Of Curse You Will

by Dorie, Sarina

  Vega left her bed and sat down beside me. She smoothed a hand over my forehead in a motherly way. She was being too nice. At any moment I expected her to withdraw an axe from behind her back and try to chop off my head.

  “By the time Thatch and I started dating, he’d gotten used to having a chip on his shoulder and behaving like a grumpy sixty-year-old man set in his ways. He’d wasted years of his life pining for a woman who didn’t love him, and that hardened his heart. He didn’t care whom he hurt. Fifteen years after your mother’s death, he was still just as fucked up over losing her. Then along came me. Sexy, young, powerful.” She flicked her hair back. “Perfect.”

  Conceited much? I tried not to laugh. She would probably curse me if she got one whiff of my scorn.

  “It isn’t often that a flawless example of femininity falls into a man’s lap, but when one does, a true man knows what to do with her.”

  “Like Elric?” I asked.

  “What can I say? He had me at immaculate orgasms. Your loss is my gain. Obviously.” A sly smile laced her lips. “As for Thatch, that fucktard, he didn’t know what to do with me. I have to say, I couldn’t resist the temptation of seducing the cast-off lover of Alouette Loraline.”

  I wondered whether she had liked Thatch or it was all about her ego. I didn’t need to hear more. I stood. “I’m going to go shower.”

  “I’m not done with my story.” Vega grabbed my wrist and yanked me back down beside her. “The first time we were together, it was nothing special. I suppose he was thoughtful enough, but distant. Boring. He couldn’t even come. I was waiting for the wild and crazy sex magic. Something dark and forbidden.” She paused, skewering me with her gaze.

  I wondered if she had suspected he was a Red affinity.

  I wanted to shout at her he was a perfect lover. He was kind and considerate. The reason he didn’t come was because he didn’t want to barbeque her. I held my tongue. I wasn’t going to give myself away. Or him.

  “He was always so serious. Mopey. He looked like he would cry every time we were together. And then one day he made some offhanded comment about my hair. ‘Have you ever thought about growing your hair out?’ he asked.”

  It was funny to hear Vega’s impression of a British accent. It wasn’t Thatch’s heightened received pronunciation, but it wasn’t cockney either. She sounded more like Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies. I burst into giggles.

  “Shut up. I am telling a story, bitch.” She whacked me on the shoulder.

  I scooted as far back as I could with her holding on to me.

  “His comment about my hair got me thinking. I’d seen the portrait of Loraline in the hallway, the one with her long dark hair flowing over her shoulders. In a spark of inspiration, it came to me. He needed me to act out his fantasy of her. That was why he wanted me to grow my hair out.” Her eyes were bright and shining like she had a fever as she lost herself in the memory.

  She smiled wistfully. “I thought I had him then. I used a potion to grow my hair out for the evening and used a little sewing magic to alter something I owned into something more modest, more Victorian. That was how Loraline had dressed, in high-collared gowns with cameos. I only know that because of Gertrude Periwinkle—who completely copies Loraline’s fashion sense. Loraline wore grays and blacks like an old-fashioned governess. Gray is so not my color, but I wore it for the effect. I wanted to see if I could trigger his old lust-crazed self.”

  I wondered where this story was going. If Vega had dressed as my biological mother because she craved to be who he wanted, I might have felt a little more sympathy for her. But she had done this because she wanted to use him to fulfill her fantasies. I couldn’t imagine this had gone over well.

  “The moment he stepped into the room—it wasn’t this room—it was one of the ones down the hall—the change over him was immediate. ‘How beautiful you look, Miss Bloodmire,’ he said, switching to formalities as if we hadn’t already been fucking each other for three months. His eyes were cool, his muscles tense. I could feel the fury building in him.

  “I liked that imminent danger.

  “I kissed him, and he crushed me to him. This was it, I thought. He was about to explode with passion. He was about to make my wildest sexual fantasies come true. There would be no holding him back.”

  I held my breath, afraid what might come next in her story.

  Her face resembled the mask of his face when she spoke again. “He voiced what I was thinking and more: ‘You need a Witchkin so skilled he can use magic to discover your kinks and know what will turn you on. Someone strong enough to dominate you, so long as he does exactly what you want. You have a taste for dark magic, so long as it doesn’t taint you and get you dirty.’ Or something along those lines. What I remember most was the edge of cunning hiding in his words. I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me or lost in his personal pathos.”

  That sounded like him. I could never tell what he was thinking either.

  “I agreed that was what I was looking for. He smiled, and it was a chilling smile that sent goosebumps down arms. He asked, ‘Is this my fantasy or yours we’re acting out tonight?’

  “The hair and the Victorian dress had worked! ‘Can’t this be both our fantasies?’ I asked.

  “He grabbed me by the hair roughly and kissed me.” She used her funny, Hagrid accent, “‘Tell me, Miss Bloodmire, do you enjoy being scared?’”

  Vega’s lips turned down at the corners, and a sad look came to her eyes. I didn’t doubt she was telling a true story anymore. I just didn’t know if I wanted to hear it.

  “He withdrew his wand and disarmed me of my own. I thought it was part of the game. My coffin slid out from under my bed—I’d asked him twice if he would fuck me in it, but he’d declined on both occasions. It knocked my feet out from under me as it slid into me, and I fell inside. He used his wand to control my body, to will my arms to cross over my chest, posing me like a corpse. I could have fought him, but why would I? I was getting what I wanted. Or I thought I was.”

  I wondered if her delight in the swing club when Elric had made Thatch into a puppet had been due to this incident.

  “He leaned over me, rearranging my hair, smoothing out my dress. ‘Close your eyes,’ he said.

  “I did, never for a moment doubting this was going to be the best fuck of my life. The lid of the coffin slammed closed. Even as he hammered nails into it, I wasn’t worried. It was thrilling and exciting he wanted to roleplay. I was all for putting some romance back into necromancy.”

  My stomach felt uneasy with where this story was heading. “I don’t want to know any more. I get that seducing Thatch didn’t go as you planned. I believe you when you say he was a jerk.” I tried to yank my wrist away from her.

  She held on. “No, you don’t get it. You need to hear this.” She snorted. “I was aware of him sliding the coffin across the floor and into the hallway. It was only when he kicked the coffin down the stairs that I started to worry. The coffin isn’t padded. As you probably recall.”

  I did.

  “I hit my head pretty hard on the way down the stairs. I used a shielding charm as best I could with a headache, without my wand, and without preparation. The air turned hot and stuffy. I tried to push the nails out of the lid, but they were iron. I can’t imagine he would have just happened to carry iron nails with him. That meant he had the power to magically transport cold iron without it weakening him.”

  When she’d pushed me into her coffin, I had wondered what kind of nails she had used when she hammered them into the lid. Could she have thought she’d been giving me some kind of sexy experience? It obviously was one of her fantasies. I didn’t know if she had trapped me in her coffin out of convenience since she happened to have a coffin lying around or because it has something to do with this story she was telling me right now.

  She licked her crimson lips. “His magic was strong—stronger than I’d realized. I’d fucked with his head, and now he
was acting out a fantasy, just as I’d suggested. Only, this wasn’t a sexual fantasy. He was imagining someone he hated was dead.

  “Between my attempts to battle the iron out of the wood and trying to keep up the constant cushioning charm, it weakened me as he jostled me down more stairs and slid me across hallways. My head throbbed, and it was hard to concentrate on the words of an incantation that would dissolve wood. I kept forgetting my place in the spell. Probably that iron sapping my powers didn’t help. Never had I been up against any Fae or Witchkin more powerful than myself.

  “For the first time in my life I suspected I might not be able to solve a problem with my magic. His words kept echoing in my head: Did I like to be scared? This had to be the worst thing that had ever happened to me. For the first time ever, I was powerless.” Her black eyes bore into me, her grim expression hinting at the terror she’d once felt.

  This was why she had pushed me into the coffin. She had wanted me to experience that same horror. She’d accomplished that. I’d been terrified.

  “The coffin dropped, and for a second, my body became weightless before slamming into the bottom. The air was knocked out of me, and I couldn’t breathe. Something soft pattered against the wood. That’s when I realized he was burying me alive.”

  Shivers stole over me. She released my wrist. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I screamed then. I kicked. I might have cried. I don’t recall.” She shrugged nonchalantly, as if she were discussing the weather.

  I wondered why she was admitting all this to me. Vega never revealed anything about herself, especially not if it made her appear weak. Perhaps she truly did care about me in her way.

  “All my abilities for magic left me, and panic took over.” Vega leaned back, feigning indifference. “All the while, the muffled echo of shoveling dirt grew more distant. I doubted he could hear me now. It was quiet in the ground. I forced myself to calm. My temple throbbed. My ribs stabbed with pain every time I breathed. I later realized I had broken them and used Dame Matilda Dalrymple’s broken-bone tonic on myself. In the coffin, I had to put up with the pain.

  “I knew that if I dissolved the wood as I’d originally planned, the dirt would fall in on me, and I would be immobilized by the weight of the soil. That charm would no longer do. Celestor magic is easiest when one has a clear path to the cosmos. With wood, iron, and earth between me and the sky, I had too many obstacles to use Celestor magic. I considered several spells and settled on one that used earth energies to punch the wood and earth outward. I gathered my strength and called magic to me. Impeded as I was by the iron, my broken ribs, and my throbbing head, it took me minutes to do a simple spell. When the air in the box grew thick in my lungs, I knew I was starting to asphyxiate.

  “Finally, I punched through the wood and dirt and crawled out of the hole I’d created.

  “He lay next to the grave, lounging against a tombstone, reading a fucking book. It was dark, too dark for a human to read, but we aren’t Morties. I can see as well as a cat at night. I have no doubt he has his own magical methods for improving his eyesight.

  “Dirt speckled his shirt and hair, probably from the force of my spell, but he didn’t act as though he noticed. He turned a page, glancing up as I clawed my way out. He didn’t offer to help me. Somehow, I ended up with a mouthful of dirt, and I spat it out. I collapsed onto a mound of earth beside him, resting my face in a patch of clover. A spider crawled next to his pants leg.

  “‘It’s about time,’ he said, his gaze straying from his book. ‘You were about to run out of air.’

  “My face was hot, and my hair mussed and dirty. I raked dirt out of my eyes. I shouted at him. ‘I could have died in there!’

  “‘That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? A little thrill to turn you on?’ He rolled over onto me. His pelvis pressed into the back of my skirt.”

  I cringed, wishing she hadn’t started this story. I didn’t want her to tell me something that couldn’t be undone. “I don’t want to know any more. I’m going to leave if you keep talking.” I scooted toward the edge of the bed.

  Vega’s viselike grip closed around my shoulders. “Relax, honey. He didn’t even have an erection. He pushed my face back into the dirt. His breath was as cool as an arctic wind on my ear. And you know what that fucking dickwad said?”

  I tried to pull away from her. “Please don’t make me listen to this.”

  “No, that is not what he said. He whispered, ‘I would have opened it if you had said the safe word.’

  “I tried to elbow him and managed to twist away enough to lift my head out of the dirt. ‘What safe word?’ I asked. It wasn’t like we’d discussed a safe word. I hadn’t planned on needing a safe word.

  “‘Self-absorbed,’ he said. ‘But I would have accepted, I’m sorry, or Touché, or even I’m sorry I’m so self-absorbed. I won’t ever attempt to exploit you again.”

  “‘I’ll kill you,’ I said. I truly wanted to.

  “‘No, you won’t,’ he said. He rolled off me. His smile was cruel, calculating. ‘I’m stronger than you, more powerful, and more cunning. If you kill me, you will have no one at this school worthy of your respect.’ He patted me on the head condescendingly. ‘And no one you find interesting enough to sleep with when you’re bored.’”

  Vega released my arm.

  I stared at her, astounded. “No freakin’ way! Did he actually think you would sleep with him after that?”

  She shrugged. “Of course I wanted to fuck him. We were in a graveyard.” She gave me one of her Duh, dummy looks. “But he made me beg on my hands and knees, that asshole. He kept reading his book, acting indifferent, like he had no interest in me. And do you know what book he was reading. Little Women. Little fucking women! Have you read that stupid book? He actually read it out loud to me. As if that would be more interesting than sex with me. He is so fucked up.”

  There was the pot calling the kettle black.

  I shook my head. “You’re making this up. How do you not hate him? I thought you got along better with Thatch than anyone else. Why would you want to sleep with him after he buried you?”

  She waved me off. “We do get along. We just had to come to an understanding.”

  “So what was your understanding? He would regularly try to kill you, and you would like it?”

  “Don’t judge me, little miss spider-bondage bait.”

  My face flushed with shame.

  “I only fucked him a few more times after that before I realized he was far more predictable in bed than he was when he was in one of his deranged, psycho moods. He had all these stupid rules—he wouldn’t fuck me if I was drunk. He wouldn’t do it in the graveyard again. He wouldn’t let me spank him or use the shackles in the dungeon or his special chair. It isn’t like he’s boyfriend material. He doesn’t want to dance or go out. He just likes to read his stupid, boring books and mope around feeling sorry for himself.”

  I could see why Thatch had wanted a relationship with a librarian. Not only was Gertrude Periwinkle a gorgeous siren, but they actually had something in common.

  I said, “I’ve never seen him mope. He’s just . . . crabby and doesn’t like to leave the dungeon.”

  “Same difference.” She made a fist and knocked on my head.

  “Ow! What was that for?”

  “Just checking to see if your head makes a hollow sound, like empty wood.” She chuckled. “Emo women full of pathos make lousy roommates. Josie in love with Thatch was annoying. I tried to warn her he didn’t love anyone—how could he? There was no love left in his heart for anyone but Alouette Loraline. Josie out of love with Thatch was ten times worse than her being in love.

  “Now I have to put up with you in love with Thatch. If you were more like me and could just use him, you might stand a chance. You could be fuck buddies . . . if you could get over the fact that he doesn’t actually want you. He really wants your mother. But that isn’t going to happen because she’
s dead, and you’re a sorry consolation prize.”

  “Thanks. That was just the pep talk I needed before bed.”

  “You’re welcome. Good night.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Rewarding with the Stick; Punishing with the Carrot?

  Tales from Vega did not make good bedtime stories. I lay awake, trying not to toss and turn in the creaky bed and disturb my roommate.

  Vega didn’t understand Felix Thatch. She’d manipulated him, and he’d gotten back at her. It was obvious they were a poor match. She wanted to go out dancing. He wanted to read where it was quiet. She made fun of his love of literature and didn’t understand why he might be angry she’d tried to use him. At least she’d gotten over him. Then again, when I thought about her hostility toward him, I wondered if she had gotten over him. She held a grudge for a long time.

  Josie wouldn’t have been happy with Thatch because he humiliated her by bringing up her true affinity. He had poked her wound, and she had been too hurt to see he meant well. She also hadn’t understood his love of the classics.

  I wondered if I had teased him too much when we’d argued about the best books that time we’d been washing dishes at my mom’s house.

  If Thatch’s Red affinity hadn’t set off Gertrude Periwinkle’s siren spell and made him into an addict, he might have been happy with her. Or if she hadn’t cheated on him with Pro Ro. Or tried to seduce me.

  And then there was me in this lineup of women. What did Thatch and I have in common besides having the hots for each other? We liked books, art, and magic. I didn’t even know what kind of music he liked. Our temperaments were like night and day. He was crabby, and I hated it when his Eeyore attitude rubbed off on me. We were both introverts with poor social skills, but I didn’t intimidate people, boss them around, or have difficulty feeling the appropriate emotions—or understanding people’s emotions.