by Ani Gonzalez
"The curse is gone," Liam replied. "Well, mostly gone."
His words, however, belied his inner doubts. He'd worked in the house for months, and before that visited it regularly. The curse had always been nothing but a nuisance. It meant accidents, and delays, and repairs.
It didn't mean malevolence.
Until now.
Was it strange that now that he'd supposedly broken the famous Hagen House curse, the house felt darker than before?
"Is that like 'mostly dead'?" Caine asked, raising a brow. "You don't seem so sure, buddy."
Liam shook his head. "Of course I'm sure. We did everything right."
Caine's eyes narrowed. "Everything?"
Liam ignored his friend's innuendo. "Don't you have to set up or something? This thing isn't going to film itself."
Caine rolled his eyes. "I wish. We should do a segment on the house's history, to introduce people to the curse and the new stuff we dug up. Where should we shoot that? The library or study?"
"The study. It's to the left." Caine's words sank in. "Wait, what do you mean new stuff?"
His family's history was well documented, particularly by PRoVE. What new information could they have possibly found?
Caine looked sheepish. "Well, old stuff we're going to pretend that we just found. Our most popular investigations are the ones where there is a mystery. You know, how the person died, what they are trying to tell us, that kind of stuff."
Liam frowned. "No one has been trying to communicate here."
Unless you counted a very long streak of deaths and misfortunes as an ill-conceived attempt to convey information.
"That's the problem. We've been looking at the Hagen House manifestations as a curse laid by Violetta Santelli. People aren't that interested in curses, so we tried to think of another angle."
Liam's heart sank. PRoVE was getting creative, which was never good news. "What other angle?"
"Everyone assumed that Violetta committed suicide and that her suicide sealed the curse, right?"
Liam nodded, a feeling of dread coming over him. The whole point of this video was to make it clear that the Hagen House curse was broken—well, mostly broken. Was Caine going to mess that up?
Caine's eyes narrowed. "What if it wasn't a suicide?"
Oh, hell. This is what Liam was afraid of. He didn't need this right now. "What about it?"
"Think about it." Caine paused dramatically. "What if it was murder?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
KAT SAT in the ginormous master bathroom, wearing a pink plastic cover that read "Banshee Creek Beauty Salon. Who Needs Magic When You Have Makeup?"
Yolanda really had her marketing down, didn't she?
But Kat didn't say that out loud. The botánica/hair salon owner was currently putting up Kat's hair in a complicated hairdo involving heat, curlers, and hairpins so large they looked like torture devices. Compliant silence seemed like the best strategy at this point.
"That hairdo is going to look lovely with the shirt," Cassie commented. "Very Vintage Chic."
"Um, thanks," Kat replied, unsure as to what Cassie meant. Kat peered at the vintage photograph Cassie had pasted on the bathroom mirror. Apparently, she'd found it in the Banshee Creek library and made a copy. It was a grainy monochrome picture of the Santelli sisters in complicated hairdos and ruffled blouses.
Guilia, the older sister, looked handsome and stern with her hair pulled back in a stately bun and her shirt buttoned up high. Violetta, however, smiled at the camera, loose curls framing her lovely, heart-shaped face. Her shirt had intricate embroidery and she wore a cameo brooch. The pose was familiar to Kat, since a faded copy of the picture was in her genealogy records, but this version was a lot clearer. Violetta's smile was broad and bright, whereas Guilia seemed to be eyeing the picture frame with extreme disapproval. Violetta wore a ribbon around her neck, the bottom part disappearing into her frilly blouse. Maybe she was imagining things, but Kat had the odd feeling that she knew what Violetta was hiding under her clothes.
The silver ring Kat was currently wearing in her left hand.
She winced as she felt a hard pull on her hair. Yolanda was trying to replicate Violetta's hairdo. Doing a messy bun hairdo, it appeared, was much more difficult than expected.
"We take out the curls," Yolanda said, tugging hard. "Then we put it up. Then we put back the curls."
She tugged again, making Kat's eyes tear up.
"She will look like a magical princess," Yolanda said.
Yep — another painful tug — a very pained princess.
"Great," Cassie continued, "it goes perfectly with our new theme."
Kat frowned, concerned about the 'princess' part. "Um, what new theme? I draw the line at wearing a tiara."
That would be absolutely the last straw. She was willing to act the part in order to sell the house, but was not willing to play Faerie Princess Santelli. That was just way too ridiculous.
"Don't worry." Cassie's laugh was somewhat reassuring. "We just want an ingénue look, like in the picture."
Oh, boy.
Better get all the bad news at once. "What do I have to do?"
"Don't worry. It's not much, after all, you just got here."
That was a relief.
"We just need you for the family history part," Cassie continued. "Caine is going to have a short interview with Liam to go over his family's story and the events that have occurred in the house. You know, the Hagen financier who committed suicide, Ms. Lorraine who had to be institutionalized, and that girl who saw the blood on the floor. You just have to talk about your own folks."
"Oh." Kat paused. "That's good. I guess."
Cassie's matter-of-fact recitation was a chilling reminder that the house's paranormal history had a real human toll.
Which was one of the things that bothered her. She could still remember the dark feeling she'd had at the botánica. She still had the crystal pendant—the one she could've sworn cracked open—in a drawer in the kitchen.
She didn't plan to open that drawer much. That particular piece of jewelry now creeped her out.
"I don't have a lot of information about my family," she warned Cassie. "Just what my grandmother had in her genealogy records. I don't know much about the, er, unpleasantness." Her "folks," as Cassie put it, were the ones who'd done this. Violetta Santelli had laid the curse, supposedly to avenge the death of her lover.
She examined Violetta's picture. The fragile-looking smile gave her a waif-like vibe, but her strong chin and steady gaze hinted to inner resolve. Was she capable of such evil?
Did that make sense? She frowned, thinking hard. She'd accepted the suicide story without question, but suddenly she wasn't so sure.
"I mean I don't even know who really killed William Hagen," she found herself saying.
Yolanda paused her brushing. Cassie's brow furrowed.
"Who really killed him?" Cassie asked.
Kat nodded. She wasn't quite sure why she'd used the word really, but it felt right.
"That's an interesting way of putting it," Cassie mulled. "I mean everyone knows that he was killed by the Santelli brothers."
"Everyone?" Yolanda interrupted, her hands still in Kat's hair. "That usually means that nobody knows."
"But if he was killed by her brothers, why curse the Hagens? And if the Hagens are all cursed, why has Liam never been attacked?"
Yolanda smiled. "Sí, I always wondered about that," she murmured.
Cassie looked at her sharply. "You still did the cleansing? Even though you had doubts?"
Yolanda raised a haughty brow. "It's a spell, not a legal brief. I called on Oshún and Obatalá to bring light and peace to the house. The details were unimportant."
"Really?" Cassie's brows went up in astonishment. "You're usually little miss research-über-alles. What changed this time?"
"Different problems require different solutions," Yolanda huffed, a bit defensively. "This happened almost a century ago and there
have been dozens of different tales and rumors. No one could be certain of anything. That's why I asked for a general resolution." She glanced at Kat. "Something that would cover all the bases."
Cassie was not mollified. "I don't suppose you specified the mechanism."
Yolanda snorted. "You can't control how it will happen. That's not how it works."
"But Violetta did curse the house," Kat interjected. "Right?"
Something inside her recoiled against the idea. She stared at the beautiful girl with loose curls in the picture. She looked happy and innocent, and not at all like someone who would cause so much death and destruction. Kat had spent all morning with her genealogy records and the Santelli recipe book, trying to figure out why Violetta had jinxed the house.
She'd found nothing.
Yolanda paused, as if choosing her words carefully. "There's a noxious cloud around the house. A shadow that seeps into everything near it. How it came to be, well ..." She shrugged. "That's a bit hard to pinpoint."
Cassie grinned. "This is great. You should mention it during your interview. It's a twist on Caine's pet theory."
"What theory?" Kat asked. Did the PRoVE head honcho think that there was something fishy about the Hagen House curse?
"He calls it a marketing strategy, but I think he actually believes that it's true." Cassie's voice dropped to a whisper. "He doesn't think that Violetta committed suicide."
"Oh?"
"He thinks she was murdered. Our sasquatch expert concluded that someone must have pushed her over the balustrade."
They considered this in silence. Sure, "our sasquatch expert thinks it wasn't suicide" wasn't a phrase that would usually inspire a whole lot of confidence, but...
"In that case," Kat struggled to put her thoughts into words. "Who killed her? And why did Violetta curse the house?"
That was the question. That was the part that bothered her the most. Somehow, she didn't think that Violetta would have cursed this house. She simply didn't believe it.
"And who killed William?" Yolanda added.
Cassie spread out her hands in a helpless gesture. "Caine hasn't worked out the details yet. That usually happens during editing."
Editing? That didn't sound like reliable, fact-based analysis.
Cassie checked her phone. "We should finish getting ready. Filming will start soon and I'd like to get one practice in before Caine gets to us. But let's think about this. It might be a whole new angle on an old haunted house story."
Yolanda nodded and the next twenty minutes were a flurry of activity with waves of hairspray that smelled like fruit and frantic combing and makeup plastering. Kat sat immobile throughout the process, hoping that the final result would be more Anne Hathaway in Princess Diaries and less Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein.
"Close your eyes," Yolanda commanded.
Kat obeyed, waiting meekly until her eyes were shadowed and lined. Then it was time for lip tint and a final application of powder.
"Stand up."
Kat stood, trying but ultimately failing, to sneak a peek at the mirror. She couldn't make out the final results.
"Help me get this shirt on her," Yolanda said.
The apron was carefully removed. Cassie brought the frilly shirt out and helped Kat put it on without messing up her makeup. Thankfully, the PRoVE costume department didn't seem to feel that a full period costume would be appropriate. She was going to wear black pants and heels with the frilly shirt.
She still had a bad feeling about this. She didn't usually wear these many ruffles and she had the sinking feeling that she looked like something out of Little Haunted House in the Prairie.
Cassie straightened the shirt while Yolanda fussed with her hair. Kat opened her eyes.
"There." Yolanda stepped back, looking satisfied. "It's perfect."
Cassie smiled. "It is."
Kat took a deep breath, turned and examined the final result in the room's full-length mirror.
It could be worse.
Her hair was piled up in an antiquey-but-modern disheveled type of hairdo, a Victorian bedhead, so to speak. The shirt, which had appeared busy and old-fashioned on the hanger, now looked bohemian and hip. The vintage-looking shirt matched her wedding ring perfectly.
But something about the ensemble—maybe it was the hair—was a little off-putting. She simply didn't look like herself.
But it could definitely be worse.
That's when she noticed Cassie staring at her, a weird expression on her face.
"What?" Kat asked. "Do I have lipstick on my teeth?"
"No." Cassie still looked puzzled. "It's just, you sort of look like her."
Cassie's words made a chill run down Kat's spine. How could that be? She didn't look Italian at all. She looked Puerto Rican. Her skin was darker. Her hair was curlier. Her hips were, well, you know.
"It's the eyebrows," Yolanda concluded. "You should come by the salon and get them waxed. I'll give you a discount."
Over. Her. Dead. Body. There were some things she wasn't willing to do and waxing was one of the top three.
"Liam also looks a bit like William Hagen," Cassie mused. "We should probably mention that during the documentary."
"Let's go," Kat blurted, before Yolanda brought up eyebrow grooming again. "You wanted to get one practice in, right?"
She walked toward the door.
Cassie laughed. "We may not have time for that, but lead on, MacDuff. We're shooting the first scene near the stairs."
"On the first floor?"
"No, the landing."
"Oh." The landing as in the spot where Violetta stood before committing suicide. Kat gave an involuntary shudder. Some stories said she hung herself from the chandelier, and others said she jumped. It didn't matter. It was still horrible.
But she shook off the ominous feeling off and kept on walking. She'd been living in the house for a while now. She'd gone up and down the stairs dozens of times.
They were just stairs.
"Caine wants to get a silent shot first," Cassie explained. "Just you walking down the stairs."
Kat giggled nervously. "You mean like a prom shot?"
Thinking of it that way was kind of reassuring. What could be more inoffensive than a prom shot?
"Kind of. But try not to smile. You should look serious and solemn." Cassie passed her and headed down the stairs. "I'll film it with my phone and see if the light is right. Caine's worried about the chandelier causing glare."
Actually, glare was the least of Kat's worries regarding the chandelier. She was more worried about the light fixture's love-hate relationship with gravity. "I don't have to walk under it, do I?"
"No," Cassie answered quickly. "Liam would kill us if we did that. Just head down the stairs and come back up."
Kat waited on the landing while Cassie got in position. The chandelier really did look enormous from this angle, all glittering crystals and golden branches. The morning light hit the glass baubles making them glisten.
Hopefully the glow wouldn't mess Caine's cameras too much. She didn't want to have to reshoot the whole thing. It was kind of soothing in a way, a warm golden light tinged with red highlights from the art on the walls.
"I'm ready." Cassie was standing on one of the middle steps, halfway down the stairs. "Walk toward me. Remember, try to look solemn. You're the Santelli heir and this is where your ancestress met her doom."
Doom? Well, that didn't help at all. The word sent shivers down her spine. Crap, why was she so nervous? All she had to do was walk toward the stairs. It was just a few steps.
Yet she couldn't move. She was rooted in place. Just like in the botánica last night.
"You can start now." Cassie's voice had a slight edge of impatience.
Kat forced herself to move forward, one foot in front of the other. She focused on the sunlight reflecting off the chandelier. Its brightness helped to counteract the shadowy feeling of dread washing over her.
"That's good." Cassie
crouched to get the shot right. "Try to slow down."
Just one more step.
"I like how the shirt looks, Yolanda." Cassie's voice sounded odd, as if she were far away. "Although we may want to loosen some of the ribbons to give it a more old-fashioned look."
She kept on talking, but Kat had trouble making out the words. She frowned and grabbed the handrail, suddenly feeling woozy.
What the...?
Kat focused on the lights. The room had suddenly grown darker, but she could still see pools of light from the chandelier reflected on the black and white marble floor. The gold color seemed to be darkening.
"Kat, are you okay?"
The light pooled on the floor, turning it a dark red color.
Like blood.
"Kat?"
The balustrade seemed to melt under her hands and something hard hit her back.
She felt herself falling.
Then darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
"KAT?" LIAM grabbed her wrist and checked her pulse. "Talk to me."
She was lying on the stair landing, her face pale and drawn, but her pulse was strong and she was breathing.
"She just fainted." Cassie's eyes were wide with alarm. "She collapsed like a marionette. I don't even know how to describe it."
"Did you get it on film?" Gus, the cameraman asked.
His question was greeted with silence. Caine stared at him as if he'd grown a tail and horns.
The PRoVE cinematographer stepped back, arms raised. "Hey, it's just business. This is great footage."
Liam's jaw tightened. "Yeah, well. I can give you something even better."
Kat's eyes fluttered open, and Liam's anger dissolved into effervescent relief.
"Lucky for you I have a wife I need to take care of." He propped up Kat carefully. She felt light and boneless in his arms. "Are you okay, baby?"
Her dark eyes looked huge on her pale face. "I fell." She propped herself up and scanned the landing. "There was blood on the floor, so much red."
He followed her gaze. "There's nothing there now."
That had been the first thing he'd checked when they'd heard Cassie's scream and rushed to the foyer. The first thing he saw was Kat lying on the floor behind the balustrade, unconscious. That scared the crap out of him.