The Cursed Key

by Miranda Brock

  My gut twisted. Had I just tortured the guy? I hadn’t meant to hurt him. I’d only wanted answers. I had to get this magic under control before I did something I would regret.

  Sweat glistened on the man’s forehead. He stammered, struggling to string words together. When he finally spoke, his voice cracked with thirst.

  “My master sent me to find you, to see if you pursued him.”

  I glanced at Kael. The mage had people following us?

  “He hoped you would follow him,” the man rasped, “and that, before you found him, you would remember.”

  “Remember what?” I asked.

  The man twitched, eyelids fluttering. At first, I thought it must be a nervous tick, but he didn’t stop. He began to jerk violently, arms and legs thrashing.

  Kael and I got to our feet and stepped back. My eyes widened. Blood trickled from the corner of the man’s mouth and ears. Then, as suddenly as the fit started, he stilled. He somehow looked thinner, paler. In the light of the nearby streetlight, his eyes were glassy.

  My heart raced. Had I done that? I clutched my hand to my chest. I hadn’t been touching him, though.

  “Is he…dead?” I asked.

  “A puppet,” said Cordelia as she came up behind me. Had she been watching the entire time? Her steady gaze was locked on the body at our feet.

  “A puppet?” Kael rumbled.

  “Poisoned with a yearning to deliver the message to Olivia and nothing else. He’d been driven to the point of exhaustion and starvation. The mage’s doing, most certainly.”

  The blood dripped from the man’s lips to the cold sidewalk.

  “But it’s barely been two days since the mage stole the key,” I said. “He wouldn’t have gotten in this state in such a short amount of time.”

  The witch pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders. “The mage’s dark magic would work quickly. This man didn’t have a prayer.”

  Who was he? Had he chosen the mage as his master, or had it been forced upon him? It hit me then, as I stood with a shifter and a witch in the darkness, that we were standing over a dead body.

  I glanced around. The last thing we needed was for someone to call the police. My gaze fell to the man’s jacket as if I could see the fingerprints I had left there.

  “I will get rid of him,” Cordelia said. “You need to hurry if you have any hope of catching the mage before it’s too late.”

  So many questions burned in my mind about my magic and the crazy visions, but it appeared I would have to find the answers elsewhere.

  “Thank you so much for your help, Cordelia.”

  She gave me a small smile and a nod.

  What was she going to do with the body?

  Before I could ask, Kael grabbed me by the elbow and quickly towed me to my car. He seemed eager to put distance between himself and the witch.

  “Stop manhandling me.” I jerked my arm from Kael’s grasp. “Or next it’ll be your throat I set my knife against.” I wiggled Chaucer in front of his face.

  Kael scoffed, unfazed. He opened the door for me, waited for me to settle into my seat, then shut my door before rounding the front of the car. How was it that one second he seemed ready to physically haul me to Scotland, and the next he was being a gentleman? The guy was an enigma. Were all shifters like this?

  We passed buildings and sidewalks as we made our way to the airport. I tried not to think about the possibility of anyone else trying to follow me.

  “Why did you call me Livvie?” I asked in the silence.

  I got a shoulder shrug in answer.

  I rotated my knife in my hand, studying the dark grains in the handle as we waited at a stoplight. “No one has ever called me Livvie besides my dad.”

  “You must have been really close to him,” Kael said quietly.

  “Yeah, I was.”

  Kael took a turn to the left, making the final stretch to the airport. “What happened to him?”

  “His wretched car wouldn’t start. Instead of calling a cab or asking for a ride like a normal person, he decided to get out his old bike and head to campus his own way.” I paused, a tightness in my chest. “He was struck as he crossed the road. I was on a dig in Mexico at the time.”

  Kael was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

  I shoved my knife back into my bag. “He died being his normal, stubborn self, doing something he shouldn’t have been doing in the first place. It was the way he would have wanted to go.”

  “It sounds like you.”

  “No,” I said as we pulled into the airport. “When it’s my time, I want to see it coming.”

  It was a sixteen-hour flight to Inverness, Scotland. I slept on the flight, cramming myself next to the window in an attempt to not fall asleep on Kael. I still woke with my head lolling onto one of his broad shoulders. He hadn’t seemed to mind. Thank goodness I hadn’t drooled.

  I was still exhausted as we boarded a bus that would take us on a two-hour ride to Kinloch Hourn. It was there we would find Aileen, the witch who would hopefully help us find the second key.

  A sense of excitement rippled through me as the countryside ambled past us. It always did when I found myself in a land steeped in rich history. The archeologist in me yearned to explore crumbling castles, ancient abbeys, and secret ruins.

  The wistful wanderings of my mind were interrupted twenty minutes into the ride by Kael’s loud snoring. It was borderline snarling. I was glad there were only a couple of other people on board. They cast a couple of annoyed glances our way but didn’t say anything.

  The bus finally arrived at our destination with loud, squealing brakes. The doors at the front opened, and I didn’t miss the opportunity to jab Kael sharply in the ribs to wake him. He jolted upward with a mumble and looked at me with bleary eyes. His hair was rumpled on one side, sticking up in all directions like one of those crazy-furred guinea pigs. I stifled a laugh as I nudged him, jerking my head toward the front of the bus.

  “Come on. This is our stop.”

  Kinloch Hourn was a small village. It consisted of narrow roads lined with small, white-washed houses and low stone buildings. The large hills of the highlands crowded the entire area like earthen sentinels, the peaks and lowlands alike wreathed in mist. Despite the ages, it seemed just as wild and ancient.

  Shifting my bag onto my shoulder, I gripped the handle of my suitcase. It jostled and bounced along the uneven road as we made our way to what appeared to be a pub of some sort. There were a pair of young men outside, laughing over some joke about an old man and a blonde.

  “Pardon me.” Kael stepped up to them, his own large canvas bag heavy in his hand. “We’re looking for the bed and breakfast?”

  They pointed us in the right direction, which turned out to be a mile out of town. Luckily, neither of us minded walking. Kael peered into every dip in the grass and glared at every rock.

  Was he always this paranoid?

  Birds chirped in scraggly brush beside the road that was little more than dirt and loose stones. The waters of the Loch Hourn were still in blues and grays beneath an overcast sky that threatened sharp wind and rain to come. In the distance, a few deer, with their crooked antlers spreading wide, crossed a meadow.

  I was a bit annoyed at the shifter stalking beside me, staring down every patch of weed and mossy stone walls. He was killing my mood.

  “Look, I know we’re on a mission to track down a powerful mage of darkness and recover a relic that unlocked some crazy inside of me, but seriously, could you lighten up a bit?”

  “This isn’t a field trip, Olivia.”

  “Well, it’s not a funeral, either.”

  “There it is.” Kael pointed to the bed and breakfast, effectively axing any further argument.

  The bed and breakfast was a little place with stone walls and a sharply pitched roof. Smoke wound skyward from a chimney, and square windows glowed with soft light. I gave a little sigh, imagining myself reading a book by the fire and sipping a cup of tea.
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  “It looks charming,” I said wistfully.

  Kael rumbled again that we weren’t on a vacation.

  “How do you manage to get through life with such positivity and joy?” I asked sweetly.

  He sighed and didn’t deign to answer.

  I opened the gate, and we walked to the front door. A cast iron bell hung beside the door. I pulled the string before Kael could start banging on the door. The resulting clang echoed around us, seeming to bounce off the hills themselves.

  The door opened, revealing a woman with dark curly hair and blue eyes. She glanced behind us curiously, then swept her gaze to me.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Are you Aileen?” I asked.

  “Yes.” The witch shifted her weight. “I’m sorry, but you have to reserve a stay here. I’m not scheduled to receive visitors for a couple more months.”

  “We aren’t here to stay in your lovely…what I mean is, we came here to speak with you.”

  Aileen’s eyes narrowed past me and toward Kael. Her nostrils flared, a sharp glint in her eye. Could she sense he was a shifter?

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think so.” Just as she started to close the door, a cat slipped out. “Nutmeg, get back here!”

  The cat trotted right over to Kael, peering up at him with her striped face.

  He crouched and scooped up the cat. It instantly started purring as Kael scratched it behind the ears and under the chin. Her head bumped against his cheek, tiny claws digging into his jacket as she climbed farther onto his shoulder.

  Both me and Aileen gaped at Kael. The man was snuggling a cat.

  “Nutmeg,” Aileen started, “is a great judge of character. I suppose if she likes you, then you may come in for a short visit.”

  The witch let us in and showed us to a quaint and cozy living room with fat chairs and sofas spilling with small pillows and throw blankets. She gestured for us to sit in a pair of plain wooden chairs. Clearly, she didn’t want us getting too comfortable. She settled on a pale green sofa across from us.

  “What do you want with me?”

  “We were sent here by Cordelia.”

  A slight widening of eyes was the only effect my words seemed to have on Aileen. She waited quietly.

  “We are here for a relic,” Kael explained. “A key, to be specific.”

  Aileen went very, very still.

  My wrists pulled down to the arms of the chair and my ankles pressed back against the wooden legs. I pulled but there was no use.

  What was going on?

  Beside me, Kael’s chair groaned as he wiggled and jerked against his own invisible bonds.

  Aileen didn’t break her stare. The room grew darker, shadows creeping out of the corners and out from under the furniture. My breath rose in wisps, goosebumps prickling across my skin.

  Something broke from the darkness behind me and another from behind Kael. The shadowy forms stopped beside Aileen, and when they turned around, I saw they were women. Their faces were cool, void of emotion.

  “What is this, sister?” the woman on the left asked. “Have you invited thieves into our midst?”

  Chapter 17

  I was tied to a chair in a house in Scotland under the hard, unwavering gazes of a trio of witches, while a shifter rumbled beside me. When this whole thing was over, I’d never take a mysterious relic from a ruin again.

  I ground the lie between my teeth.

  Aileen didn’t break her stare from me as she spoke to her sisters. “This girl claims they came here seeking a key.”

  Girl? I scoffed. I wasn’t a girl. I was a strong, capable woman, and I would not remain restrained in this chair for long.

  “I assure you we have good intentions,” I said. I spoke calmly, though anger buzzed inside of me. They had no right to treat us like this.

  Kael, strangely, seemed to have stopped struggling. He was watching the witches with his head cocked, as if trying to figure out a puzzle.

  “The world has stumbled many times in the hands of people with good intentions,” said the sister on the right. Her hair was black as ink and her eyes a startling blue, frozen and carved from ice. I could almost feel the cool touch of her gaze on my skin. “Besides, we know nothing of the key you seek.”

  So, that was how they were going to play it? “I think you do know what key it is we are seeking, and if you would rather it not end up in the hands of a dark mage, you should probably tell us where to find it.”

  Aileen narrowed her eyes. “What mage would that be, child?”

  I sighed. I was growing tired of repeating the same story over and over, of telling other people of my failure. Kael was silent beside me as I repeated the recent events, though his shoulders stiffened and jaw clenched when I spoke of taking the key out of the ruins.

  Was he more angry at me, or at himself?

  As I spoke of the mage, a glance passed between the trio of witches. It wasn’t a question that sparked in their eyes. With slight nods between them, I knew they already had knowledge of the mage.

  “So, he already has one key,” I finished. “We have been told the second key may be able to help us track him down, so we can recover the first.”

  “How do we know what you say is true?” asked the third sister. She was a mirror image of her black-haired sister, except her eyes were a rich brown. Perhaps they were twins.

  “Cordelia is the one who told us about you. She sent us here. Call and ask her.”

  Aileen shook her head. “We don’t use phones. Besides, Cordelia hasn’t set a toe in these lands for a very long time. For all we know, her allegiances have changed. She could be a traitor.”

  Show them your magic. Cordelia’s words flitted back to my mind. They, too, will be able to sense its ancient breath.

  “I can prove it to you.” I struggled against the invisible bonds. They chafed and itched against my skin, as if they were twined with coarse rope. “Can you turn me loose? I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  Aileen sniffed. She was obviously seriously doubtful that I could harm her or her sisters. Good. Perhaps if they thought of me as no threat to them, as a “child,” they would let me loose. She looked at Kael, her lips pressing into a thin line.

  “You don’t have to untie him yet. Just me so I can show you.”

  The witch turned to her sisters. The way they stared at each other made me wonder if they could silently communicate through their minds.

  Aileen nodded. “Very well.”

  The pressure fell from my arms and ankles. I massaged my wrists and got slowly to my feet. If I made a wrong move, I had no doubt these witches could destroy me where I stood. I pulled in a breath and tried to focus. There was a window behind Aileen, and I peered through it, losing myself in the wild hills and gray skies. I closed my eyes.

  Magic whispered across my soul. I pulled at it, bringing it to the surface. My skin warmed, and my fingers tingled. I knew my magic was there on display, but I didn’t open my eyes. I didn’t want to break my concentration. I was afraid to let it out of control, even if my magic was screaming to be let loose.

  It was a horrible and gratifying feeling to sense the power swirling within me. I could blow the roof right off this place, crack the rafters, and scatter the stones across the cold fields outside like a jar of upturned marbles.

  Something bumped against my leg, and I jumped. I opened my eyes as the magic shrank back into myself. On the floor beside me was Aileen’s cat, back arching against me for attention.

  The weight of judgement was heavy in Aileen’s gaze as she considered me. Behind me, Kael’s chair groaned under his weight. He crossed his arms. Aileen must have released him. At least he wasn’t glaring at the witch.

  The blue-eyed sister turned to grab a kettle. “Tea?”

  She offered a small smile. She was still cautious, but at least she was making an attempt.

  “Please,” I said. Kael echoed me.

  Steaming tea cups were handed out as the sisters settled into cha
irs around the small sitting area. I took a tentative sip of the tea. Chamomile with a hint of honey.

  Aileen fixed me with her unfaltering gaze over her cup as she lifted it to her lips. “You struggle with your magic. You need to embrace it if you wish to tap into its true power. The little light show around your fingers will do nothing against the dark power that could be unleashed on the earth.”

  Embrace my magic. People kept telling me to do that. They didn’t understand it would be like embracing a wolverine, didn’t know the wild danger lurking within me.

  The witch with the brown eyes stirred extra cream into her tea. “The magic inside is something from your bones, stitched into your very being. It is ancient and it is your own.”

  “What do you know about it?” I asked.

  The trio of witches regarded me with a long and steady stare. It was Aileen who answered.

  “I cannot say, exactly, but I have a feeling that if you seek out the mage, you will find your answers.”

  The mage’s words came to my mind, words that had been in some ancient unknown language I had somehow understood.

  Who are you? You do not know any longer, do you? You have dwindled to this weak being with a memory of nothing more than dust.

  Unease shivered through me. I was beginning to lose my grip on my identity. Who was I?

  I shoved the mage’s words away. I didn’t want to find answers from him. The only thing I wanted from him was the key.

  Kael spoke, his deep, rumbling tone breaking through the silence. “Where do we have to go?”

  Aileen gestured for her sisters to come closer, and the trio huddled together. Kael’s finger drummed against his arm, the steady beat the only sign of impatience I could see from him.

  “I will take you,” Aileen said as the sisters broke apart. “The journey is not an easy one. If we leave now, the ruins will likely not be reached until tomorrow morning. If you prefer to wait, you may stay here tonight and make the trek tomorrow without needing to stop.”

  It seemed like the more logical plan, but a sense of urgency was beginning to settle on me. I was restless, as if the key hiding in the feral hills of the highlands was calling to me.