Page 92 of Too Cursed To Kiss
“If you tie that to the doorknob, then Wald can’t cross the threshold.”
Damn, that might be useful. I wasn’t going to be giving that back. “How does the ring work?”
“No clue, Elizabeth was supposed to be handling that part. It’s now your problem,” she replied, folding her arms as if she were done with her part.
Yeah, it was my problem. I thought about the cards in my pocket. Maybe I could use them to focus. Extreme emotion wasn’t going to come from my mild irritation of dealing with Britannia’s smirks.
“Will you take me to Donia’s room?”
“Good luck,” Victoria said, returning Britannia’s tight-lipped smile.
Britannia strutted off, leading me through a different mirrored door down a long beige hall, the kind you see in hotels on the service side.
I fondled the beads. They had warmed, almost burning my fingers. If there really was magic in me, I needed to figure out how to use it to get what I wanted.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Idon’t know what I was expecting, but the J-Pop print explosion in Donia’s room was not it. I closed my eyes against the pattern overload. “Wow, your sister must have been into anime, huh?”
“Donia was an internet star.” Britannia shrugged and nodded at a framed poster over the orange acrylic bed. The girl in the picture looked about fourteen.
“You guys were twins, right?”
“Yeah, not identical. Not that it matters.”
“Right, if she could look any way she wanted, why not a fourteen-year-old anime character with plastic surgery-level features?” I said it out loud, but it was a stream of thought. “She’s really pretty, or was.”
“Saying I’m not?” Britannia snapped, jutting out a hip.
“I didn’t say that. She doesn’t look like you at all. No comparison.” I got a thin smile back, and for Britannia, it was a nod of approval.
“Yeah, well, her audience was only interested in how fastshe could get them off, so beauty was what she was going for. Lucrative though.”
Theewwfactor ratcheted up. Her vivid description wasn’t how I would think of a dead sister, but then this was Britannia. “Show me where you two were.” I gestured to the bed and noticed there was no chair or dressing table. Weird.
“Donia was on the bed, and I was standing here,” Britannia said, walking around to the side of the bed farthest from the door. “I demanded the ring, she said no. I was fighting with her to try to get it off when Wald walked in.”
The cardboard of the tarot cards vibrated in my fingers. It seemed like I’d need something to focus on other than the ring since, of course, I had no idea what I was doing.
I laid out the three cards Agatha had specifically left me, but they didn’t seem right. Not that I knew what right was. Closest I’d ever been to fortune-telling was breaking open a cookie. I sorted through the cards, replacing The Lovers with The Fool and Death with The Empress. That left The Wheel of Fortune. I thumbed through the cards. Someone whispered,Herosomething, and I whipped around, dropping the deck onto the bed. Britannia looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“You didn’t hear that?” I picked up the scattered cards. They were all face up except one.
“Hear what?” Britannia asked, cocking her head.
“Look, quit the tricks. If this is going to work, I need your help not your fucking attitude.” I turned over the card. It was The Hierophant. It meant nothing to me, but if someone wanted me to use it, I was going to listen.
Britannia toyed with the charm on the long chain around her neck. “You’re basically babbling, but you know I want this as much as you do. So, you’re going to need something more.”
“Like how about being specific-much?”
“A drop of my blood mixed with yours should connect us enough.” She pulled out a knife from her catsuit pocket. It was similar to the one Victoria had given me, but hers was black with pink stripes. The blade popped out, and she brandished it at me. “Palm, please?”
“Hell no.” I tucked my hands behind my back. I had not signed up for blood rituals.
“Look, it’s easy. You put out your hand and poke a finger. There.” Blood welled up on her fingertip in a little blue bead. “It doesn’t even hurt.”
“Your blood is blue?”
