Thankfully, Tiago caught on. He shoved Ryerson at the door and shouted something I couldn’t hear over the roaring in my ears.
I fell to my hands and knees as my magic tried desperately to shove itself between the cursed magic and me, but it wasn’t strong enough. Black spots swam across my vision.
This was it.
Then, as suddenly as it started, the magic chokehold eased. It loosened slowly and I willed Ryerson to run faster. Finally, after what felt like an eternity but was probably no more than a few seconds, the magic roared and then snapped, choosing to stay with Ryerson over killing me.
I face-planted on the carpet and sucked in great, wheezy breaths. Tiago knelt next to me, his hand on my back. He was talking, but it was another minute before the ringing in my ears had faded enough that I could hear him.
I rolled onto my back and blinked up at him. His eyes were wide and his gun was in his hand and trained on the floor.
“What the hell was that?” he said.
“Magic,” I rasped.
“No shit. What kind of magic?”
I sat up. My whole body ached. I wondered what was more to blame: the curse, the workout, or the running for my life thing. “Love curse.”
“A love spell just tried to kill you?”
“Love curse.” I rolled to my feet, swaying. Tiago wrapped a long arm around my waist and helped me into the bedroom I’d claimed. I collapsed onto the bed and relaxed into the cool sheets.
“Tell Ryerson he can come back now,” I said sleepily.
Tiago looked dubious. “If he comes back and you die, corporate will be pissed.”
Gee, I’d miss you too, I thought grumpily. A smile pulled at Tiago’s lips and I realized I had said that out loud.
“I got too close to Ryerson and the magic felt threatened. As long as the magic doesn’t feel threatened, it’ll stay dormant.” I think. I really needed to talk to Aunt Belinda.
I yawned. Tiago was still talking, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I drifted to sleep.
Hours later, in the middle of the night, my magic nudged me. I blinked blearily and unmashed my face from the pillow, then rolled onto my side. The room was dark and hazy, the only light courtesy of the moonbeam outside the window, spilling across the floor.
Ryerson sat in a chair against the far wall, arms crossed, frowning deeply at me.
“You need to get a hobby,” I murmured sleepily.
“Tiago told me to let you sleep, but I wanted to check on you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You nearly weren’t.” His voice was tight and strained. “Is that what happened to you in the café this afternoon, when you couldn’t breathe? That wasn’t the aftereffects of the spell you cast, was it?”
“I think so.”
He pushed a hand through hair that looked like he’d been doing that a lot tonight. “If you knew what it could do, why risk it?”
Good question. In fact, that question had been nagging me since the moment I decided to do it. It was reckless, and I’m rarely reckless. “Because it seemed safer than working with you without knowing what kind of magical influence you might be under.” That was true. It just wasn’t the full answer. No need to tell him I had done it because I’d been worried about him. And definitely no need to tell him I still was, especially now that we knew what the magic was.
Ryerson shook his head. “I’ve been trying to figure out who could have done this, and I just don’t know.”
I blinked at him. “Are you serious? It’s your old partner. The witch who died.”
He shook his head. His look said he’d already chewed on the idea, decided he didn’t like the taste of it, and spat it right back out. “No. Sloane wouldn’t do that.”
“Love curses make you feel like you’re in love,” I said gently. “That’s kind of their thing. Have you felt like you’ve fallen in love with anyone else recently?”
He looked at me for a long moment and then looked away. “It wasn’t her.”
I sighed. Could the curse be influencing him even now? I really needed to talk to Aunt Belinda.
“Ryerson …”
“Get some sleep.” He walked out. I groaned and mashed my face into the pillow. Thoughts spun through my head, and I decided it would be a long time before I fell back to sleep.
Sometimes being wrong isn’t so bad, after all.
16
The next morning I padded sleepily into the kitchen, dressed in jeans and my last clean t-shirt. If this mission dragged on any longer I would need to find a laundromat. How did spies handle dirty laundry? Was there someone they called for this sort of thing?
Lost in thoughts of a secret agent turndown service, I opened the refrigerator, more out of habit than anything, and gasped. Two cartons of Chinese takeout sat on the top shelf. Score. It was probably Tiago and Ryerson’s leftover dinner, after I’d passed out. I grabbed one of the thin silver handles and scrounged up a fork. Then I dug happily into chilled pork fried rice and sat at the tiny counter to think.
So Ryerson’s ex-girlfriend had placed a love curse on him. Why? A memory rose up. Ryerson’s ragged breath hot on my neck, his hands brushing up my sides to tangle in my hair, his body hard and tense against mine, ready to … I sucked in a shuddering breath and shoved the memory far, far away.
Well, okay, I could think of one reason why she would do it.
But curses were serious magic. Plus his ex was a spy. Surely she hadn’t done it just because he was hot. If I’d learned anything from Ryerson, it’s that spies are … complicated.
Whatever the reason, what she’d done was inexcusable and anger flashed through me at the thought of how thoroughly she’d worked him over.
But why?
And more importantly, could it be undone? But even as I thought the question, I knew the answer. Of course it could. Aunt Belinda had cursed Dad, and he was fine now. I really needed to talk to Aunt Belinda.
Too bad Ryerson had confiscated my phone after Alec had used it to call him at the cemetery.
I supposed I could just ask him for it. I toyed with the idea and discarded it. Ryerson was cursed and therefore unpredictable, and he might say no. Better just to take it.
Wondering how difficult snooping through a spy’s room would be, I scooped up my fried rice, strolled into the living room, and stopped cold.
A nice-looking Asian couple dressed in pajamas sat on the couch, hands folded in their laps, empty gazes fixed on Tiago who was sprawled in an armchair across from them, reading a magazine.
“Company?” I asked.
Tiago didn’t look up from his magazine—something with a car on the cover—but he waved toward the couple. “Ainsley Winters, meet the North Korean ambassador to Poland and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Chun Yong. We picked them up early this morning.”
“You mean you kidnapped them.”
Tiago waved a hand in a “potato, potahto” kind of way.
I shook my head and turned back to the couple. The woman was pretty, with sleek black hair, a Cupid’s bow mouth, and a narrow face. The man was squat, with bushy silver-threaded eyebrows that sat in stark contrast to his shiny bald head and a scowl so deep I wondered if he and Ryerson had exchanged notes. Neither of them seemed to notice me.
“Why aren’t they, you know, screaming or something?”
“Fugue potion,” Tiago said. “They’re basically comatose for the next twenty-four hours. No yelling, no complaining, no explaining. One of Andersen’s better spells if you ask me. By the time it wears off, we’ll have them back in their hotel room. They won’t remember a thing.”
I frowned. “Why are their eyes still open?”
“No idea. You’re the witch.”
My frown deepened. So poor Mr. and Mrs. Chun Yong just had to sit there, unable to move, for a whole day? What if their eyes dried out? Or they got a blood clot? Or a leg cramp?
I set down the takeout carton and pressed their eyelids closed. They stayed like that for a moment and then popped ba
ck open, their blank stares fixing on me. I yelped and jumped back. When my heart rate had returned to normal and I was convinced they weren’t going to jump up, walking-dead-style, I readjusted the woman until she leaned back against the couch, feet propped up on the coffee table, her heels resting on a couch pillow. Then I turned to the man.
“Um, what are you doing?” Tiago’s voice was a cross between exasperation and amusement.
“Muscle cramps are a real thing.”
“They can’t feel anything.”
“Says you.” I tried repositioning the man so that he was at least leaning against the arm of the couch, but it was like shifting a three-hundred-pound bowl of Jell-O. One nudge and he slow-slid straight to the floor. I grabbed at his pajama shirt, but the silky material was no match for gravity. The fabric ripped and the ambassador flopped to the floor.
Oops.
I stared at the now half-naked man, squished between the couch and the coffee table, and then at Tiago who was trying, and failing, to hold back a laugh.
“A little help?”
“What for? You’re right. He looks much more comfortable now.”
I glared at him. “What is the point of all those muscles if you don’t use them to push around nearly naked, semicomatose diplomats?”
Now that the situation affected him, he didn’t seem to find it nearly as funny. He loosed a put-upon sigh and, with more dramatics than a Kardashian in a telenovela, tossed his magazine on the coffee table. He heaved Mr. Chun Yong onto the couch and held him steady while I repositioned him.
When I was satisfied they were as comfortable as they were going to get, we stepped back and considered our work. The diplomats stared back at us. Mr. Chun Yong’s arm rested around his wife’s shoulders, his ankles crossed on the coffee table, like they were settling in to watch TV.
Tiago shook his head. “That’s so creepy.”
I swiped the takeout carton from the table and Tiago lifted an eyebrow. I tilted the carton at him. “Want some?”
“You don’t want to learn to defend yourself because you might sprain an ankle and you worry about strangers suffering from couch-induced muscle cramps, yet you eat worse than any girl I’ve ever met. You’re a walking contradiction.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘complex.’”
Tiago shook his head again and dropped into the armchair with his magazine.
Down the hall, the shower came on. Hmm. Seemed like the perfect time to raid Ryerson’s room for my phone.
“I’m just going to my room,” I announced in a too-loud voice, startling Tiago into glancing up.
He gave me an odd look and went back to his magazine.
I snuck down the hall and into Ryerson’s room. The bed was still made, corners tucked tight and the pillow smooth, as if he hadn’t slept at all last night. That or the secret agent turndown service was that good.
I dragged his bag out of the closet and rummaged through it. Pants, shirts, boxers … An image of Ryerson wearing nothing but silky black boxers and a beckoning smile rose up in my mind. All of that smooth, toned muscle. The smile was harder to picture. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him smile. Kill people? Yes. Save my life? Check. Smile? Nope.
In the living room Tiago coughed, dragging my thoughts away from half-naked Ryerson and back to the present.
Stupid brain.
I shoved the rest of his clothes aside and found my phone tucked into a side pocket. I snagged it, shoved everything back inside the bag and hurried into my own room.
It took a minute for the phone to power on, and then I scrolled through a dozen texts from Zoe asking how the interview went and a few stories of crazy things customers did that day. Then I dialed Aunt Belinda while I listened for the sound of the shower shutting off.
“Hey, sweetie,” she answered. “How’s the conference?”
“Conference?”
“Aren’t you attending a work conference this week?”
Right. “It’s great. Listen, I have a question.”
“Can you hang on a moment?”
“Uh, sure.”
She pulled the phone away from her ear, but I heard her say, “Please don’t touch—” followed by a shriek and another voice that said, “My hands! What did you do to them?”
“It’s not my fault you don’t read shop signs,” Aunt Belinda snapped. “Don’t touch means don’t touch. Honestly. It’s just a few warts. Now quit waving them about and hold still.”
I dropped onto the bed and drummed my fingers against my thigh. There was a reason Aunt Belinda’s coven had warded her shop door with a spell that made her customers forget everything that happened in the store when they left. It kept them from bringing unwanted attention to the magical community when something in her shop attacked the customers, but it was hard on repeat business so Belinda was touchy about it.
“Sorry dear,” Aunt Belinda said. “Some customers feel the inexplicable need to touch everything.” I heard someone in the background yelling about “real witchcraft” and mentally fist-bumped Belinda’s coven. “Anyway, what’s your question?”
“What do you know about love curses?”
“Is your father on about that again? For goddess sakes, it was one little curse, thirty years ago. I swear, he—”
“No, Aunt Belinda. It’s not about Dad. I have a … um, friend whose ex-girlfriend cursed him.”
“Bitch.”
That summed it up nicely. “What can you tell me about them?”
“Nasty buggers. They’re designed, of course, to make the cursed believe he’s in love with someone. It takes dark magic to curse someone, darker still to confuse their emotions so completely and take away their free will. They tend to work as they’re intended at first, but the curse becomes more dangerous the longer it’s worn.”
I was starting to see why Dad was still pissed. “Dangerous how?”
“Well for starters, it tends to lash out at anyone the magic deems a threat. So pretty much anyone the curse wearer has romantic feelings for.”
“Oh.”
“I found that out after I cursed your father,” she added. “Oh, and it can drive the curse wearer mad.”
My grip tightened on the phone. “How so?”
“Obsession, mainly. The obsession starts small enough. A focus on someone to the exclusion of everyone else. But eventually that focus consumes them, body and soul, until there is nothing left to live for except that person.”
Unless that person is dead, I thought. “How do you remove a love curse?”
“I don’t remember the full counter-curse. It was a long time ago. What kind of conference did you say you were attending?”
“Er, it’s about coffee beans. Can you find the counter-curse? It’s important.”
She was quiet a moment, as though she knew I wasn’t giving her the full story. Finally, she sighed. “You’ll tell me what’s going on when you get home?”
Unlikely. “Sure.”
“All right. I’ll find it. You’ll definitely need the blood of the witch or mage who cast the spell. All curse-breaking spells require that.”
Um. “What if the caster is, erm, missing?”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. The cursed person can always find the person they’re focused on. All they have to do is look. It’s a side effect of the curse.”
Interesting, but … “What if the caster is dead?”
“Oh dear. I’m afraid there is no other way.”
My stomach plunged to my knees and my grip on the phone turned painful. “What happens to the cursed if the caster is dead?”
“I believe they usually try to kill themselves. Eventually, they succeed.”
I thought of the way Ryerson had pursued Merrick even after his own team told him it was too dangerous. And what he said to me in the car yesterday, about how I shouldn’t have saved him.
The apartment pipes groaned as the shower was turned off. Time to go, but there was something else that was bugging me.
“Oh yes, dear. It’s the only way to properly identify what spell or curse a person is inflicted with.”
I wondered what she’d think of Andersen’s spell sensor. “How do people usually react?”
“That, my dear, depends entirely on how the person feels about the witch. Most of the people I push my magic into are strangers. They describe a tingling sensation, but that’s about it.”
“What about people who know you?” I pressed. “How do they react?”
“That can be … unpredictable,” she said. Tell me about it. “I don’t often dip my magic into people I know for exactly that reason. Generally speaking though, if the person likes you, they’re likely to feel a warm feeling of contentment. If the person does not like you, then they’re likely to feel pain. How much pain depends on the strength of their feelings for you. The stronger the person’s feelings toward the witch, the stronger their reaction.”
“What if it makes them feel … good?” Heat rose to my cheeks, and I was very glad we were not having this conversation in person.
I heard the smile in her voice. “I’ve heard that if the person has strong romantic feelings toward the witch, then the experience can be quite … pleasurable.”
Only Ryerson couldn’t have those feelings for me. He was love cursed. Also, he hated me. “So if the person despises the witch, he should feel pain, not pleasure, right?”
“People’s emotions are never black and white. His reaction will reflect his strongest feeling for the witch.” Belinda’s voice rose. “Oh, hex it. Don’t touch the ragweed!” To me, she said, “Teenagers. I’m sorry, sweetie. I have to go. I’ll dig up the counter-spell to the love curse. Call your mother.”
We hung up.
Footsteps echoed down the hall, and I shoved the phone under a pillow just as someone rapped the door once and then opened it. Tiago stuck his head inside, a garment bag folded over his arm. I felt the tiniest glimmer of disappointment that he wasn’t Ryerson and squashed it down.
“I ate all the fried rice,” I said before he’d opened his mouth.
He blinked, trying to catch up. “What?”
“I assume you came to your senses and wanted your leftover Chinese back. Well, I ate it all.”
License to Spell_An Urban Fantasy Novel Page 11
