Casually Cursed

by Kimberly Frost

  “I got the woman I wanted. If we live fifty more years or fifty more hours,” he said, repeating part of what he’d said when he’d proposed.

  “Crazy,” I murmured, but gave him a kiss, feeling the magic curl into me, warm and silky like melted caramel. “I hope it’s fifty more years. But don’t say I didn’t warn you if it’s fifty more hours.”

  “Kiss me again, and I won’t care if it’s fifty more seconds.”

  Yep. Crazy.

  * * *

  FOR PART OF the flight we slept, but when we were awake Bryn read secret WAM files sent by his friend Andre. The electronic documents contained the most up-to-date intelligence on the Seelie fae. Unfortunately there was no information about getting into the Never or getting out of it. Several operatives had breached the gates, but they were either found dazed and confused in the woods, unable to give any information about what had happened, or they were never seen or heard from again. Not encouraging.

  “You should never let it slip to anyone that your aunt Melanie has been underhill and returned with her memory intact.”

  “You’re right. WAM would send someone from the Conclave to get her, so they could question her,” I said grimly. The World Association of Magic was the organization of witches and wizards worldwide. Its leaders had an agency that reported to them called the Conclave, which was made up of killers and spies. It was hard to tell who was the most dangerous . . . the operatives sent by WAM or the leaders who sent them.

  I rubbed my tired eyes. I didn’t know why I’d bothered to buy Saveur and Fine Cooking magazines. I hadn’t really looked at them. I’d spent most of the time whispering back and forth with Bryn about the trip, and regretting that the first time I’d see his home country was just to pass through on the way to the Never.

  “I wish we had time to see where you grew up,” I said.

  “Next time,” Bryn promised.

  “Maybe on our honeymoon.”

  He smiled. “Ireland would be great for our honeymoon, but then, I’d be happy just about anywhere celebrating that.”

  I smiled. “Sweet-talking candylegger.”

  He laughed. Candylegger was what Edie called him. It was slang from the 1920s and supposed to be an insult, but I’d turned it into a pet name.

  * * *

  HEATHROW AIRPORT IN London, England, is four-point-six square miles, and I think we walked at least half of that. I was so tired I used a pillar to hold me up while we waited for our luggage.

  I noticed Bryn go still and then look around sharply. I felt his magic gather. Suddenly alert, I felt my spine stiffen, and my gaze darted side to side.

  “What is it?”

  “I sense magic from at least three different practitioners. It’s all around us.”

  I bit my lip. “I wish Merc were here,” I said.

  Mercutio is my ocelot companion and pretty much my best friend. I’d had to leave him in Duvall, because Merc’s a jungle cat and there are no jungles in the United Kingdom, and it was going to be really cold. Also, I didn’t trust the faeries. What if they locked us up? Mercutio roams all night. He has to be free to go wherever he wants or he’s not happy.

  “I wish I had a gun,” I whispered. Being unarmed made me feel vulnerable. For weeks I’d kept a gun in a kitchen drawer with other occasionally used utensils. “Wait, look. It’s okay—there’s Andre!”

  Bryn’s friend Andre is as cute as a cupcake. He’s chubby and has thinning light brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He looks like a baker for Pillsbury, but really he’s a wizard and physicist.

  “I didn’t tell Andre to meet us,” Bryn said.

  My smile drooped a little. “Well, he probably wanted to surprise us.”

  “I never told him what time we were arriving. I planned for us to go straight to Dublin after collecting a pair of reference books on the fae from a London bookshop.”

  Andre hurried to us. “My friend,” he said, embracing Bryn. “My dear,” he said, kissing and hugging me.

  “What’s going on?” Bryn asked.

  Andre is Swiss, but he speaks German as his first language, and he lapsed into it, speaking rapidly.

  Bryn glanced around and then nodded. I gave him a questioning look.

  “We have to go to WAM headquarters.”

  I tensed. “Why?”

  “Andre wasn’t told,” Bryn said.

  We’d gotten into trouble with WAM pretty often. They’d sent operatives to train me for a magical challenge, and those guys had ended up dead. But they’d been bad guys. Then the Association had sent more representatives, including the president and his superspy bodyguard. Three out of the four people they’d sent on that trip—including the superspy, who turned out to be my great-aunt—had wound up getting killed.

  A lot of what had happened had been their own doing, meaning sometimes they’d killed one another. Assassin-spies, go figure! But Bryn and I had played a role in the demise of every WAM entourage that came to Duvall. We’d been acting in self-defense and in the defense of others, but even though we’d given proof of criminal conspiracies and wrongdoing, I didn’t think the Association was particularly pleased with us. Their operatives had been trying to secure Duvall and its magical tor for WAM; Bryn and I had prevented it. We just kept rebelling against everything the powers that be wanted us to do.

  “How does the Association know we’re in London?” I asked, glancing around. I still hadn’t seen anyone who looked like a magical assassin. And Andre certainly wouldn’t have told his bosses about our plans.

  “I don’t know,” Bryn said; then he leaned close. His voice in my ear was low. “Remember which things to keep secret.”

  “I’ll remember!” I whispered fiercely. “Listen,” I said, grabbing his arm. “We’re in the airport. They won’t try to take us from here by force. There are too many people and cameras. We can just get on our plane to Ireland.”

  “Getting to Ireland wouldn’t do us any good.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Andre’s given us the message. If we don’t comply, they’ll have operatives waiting to take us by force in Ireland the minute we step out of the airport in Dublin.”

  I frowned. “That’s not fair.”

  “I know. Take a minute. Remember the practice interviews we did to prepare for the interrogations last time? Go through those in your mind.”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. I sat on top of my suitcase and closed my eyes to concentrate. I ran through the practice question-and-answer sessions I’d had with Bryn until I heard him say, “Christ. You’ve got to be kidding.”

  My lids popped up, and then my mouth fell open.

  Dressed in a fur-cuffed coat in dusty rose and a short burgundy beaded dress and matching booties, Edie strode toward us. Next to her, on a leash that was attached to a jeweled collar, came Mercutio. And bringing up the rear in a cowboy hat, jeans, a dark sweater, and boots was my buff ex-husband, Zach. He had a coat under his arm and a duffel in his hand. People turned to stare at the trio. It’s not every day that you see an heiress in flapper wear with an ocelot and a cowboy in tow. In fact, I’m pretty sure no one had seen that combination before. Ever.

  Mercutio darted forward and, rather than being pulled by the leash, Edie let it go. The leash slapped the ground and slithered behind him.

  I put my arms out and hugged him when he got to me.

  “Thank goodness you’re here, Merc! We’ve just landed, and we’re already in trouble!”

  “Hello, biscuit,” Edie said to me.

  “Edie, how—”

  “First of all,” she said, leaning forward to whisper, “let’s remember that we are in the land of tea and treachery. My name is Evangeline Rhodes. My friends call me Evie, which is short for Evangeline, of course.”

  “Oh. Right. That’s good thinking. Evie. I’ll try to remember that.”
/>   “Luckily Edie and Evie are very close. If you slip, it may go unnoticed.”

  Zach nodded briefly at Bryn and then joined Edie and me.

  “But I don’t understand how you got Mercutio here.”

  “It’s called money,” Edie said.

  “Edie,” I hissed.

  Evie, I corrected in my mind. Think of her as Evie.

  “I chartered a plane, paid some fees, and arranged for some powerful people to smooth the way. One exotic animal arriving in London for an ad campaign and commercial shoot with his owner,” she said, touching her chest. “And his trainer,” she said, nodding at Zach.

  My eyes widened.

  “Lyons could’ve managed it if he’d bothered to try. Remember that, darling,” she said. “Who best takes care of you? Fiancé or family?”

  “Hello,” Bryn said, and bent to stroke Merc’s fur. “I’m not even going to ask.”

  Edie looked around. “There’s a lot of magic here,” she observed.

  “Yes,” Bryn said. “It belongs to the Conclave, and it’s here for us.”

  “Oh,” she said, frowning.

  Andre stepped forward and extended a hand. “The beautiful Ms. Rhodes, I believe.”

  “The very one,” Edie said, turning to Andre. “And men who call me beautiful may also call me Evie.”

  Andre blushed. “Evie, I’m Andre Knobel. I’m very pleased to meet you. I wish the circumstances were better.” His brow crinkled. “I’m afraid the Association sent me to greet you and to extend an invitation for you to come to headquarters.”

  “Just when I thought I’d made a friend,” Edie said.

  “Do you still think it was a good idea to blow into town on a pile of cash and flash?” Bryn asked.

  “You tried to sneak through, and that didn’t work. So why not flash and cash? If we are going down, at least we can do it in style.”

  For the love of Hershey!

  I took a deep breath and stood up straight, giving each of them a stern look.

  “Everybody needs to remember his and her manners, and that we”—I gestured to the group of us and continued—“are all on the same team. Rule number one is no fighting with each other in front of the bad guys. And here comes one.”

  7

  THE WIZARD WHO’D come up to us in the terminal was our driver. We’d been taken from the airport to a London neighborhood that featured stately old buildings on big lots of property.

  Our destination was a building of beige-brown brick that made it look bronze as we approached. We emerged, and I looked up. Gargoyles perched on stones three stories above us. My eyes widened. Were the creatures real? Did they turn from stone to flesh at sunset? Or were they just decorative? At the headquarters of magic, you never knew.

  At the window of a corner turret, someone held back dark curtains. I tried to figure out whether the figure was a man or a woman, but the person stepped back and the curtains swung closed. Another wave of unease rolled through me.

  The morning air had an icy grip, frosting the steps and making me pull my new emerald-green wool coat closed around me. Bryn had ordered it for me over the Internet. When I’d tried it on in Texas, I’d thought there was no way the United Kingdom would be cold enough for me to need something so heavy and hot. It wasn’t like we were going to Alaska or the arctic, after all. But luckily I’d trusted Bryn and hadn’t exchanged it for something lighter.

  I quickly found that I don’t appreciate it when the weather’s cold enough to make my breath look like smoke. Breath should be invisible.

  Andre held the door for us, but I paused on the steps to look at the black sedans that sidled up the street. Those cars with the darkly tinted windows had followed us all the way from the airport. They stopped in the street next to where the van we’d ridden in was parked.

  “Tamara,” Bryn said, nodding to the open door.

  “They’re watching. Waiting to make sure we go inside,” I said.

  “Then let’s give them something interesting to watch,” Edie said, sashaying up the stairs as if her hips were maracas to shake.

  “Wow,” Bryn said. “Is she for real?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “I guess so. For now, at least.”

  Zach’s narrowed gaze never left the sedans until we were inside and could no longer see them. I wondered if they would stay there, double-parked, to be sure we didn’t bolt out.

  The lobby’s tapestries depicted the seasons. One had the four elements with spring flowers, one had the night sky with a witch in a sundress, one showed a storm with blowing leaves, and the last one had an elderly man reclining and a woman holding a bundled baby in the falling snow. I realized they represented the major kinds of magic: elemental, celestial, weather, and blood and bones.

  Edie’s shoes clicked across the parquet floor as she followed Andre to the elevator. The elevator doors were brass with square-framed images on the right and left. The right side looked familiar, and in an instant I recognized it.

  “It’s the sunburst from the locket,” I said, pointing to the panel. “That looks familiar, too,” I murmured. On the left the pattern was a diamond shape, bigger on top than bottom. There was a large gold gem at its peak, two black stones of equal sizes on the sides, and then a small white gem on bottom. “Where’s that picture from?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Bryn said. “It’s an image one sees in different mystical art representations, but it’s not a constellation or pattern that’s historically meaningful.”

  “Edie, have you seen that picture before?”

  “I suppose so,” Edie said, shrugging. “I’ve been here before.”

  I held the heavy brass rail inside the elevator and wondered why it was there. Would the thing lurch as it went up? But no, the ride was perfectly smooth. We exited on the fifth floor. The corridor was painted burgundy with rose and gold trim, but the door to the office of the president was simple oak, and when it opened there was a whole different decor inside: glass and steel, very cold, very modern.

  A fit, tall man in his middle forties stood at a raised workstation of smoky colored glass and metal, typing quickly. He wore trousers and a thick sweater, and had honey-brown hair and wide-set eyes with fine lines around them. If someone gave him a jacket and goggles, he could’ve advertised a ski vacation in the Alps.

  He finished typing and lowered the screen to close the laptop.

  “Hello,” he said, coming forward. He shook Bryn’s hand first and then mine, introducing himself as Lars Anderson, the interim president of WAM. “I understand that I owe my current position to you.”

  I flushed. “Well, you’re welcome, I guess. Though we didn’t mean to get John Barrett fired—or thrown in jail. Is he in jail?” Or had he been tried and executed?

  Anderson said, “You have no cause to apologize. His fate was of his own making, yes?” He smiled, stopping in front of Edie, who looked bored. He took her hand and held it for a long moment. She favored him with a smoldering green-eyed look. I cleared my throat.

  “Um, Evie, do you have any gum in your purse?”

  “No,” she said.

  “How about chocolate? Or mints? Can you check?” I asked, wanting to separate her from the president.

  She ignored me, but Zach, who appeared to be looking around, hooked a finger in her pearl necklace and tugged. She took a step back to ease the pressure of the necklace on her throat.

  “This is Mr. Sutton,” Edie said, adjusting her pearls. Zach’s finger slipped out.

  “What are you?” Anderson asked Zach. They were the same height, but Zach had bigger muscles, which was almost always the case.

  “I’m just the animal trainer,” Zach said, nodding toward Merc.

  That’ll be the day! Merc and Zach weren’t even friends.

  Mercutio prowled around the office, stopping to look at his re
flection in the window.

  The door opened, and my jaw dropped. It was the Winterhawk, with upswept hair and dressed in tweed. But of course it couldn’t be the Winterhawk, because I’d killed her.

  So this was her twin sister, Josephine, my grandma. The one I’d never known about growing up.

  While I was little I thought Granny Justine had had Momma and Aunt Mel late in life, but it turned out that she was my great-granny. Momma and Aunt Mel had pretended their own momma didn’t exist. And so far, no one had told me why.

  Her hair, a mix of silver and steel gray, was pulled and sprayed into submission in her bun. Her hands were tucked into the pockets of her tweed blazer, making me wonder if she had a weapon. This was the Winterhawk’s twin, after all. But her hands stayed hidden away, not doing anything aggressive. She wore a three-quarter-length wool skirt and black boots. I remembered I’d been told she was a teacher at a school for witches. I could see that. She looked very professorial. She also looked stern, like she might break and breed horses in her spare time.

  I hesitated for a moment. I’d killed my grandma’s twin sister, Margaret. If someone had killed Aunt Melanie, Momma would never have forgiven that person. Same for Aunt Mel. Sisters, especially twins, were as close as people could be.

  Her light green eyes swept over me. She didn’t smile, but she didn’t frown either.

  I stepped forward. “Hi. I mean, hello.” I thrust out a hand. “I’m Tamara Josephine Trask. I’m real sorry about what happened to your sister. I didn’t want it to turn out that way.”

  “Yes, well, I can’t say I approve of your choosing to protect a Lyons to the death, but I understand that you owed him a debt. He’d saved your life in the past?”

  I nodded.

  “Debt discharged, then. Maggie understood duty. As do I.” She cleared her throat, and then glanced at Bryn. “He’s a Granville prizewinner. An asset to the world of magic that it would be a shame to lose.”

  Was there a little threat in her tone? Or was I just imagining it because her voice was a lot like her sister’s?