The Curse: Touch of Eternity (The Curse series) (2 page)

When Nathaira’s black stallion had almost reached Vanora, the girl leapt out of the saddle and attacked, screaming wildly. Pulling a dagger out of its sheath, she rammed it into the old woman’s heart.

Vanora did not raise a hand to defend herself, nor did she seem astonished by the pain. She reached out to her killer’s hands and looked inquiringly at the dark-haired girl’s face. When she had found what she was looking for, she smiled.

“
Sguir, mo nighean. Mo gràdh ort.
”

Her words were hardly more than a whisper. While she pressed a forgiving kiss onto the girl’s hands, the white-haired lady’s soul left her body, and she was gone.

“What did the witch say?” Cathal asked sternly.

His sister got up, shaking. All the color had drained from her face, and she stumbled weakly to her horse.

“Nothing!”

She would never admit what the old woman had said—or how she had looked at her.

“She was nothing more than a crazy old woman.”

Delaware, Present Day

I
was sitting in Grandma Anna’s dusty attic, surrounded by piles of paper. In front of me were two cardboard boxes with faded labels. The naked bulb above me gave just enough light to illuminate the part of the room where I was sitting. Everything else was in the shadows; the countless boxes and covered pieces of furniture farther back merged into weird, bulky shapes. I was a little spooked, but a moving company was coming in two days to clear out Grandma’s house and I wanted to see if there was anything important or interesting up here. My parents were downstairs, sorting coffee mugs and wrapping photos. The house would soon be sold; some potential buyers were actually coming later that same day with a real estate agent.

Digging into the box again, I pulled out another stack of papers. Dust rose and danced in the flickering light, making me sneeze. It was strange; I had never realized that dust could have its very own smell. Old and secretive. Feeling a bit like a grave robber, I kept going. I had no idea what I might find between the old receipts, bills, and newspaper clippings. I sighed, wishing Grandma were sitting next to me so she could tell me the story behind each slip of paper.

If I kept going at this speed, I would wind up spending the whole night up here with the cobwebs. So, determined to pick up the pace, I pulled my hair back in a ponytail and plopped the next two bundles into my discard pile, just as mercilessly as I had with countless other papers. There was absolutely nothing worth a second glance in the next box, and I started to wonder whether I should even bother opening any others.

My stomach rumbled loudly. I tried to estimate the time based on how hungry I was. Still, I was slightly curious, so I decided to try one more box. I figured, why not? My fingers were already black from the newspaper ink.

Pulling the box a bit closer, I was surprised to see that it was even dustier than the others. It looked like it hadn’t been opened at all in the past fifty years. I imagined finding secret papyrus rolls, a gold chalice, or even writing carved into stone.

I took a deep breath and removed the lid. No sign of rare antiquities. But there was something about this box that made me think it was worth taking a closer look. A splash of red underneath a pile of yellowed papers caught my eye. It was a book with a leather cover—maybe a journal or a diary, I thought—and I carefully took it out. Next, I pulled out a huge pile of crumbling newspapers. I had almost given up hope of finding anything else interesting when my fingers ran into something hard. I groped around to get a good grip and tugged it out.

I held it up directly under the bare lightbulb. In my palm was a fairly unspectacular piece of jewelry: a tarnished silver chain and a round silver pendant. On the front was a circle with a bundle of arrows inside it. A ribbon was wound
around the arrows and tied in the middle. Some words were engraved on the pendant—they seemed to be written in a foreign language—but it was so tarnished I couldn’t make them out, even though I rubbed it on my jeans to try and get the gunk off. The necklace couldn’t exactly be described as a treasure, but it was the most valuable thing I’d unearthed so far. I couldn’t remember ever seeing my grandma wear it, but I would definitely keep it.

I was still turning and twisting my find in the light, trying to decipher the writing, when my dad called for me.

“Sam! Can you please come down? We could really use your help putting all these boxes in the car.”

I sighed, shoved the necklace into my pocket, and called down the stairs to say that I’d be right there.

Looking over the papers and garbage bags strewn around the attic, I wasn’t sure all of my digging around had been of any use. But that little red book, the necklace, and a pile of letters I’d found—they seemed like they at least might be important. I figured I’d take another look at them at home. I stuffed them into my backpack and started to stand up, but my legs were almost numb from sitting cross-legged for such a long time. As I cautiously made my way down the steps, I heard a creaking sound from above and I turned around for a final look. I guessed this would be the last time I’d be in this house.

“Good-bye, Grandma,” I murmured. “I’m going to miss you.”

It felt wrong to me that we were selling Grandma’s house so soon after she had died, but my parents disagreed. I’d been avoiding them all day. Feeling for the necklace in
my pocket, I swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in my throat and put on an artificial smile.

“I’m here. Which boxes first?”

There was a chaotic pile of boxes in the driveway, and it looked like there was no way it was all going to fit into our car. Even if we could stuff everything in, I couldn’t see where I was going to sit.

But believe it or not, we managed to wedge everything in, like a giant puzzle, and I actually wasn’t too squished on the short trip home.

Our house was on Silver Lake in Milford, Delaware, only fifteen miles away from Grandma’s. I thought about how all these boxes with her belongings would now be put into our attic, probably only to be rediscovered when someone went through our stuff after we were gone.

It was already dark by the time we’d carried everything in. While Mom disappeared into the kitchen to make us a quick dinner, I sat down to do my homework. I hadn’t even started it when the phone rang.

“Hi, Kim,” I said as I picked up the phone without even checking the caller ID.

Kim hadn’t said a word, but she didn’t need to. Ever since we’d been in elementary school, she’d called every day at the exact same time to talk about important topics—mostly boys.

“Hi, Sam. How was it?”

“Dusty. But we finished everything.”

I was surprised she’d remembered to ask me about Grandma’s house. She’d been a little self-centered lately.

“Good, I’m glad that’s over with.” Then as expected, she quickly changed the topic. “You’ll never guess who I saw today.”

Kim’s enthusiasm practically radiated through the phone. I knew her cheeks must be pink with euphoria.

There was only one boy in Milford who could evoke such excitement, but I pretended not to know. “No idea… Tell me, who?”

“Ryan Baker!” She shouted so loud I had to pull the phone away from my ear. “I was in line in front of him, so that means he got in line behind me!”

There was a meaningful silence. I shook my head.

Ryan was the coolest guy at our school. He was seventeen, a junior, just like us, and the quarterback of the football team. He had wild wheat-blond hair, luscious full lips, and cornflower-blue eyes. And, oh yeah, those devastating six-pack abs. Pretty much the entire school either wanted Ryan or wanted to be Ryan.

“Wow,” I exclaimed, although I didn’t think there was that much for her to be excited about, to be honest.

Hardly listening as she gushed on and on, I went back to my geography homework. I was trying to be a good friend, though, so at regular intervals I’d let out an affirmative mumble or an astonished “Really?” followed by a breathless “Unbelievable!”

For Kim, every day was evaluated in terms of being a good day or a bad day on the Ryan Scale. This was definitely a good day for Kim.

As for me, I tended to avoid Ryan entirely. I’d made a fool of myself in front of him—and half the school—two years before at my friend Grace’s birthday party. Her parents
weren’t home, the party was going full speed, and we had decided to play spin the bottle. On Ryan’s spin, everyone held their breath as the bottle wobbled around, telepathically trying to get the bottle to stop in front of them. Everyone was laughing and clapping when the bottle slowed and pointed at me. Ryan had an amused look on his face as he crawled over to where I was sitting. My heart almost stopped beating, and I turned bright red. Then Lisa, of course, had to ruin everything.

“I heard that our little Sam has never been kissed,” she said tauntingly. “So Ryan, honey—do your best to give her something to dream about for the next twenty years.”

Lisa flounced to the side, laughing away in her size-two jeans. I’d always hated that blonde perfectly perfect daughter of a plastic surgeon, and I sure as hell hated her more at that moment.

“So what?” I shouted defiantly.

Ryan pulled me over to give me the first kiss of my life, but I pushed him aside, scrambled up, and ran away. Tears of humiliation ran down my face as I tore through the living room and out the front door. The whole way home, I muttered dark curses to myself, all along the same lines: what a horrible, mean person Lisa was. Naturally, she’d probably kissed hundreds of boys.

Ever since that night, I’d been avoiding Ryan. I’d hide if I saw him in the grocery store, and I’d duck into another classroom if I saw him coming down the hall at school. I certainly wasn’t going to talk to him, much less look him in the eye. Frankly, I thought Kim was getting her hopes a little high by crushing on him. Ryan was the kind of guy who
preferred to be seen with the popular cheerleaders, not the whip-smart editor of the school paper.

“Kim”—I interrupted our one-sided chat—“my mom just called me to dinner. We can talk tomorrow, OK?”

“Oh, sure. But think about it, because the beach party this weekend is going to be incredible. And I definitely can’t go alone. Please, please, please, if you’re my friend, come with me!”

“I’m sorry, Kim. I really don’t want to hang out with Lisa and her crowd.”

“Please… Please…” She made whiny little puppy noises. It was unbearable.

“OK, OK. I’ll think about it. But I’m not promising anything.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! You’re the best!”

“I said I wasn’t promising anything.”

“I know. But I know you’ll come!” I heard her giggle as I hung up the phone.

I sighed and hoped the beach party didn’t involve swimsuits. I mean, I’m fine with my body. I’ve always liked that I’m thin, but I don’t have much to offer on top. And being compared with Lisa and company, well, I bet even someone like Jennifer Lawrence would feel intimidated. But, I thought, if we had to wear swimsuits, I could always wrap myself in a brown towel and try to blend into the shoreline.

At school the next day, Mr. Schneider wanted to see my geography homework. And just as I had feared, he wasn’t happy with the poorly done map I’d drawn of the subregions of Europe and he gave me a C. Wonderful. There was only one month left in the semester to improve my grade. Frustrated, I banged my locker shut.

I looked up and saw Kim barreling down the hallway. Jeez, she practically shoved a ninth-grader out of her path to get to me.

Kim’s black pixie cut and her chunky black-rimmed glasses suited her journalist-wannabe image. Actually, she was well on her way to her dream, with all the reporting and editing she’d been doing for the student paper.

“So,” she said conspiratorially, “I’m on my way to the field to interview some of the football players about healthy food. Want to come with me?”

Although it was spring, the football team still had practice. In the off-season, they’d run sprints, lift weights, and basically just act manly. It was kind of gross, if you asked me, even if their year-round dedication had helped make them the state champions for several years in a row.

Kim was pulling me along by my sleeve when I realized which player she wanted to interview.

“Sorry, I don’t have time,” I told her. “I just got another C and I really need to do some homework.”

“Come on. It won’t take long. And I’ll buy you nachos after, to make up for all our reporting on healthy food.”

Bribery.

Before I knew what was happening, I was sitting on the bleachers behind the school, watching Ryan and the other boys show off in front of the cheerleaders. Lisa squealed loudly when Ryan threw her over his shoulder and ran around the track. They laughed as they rejoined the others. Lisa was shamelessly flirting with Ryan, stroking his arm. Yuck. Kim saw this as her cue, and she marched toward the team with her notebook under her arm, determined to prevent any further advances by Lisa.

“Gentlemen!” she called out. “I’m doing a story on healthy snacks for athletes. Can you help me with some quotes?” She elbowed in, right in front of Lisa, and beamed up at the players, and I wondered if I was the only one who noticed that the football team was featured in the paper with astonishing frequency. I had a sneaking suspicion that raging hormones and starry eyes had distorted most other readers’ perceptions.