Demon's Curse

by Alexa Egan

  Molly shifted from foot to foot, her eyes flickering between her mistress and the wall behind her. “No, mum. It’s not that.”

  Bianca tensed. “Is he feverish? Does he need his dressing changed?” She passed Molly to see for herself. “He didn’t take his anger out on you, did he? Of all the ungrateful, self-centered—”

  “He’s left, mum.”

  Bianca spun round. “Gone?”

  “Yes’m. The bed’s made, his clothes are gone, and he’s vanished.”

  “People don’t just vanish.”

  “Must have been during the night or first thing this morn. I let Mrs. Skelton into the kitchens at half six to begin breakfast and didn’t see nothing then.”

  “That can’t be.”

  “I didn’t want to bother him in case he was sleeping, so I never checked on him until just now. I’m sorry. I know I should have done it sooner, but Mrs. Skelton needed me—”

  “It’s all right, Molly. Not your fault our bird has flown his coop.” Bianca entered the room as if expecting Molly’s story to be just that. Bed neatly made, extra quilts folded at the foot. No clothes draped upon the chair. Adam’s journal gone.

  She pulled the door closed again. “I should have known. Good-bye it is,” she whispered to no one.

  * * *

  By the time Mac returned to his lodging house, the throbbing in his side matched the throbbing in his head. All he wanted to do was sleep a few hours before he tackled Adam’s journal. Instead he met David lounging outside the door to his rooms.

  “Mother of All, Mac. What in blazes happened to you?”

  “Bit of a run-in with Spitalfields’ finest.” Mac tried and failed at a reassuring smile as he ushered his guest into his apartment.

  David gave the small, shabby rooms a cursory once-over. “What a dumpy flat.”

  “So it’s not Brighton Pavilion,” Mac answered.

  “It’s barely Brighton barracks,” David shot back.

  For the first time, Mac viewed the place through another’s eyes. Scrupulously clean. Ruthlessly barren. No pictures on the wall. No knickknacks or childhood mementos. Nothing he couldn’t fit into his campaign haversack and take with him at a moment’s notice. Nothing he cared about losing.

  “I don’t need much. I’m only here when I have to be.”

  A silent understanding passed between them before David turned away to rummage among the liquor, pouring himself a tall whiskey. Another for Mac. “So, what happened? Footpads?”

  “It was an ambush. At Adam’s house.”

  David stiffened. “What were you doing there?”

  “Mrs. Parrino and I—”

  “Hold on. The actress Bianca Parrino? What the hell were . . . you’re still on about his murder, aren’t you? After Gray and I told you to leave it alone, you went ahead and poked your nose in anyway.”

  “Adam’s murder wasn’t a random killing. The attack on me yesterday proves it. Someone knows about the Imnada. Someone who wants us dead. The clans could be in danger.”

  “He’s gone, Mac. Unmourned. Unshriven. And who from the clans showed at his service? None. To them, we’re no different from the dirt filling Adam’s grave. Emnil. Nothing.”

  Mac felt David’s anguish like a frozen piece of his own heart, but he said nothing. Sympathy wouldn’t assuage David’s bitter resentment. The Gather had spoken. Their word was final, but mayhap if he knew . . .

  “What would you say if I told you Adam had found a way to break the curse?”

  Even as he spoke, Mac wished to take the words back. The wild flash of hope in David’s eyes was almost heartbreaking. And then, just as quickly, it was gone. Replaced by his usual heavy-lidded cynicism.

  “I’d say you received a knock to the head as well as that gash in your side.”

  “But if it’s true, it could mean a lifting of our exile. We could go home, David. Think on it.”

  “I’ve better things to do than entertain crazy pipe dreams. Face it, Mac. We’ve exhausted every avenue. The Fey-blood’s curse is forever. When will you finally surrender to the inevitable?”

  “When I stop breathing. Here. Look at this.” Mac handed David the journal. “Adam hid it with Bianca the night he disappeared. It’s his diary, David. He never went anywhere without it. Remember? And there’s more. Bianca saw Adam after sundown. She thought I was mad to press her about it, but she saw him. More than once.”

  “She couldn’t have.”

  “Unless he broke the curse. Unless he found the answer. And if he did, maybe he wrote it down in here,” he said, jabbing at the book.

  “Well, did he or didn’t he?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to go through it yet.”

  “All right, so let’s just assume Adam did break the curse, and there’s the ghost of a chance we may discover how he did it and reclaim our place within the clans. A big assumption, by the way, but I’ll humor the man who looks as if he’s been pummeled with bags of wet cement and say it’s all plausible. What do you need from me?”

  “I need you to keep an eye on Bianca.”

  “Look after Adam’s beautiful ex-mistress? Now, there’s a job I can get behind.” He smirked. “And on top. And underneath. The possibilities are endless.”

  “If you value your manhood, you’ll keep your possibilities to yourself.”

  “Are you marking your territory? Next you’ll be clubbing her over the head and dragging her back to your cave?”

  “Leave her alone. I mean it.”

  David held up his hands in surrender. “All right. All right. No need to play defender of the realm. Why does Mrs. Parrino need guarding anyway? I thought you said the men targeted you, not her.”

  “Because something tells me she’s important. I don’t understand how, but I feel it. It’s as if she’s a key. And if we lose her, we lose our last chance to go home. Please, David. You’re the only one I can trust.”

  David headed to the door. “Which says what about you, old man?”

  “And be careful. Someone’s hunting us. They killed Adam and now they’re after me. It’s not a coincidence. But is it because we’re Imnada or because we served together?”

  “Maybe it’s both” was David’s grim reply.

  * * *

  Feeling like a complete idiot, Bianca gnawed the end of her pen, the paper beneath her hand already smudged with cross-throughs and edits. The blotter beside her stained purple.

  She neither wanted nor expected to see or hear from Mac ever again. He had Adam’s journal. There was nothing more to draw him back to her. Whatever happened to him from here on out was none of her concern. And whatever happened to her, he’d made it clear he didn’t care.

  She should have known better than to trust in his avowals of support. She was on her own. Just as she’d always been. Just the way she preferred it. The way it had to be if she wanted to hold tight to her hard-won freedom.

  Whatever tingly excitement she’d felt in his company would dull. Whatever scandalous dreams he inspired would fade. And she would most assuredly not wake with the image of his swoon-worthy body dancing across the surface of her mind or with impossible endearments whispered in a lilting Irish accent pushing against her heart.

  No. Never. Not a chance in this or any other life.

  She shook off her fancies with a firm shrug. She needed to control herself. Hadn’t Lawrence caused the same flutterings and palpitations? Hadn’t he been all that was kind and solicitous and tender—until he’d married her?

  She clenched the pen tightly in her fingers, scribbling another hasty line.

  “What are you writing over there, Bianca sweeting?” Sarah called from her place at the whist table. “Is it a love letter? Anyone we know?”

  “What did she say? A love letter? I hope it’s not that skinny Mr. Paisley who lives with his mother,” Mrs. Commin commented. The earl’s twice-widowed cousin living in East Grinstead had been overjoyed when an invitation to stay at Deane House had been extended. “A stiff wind wou
ld blow that man away.”

  “He’s not skinny. He’s wiry,” Miss Hayes, Mrs. Commin’s timid friend, said in Mr. Paisley’s defense. “And his mother is very nice.”

  “Are we chatting or playing?” Lady Grigson complained. “I’m not getting any younger.”

  The elderly dowager viscountess had been one of the few Society women to buck prejudice and accept Sarah upon her shocking marriage to the earl. A plainspoken woman with a gimlet glare and connections to every important family in England, she spoke of Lord Deane’s mother as “that upstart mill owner’s daughter” and assured Sarah that Sebastian had enough money to buy entrée for his wife were she a gypsy from Timbuktu.

  “Of course. It’s your play.” Sarah turned back to her cards but not before Bianca threw her a threatening we’ll-talk-later glare.

  She looked down upon the horrid scrawl with a sigh. Perhaps she was jumping the gun by writing to Mr. Jones at Dublin’s Crow Street Theatre. But a few months in Ireland might be just the change she needed. A new city. A new job. A new start. She’d not look too closely at why she’d chosen a theater in Dublin above theater companies closer to home. It certainly had nothing to do with a certain Irish army captain.

  “. . . they call him the Ghost Earl. Isn’t that delightfully thrilling?” Sarah gushed. “Such a mystery.”

  “The de Coursy family has always been a bit eccentric,” Mrs. Commin commented between tricks.

  The women’s chatter drew Bianca back from the treacherous train of her thoughts. She listened, halfheartedly dabbling at the page with her pen.

  “You mean mad as a house of hatters,” stated Lady Grigson. “Obviously Gray de Coursy hasn’t fallen far from that tree.”

  Bianca sat up. Why did that name sound familiar? Where had she heard it before?

  “I heard the duke cast him off completely last year,” Sarah said.

  “Maybe so, but the Duke of Morieux can’t stop the major from being heir now, can he?” Lady Grigson remarked, sounding like the voice of doom. “Besides, the duke should feel fortunate he still has an heir. Never wanted the boy to go for an officer. And from all I’ve heard, he was in the thick of things through most of the war.”

  The duke . . . Gray de Coursy . . . An officer . . . Of course. Adam’s journal.

  Gray’s name had figured throughout the pages.

  The gossip was interrupted by Sebastian’s arrival, which turned the conversation away from de Coursy. Bianca concentrated once more on her sad muddle of a letter just as a shadow fell across the desk.

  “Catching up on your correspondence?”

  She looked up into the earl’s quizzical face. One could be forgiven thinking Sebastian Commin past his prime when assessing his craggy features and gray-streaked dark hair. But then one noticed the broad-shouldered build of a pugilist beneath the elegant clothes and the shrewdness in his fiery gold gaze, and knew to tread very carefully.

  “It began as a letter,” she answered. “I’m afraid it’s ended as fuel for the fire.”

  His eyes passed over her scribbling, his mild look of interest sharpening. “A strange little drawing there.”

  She followed his gaze to find she’d unconsciously sketched the crescent symbol over and over along the bottom of the paper. Shocked, she placed a hand over the page. “It’s nothing. Just a mark I glimpsed recently.”

  “Did you?” His gaze grew solemn, his gold-flecked eyes burning brightly. “Step across to my study, Bianca. I’d like to show you something.”

  She rose and accepted his arm, the two of them passing through the corridor, past a pair of salons, to a dark-paneled door. Sebastian took a key from his pocket, fitting it into the lock, and pushed the door wide for her to enter ahead of him.

  The book-lined room smelled of leather and parchment and ink and cheroot smoke. Knickknacks and curiosities lay scattered among the shelves and upon every cluttered cabinet and table surface. Little bits of carved stone. Small figurines in jade and quartz and one in ebony. A compass in a walnut case. A jeweled dagger beside a bowl of egg-shaped stones. A casket with a clasp wrought in diamonds.

  Sarah had always made sport of her husband’s fascination for the fantastic, his enormous collection of strange books and ancient artifacts. She called it his gentleman’s hobby. But this room spoke of far more than a hobby. More like an obsession.

  Bianca’s mouth went dry and her prickling sense of unease returned and spread until it raised the hairs at the back of her neck.

  He ascended a ladder next to the bookcase and pulled a book from the topmost shelf. Climbing down, he took a seat at his desk, clearing his throat with an awkward look of sorrow. “I was very sorry to hear of Lieutenant Kinloch’s death. Sarah says my birthday gift was chosen on his advice.”

  “Adam found the volume at a queer little bookshop in Smock Alley. Said it would be perfect for you.”

  “Really?” Sebastian fiddled with his signet ring. “Interesting,” he muttered again with an infuriating air of mystery as he handed her the book, open to a specific page. “That must be Theophilus Steen’s shop. I purchased this volume from old Steen last year. He’s quite a character.”

  Bianca’s eye fell immediately on the illustration. Not quite the same. The crescent was fatter and there was a small star design she didn’t remember. But there was no mistaking it for anything but the symbol she’d doodled. The symbol scratched onto the bottom of the note to Adam.

  She read the text beside it before meeting Sebastian’s grave expression. “Who or what are the Imnada?”

  * * *

  Line Farm stood at the end of a quiet lane, set apart from the village by a belt of thorny, untended coppice and a crumbling ditch wide enough to corral a flock of grazing sheep. A churchyard ringed with yew stretched away to the west until it met a meadow thick with sweet clover. Jory Wallace had obviously wanted to keep nosy neighbors at bay.

  Unlatching the gate, Mac entered the cobbled yard, trying on varying conversational gambits as he went. Discarding them just as quickly. His nerves jumped under his skin and his pulse thundered in his ears. His last sight of Wallace had been as he was dragged from the Gather’s circle, face white as bone, with blazing eyes and a jaw set like granite. This meeting today could follow one of two paths: Jory might give Mac the moments necessary to explain his presence before he attacked.

  Or he might not.

  Nervous energy had Mac’s mind leaping from David and his promise to watch over Bianca to the letter he’d posted to Gray before leaving London for Surrey. If the worst happened, at least his friends would know his fate.

  Unfortunately, it would be too late to help. Mac would be six feet under.

  The silence held a hushed expectancy. Prickles raced over his skin and up his spine, to settle cold at the back of his neck as he dismounted, and it took all his willpower not to reach for the weapon he carried in his saddlebag. Instead, he scanned the outbuildings for the unseen watchers he sensed, his gaze cutting through the long morning shadows.

  “Bang! You’re dead!”

  Mac’s heart shot straight into his throat at the sudden shout while his horse shied, throwing its head.

  “Bang! Bang!” Another shout, this time from a barn to the right. “You’ve got to fall down now. I shot you fair and square!”

  “Easy,” Mac murmured to the big bay gelding, chagrined at his own skittish response. A year posted to a desk had wrought more changes than permanently ink-stained fingers and a brain packed with useless military trivia.

  “Your gun misfired. And I dove under the bullet. You’re the one who’s dead.”

  So Mac was not the intended target. Merely caught between battle lines.

  “That’s not fair. I’m telling. Da!” The shout became a wail. “Daaaa! Henry says I’m dead.” A young boy bolted from his firing position behind the chicken run, screaming all the way. “Daaaa! Tell him I’m not dead! Tell him he’s a big, ugly liar!”

  An older child stood up from his hiding place at the edge of
the trees, a long stick at his side. “You wanted to play. It’s not my fault you’re a poor shot.”

  Upon spying Mac, both boys rattled to a stop in mid-argument even as an enormous, rugged-shouldered man appeared from the barn, wiping his hands upon a rag, sweat darkening his red hair to a muddy brown. “Sam! Henry! I’ve told ye I need to be—” He spotted Mac, his gaze narrowing with suspicion, body braced as if expecting trouble. “What’s your business here?” he asked, though his tone clearly implied he’d rather not.

  “Jory Wallace?” Mac asked.

  The two men eyed one another—the children looking silently from father to stranger with worried curiosity as the atmosphere grew storm-charged. It was the gelding that broke the standoff. It nickered, stretching its neck toward the smaller of the two boys with a twitch of its soft lips.

  The boy smiled, patting its great dark head before glancing up at Wallace from under a shaggy crop of wheat-blond hair. “Look, Da. He likes me.”

  Wallace’s lowered brows cleared as he tousled the boy’s head. “Course he does, Sammy. Now take him to get some water. Henry, go with your brother.”

  The older boy looked as if he wanted to argue, but at a stern glance from his father he did as ordered, though he shot suspicious glances back over his shoulder as he went.

  Wallace turned his attention to Mac, regarding him with as piercing an eye as a parade ground sergeant. “You’re Sir Desmond Flannery’s heir, aren’t ye?”

  “How do you . . .” Mac’s words trailed off. “You remember me?”

  Wallace gave a snort of disgust. “You’ve something of the look of your father and him I’ll never forget. Big fellow. Shouted a lot. Wanted my head on a plate.”

  “That was him. Don’t take it personally. He wanted mine as well.”

  A muscle tweaked in Wallace’s jaw. “His own flesh and blood?”

  “With Sir Desmond, family counts for nothing against the good of the clans.”

  Wallace shook his head before he motioned toward the house. “Come along inside, then, Captain. I’ve been expecting ye.”