Page 35 of The Curse

Smiling, she answered, “I don’t know, little orphan, why don’tyoutell me how it feels? Poor, poor, little lost boy floating through life without any parents to love him. That must have been a bitch. Tell me, love, did you cry your pretty eyes out at bedtime? I bet you did. Nobody to love the last little Bailey descendent…because everybody else was dead?”

“You’re seriously a bad movie just waiting to be made.”

“Don’t provoke her, Nico,” Alastair murmured from behind me. “She’s dangerous.”

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Morgan said with a huge smile. “I’m so relieved to see that at least one of you has some sense.” She peeked around me and looked Alastair up and down. “I can see why Roman wants you so badly, Alastair Harlowe. You’re such a pretty thing.” She made a tsking sound between her teeth as her eyes returned to me. “Do you have any idea what kind of ugly mayhem awaits your sweet Alastair, Nico? After you fail in your ridiculous attempt to save the day, you’ll die, Corbin will die, and Alastair will spend the rest of his miserable life being a plaything to a warlock. Don’t you just love it?”

She was so fucking confident. I needed to end this. “That’s your plan, Morgan,” I countered. “Maybe it will work…but maybe it won’t.”

Something flashed across her face--something that made me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. It was fear. She hid it swiftly, but it’d been there.

“Cocky, aren’t we?” she asked quietly. “Where did you get all this new confidence, Nico? The last time I checked, your opinion of yourself was as low as Alastair’s. Why do you think you have a chance of defeating me all of a sudden?” A smile spread across her face. “It doesn’t have anything to do with that sillyvisityou had from your mother, does it? Please tell me you didn’t fall for my parlor trick. Sweetheart, that was Basic Magic 101. Anybody could have pretended to be your dearly departed mother.” Her eyes cut around to Alastair. “Eventhatweak witch could have accomplished a magic trick that simple.”

“No!” Alastair hissed from behind me. “Please tell me she didn’t use a trick to get you here, Nico.”

I could literally taste the guilt pouring out of Alastair, and I hated Morgan even more. On top of that, I hated that I was going to have to act like I believed Morgan. I didn’t want her to know that I’d seen the fear in her eyes. I had no idea how she knew about the image in the mirror, but there was no way I believed it had been her. Itwasmy mother. My soul told me so.

“Wh-what?” I stuttered after a loud gasp. “That…that wasn’t you! That couldn’t have been you. It was my…”

“Mommy?” she finished with an arrogant arch to her brow. “You thought I was your mommy, didn’t you? Sweetheart, I destroyed your parents a long time ago. Almost twenty-five years ago, to be exact.” She glanced down at her watch. “Would you look at that? We’re only thirty minutes away from your huge birthday celebration, Nico.” She clapped her hands together, feeling confident again. “Let me go make sure everything’s prepared for the big event. Corbin should be arriving at any moment. I can’t wait to see the despair on his face! I swear to you both, it gets better and better each time it happens.”

She vanished before my eyes and the stench in the room eased up immediately. I turned to Alastair and asked, “Is it just me, or does she stink?”

He looked at me in exasperation. “Why are you so calm, Nico? She tricked you. You and Corbin both are going to die. There is no happy ending to this story!” Several seconds ticked by before he added, “Yes, she stinks. It’s the dark magic.” He slammed his fist against the wall. “I should have smelled it on Roman. I…I should have known. All these years…”

I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have any magic. Alastair didn’t have any magic. There was a damned good chance that I was about to die and, worse than that, Corbin was about to die. I didn’t even want to consider what Alastair would endure if I failed. Even with all this, there was peace in my heart.

I could do this.

Not wanting Alastair to worry, I tried for humor, “So tell me about this Riker? Was he the reason you blushed the day I asked you about boyfriends?”

“You can’t be serious,” Alastair whispered. “I’m not talking boyfriends with you right now, Nico. You and Corbin are about to die. There won’t be any coming back from this. I’ve heard them talking. They plan on burning both of you at the stake. Witches don’t come back fromthat, Nico. It’s the one sure-fire way to destroy us.”

“I’m overwhelmed by the confidence you have in my magic, Stair,” I responded dryly, and then shoulder nudged him. “We’re going to do this. I promise. Me and you, Stair. Not Corbin and Riker.Us.”

“Your magic is bound, Nico,” he reminded me. “Plus, I’m pretty sure I overheard that you were powerless against Morgan until your birthday hour, anyway. And then there’s me. I’m useless. One witch, Nico,” he hissed in disgust. “Remember? One witch to bind me.” He took a deep breath. “I wasn’t always like this. I used to be powerful. When Riker…no, Roman, messed with my head all those years ago, everything went to shit with me. It was like all my magic vanished in one day…and it’s never returned.”

“You’re the same as me, Stair. Your magic wilted because the man you love disappeared from your life. You were in love with Riker, weren’t you?”

“No.” He answered immediately and then, hanging his head, he amended, “Yes. Embarrassingly so. I loved him so damned much, Nico. He meant everything to me. He was my world and then one morning, that world was destroyed. No need going into the details since none of it is going to matter in twenty minutes, but Roman, Riker’s twin, tricked me into thinking he was Riker and did…did something really mean. Then, before I could even confront him about it, he was gone. He and Roman both left the training academy the next day. When he walked out of my life, a part of me died. And I’ve hated him all these years. I’ve blamed the wrong man.”

“Well, he’s been to Corbin’s house looking for you, so wake that love back up. Riker’s hunting for his cute little witch, and I don’t think he’s ever going to walk away again.”

He snorted and then hiccupped. “Whatever. I’m going to belong to his brother, the evil, sadistic, son-of-a-bitch. I should have known Roman was behind everything. I should have had more faith in Riker.”

“Probably,” I agreed and was briefly thankful that his magic was being held captive by Morgan’s coven. He looked like he might want to turn somebody into a toad. And I was handy. “But, more than that, you should have had faith in yourself. You’re a keeper, Stair. No way would Riker have taken a taste of you and not wanted to keep you forever.”

Corbin’s writings flickered through my brain.This one will be important.Important…how did he mean that? A plan started to form. Excitement flowed through me, and I whipped around to tell Alastair what I’d come up with. But he’d vanished. “Alastair? Stair!” The room was empty. “Morgan!” I screamed in fury.

A wave of dizziness muddled my brain, and when I came back to my senses again, I was standing in the middle of a clearing, surrounded by Morgan’s coven. Morgan stood a few feet from me, grinning like the damned evil witch she was. To my right, up on a tall platform, was Corbin and another unidentified man. They were both tied to stakes and stacks of wood surrounded them. As my eyes met Corbin’s warm gaze, I was terrified of the anger and disappointment I feared would be swirling in those beautiful depths.

But as I gathered my courage and gazed up at him, I saw that it wasn’t there. Only love shone from his beautiful eyes. Pure enough to make my legs feel weak. I winked at him, but he shook his head from side to side in a negative movement and the wordsI love you--always have and always will, reverberated in my mind. He was letting me know that he didn’t have a rescue planned for us. He’d come to die because he thought I was going to die.

Not so fast, cutie pie.

The unidentified man was ignoring me completely. I followed his gaze across the clearing and saw Alastair. He was kneeling next to a man that looked identical to the first guy. Ah, Riker and Roman. There was a leash around Alastair’s neck, and Riker’s twin was holding it tightly, sneering and smirking. Dark magic swirled around him. When Alastair looked at me, the despair and shame on his face broke my heart. Alastair needed this victory as much as Corbin and I did.

“Looks like the gang’s all here,” I said, sneering at Morgan. She looked at me strangely, maybe wondering why I wasn’t falling apart. I put on my game face.This had to work. Morgan had been allowed to run rampant for far too long. She had destroyed too many lives. Time for her to pay the piper.

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