Page 26 of Too Cursed To Kiss
Insane anger blurred my vision. “Like I care what your parents think. I mean what are you—fifteen?”
He smirked. “You will care as they will protect you if they approve of you. At the moment, you need their protection and mine.”
“I can protect myself.” But could I really? My stomach plummeted. Going home with him was stupid. What was I thinking? Oh yeah, my entire life was in flames because of hisdamned sister, and I currently had no other viable option. I held up the dress, trying not to cringe. He’d gotten plus-sized clothing that might even fit me. There was even a super-sized pack of baby wipes. Damn it if clean might beat ugly just this once.
I swore and pulled off my overshirt. He glanced in the rearview mirror.
“Keep your eyes on the road,” I snapped.
“There’s underclothing in the third bag.”
My heart did flip-flops. I dug in the bottom of the bag. Pink satin with little crystal rhinestones and bows. I was not wearing that. Nope, nada. I’d wear the dress but not the bra.
My comfy black sports bra showed all over the place in the dress. Aesthetics won. After removing blood and dirt, the best I could, I put the pink bra on. It was a near-perfect fit, but I didn’t give on the panties.
“It’s okay. I didn’t think you’d go for the panties, but they came as a set.”
I groaned and dropped against the seat, ripping open a chocolate pecan energy bar. My favorite. He’d also bought tetra-packs of chocolate milk, sandwich cookies, dark chocolate, and steaks. Raw steaks.
“The steaks are for me,” he said with what I swear was a growl.
“Take it easy. It wasn’t like I was going to eat them.” I dropped the beef back into the bag and opened a chocolate milk, the only kind I’d drink…
It was becoming apparent I still didn’t know the whole story. That was a huge problem. I was inquisitive, crazy anal actually about knowing stuff. Maybe it was all the true crime podcasts I listened to, but not knowing all the details would kill me slowly. So, I started to ask…
“It’s part of the mind-reading package. It’s an empatheticreaction. I can read your thoughts and emotions as if I know you really well. When I was shopping, I took that into account.”
“Why did you buy pink stuff then?” My mind was whirring. He’d not only picked out clothes for me, but he’d chosen the right sizes.
“I told you, Tails. I like pink.” He turned his head, but it didn’t hide his smile.
“Bastard,” I hissed, taking a bite of a sandwich cookie. The damn things were poison, but they soothed the soul.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Wald had pulled off the highway about a half hour ago. He’d taken some narrow roads, but the final one was a dirt track with pine forest on either side. A dead-end barrier was coming up fast, but Wald wasn’t slowing down.
Bracing for impact, I screamed, “Stop!” my insides in full panic contortions as we drove through the sign—which apparently wasn’t there.
“What the hell?” I yelled at him. “You could have told me the sign was a fake.” I focused on getting my breath steady. Goddamn it.
“It isn’t a fake, it is an illusion.” He didn’t even glance at me. “My father’s gift. He has the ability to make illusions. He’s quite proficient at what you call magic. Our eyes work differently from yours. I can see the barrier isn’t real.”
“Like wizard magic?” I rubbed my forehead, trying to wrap my head around seeing something that wasn’t there.
“Not the movie kind of big explosions. Illusions to conceal, like my shaped form that you see.”
“The hair is real then? The skin is not?”
“Real is a learned definition. You sort things into boxes because humans are taught to do that, but to me, the imaginary is a form of real illusions. I call themseideir-draumr, literally, a magic dream in our language which is older than Norse or Viking. A time when all words had power if you knew how to use them.”
“Well, that’s murky as fuck. It’s a spell then? Like a witch casts a spell? An incantation or something?” I pushed my hair out of my face and braced against the dashboard as Wald went over more bumps. He hadn’t slowed down. This car was a tank.
“Connection with magic by a human is a complex process. Not impossible but very rare without the help of an old one. We’re almost there,” he said, turning onto a paved driveway.
The tree line broke on one side, revealing the sprawling Victorian I’d seen before, painted a matte forest-green. The monochrome infused it with eeriness. The weirdest thing I’d ever… Well, perhaps not counting today. The driveway went around the house and then ended in the concrete pad that I’d traveled down before.
“Hang on, we came down the driveway I drove out on, right? Why didn’t it end on the dirt road?”
