Cruel Fortunes Omnibus: Volumes One to Four

by RAE STAPLETON

  “How will I recognize the spell?”

  Her expression transformed, and she eyed me with avid interest. “You won’t. Come to me with the book and the jewel and I’ll help you. And Sophia, in the meantime you must hide. If you don’t, you will die and there’s nothing you or I will be able to do to save you.”

  “Who am I hiding from? Is it Nick?” I asked, jiggling my knee in irritation.

  “Nick is your lover who tried to kill you in France?”

  I nodded. “Well, he dropped me off a cliff. I’m not sure if he meant to or if it was a cruel joke gone wrong but either way, I no longer trust him.”

  He would be the logical choice then but I can’t say for sure.”

  ***

  Arriving home without incident, I grabbed my bag from the car, and hit the lock button as I walked away. The shift in the air set my teeth on edge, and I looked over my shoulder to see if the black bird was still hovering but it was gone. My car beeped and the lights flashed. It was getting dark, and the street—filled with pines and maples—was full of moving shadows, most likely the tree branches lifting and swelling in the wind.

  I crossed the road making my way to my front door. All the while, reprimanding myself for being such a scaredy-cat. I’d been in sketchier places then that my own quiet neighborhood.

  It was simply the storm that was brewing that had me on edge. The trees on the front lawn whooshed around me. I desperately needed a drink. This paranoia was getting to be too much. If Liam was still in town, maybe I’d take Cullen up on his offer and have him stay with me.

  “Sofa!” I knew that nickname like nails on a chalkboard.

  The birds in my oak tree scattered and flew away. Lucky you.

  I turned to face Nick-the-dick.

  “You disappeared from the hospital.”

  “No shit.”

  “I was worried about you. Why have you been avoiding me?”

  Wow. Just wow. Some people had balls. He actually had a straight face. “Maybe because you strangled me and knocked me off a cliff. Why would I see you?”

  “C’mon, Sofa. Don’t you think you’re overreacting? It was an accident. Besides, the cliff wasn’t even that steep.”

  “Oh, you’re the worst,” I said, turning to unlock the front door.

  “Sophia, we need to talk.”

  “We certainly do not.” I flipped on the light, stepping inside. Gigi’s sweater still hung on the hook from her last visit. “How did you even know I was home?”

  He attempted to push his way in.

  “Don’t!” I yelled back. “Hell is that way.” I pointed with my middle finger.

  He kept coming.

  “Nick, you’re not welcome to come in. I’ll get a restraining order if I have to.”

  He reached out and pulled me roughly into him, forcing a sloppy one-sided kiss onto my mouth. I felt trapped. Powerless again. Then something changed. An anger surged from within me. I stepped back and smacked him so hard across the face that my hand imprinted on his cheek.

  “Ow.” He rubbed at his face.

  Satisfaction bubbled in my chest. That had felt so much better than I’d imagined. I almost wanted to do it again. Boy, violence was catching.

  “Feeling feisty, eh?” The jerk laughed at me. “I knew you liked the rough stuff.”

  He lunged for me like a crazed animal.

  “What are you doing? No—stop this! Stop it, Nick!”

  I reefed myself from his arms and turned to run down the hall, but he caught hold of me, and we both fell to the ground. Where was Daphne—I could use her claws right about now.

  I scratched at Nick’s face as he flipped me onto my back but it didn’t stop him. He put all his weight on my wrists, and reached for his pants.

  I screamed in his face. This was a whole new level of low, even for Nick.

  I kicked until I got one arm loose and elbowed him in the ribs and then the nose.

  He let out a primitive howl far louder than my own shouts. Blood began to trickle from his nose.

  “Get the hell out!” I said, as he stood up and pulled me to my feet.

  “Come on, Sophia. We were just having a little fun. I missed you.”

  “Well, you sure have a funny way of showing it.”

  I shoved him back out the door.

  “Sophia, wait. I want to talk to you. Is this because of that ginger asshole?”

  “It’s none of your business. We’re through, Nick. I mean it,” I yelled and slammed the door. Bolting it immediately.

  I heard him shout, “I don’t think so! I’ll never give up, Sophia. I’ll never give you up.”

  FORTY

  “I

  can’t believe that guy,” Leslie said, in a whisper that somehow managed to sound menacing?

  I stood at the window, watching the flashing lights of the police car parked across the street until they were switched off. Leslie had busied herself with the task of brewing tea while the police questioned me but I could tell she’d been eager for them to leave. I shook my head.

  “You heard the officer.” I took a seat on the couch. “He’s got money. He can buy his way out of most everything. I feel helpless.”

  Leslie sat beside me on the couch, patting my back.

  When she handed me my cup, the tremor in her hand caused it to rattle in its saucer. She touched my wrist gently.

  “How about some wine?” she asked, walking toward the kitchen.

  “Sure. There’s a bottle under the counter.”

  Outside the window, across the street, the police car remained parked. I’d answered all their questions, and they’d promised to keep a cruiser in the area for the night until they tracked down my ex.

  A faint uneasiness continued to course through me. What was my problem—the residue of violation? I hadn’t really been harmed. I should feel lucky, right?

  With a jolt, I hurried down the hall and into my bedroom. Satin pillows and a crumpled blanket lay on my blue velvet couch, flanked by a book and empty coffee cup. My belongings in my room and yet I no longer felt like this was my sanctuary. Opening my purse, I retrieved my cell phone. I knew what I had to do.

  I pulled my suitcase from the closet and dialed Cullen.

  I was just saying goodbye when Leslie came in and handed me my wine.

  “Who are we gonna see soon?”

  “I was on the phone to Cullen.” I took a sip of my wine, and then set it on the dresser.

  I felt her scrutinizing my face, “Cullen? Is he coming to stay with you?”

  I shook my head.”

  Before I could utter a word, she let loose with a string of expletives that would have brought tears to a truck driver.

  “Sophia, you can’t move to Ireland. You barely know him.”

  I shrugged. “What else is there to know? Nick’s after me, Les. And according to Madam Brun, he’s going to kill me.”

  Epilogue

  Almost One Year Later, Dublin, Ireland

  T he antique table against which I tapped my fingers in the O’Kelly’s redbrick Edwardian mansion had once belonged to my boyfriend’s ancestor, museum curator Tandy O’Kelley. I thought it fitting that it was now covered with stacks of books, police reports, and assorted papers pertaining to the very cursed sapphire he’d sold to my family over a century ago.

  Leslie and I had been at it for an hour, searching through musty books in Cullen’s parent’s library. We were looking for some clue that might shed light on the baffling cursed nature of my inherited sapphire gem set.

  As I spoke, Leslie walked the perimeter of the room, leaving crumbs from cookies Cullen’s ma, Lucille, had made. Leslie’s auburn hair was styled up in a bun, and her large brown eyes were framed by tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses. They reflected the fire Cullen’s Da had been gracious enough to light before heading out with the family for the day. The fire crackled and spit as it bit into the dry wood.

  I paused from reading the text to pour a cup of tea and decided to take another run at crac
king Leslie’s reason for visiting. She smiled too widely and held eye contact for far too long. Guilty, just as I suspected.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Cullen seemed perfectly normal to me.” She feigned innocence with an authenticity in her voice that a used car salesman would have envied. I wasn’t buying it.

  Cullen, my cool and aloof beau, had been particularly secretive for the past month. And last night Leslie had surprised me by popping in from Canada for Samhain, the Gaelic festival weekend. Just a hop, skip and a seven-hour flight—no big deal there.

  Leslie tried to hold my eye, but her gaze kept wandering to the door.

  “No one’s coming to save you, Les,” I said, dryly. “Now spill it.”

  “Fine.” She threw her hands up in the air. “The dinner that the O’Kelley’s are holding tonight is not an All Hallows Eve dinner but rather a celebration in honor of your six-month anniversary. Way to spoil the surprise.”

  “Six-month anniversary, seriously? That’s not a thing, and you flew all the way to Dublin for that even though you’re broke as hell?”

  “I am not broke as hell and Cullen flew me here on his dime. I’m your best friend…”

  “And…?”

  “And…he thinks you’ve been a tad bit melancholy lately. He’s hoping you’re just bored, but big surprise, he feels like there’s something you’re not telling him.”

  “Like the fact that I’m cursed, that I time traveled,” I added dryly. It was hard to believe that in the last year I still hadn’t told him the truth: that when he had seen my ex-boyfriend push me off a cliff, I hadn’t just landed in the water beside his yacht, but had plunged into the body of a nineteenth-century princess.

  “Why haven’t you told him?”

  “Leslie, what sane person would believe that what had been only seconds underwater to them had been weeks to me?” I tapped my pencil against the side of my head. “So, he sent you in to ferret out the truth, huh?”

  “I hope you know that I resent being compared to a ferret—with its weasel-like qualities. My spirit animal is more akin to the panda bear. I like to eat and sleep and I am definitely not as cuddly as I look.”

  “You’re a hundred pounds and barely five feet two inches tall. You’re hardly a bear.”

  “Okay, so maybe I’m more of a red panda,” Leslie said, following it up with her trademark chuckle.

  “Those are hideous looking raccoons, that’s no better. Anyway, we’re getting off topic. So, where is this All Hallows Eve dinner? He won’t tell me where we’re going.”

  “I don’t know. Some fancy restaurant downtown. All I know is that there’s a new dress in a box upstairs and the limo is picking us up at four.”

  “A new dress, huh?”

  Leslie grinned. “Long, silky and emerald green, you want to go try it on?”

  I bit my lip. “Not yet. Let’s finish up here first.”

  “Right. Let’s review: What do we know so far?” Leslie asked.

  “The sapphire was stolen from the Temple of Indra by a treasure hunter named William Ferris during the Indian Mutiny, something about removing the stone activated a curse and because it was given and handled by my past life self, Princess Sapphira Grimaldi of Monaco, I am now cursed forever,” I answered from my perch at the head of the table.

  “How do we know this?”

  “I was pulled back in time and experienced it.”

  “Yes, but how do we know you are still cursed?” Leslie said. “How do you know plunging from the Palace balcony wasn’t the end of it?”

  “Madam Brun, the psychic we met, said that the dark spirit attached to me would not stop until he killed me in this life as well. She said I’ve experienced this cycle several times already –in the body of the Princess and in the body of my Great-Aunt Zafira. She said there may have been other times as well.”

  “As a librarian and a self-proclaimed scholar, I must tell you: Psychics are not exactly reliable sources.”

  “This from the girl who introduced me to her.”

  “Psshh. What do we know about your Great-Aunt’s life and death?” Leslie dusted off her hands on a napkin and immediately reached for another cookie without breaking her stride. “We have a journal from the killer, do we not?”

  “Yes, we have the killer’s journal,” I said, picking up the familiar dark journal with the initials E. B. on the cover. It had once belonged to my Gigi’s father: Eugene Breathour.

  “Shockingly, he does not outright admit to killing his daughter in it.”

  “Damn! We just can’t catch a break now, can we?” Leslie smirked.

  I opened it, flipping to the beginning, and read the spidery ink.

  Velte has still not returned. He’s been missing since the girl’s body was found below deck. Coincidentally, two of Papa’s jewels are missing.

  “It recounts his family’s journey from Germany to Canada when he was fifteen. He talks a lot about his brother Velte. He was a troubled youth who died on the way over.”

  “Foulplay? Perhaps Eugene got his first taste of murder on that trip?” Leslie took a pen and wrote something down on her pad of paper. Then she paused and began pacing again. “How do we know he was the one who killed Zafira? Did someone see him do it? Did your Gigi tell you that her father killed her sister?”

  “No. My Gigi thought her father was a saint. She was in an orphanage at the time of her sister’s murder. Zafira was only released because she turned eighteen.”

  I picked up a sketch from the police file and handed it to her. “This is the man that the neighbors saw fleeing.” I picked up a family photo from my own keepsake box. “This is Zafira’s father—Eugene.”

  Leslie nodded. “Same man. Open and shut case.”

  “My Gigi’s husband was a private investigator. In his notebook, he talked about how Gigi never got over her family’s past so he began investigating the cold case without her knowledge to give her some peace of mind. He never told her what he found. That it was her own estranged father who’d killed her sister.”

  “How did he find out?”

  “There was an article talking about the prisoners in Kingston, and apparently Eugene’s name was featured in it.”

  I tried and failed to imagine Gigi’s father as a monster. Considering the stories Gigi had told me, it didn’t make sense that he could have done it.

  Leslie looked over the top of her glasses. “You say, ‘He was estranged’. Where was the girls’ mother?”

  I took a sip of my tea. The hot liquid singed my tongue.

  “Dead. Eugene’s parents also died that same year.” I paused for a second. “Eugene couldn’t deal with the loss of his family and had to be hospitalized. I think it was only supposed to be temporary, which is why the girls were sent to an orphanage as opposed to tracking down overseas relatives, only he went missing after he got out and so the girls were left behind.”

  Book[RS1] Two: Mischievous are the Spelled ONE

  T he luminous moon peeked out from behind a thin stream of clouds, highlighting crimson leaves as they skittered across the damp October streets of Dublin. Cullen appeared to spot me from just inside the restaurant’s wide walnut doors as I approached the with Leslie, but he was surrounded by a group of his rowdy cousins.

  The doorman took my wrap—a fur stole lent to me by his mother and for a moment I felt almost naked. The smooth silk of the green dress flowed like water over my skin.

  I whispered to Leslie, “Do I look alright?”

  She paused for a moment and her face turned to mock horror.

  “What is it?” Had the dress ripped? Was it see-through? Could you see my nipples?

  “There is a hair out of place.” She pretended to smooth it.

  “You’re an ass. You know that?”

  “Sure do,” she said, with a smile. “But I’m your ass.”

  Cullen was only a couple of feet away now, making his way over to me with two glasses of champagne. He looked handsome in his sport jacket an
d tailored shirt. His hair, a coppery red with streaks of blond that looked almost golden in the sunlight, was slicked back.

  He made me over-the-moon happy.

  “Thirsty?” he asked, holding a glass out to me.

  Leslie leaned forward to kiss Cullen on the cheek. “Oh, Cullen, it’s like we were meant for each other.”

  Cullen’s brother, Liam with his dark whiskey-colored eyes and raven’s-wing hair roared with laughter from behind him. “I like her. She's great craic.”

  I took the other glass and laughed. “Yes. She’ll keep us entertained. That’s for sure.”

  Liam held out his arm and Leslie gave me a wink and wandered off with Cullen’s brother.

  “Looks like everyone is enjoying themselves,” I said, gazing about the restaurant. The walls were a rustic stone, a soft and whimsical Irish fiddle played in the background and there was a drink in every hand. “Seems strange to me to see devout Catholics such as yourselves celebrating a pagan holiday like Halloween. Am I wrong in my thinking?”

  Cullen laughed. “Aye, well, I don’t know about us all being devout. Liam’s the only true catholic. Half the people here are wiccan. However, there’s still the vigil for the saints tonight. No champagne there, I’m afraid. This dinner is more in honor of our anniversary, and I do know Leslie spilled the beans already, so you can quit with the fishing expedition. She already told me ye needled her.”

  Nice of Leslie to tell on me. I thought.

  “I can’t believe it’s been a year already,” Cullen said.

  “Sorry. Say that again. I was just plotting revenge on Leslie.”

  Cullen laughed.

  It wasn’t really our anniversary, but it had been a year since we’d met. Since that ill-fated day on the Lerins Island, half a mile off shore from Cannes, when I’d rejected the marriage proposal of that egotistical lunatic Nicholas Bexx and endured his wrath. Lucky for me, Cullen had been looking up from the deck of his family’s yacht and had seen Nick push me off the cliff. Cullen dove in and pulled me to safety, and subsequently into his life.

  It was hard to believe that it had been a year already and harder still to believe that Cullen didn’t know about my little adventure into the body of the nineteenth-century princess. I hadn’t even told him about Madam Brun’s plan for me to return on Samhain to end the curse. Hence, why I was still here in Ireland instead of back home with her attempting a spell.