Page 78 of Too Cursed To Kiss
Nine hells. The fucking ring. I needed the ring.
My hand closed around the marble about the same time Frank whipped around the room looking for me. I ducked as he swooped, with my heart pounding in my ears.
Fuck me, I forgot the marble didn’t make me invisible to Frank. Maybe he couldn’t touch me. I wasn’t about to test that out. Cowering on the floor, I shrugged on the leather jacket, the warmth covering my shoulders and giving me security I shouldn’t feel. Like it was armor.
Then, heart pounding, I waited for Frank to pass and darted over to Wald, as if his body would give me strength. I laced fingers with what were probably cold stiff ones. If I was going to die here, we could be dead together. Closing my eyes, I slipped my other hand into the pocket of the jacket to grab the ring. I stuck the massive hunk of metal on my third finger and squeaked as the silver bit into my flesh. Ripping my other hand out of Wald’s, I twisted it.
More horror froze me from the inside. Nine hells, now it fit, but it would not come off. My only hope was that in the short term, it might protect me from Frank.
I couldn’t just wait here and hope not to die. I had to do something.
It took every ounce of strength I had to stick the marble back in my bra. Frank’s glowing red gaze locked on to me, and his smoke form shot at my head. I screeched, dropping flat across Wald’s stomach.
Frank missed me by an inch, leaving me with a trail of woodfire smoke combined with that scent you get before the rain. My nose flooded with the candied violets my grandmother used to put on top of my birthday cake, back when Istill had a family. I twisted around, looking for the source, and Agatha’s voice sent rippling shivers over my skin.
“Harlan, you need to turn the page.” Agatha’s form was not fully materialized, and my grandmother’s face flickered across hers. Agatha was more defined than Frank, but I had a hard time focusing because of the reflections from the cracked mirrors and sheer terror.
Frank spiraled toward me. I crawled toward the table with my heart thumping at a terrifying beat. Still crouched, I reached up, flipped some pages, and then hid beneath the table as Frank swirled overhead. The scent of violets came again.
“The page with my photo,” Agatha said, wafting off toward the wall.
I scanned the room, waiting for Frank to be on the rise, and darted out. The album photos were glared by the downlight, and Smoke-thing was almost at me again. I grabbed the book and crawled under the table, paging through it, tilting it to get light without glare. I had no idea who any of these people were. There were parents and children, men and women of all ages doing things and standing in a static setting. There was even a carnival busker and a fortune-teller. All looking at me. None of the photos looked like Agatha.
“All in the fortunes, honey,” Agatha said in my ear, but I’d already figured it out. The fortune teller photo didn’t look anything like Agatha now, and the photo itself looked too old to ever have been Agatha, but if I squinted, it could be Agatha.
“So now what?” I called out.
Frank swooped by again, and I ducked. Bolstered by the fact that he still hadn’t touched me, and maybe the ring was keeping him away, I clambered out from under the table. With every fiber of my soul praying this would work, I leftthe book on top, open to the fortune-teller page. The light glared over Agatha’s photo.
Nothing happened.
I hovered my hand over it and then pressed my hand on top of it.
Still nothing.
“Agatha? What the hell am I supposed to do?” I called out to the gloom.
An ear-splitting screech sent me skittering back under the table, gripping the base like it was a lifeline. All conscious thought left as Frank’s smoke was sucked into the nearest mirror piece, his red eyes dimming as his swirl disappeared with a mirror-rattling thunderclap.
Then there was silence. The air was still and dusty yet charged with an after-rain freshness. I stood up shakily. The book looked the same, but Wald was still dead, and the ring still would not come off.
The mirrors began to rattle.
With a squeak, I dropped under the table again, squelching the urge to cover my eyes. Agatha walked out of the mirror that Frank had disappeared into.
Holy crap. She was not dead or a ghost with form, although the reflections of the mirrors made it seem like I could see through parts of her. Like she wasn’t totally there.
She walked over to me and crouched down. “The marble?” she asked, holding out her hand. The scent of wood smoke lingered around her.
I crawled out from under the table. “Not so fast, Wald has passed over. I need him back.” I said, gesturing to Wald’s body.
“You need?” She laughed at me, the sound of tinkling glass especially eerie under the circumstances. It was not the reaction I was expecting. “You would bring him back and notme? I would be so much more interesting, and I could provide you with so many pleasures,” she said, running a hand down my back and cupping my ass.
Mother of hell, I was being felt up by a ghost. I squealed and stumbled back to get the hell away from her.
“Back off. I’m not making deals. I want Wald back.”
“I could fix the ring for you,” she purred.
