exclusively on tales of drainers, and as I flipped to the last page, I found a yellowed piece of paper folded and wedged in the crease next to the spine.

  Scanning the document, my eyes widened. It
was a reversal spell. Pammy had said it was impossible, but my magic tingled just reading over the incantation. I thought it could be the real deal. The lethargy I’d been feeling faded quickly as I transcribed the spell into my notebook. I replaced the original into its hiding place and closed my notebook, knowing it held something precious and rare. I cleaned up my coffee mug and pot and re-shelved my books, leaving the space how I entered it.

  As I left the old church building, I clutched my purse to me. I knew this wasn’t the only copy of the spell, but it felt fragile. If I didn’t get it to the other Arizona witches before our final showdown, I didn’t know that anyone ever would with Alice being gone right now. So I got in my Jeep, turned on the engine, and locked all my doors before texting the spell to Pammy. I then sat and memorized the counter curse. Given its oddly simplistic nature it made sense to have it ready to go if the McAllisters found me before I found them.

  An earlier lesson from Pammy, paranoia was being prepared. She likened it to television thrillers where some idiot would get secrets vital to national security and for reason X, Y, and Z never disclosed said secrets, gets killed in a fireball, and then everyone’s screwed for six episodes for something that could have been resolved with one phone call. One of my daily goals was to not be that guy. I sent a second text stating that the family had gone by different names over the centuries, but they always had nine members. Then I signed off because the clock read two a.m., and a witch worth her mettle knew that she needed her energy stores up.

  17

  My kitchen table was small, and every spot of it was covered in various notes, my laptop, and Cheddar, who was supporting my work by sitting on whatever piece of paper I was currently looking for. I’d called Pammy when I’d woken up after four hours of blissful sleep to verify she’d gotten my text. She had, and she emailed me a list of the trailer parks that they had found. I continued my search to make sure the list was as thorough as possible.