Page 101 of Fool Me Twice

He shook his head at Ash, and Cane wasn’t sure whether it was in response to his question or disapproval of the way Ash had handled the situation.

“You think that was my fault?” Ash clearly took it as the latter.

Cane’s fucked-up mind wanted to agree with the fucking cursebreaker, because if he was at fault…it meant Cane wasn’t.

“No, Ash,” Fix said tiredly.

“No, you clearly do, Fix,” Ash said, his face growing red. “So why don’t you just say it out loud?”

“I didn’t say that,” Fix said, drawing himself up as Ash’s anger turned to him now that Hart was gone.

“You think it,” Ash said.

Cane felt his headache lurch into his forehead, threatening to make his eyeballs explode.

“Enough!” Cane said, stopping further arguments. “This isn’t helping.”

“You’re not helping,” Ash responded, pointing at Cane. “In fact, this is all your doing.”

“Ash,” Fix said again.

Ash spun on his heel. “He’s lost his mind, Fix. I’m not imagining that. Hart’s fucking gone off the deep end. He’s late for shit, he’s not doing his job, he’s keeping secrets, and you’ve seen the way he fucking looks.”

“Ash!” Fix said, louder this time.

“Yesterday was a day of…something. I’m fucking sure of it, because every day is.” Ash kept ranting. “And we didn’t get stickers or a fucking banner, or even him acknowledging it.” He looked at Cane and his eyes went darker. “He’s fucking sleeping with—”

“HE’S CURSED!” Fix said loudly, stopping Ash’s tirade and making Cane’s stomach turn.

“Excuse me, what?” Ash asked, and Fix ran a tired hand over his face.

“Hart is cursed,” he repeated.

Ash frowned. “He can’t be. He’s a cursebreaker. It’s literally not…”

“What?” Cane asked into the silence when Ash trailed off. “It’s not what?”

“Possible,” Ash said. “I told you before. Cursebreakers don’t get cursed. That goes against our, like, DNA or some shit. We can’t actually BE cursed.”

“I thought that was just you being a smug jackass,” Cane said.

“No.” Ash shook his head. “Legit can’t be cursed.”

“But you think Hart is?” Cane directed his question at Fix.

Fix grimaced, sighing deeply before throwing his hands in the air.

“Everything about this curse is strange. It’s not how curses behave, at all. Hart had a theory that your curse was moving. Passing from person to person to anyone connected closely to you,” Fix explained. “I didn’t think about it because one, he’s a cursebreaker, and two, he was so close to you I figured it just couldn’t be it. You were the only person he wasn’t acting negatively toward. It wasn’t until you said he hadn’t told you about Arianna that I knew this is another way this curse is acting contrary to everything we know about curses.”

“He…” Cane’s mind spun. Guilt started gnawing at his bones. It was one thing to be responsible for his business failing, but it was something completely different to be the cause of Hart’s downfall. To be openly told he was. “That’s not…”

“You know it is. Think about it. Who is that person we’ve been living with these past few days? Do you even know them? Really?” Fix asked, looking between Ash and Cane and waiting for the words to land.

Cane swallowed, the horror of it worse than anything he’d ever felt before. “I cursed him.”

“You didn’t cast the curse,” Fix hurried to say. “And, Ash, you didn’t make Hart behave the way he did. But we do need to figure out who did. And we need to figure out how.”

“Finding the caster won’t help break the curse. Curses shouldn’t work on cursebreakers, so who the fuck knows what this one will do to Hart,” Ash said, sounding anxious instead of cocky and loud like usual. “We need a cursebreaker.”

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