By a Charm and a Curse(13)
“I am old as balls, but only because of this place. Before I got here, I was dying from lung cancer. Docs said it was thanks to exposure to chemical agents in the war.”
“Don’t bullshit me.” The anger I felt before, the stuff bubbling just under the surface, threatens to roil again, and my arms tighten around the dog, though I’m not sure if I mean to protect him or if I want him to protect me. My grandfather had lung cancer, died of it, and Lars could probably model for some sort of mountain man, outdoor living magazine.
“You want to see my old x-rays, kiddo? I was dyin’, and now I’m not. Leslie found me doing chemo with her dad, thought I still had some life in me, and brought me here. I can breathe, and I don’t even think I’ve coughed in decades. And I’m not the only one reaping the benefits of the charm. We like it, Emmaline. We want nothing more than for things to continue as they are.
“But that’s just it. There are no perks in it for you. You won’t age, but you won’t live, either. Every day you’ll need to be in that booth, waiting to trap the next sucker. And the longer it takes for you to charm some boy—or girl, that’s a thing now, right?—into taking your place, the more stunted and dark your heart becomes. You’ll sacrifice bits of your soul all under the umbrella of the curse. You’ll tell yourself it’s okay when the lies tumble out of your mouth to steal someone’s life away from them. Because that’s the bottom line: if you want to leave, you’ll have to screw someone over.”
The breath blows out of him like the troubled rumble of a slumbering lion. “But this…this is the first time I’ve really been directly involved. Gotten my hands dirty, so to speak. And I don’t like it much. I know we need someone in that booth, but it doesn’t have to be someone I helped put there. So I want you to get up. Get in there. And let Leslie and that jackass tell you how to pass this curse along.”
He places a big hand on my shoulder, just for a second, so quick that his warmth doesn’t get the chance to seep into my skin. Then he’s gone just as quickly as he came, surprisingly quiet for someone so big, leaving me to find solace in the black and gray and white world lit by the moon.
One by one, the sounds come back into the night. Crickets chirp back and forth at one another, and if I listen really hard, I can hear some people talking farther down the alley. But, louder than any of those things are the dull clacks of the dog’s nails as he resituates himself on the hard, unyielding surface of my legs.
I want to go home. I want to tell Jules I’m sorry. Catch her before she tells my dad and brothers, to spare them any pain or anxiety that might result from my disappearance. I want to fix this.
I have to fix this.
Gripping him gently, I lift the dog from my lap and place him on the ground. Slowly, so as not to set off another round of uncontrollable twitching, I stand. The little dog looks as if he doesn’t understand why we had to get up, and, if we did have to get up, then why is he not in my arms, but I shoo him along, and he trots down the aisle, looking for trouble to cause or another lap to sit in. I take a careful step, and when my legs don’t give out beneath me, I make my way to the trailer. The muffled conversation within is cut short as I clunk up the stairs. Stealth, something I never particularly excelled at before, is completely impossible in this graceless body. My fingers slip once against the door handle—just one smooth surface skipping along another—but I get it on the second try and go in.
Lars and Leslie watch me as though I’m a bomb about to go off; Sidney, occupied with a bowl of cereal and another cup of coffee, couldn’t care less. I stumble back into my seat opposite Leslie and put my hands on the table, pressing one down hard into the other in hopes it’ll calm the twitching.
“Tell me about the curse,” I say.
Leslie shifts in her seat and sighs. “These are the basics as we understand them. The cursed one chooses someone to take his or her place. They get the—”
She pauses, her mouth tightening into a grimace, and I jump in. “Just say victim, because that’s what I am.”
“Hey,” Sidney says around a mouth full of food, “I was that victim once, too.”
“Are you asking me to pity you?” I feel colder than cold, more still than I have all night. I am an iced-over lake, a glacier. At that moment, I would have gladly accepted the consequences of the curse if it came with the ability to freeze him like an icicle I could shatter against the floor.
Leslie leaps back into the conversation before Sidney can make things worse. “There is a series of events that have to be done in a certain order. The victim must give up their true name. He or she must drink all the wine, brewed and charmed by our psychics, and if even a little of it remains in the bottle, the curse won’t transfer. And then the victim must be broken, so the curse can put them back together again.”
“Are you telling me that this asshole didn’t have to kiss me?” I ask.
Leslie shakes her head. “The kiss seals the pact between you. It must be those things all together—name, wine, a kiss to enter the deal, and a kiss to seal it. Just one or two of those things doesn’t mean anything.”
“But I didn’t agree to anything!” I’m close to running out again; my legs itch to get away from this trailer and keep going. To find my father and let him help me figure this all out. To get help from anyone who isn’t a member of this damned carnival.