Page 1 of Entranced By the Basilisks

PROLOGUE

EMILIA

“So, you’ve been cursed?”

I flinch.Cursed.

The woman across the intricately carved desk asks the question in a careful way, a kind way.

I blink, dropping my gaze while I nod. My eyes run over the carvings of the opulent piece of furniture, and I snap my head up again. My cheeks burn.

The carvings are people having sex. In fire. Some figures are so contorted that my panicked mind didn’t recognize the images until parsing out a hand grasping the hair of its wooden companion and the rest of the images came together in all their lurid glory.

What is this place?

I already know the answer to that question. This is the first place Grace thought to bring me when she’d run her hands over the book I shouldn’t have opened. I shake my head.

“Sorry.” I clear my throat. “Today has been… wild.”

My words come out raspy. Lack of sleep and a surplus of panic constrict my throat. I’d already been struggling with the revelation that the world is not how it seems beforethisnightmarish event started. Weeks ago, I’d been abducted by people performing what I’d assumed were magic tricks. It had been a fearful, bizarre experience even beforegargoylescame to my rescue.

The revelations that followed make it hard to sleep at night. I am human, but parts of the rest of the population aren’t. My best friend isn’t. The woman across from me isn’t.

I walk among threatening creatures every day and can’t tell which of them would grind my bones for bread, offer a kind deed, or just want to live their lives. The world is strange.

I still don’t have the guts to ask if El Cuco, the bogeyman all the mothers in the neighborhood threatened us with throughout our childhood, is real. There are some things best left undiscovered.

Just like some books aren’t meant to be opened.

The woman waits for me to answer the question. She’s so patient and understanding that I fight back the tears that have plagued me since this all began.

I cried for an hour straight afterithappened. After the panic and crying and Grace trying to reassure me that we’d figure this out, I pulled myself together. Mostly. Every few minutes I feel theslitheralong my scalp and my composure threatens to crack again.

“Yes, I’ve been”—I swallow—“cursed.”

The woman, who introduced herself as Rose Love, matchmaker extraordinaire, nods.

“And that would be the reason for the glasses?” she asks, pointing to the gold heart-shaped frames with rose-tinted lenses.

Grace swore, hand over her heart, that these were the best option. They’d come from her vintage collection and supposedly the materials are high enough quality to handle thespellshe’d cast on them.

On any other day, the glasses would be funny, but right now, I'm the last person who would be accused of seeing the world through rose-colored glasses.

“Yes. We don’t know yet if I can really turn—” I cut myself off, still struggling to believe that any of this can be real.

“Turn people to stone?” Rose asks.

I breathe. “Yes.”

“Interesting,” Rose muses, tapping a stylish pen softly against the stationery in front of her.

A laugh of disbelief catches in my throat. Interesting is the last word I’d use for it, but maybe if I weren’t the one walking around as the poster child of a revitalized myth, I’d take a more academic approach.

Rose winces as if she can hear my thoughts... maybe she can. I’m far from an expert about witch abilities.

“Sorry, this is just the first curse of this kind that I’ve seen. What is it that you think I can do? Grace wasn’t very clear when she called me,” she says.

Grace had walked me in before taking off to pick up aglamourfor me. A spell to hide what has happened while we try to figure out how to break the curse.

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