Cursed Luck, Book 1

by Kelley Armstrong

  “So you think Josephine had the Necklace of Harmonia.”

  He passes over another photograph, a black-and-white shot showing Hill-Cabot as a bride. Around her neck, two serpents clasp a jeweled sun between their mouths.

  “Either that’s the real necklace, or it’s a gorgeous reproduction,” I say. “Let me guess. You said there were other interested parties. After Josephine’s death, you’ve all realized she had the necklace, and now you’re madly racing to steal it from the Hill-Cabot vault. I think I’ve seen this movie.”

  “Do I look like a thief, Ms. Bennett? I’m a businessman. As you saw, the family isn’t able to claim their inheritance, given the suspicious circumstances of Josephine’s death. So they’ve discreetly put several items up for sale. One is the necklace. They had several interested buyers, so it’s being offered in a very exclusive auction in just a few days. All those buyers are part of the magical community, where it’s theorized that a skilled curse weaver could remove the hex.”

  “Leaving only the charms: eternal youth and beauty.”

  He leans back in his chair. “You’d consider eternal beauty and youth a blessing then?”

  “Pfft. No.” I wave at the photo. “That kind of beauty is nothing but trouble. And eternal youth? How long did Josephine manage to live in the real world before she went all Howard Hughes? At some point, you can’t keep crediting genetics and moisturizers . . .”

  I trail off. “You think it’s all curse. The beauty and youth part is a trick. A trap. The wearer thinks they’re getting an awesome gift in return for a bit of bad luck. Instead, it’s all bad.” My gaze lifts to his. “Joker’s jinx.”

  He smiles, and it isn’t his usual smug smirk. It’s a genuine smile, his green eyes crackling with summer’s warmth where, a moment ago, there’d been nothing but winter chill.

  “That’s why you wanted to hire me,” I say. “Others are looking to combine a weaver with a charm caster, and you think they’ve got it wrong. What they need is an expert in one particular curse. The joker’s jinx.”

  “Exactly.”

  I shake my head. “I’m flattered, but I’m still not sure it’s enough. That is one serious curse. The biggest of them all. It would take more than just skill to unweave it. It’d take—”

  “Luck?” He smiles again, that summery blaze of a smile. “That’s where I come in.”

  I have a bit of luck now and then.

  “You’re a—” I begin.

  “I am indeed.” He leans back in his chair, that smug look back.

  “Wow. I’ve never met an actual leprechaun.”

  He sits upright so fast the chair squeals. “A what?”

  “Leprechaun. I should have guessed. You mentioned luck. You’re Irish. You have red hair. You’re not overly tall.”

  He straightens. “The average American male is five foot nine, I am five nine and a half.”

  “That’s . . . oddly specific. Also, interesting that you know that particular piece of trivia. Still, I didn’t say you were short. Just not overly tall. Which I’d expect from a—”

  “I am not a leprechaun. There’s no such thing.”

  I eye him. “Are you sure? Because you—”

  “I’m a luck worker.”

  “Mmm, luck workers are Italian. Descended from the Roman goddess Fortuna. Leprechauns, on the other hand—”

  “—do not exist,” he says, his voice chilling. “If you are at all familiar with Celtic history, you will know Britain was invaded by Rome.”

  “Yes, but not Ireland.”

  “There was still a mingling of bloodlines. The Connollys trace part of their lineage to Rome. The part that makes them luck workers.”

  I open my mouth, but he cuts me off with, “I can bring the required luck to your weaving. That is all that matters.”

  “Mmm, no. What matters is that my sisters are missing. I presume you’re implying they’ve been kidnapped by someone else hoping to unweave the curse.”

  He nods. “When I went to research curse weavers, your family was the first name to come up. That is, apparently, what happens when you run an actual business removing curses.”

  “Are you suggesting that if they’re kidnapped, it’s our own damned fault?”

  “Not . . . really. Although one could say—”

  “One could, but one should not.”

  He raises his pen for emphasis. “My point is simply that it seems unwise—”

  The pen bursts, ink spraying his white shirt. He startles back and then looks from the pen to me.

  “That was my favorite pen.”

  “Tragic. Now—”

  He hesitates. “Did you jinx it earlier?”

  “That would be wrong. I need a reason.”

  “But you didn’t touch it. Curse weaving requires physical contact with an object.”

  “Does it? Well, then, the exploding pen was a coincidence.”

  He turns it over in his hands. “It’s true, then. Your family has a little extra. That’s what the rumors say. You’re the direct descendants of the leader of the arae.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe you’re just really unlucky. At least when it comes to favorite pens.”

  “You can weave minor curses from a distance without any materials. That is definitely a show of power. It’s also the real reason your sisters were targeted. Well, that and the fact they’re very easy to find, running a business—”

  “You do like that pen, right? And you’d eventually like it uncursed?”

  He sets the pen down.

  “Yes,” I say. “My family openly practices unweaving. Has for centuries. Do you know how many times it’s led to kidnapping?” I make a zero with my forefinger and thumb. “What’s the point in forcing us to uncurse something when we do it for a living?”

  “If it’s a famous and potentially dangerous curse? On an object so valuable that any gifted curse weaver would insist on full profit sharing?” He glances at the pen. “I will concede your point, though.”

  “And refrain from suggesting that the victims had it coming? That if they didn’t want to be attacked, they shouldn’t be flaunting their stuff, strutting around in a mini-skirt, metaphorically speaking?”

  Spots of color heat his cheeks. “I . . . did not intend it that way.”

  “Then stop saying it. Please.”

  “I will. Yes, hiring your sisters is the obvious solution. Obvious to me but”—he shrugs—“perhaps they tried. Perhaps they skipped that step. Whatever the reason, our course is clear. We need to find your sisters—”

  “Really hoping that we is also metaphorical.”

  His brows knit. “I don’t see how it could be.”

  “I can find my sisters. Just give me the information.”

  “I don’t have information. I have vague leads. Which I will share as we hunt for your sisters together—”

  “Metaphorically together?”

  “I have the information you need. I also have the contacts you need. You have the curse-weaving skill I need. We’ll find your sisters, and if I win the auction, you’ll uncurse the necklace, for which I will pay you twenty-five percent of the original purchase price.”

  “I don’t want the money. I just want my sisters.”

  He waves away my words. “You’re concerned for them now. Once you have them, you’ll want the money. It’s obvious you could use it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Unless you want me to find your sisters alone. That would drop your share to ten percent, but I’m willing to consider it.”

  “I don’t give a shit about the money. But I’m not going to sit on my hands while you search for my missing sisters, either.”

  “Excellent, then we are agreed. I’m hiring you—”

  “No. You aren’t hiring me for anything, Connolly. I’m not your employee.”

  “Of course you aren’t. This is only a contract position—”

  “Not an employee.”

  “A service provider, then, and I am your cli
ent—”

  “Nope.” I cross my arms. “Employer or client, either way, that’d make you my boss. That ain’t happening. Equal partners or nothing.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t have partners, Ms. Bennett. I have employees and service providers.” He lifts his pen and pulls out a checkbook. “Let me write you a retainer. Proof of my sincerity as your new employer—”

  Ink explodes, splattering his shirt again. He turns cool eyes on me.

  “Would you please stop doing that?” he says.

  “Would you please stop deserving that?” I say. “I’m not your employee. Not your service provider. We are partners, or I walk away and you find another experienced curse weaver who specializes in the joker’s jinx, one who will put up with your shit. That last part’s going to be toughest.”

  He hesitates, pen still poised over the ruined checkbook. “I have no experience with partnerships and—”

  “Step one, stop calling me Ms. Bennett. You may mean it to be respectful, but it sounds condescending. My name is Kennedy.”

  Another hesitation, longer this time. “I suppose then that you may call me Aid—”

  “No need. I like Connolly. Now, let me call in my associate. He’s waiting downstairs.”

  Connolly’s brows rise.

  “You trapped me here last night,” I say. “I wasn’t coming alone. Jonathan is an old friend from Unstable.”

  Connolly frowns. “Does he have a magical power?”

  “He doesn’t need one.” I take out my phone. “He’s a librarian.”

  Chapter Eight

  I want to hit the road ASAP. Roar out of here in hot pursuit of my sisters. Which would require a) a car, b) some sucker willing to look after my cat, and c) a vague notion of where to actually find Ani and Hope. Having none of these, I must yield to Jonathan’s suggestion that we discuss it with Connolly over a real breakfast. Not that I want breakfast. Really, absolutely, definitely do not want breakfast. But Jonathan insists, and when the server brings out the breakfast sandwich he ordered for me, on fresh-baked focaccia, I must admit my stomach rumbles.

  We’re eating in the courtyard behind a coffee shop. Inside, it’s wall-to-wall pre-caffeinated zombies. Out here, we’re the only occupied table. That doesn’t keep Connolly from grumbling about discussing this in a public place.

  “It has heat,” I say, pointing to the sun. “Which is more than I can say for your office.”

  Connolly turns his cool stare on me. I’m not even sure it’s the courtyard he disapproves of as much as the company. He hasn’t said a direct word to Jonathan beyond hello.

  Some men are like that around physically intimidating guys. Connolly hasn’t struck me as that type, though, and despite his penchant for business wear, he obviously spends some time at the gym. I decide he just really doesn’t like bringing someone else into this. That would explain why he keeps looking from Jonathan to me and back again, as if assessing.

  “So you’re a luck worker,” Jonathan says with an easy smile. “I should have figured you weren’t just a guy who knows about curses. If I’d done my research,”—he lifts his phone—“I’d have put two-and-two together. Boston. Connolly. Magic. Luck workers.”

  Connolly leans to look at the screen. “Where did you find that?”

  Jonathan shrugs. “In my files.” He peers down at the screen. “Connollys, originally from Cork, Ireland. Arrived in Boston in 1825. There are several branches in the area, but you’d be the son of Liam, who’s married to Marion O’Sullivan, also from a family of luck workers. They have two sons, Aiden and Rian.”

  “You have our file on your phone?” Connolly says. “A file identifying my family as luck workers?”

  “It’s secure,” I say. “Without a passcode, even the owner can’t unlock an iPhone. I learned that the hard way last year. Got so accustomed to using facial recognition that I blanked on my code. Lost a year of photos.”

  “Backups,” Jonathan says.

  “Yeah, yeah. I came up with a better solution. Now I carefully catalog all my passwords in a notebook.”

  Connolly stares at me.

  “She’s kidding,” Jonathan says. “Or, if she’s not, it’s a cursed notebook, and the ink will turn invisible if the wrong fingers touch it. As for my phone, I have an extra password on my custom-made file app. The data is also encrypted.” He turns a deceptively bland look on Connolly. “I do know what I’m doing.”

  “I still think—”

  “Don’t,” I say. “Or if you must, then stick with thinking and not saying. Jonathan’s data is secure, and even if it wasn’t?” I throw up my hands. “The Bennetts run a business uncursing objects. We’re listed in the Better Business Bureau with an A+ rating. No one’s banging down our door to burn us as witches. No one cares.”

  “Except the people who kidnapped your sisters.”

  I pause. “Touché. Can we talk about that now? Please? This sandwich is delicious, but I really want to get moving.”

  * * *

  I told Connolly that I know the story behind the Necklace of Harmonia. True, though, later I’ll run my recollection through the Jonathan-wiki to be certain I’m remembering everything correctly.

  I also told Connolly the Bennetts are the living embodiment of Greek myth. That’s a bit of a boast, though not far off. You won’t find the arae in your elementary school primer on Greek and Roman mythology. It takes some digging to get to them, and even then, details are sketchy. They’re curse spirits best known for punishing the living on behalf of the dead.

  Our family version is a little different. Mom and Yiayia—her mother—always debated the exact nature of the arae. Were they gods? Minor deities? Or just women who had a special talent and were elevated to semidivine status for it? We’ll never know.

  Back to the Necklace of Harmonia. It has the sort of history you expect from Greek myth with innocents suffering for the gods’ inability to keep their togas wrapped. In this case, it was Aphrodite, goddess of love, shacking up with Ares, god of war. That’d be fine if she didn’t have a husband at home and, apparently, no open-marriage contract. Hephaestus, understandably, was a bit annoyed that his wife was off gallivanting with a hot young god while he slaved over a hot furnace fire and vowed revenge.

  Aphrodite and Ares’s first child, Harmonia, grows up to marry a prince, and Hephaestus gives her the wedding gift of a gorgeous necklace he made himself. The Necklace of Harmonia.

  In the myth, the curse doesn’t begin life with the full eternal-youth-and-eternal-misfortune hex, maybe because the earliest owners were gods. Instead, it turned Harmonia and her husband, Cadmus, into serpents, but only after a long life together. Harmonia’s daughter, Semele, inherited the necklace and died after insisting on viewing Zeus’s true form.

  Fast forward a few generations, though, and the curse takes on its current form. Queen Jocasta enjoys youth and beauty . . . until she accidentally marries her son, which is, really, the epitome of misfortune. From there, the necklace passes in and out of human hands, bringing beauty and destruction wherever it goes.

  In myth, the necklace’s last-known location was around the neck of an ancient Phoenician tyrant’s mistress as she perished in a fire set by her own son. In the magical world, though, stories about the necklace continued. The last I heard, the necklace had been bought by a rich American at the turn of the twentieth century. Curse weavers love to speculate on the buyer’s identity. Jack Astor, purchasing it just before setting foot on the Titanic? Benjamin Guggenheim, who also died on that ill-fated ship? Joe Kennedy Sr., whose descendants continue to be plagued by misfortune?

  So it’s no surprise that it ended up around the neck of Josephine Hill-Cabot, who in her youth had been the debutante of the decade, the gorgeous and accomplished heiress to the Hill fortune. Jonathan confirms that both the Hill and Cabot families were on the list of those suspected to own the necklace.

  When Josephine’s death sparked tabloid stories—and then her necklace appeared on the black market�
�the magical community took one look at the design and knew what it was. Connolly might have dismissed my comparison to those old-school Hollywood capers, everyone jockeying to steal or swindle a rare object, but I wasn’t far off. Interested parties are assembling their crews. But instead of safe crackers and demolitions experts and computer hackers, they’re hiring curse weavers, charm casters and luck workers.

  “So why hasn’t anyone else tried to hire us?” I ask.

  “Timing,” Connolly says. “When multiple buyers expressed interest, the Hill-Cabots switched to an auction. That gives everyone time to plan. I was able to move quickly, having already determined that a strong candidate lived in my city.”

  “You came to me with a fake job, hoping to test me for a real one,” I say.

  “Exactly.”

  “Treating me like a poseur instead of a responsible member of the magical community, which my reputation would tell you I am.”

  When Connolly’s mouth opens, Jonathan cuts in with, “But it seems you weren’t the only one moving fast.”

  “No,” Connolly says. “Whoever took your sisters obviously didn’t waste time negotiating to hire them properly.”

  “Do you know who that might be?” I say.

  “I know possibilities.”

  “If you give me names, I’ll compile dossiers,” Jonathan says. “First, I’m going to have to ask for proof that there is an auction. Whatever you can supply. I don’t mean to sound suspicious . . .”

  Connolly nods. “Understandable.”

  Connolly takes out his phone, and I don’t know what he shows Jonathan, but it’s obviously satisfactory. They start talking. I know all this is important, but I want to shout “Just give me a name, damn it!” Toss one of those possibilities my way and let me run with it. Which is entirely the wrong way to go about this.

  As they discuss names I don’t recognize, I check my messages, trying to focus on something other than the fact that my sisters are missing. I end up in our text thread, staring at yesterday’s exchange as tears prickle.

  Such a normal conversation. That’s the way it goes, though, isn’t it? I still have my last texts from Dad. I’d been running to class, and he’d sent me plans for Mom’s birthday. I’d popped back “Can’t talk! Later?”