Cursed Luck, Book 1

by Kelley Armstrong

  “Marius wasn’t on our radar as a suspect.” He pauses. “I haven’t asked you how you’re doing with that. Being here. If it bothers you, we’ll leave.”

  “It bothers me that it doesn’t bother me as much as it should if that makes sense. I liked him. I’m furious, and I still need to sort out what I feel, but for now, it’s like I’m stuck at ‘I like him.’ Which is uncomfortable.”

  “Uncomfortable but useful. He regrets what he did, and he’s committed to helping us. I’ve only had minimal contact with him before this, but yes, he was on my short list of people I wanted to cultivate. Now that I know what he’s capable of?” He shrugs. “I’m uncomfortable with it, and at the same time, recognize that my discomfort may mean I’m not cut out to play on this level. When he called me a sanctimonious prick, I was more offended at the sanctimonious part. But he’s not wrong.”

  “One, that wasn’t really Marius. It was Marius channeling Hector. Two, there’s nothing wrong with having a higher ethical standard. At least, not in my book. Not in Marius’s books, either, I’ll bet. Hector would be another matter. But it helps if we can still work with Marius right now.”

  “Your sister seems all right with it. At least for now. As a matter of practicality.”

  “Ani is always practical.” I look back at the tea caddy. “Okay, I’ve had my mental break. I need to get to this before Ani bursts in to remind me that this is a wholly impractical way to spend my time.”

  “It might not be.”

  I smile at him. “Thank you. I’ll put a time limit on it, though. One hour to solve this puzzle. Now, do you want to passively observe or would you like the chatty-Kennedy running monologue?”

  “I would definitely take the monologue if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all.”

  It’s been forty-five minutes, and I can hear the mental timer running down. At first, it was fun, prodding at the gambit while explaining the process to Connolly. I’ve uncursed objects with my family, of course, but that’s like making a cake with fellow bakers—you don’t talk about it; you just do it. So sharing it with an interested observer is kind of awesome. It grew steadily less awesome when I couldn’t wow him by solving the damned puzzle.

  It is a puzzle. At least a riddle. Not solving it takes this from a fun shared—and show-off-y—encounter to potentially ego-shattering humiliation. Like the time I invited all my friends to my softball playoffs . . . and got benched for goofing off.

  The curse on Connolly’s mirror was a standard one. We have hundreds, like bakers and their books of recipes. But a true weaver can go beyond the book and create her own. That’s what the tea caddy jinx is—there’s obviously no “standard” curse for putting pet hair in hot drinks. The curse itself, though, is straightforward and unambiguous.

  The gambit is different. Oh, it happily held up its name tag. Hello, I’m Gambler’s Gambit! But that was just the introduction. Now I need the actual gambit—the riddle to unlock the prize. That isn’t so easy.

  First, it’s in ancient Greek. Naturally. I say naturally with a generous dose of sarcasm. Yes, that’s the language used to curse the Necklace of Harmonia, but considering the time period, it was the equivalent of me weaving a curse in modern English. This, though, is a modern curse in ancient Greek, which is the equivalent of doing a sermon in Latin. It’s unnecessarily elitist—saying that if you lack a certain background or education, you don’t deserve to understand it. Pure theatrics, and while I know curse weavers who still use it, I totally reverse-snob them by writing them off as pretentious hacks.

  So I’m a little disappointed to discover that this master of the craft went for ancient Greek. In this case, though, I’ll grant them an exception and say it’s probably intended as part of the puzzle.

  Yet even knowing ancient Greek, I still can’t solve it.

  In English, the gambit isn’t nearly as pretty and poetic as in its native tongue, but it roughly translates to:

  My second secret is for the wise drunkard, who treats his morning-after woes with the enemy of my first. Return what I’ve lost, and all shall be won.

  “You’re quite certain of the translation?” Connolly says.

  My narrow-eyed look answers for me.

  His reply is drowned out by Ellie, who has been meowing at the door for the last ten minutes. Meowing, I should point out, on both sides of it. When she started, we let her in . . . and she promptly meowed from our side, wanting out. Let her out . . . and she wants back in. The issue, of course, is the closed door, which is an affront to all feline sensibilities.

  I stomp over and open it a few inches. “There. Is that better?”

  She looks from me to the door and sniffs, as if to say I’m really no fun at all.

  I return to Connolly. “Yes, I know the curse doesn’t make sense. I get the part about the wise drunk. The weaver is referring to a hangover cure. But ‘with the enemy of my first’ seems like a mistranslation. It’s not. I’m sure of that. First what, though? First secret? The wise drunkard treats his hangover with the enemy of my first secret?”

  Ellie hops up on the table and eyes the tea caddy.

  “This is why that door was shut,” I say as I go to scoop her off. Then I stop. “The first secret. The jinx. The tea caddy puts cat hair in tea. What’s one supposed cure for hangovers? The hair of the dog that bit you. The cat being the enemy of the dog.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “So the second secret is for the wise drunkard, who treats his hangover with the hair of the dog that bit him.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “Obviously, we solve the riddle with booze. Just douse the caddy in cheap vodka and set it on fire.”

  His brows shoot up.

  I sigh. “Really, Connolly? I’m kidding. Though at this point, turning this thing into a big ole bonfire is mighty tempting. As for what the riddle means, the answer, I believe, is ‘not a damn thing.’ It’s misdirection. Like those stupid math problems your friends share on social media where you spend ten minutes dutifully calculating the answer, only to discover it’s a trick question.”

  His blank look tells me his friends don’t do that. Or, more likely, he doesn’t spend nearly as much time social-media surfing as I do.

  “It’s a trick question,” I say. “Misdirection. Which I fell for. It’s the second line that counts. Return what I’ve lost, and all shall be won.”

  I walk to Connolly and bend to Ellie, who’s rubbing against his pant legs, her purr getting louder the longer she’s ignored. I nudge her aside, retrieve my prize from his trouser cuffs and stand, waving it. As he frowns, I walk back to the caddy, open the top and dangle the cat hair over it.

  “Return what I’ve lost,” I say. “Yes?”

  His eyes light up. “Ah. Yes.”

  “Feel free to tell me I’m wrong,” I say. “I only get one shot at this.”

  “No, you are correct. The caddy gives out cat hair. That’s what it loses. Put it back in and ‘all shall be won’—you’ll earn the prize.”

  “Okay. Let’s do this, then.” I take a deep breath and carefully place the cat hair in the tea caddy.

  It shimmers, and I blink. “Um, Aiden? Am I hallucinating?”

  He comes over, looks inside. “Not if you’re seeing that hair turn into some kind of worm.”

  The wormlike hair shoots to the corner of the box and then wriggles into the crack. It disappears, and there’s a pop, and the bottom springs open.

  “We did check for a false bottom, right?” I say.

  “We did, but apparently, our tools don’t detect magical trapdoors.”

  He reaches in and lifts the false bottom. There’s no compartment under it. Just the actual bottom, with a folded piece of paper.

  He takes out the note. When he starts to unfold it, I grab his hand.

  “That’s locked,” I say.

  His brows rise.

  “It’s letterlocked,” I say. “See the way it’s folded? A very old form of encryption. If you unfold
it wrong, you risk destroying the contents.”

  He frowns. “Destroying the letter by unfolding it?”

  I wave off his incredulity while taking the letter. “Just trust me. Call the others in here. I’m going to need Jonathan’s help.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  I learned about letterlocking as a kid. One of those bits of trivia that history buffs stumble over and then dive down the rabbit hole. Twelve-year-old me had been fascinated by the idea of protecting a written letter with something even cooler than invisible ink. Hell, forget twelve-year-old me. Twenty-five-year-old me still thinks it’s awesome.

  I’d originally studied letterlocking to keep Hope from reading my notes to Jimmy Woo, who lived down the road. There’d been nothing in those notes that I wouldn’t have sent a female friend, but Hope was absolutely convinced otherwise. She was seven, and I was twelve, and with that came all the “Kennedy and Jimmy sitting in a tree” chants a younger sibling can sing. While she claimed she wanted to read my notes for “proof,” I think my romance-loving sis was just hopeful.

  So I locked down my letters with actual letter locks. It’s an old way of cutting and folding correspondence so, if it gets into the wrong hands, it’ll self-destruct. Well, no, though that’d be cool. Instead, letterlocking predates envelopes. Envelopes hide letters from prying eyes. They also show if the messenger has opened it, by breaking the seal. Before that, you were basically handing your note to someone and trusting them not to read it and, sorry, but here’s where my curiosity would win over my ethics every time.

  A simple letter lock is just a way of folding and then sealing the letter to keep it from being easily read. But there’s another level, one where the adhesive and the folds are done in such a way that tearing the letter open will damage the contents. The most difficult—and most secure—method is the dagger-trap. That’s what’s on this one.

  I need Jonathan because, back in my letter-locking days, he’d been my accomplice. We share a fascination for this kind of arcana, and so when I’d wanted to learn more and practice, I’d gone to him for help. Even at fourteen, he’d been a budding researcher.

  Now when I bring the others in, Jonathan has only to look at the folded sheet to smile.

  “Is that a dagger-trap?” he says.

  “Seems so. Take a look.”

  Ani nods. “That’s one of those things you and Jonathan used to play with as kids.”

  “Kennedy was a kid,” he says. “I was a responsible young adult helping a child with a valid research project.”

  “She was sending love notes to one of the neighbor boys.”

  “Not love notes,” I say. “That was the point. Hope wouldn’t believe they were just regular letters, so she kept intercepting them.”

  Connolly frowns. “Why not just text each other?”

  “We were twelve.”

  To his blank look, I say, “You totally had a cell phone by twelve, didn’t you? And your own laptop, tablet, Xbox . . .”

  “No Xbox. My parents didn’t believe in video games. But we needed the other devices for school. They were part of the supply list.”

  “Yeah, the rest of us had pencils and colored markers on our supply list, Connolly. And while Jimmy and I could have e-mailed, the letters were retro-fun.”

  “Retro,” Vanessa murmurs. “To describe a method of communication that only faded in the past decade.”

  “Would you prefer antique? Outdated? Quaintly old-fashioned?” I lift the letter. “Hey, you guys were around when people did stuff like this, right?”

  “We were around when they were writing on stone tablets,” Marius says.

  “He’s joking,” Vanessa cuts in.

  “Uh, no, people were—”

  “Fine. They did still occasionally write important decrees and such on stone.”

  “Wait!” I say. “The Rosetta stone. That’s a decree. You could have translated it, right?”

  “Sure,” Marius says. “I remember when they first found it. Athene wrote to Napoleon, offering to translate. She never heard back. So she got hold of one of the etchings and actually sent the full translation—ancient Greek, Demotic and hieroglyphs—to the British Museum. Someone there sent her a reply, basically suggesting she stick to needlework and music and find herself a good husband. That went over well.”

  Vanessa snorts. “It doesn’t help that she used her actual name. Not many girls in Georgian England named Athene.”

  “Yes,” Marius says. “The rest of us have modernized our names, sometimes more than once. Athene insists on sticking to hers. Though, in her defense, it’s not as uncommon as it once was.”

  “If she’d used a male name, she might have gotten a better response from the museum,” Vanessa says. “That’s what I suggested. But no, it had to be a woman’s name so she could make a point.”

  “My sister likes to make points,” Marius says. “Mostly so she has the right to fume and rage about it for the next few centuries. If you ever meet her, just casually mention the Rosetta stone. It’s kinda fun. As for that letter lock, yes, I used them, back when I ran a network of spies for . . .” He waves a hand. “That hardly matters. The point is that, yes, I’m familiar with these.”

  “And perhaps familiar with the person who sent this one?” Connolly says.

  Marius and Vanessa exchange a look.

  “You already have your suspicions, don’t you?” I say. “From the gambler’s gambit.”

  “We . . . may know who sent it,” Marius says. “And, yes, the letter lock seems to confirm that suspicion, but we are”—another look to Vanessa—“not at liberty to say more. I could open that for you, but I believe you’re supposed to do it.”

  “Part of the test.”

  “Yes. If it is who we suspect, they will want you solving that yourself, and we shouldn’t interfere.”

  “Well, then, let’s get to it,” I say. “I’m going to guess that the test is the fact that I recognized what it is and know how to get the information needed to open it. An open-book quiz. Since I doubt, other than you, Marius, no one alive today has memorized the steps to opening these.”

  “Even I would need help,” he says. “So, yes, feel free to look it up.”

  I do, and Jonathan and I set about opening it with Ani reading instructions. It really is mostly a matter of knowing what this is and how to avoid triggering anything that’ll damage the note. Well, damage key parts of it, that is. Like I said, it’s not as if the paper will burst into flame. Or so I hope.

  Opening a dagger-trapped letter is much easier than creating one. The letter has been pleated and then secured at multiple levels with “daggers” cut from the page itself and threaded through the paper and then sealed with wax. Once folded, it’s further locked with thin wire also threaded through the letter. One hasty pull and the wax will tear the words from the page.

  When I’m finally done, I unfold the page.

  “Is that . . . ?” Connolly begins as I smooth the paper. “A greeting card?”

  It is. Not the sort you buy in a store, but the sort I vaguely recall from my childhood, where you’d create it online, print it, fold it and then send it snail mail, saving yourself from the outrageous racket that is the greeting-card industry. It looks quaint and cheap now, especially when produced on a monochrome printer. But it is definitely a card.

  “Congratulations to a fan-tab-ulous granddaughter on her graduation day!” I read. There’s a picture of a teenage girl reclining on pillows, texting with her friends, earbud wires snaking from her ears. It’s exactly the sort of cringey card one might get from a grandparent who proves just how out of touch they are by trying to prove they aren’t.

  I open the card.

  “Greetings from the first planet from the sun,” I read. “Best of luck with your college application. Live long and prosper.” I pause. “There’s a phone number, too.” I close the card, look at it and then open it and reread it to myself.

  “I’m going to refrain from saying I don�
�t get it,” I murmur.

  “Well, I’ll say it then,” Ani says. “Either that’s meant for someone else, or it’s a joke.”

  “Kind of a joke, I think?” I say. “But one for me. Someone gave me the tea caddy. Opening it could be a kind of ‘graduation.’ I passed the test. The phone number must be a method of contact. As for live long and prosper, it sounds familiar . . .”

  “Star Trek,” Marius and Jonathan say in unison. At a nod from Marius, Jonathan continues. “It’s from the original series. Spock’s catchphrase.” He puts out a hand, separating his fingers between the third and fourth. “Live long and prosper.”

  “Right!” I say. “We watched the movies. Okay, so we have a Star Trek reference plus a planetary one. There must be a link. The first planet from the sun is Mercury. Does Mercury play any role in science fiction? It’s usually Mars.” I smile and glance at Marius. “You get all the Martians . . .” I stop.

  “Planets,” I say. “Mars. Venus. Mercury. The god Mercury. Hermes. Trickster of the Olympian Pantheon. Greetings from the first planet from the sun. Greetings from Mercury.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  I look at Vanessa and Marius. “That was your guess, right? It’s from Marius’s brother, Mercury.”

  Marius’s mouth opens, and I see denial coming. “Okay, not your brother, but still Mercury.”

  “Still Mercury, yes. Not my brother, but my sibling.”

  “Oh. Mercury is your sister.”

  “She calls herself my sister and uses feminine pronouns, but she is what we would have called androgynous. Today, gender fluid is the more correct term.”

  Jonathan nods. “Most trickster gods are said to have the power of shapeshifting, and they’re often gender fluid.”

  “That’s Mercy,” Marius says. “Always has been. And yes, we suspected the tea caddy was from her.”

  “Is there any connection to the necklace?” I say. “Is Mercy a potential buyer?”