Page 41 of Too Cursed To Kiss
“My boyfriend’s picking up our order too.”
Some act of God made Wald magically appear a moment later, carrying a box piled with takeout containers. I breathed out my relief and ran up to him, kissing him full on the lips. I slipped my hand around to the back of his pants and slid my fingers inside his waistband. The touch of skin on skin gave me strength. I waved at the officer as we passed to throw off the nervousness, but I was shaking.
We jaywalked across the street to get back to Agatha’s apartment. Some days it’s good not all the rules are enforced.
“That was too fucking close,” I said as we climbed the stairs at Agatha’s. The concrete of the suspended upstairs open hall bounced at Wald’s every step. I stopped. “Are you heavier than you look?”
“Excuse me?”
Sweet Jeezus, I loved how his S’s elongated. “Your weight? Is your weight like now or the weight of what you are underneath the illusion?”
“My mass does not alter, no.”
The bouncing became clear. Somehow that was reallyhot too. Like a super strong guy who didn’t look like a bodybuilder. Wasn’t that my ideal? I might not care how he looked. I was a sucker for that accent.
“And the accent?”
“Dew tar piston flambe,” he said.
It was something unintelligible which sounded like that.
“Not from around here, are you?”
“I told you that,” he snapped.
I crossed my arms with a huff. I don’t like being shut down or growled at. He had sort of told me, but it wasn’t explaining why he was grumpy.
Agatha’s apartment wasn’t as ugly inside as out, but I entered the weird front room with slowing steps, marveling at my reflection in mirrors hung on walls covered in jewel-toned fabrics. The floor was layered with Persian carpets. In the center of the room was a table with the largest crystal ball I’d ever seen. The place was part sultan’s tent, part mirror shop.
Wald walked across the carpet and disappeared through a curtain of stranded glass beads, which tinkled as they hit each other. I stood for a second, wondering if I should follow him.
I followed.
A strand of my hair got caught in the flipping beads. I yelped and stood for thirty seconds untangling it. The next room was like a living room with no windows, three chairs, a glass coffee table, and a couch. There were a couple of those Moroccan cut-metal star lamps hanging from the ceiling and one floor lamp in a corner with a tasseled silk cover thrown over it. Let’s call it dimly lit. Every single non-upholstered surface was covered by mirrors. Floor, ceiling, even the top of the coffee table. I was appreciating the dim light, not wanting to see my reflection.
Britannia had snuggled up beside Agatha on the lowmodern bench couch and had her head in Agatha’s lap. Agatha was braiding a strand of Britannia’s hair. She’d changed out of the prim powder blue suit into an ankle-length kaftan printed in colors that shouldn’t go together.
Wald appeared without the takeout box through a hallway on the left. The smell wafted through the apartment, and my stomach was wolf-pack worthy growling.
“Are we eating? What are we waiting for?” I asked.
“Honey, you need to relax,” Agatha crooned. Britannia shot me a look, which was not entirely the cat who got the cream. The effect was lost on me.
I crossed my arms. “What the hell is going on between you two? Isn’t she your aunt?”
“Aunt Agatha raised Britannia for a number of years,” Wald said. “Mother had trouble raising the twins, Britannia and Caledonia, and so Agatha helped out. I stayed with my father.”
“Twins? Britannia and Donia were twins? You didn’t mention that.” I looked at Wald and then back at Britannia during the uncomfortable silence, wondering what they looked like as kids. Agatha pushed Britannia up and pulled a book from under the couch. It was more a leather-bound tome. She walked over, handed it to me with a haughty huff, and sidled past Wald, running a very un-aunt-like finger across his chest as she passed him, then disappeared down the hall.
The book was heavy with bronzed clasps etched with flowers.My Familywas stamped in gold on the faded brown leather cover.
I sat in the nearest chair and opened it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The front page of the family album had a handwritten note about how precious moments with family are, yada yada. I flipped past it to the pictures. The first photos were really old, like tin-style in black and white with the chemical layer peeling, or disappearing, or whatever you call it. They were all damaged.
In the photos, the people stared at the camera as if they were frozen in time. Their eyes oddly all looked in the same direction. I turned a few more pages. The old photos were the cardboard type in sepia tones, and all the eyes seemed focused at the viewer. More pages flipped by, and I was back in black-and-white-land but with more modern paper photos. The same deal, with portraits of people I didn’t know, staring at me. Like really staring.
