Page 45 of Warlocks Don't Win
She sniffed the air. “Just a few minutes longer. Does he think your mother had something to do with his parents’s deaths?” She sounded invested, like a cop or something, seeking justice.
I smiled at her. “I don’t know. I do know that several covens had issues with death in the upper ranks in the past twenty-five to thirty years.”
“Issues with death?” She gave me an incredulous look. “What about Singsong’s coven? Who was the voice before Portalia?”
“Pickup!” Rynne’s dad said, putting the sushi box on the counter through the window.
“That’s Libby’s order,” Rynne said, turning to grab it. She hesitated before handing it over. “So, you’re working with The Librarian to find a serial killer whose targets spanned three decades?”
“No, I’m working on a curse. Sage House cursed Dame Winston with Moridia Fleur.”
She blanched, went completely pale for a moment before her cheeks colored a very nice pink. “Sage House? You’re the heir. Why would you curse her?”
“I didn’t,” I said through gritted teeth before I could force myself to relax. “I haven’t seen Sage House for a decade.”
“Impossible. Houses don’t curse people. They can be cursed, but they can’t curse, particularly someone so far away. Unless it happened when you got married. Maybe the curse was already set up and the marriage triggered it.” Her brow was furrowed as she puzzled. It sounded like nonsense to her. No kidding. The whole thing was ridiculousness piled on ridiculousness.
I took the sushi box. “She was already cursed by then. It’s been months. Maybe.” I frowned as I turned to the door, barely glancing at the row of seasonal decorations that had nothing to do with the current weather. Maybe I should do a seasonal display in the shop. Change it out every month connected to whatever was growing in the garden.
How long had she been cursed? It was possible to set up a curse to go off if someone triggered it. For instance, the boundary of the woods had small curses embedded into them that would attack intruders in subtle ways, itchiness, fear, clumsiness, that kind of thing. Could you set up an organic growing curse like Moridia Fleur that was triggered by an attack? Did Dame Winston try to attack Sage House? Maybe the Salem coven.
Tabitha might be part of this dark coven. Using the house to place a curse on their opposition made much more sense than the house throwing curses at people. Only an idiot who didn’t care who ended up dead would set up an automated Moridia Fleur curse. But could Tabitha use the house like that? Someone had been draining it. That was fact. Unless the house had drained itself by cursing people.
I sighed as I climbed the steps, my thoughts going around and around and around. I needed to kill the curse, wherever it came from.
The clerk directed me upstairs with my sushi, even though there was a sign posted, ‘no food or drink’ directly on my way to the room on the top floor where Libby was arranging books, some of which looked and felt darker than my father’s bones.
“Impressive. That book is a curse.”
She beamed at me. “Poor thing’s had a difficult childhood. Why don’t you start on this book and I’ll take care of the cursed books? I have special gloves.” She showed me her hands, covered in heavy duty gloves loaded with spells.
“Cool.” I took the book with fancy gold curlicues on the cover and sat down, opening it up to the beginning.
‘Elaborate Spellings for the Determined Magician’ was written by one Davies F. Flighty.
“Davies supposedly invented the Moridia Fleur, but I think it was his wife,” Libby said conversationally. “She was the poisoner and plantswoman between them.”
I blinked at her. “It’s good when husbands and wives can collaborate. Perhaps they made it together.”
She glanced at my left hand and then grinned at me. “Maybe so.”
Ugh. I had to undo the binding with Winston yesterday.
We spent the next few hours in companionable silence. She was a quick reader so I didn’t have to feel self-conscious for burning through my books, using the magic I’d taken from my mother to feed my brain and eyes.
I was starting to actually understand the basics of those organic curses like Moridia Fleur when I heard words that sent a bolt of panic through me.
“There you are. I brought your familiar.”
I looked up to find Winston the Warlock in his patched coat holding Tolly in his arms, both of them looking like they’d stepped off the cover of Witches and Warlocks International. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. I was definitely going to kill him.
“What are you doing here?”
He cocked his head and looked down at my books. “You’re researching the curse?” He looked up with a curious look in his eyes. “But she tried to kill you.”
I rolled my eyes and turned to the Librarian. “Thank you for these books. I should go.”
“I’ll let you know if I find anything else,” she said with a slight smile at me before she gave Winston a curious look.
