The Brothers Bernaux [01] Raisonne Curse

by Rinda Elliott

  “Do you know how I got out?” She stomped over to Mercer and tilted her head way back. She stood there until Mercer finally met her gaze. “I had to climb out of the window and down a tree. It looks like someone took a cheese grater to my stomach and the insides of my thighs!”

  Pryor grimaced, tried to remember how far that tree was to the window. She must have jumped. He closed his eyes at the thought of how terrified she must have been. And how determined to get to him—that didn’t escape his thoughts.

  “I’ve got a bruise the size of your foot on my thigh where you kicked the hell out of me.” Mercer stabbed an onion. “I think we’re even.”

  “Oh, Mr. Bernaux, we’re not even close.” She grabbed a handful of the chopped onions and went back to the stove.

  Mercer looked at the pile that was left, then at the onions she must have set next to the block and smirked. Elita, mumbling to herself, let a quietly begging Moochon out of the house before she disappeared into the pantry. Mercer looked up and caught Pryor’s eye. Pryor gave him the cheekiest grin he could manage and laughed when his brother chuckled.

  “She’s a keeper, Pryor,” he said softly.

  “I figured that out immediately,” Pryor said just as quietly back, all his good humor flying out the window. “And it’s gonna kill me to let her go.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Elita heard Pryor’s quietly spoken words and stood in the pantry until she could get her temper under control. She stared at the bare shelf in front of her, clenched her hands into fists. Still, he still, planned to halt this wonderful thing they had between them. She stood there, breathing hard, trying to gather up the courage to just walk away then and there. But just like the night before, she couldn’t. Couldn’t and didn’t want to. Damn him.

  “Damn you,” she muttered as she came out of the pantry. Knowing her face was probably stark white because of the pain shredding her insides, she faced him from across the room. He looked so sexy under the kitchen lights, so much better than he had this morning in here. “Damn you.”

  He stood up.

  “No. You stay right there.” She set everything down on the counter and wiped her hands down the front of the sweats she’d borrowed from Pryor. She took several deep breaths again, before aiming her gaze back at him. She could still see both his brothers. They’d stopped what they were doing as they watched her.

  Before she could speak, Mercer cleared his throat. “I have to tell you all something really important.”

  “It can wait,” Elita said through gritted teeth without looking directly at him. “Pryor and I need to have a talk. Right now.”

  Mercer shook his head. “It really can’t wait. It affects us all—even you.”

  She stopped fuming at Pryor and really looked at his brother.

  Mercer’s face had gone pale behind that dark beard. “When we were young, our uncles died because they tried to help someone with a hex while they were away from the house.”

  “Pryor told me about this,” Elita said, frowning. “I know what you’re going to try and do. Warn me away.”

  He set down his knife and held up one hand. “Please, just listen.” He looked at Pryor. “It was the Raisonne curse.”

  Elita sucked in a breath and held it. Everyone in the room was silent as they tried to process the announcement. Felt like a gray fog filled the air as everything seemed to go surreal. The scent of cooking sausage and onions filling the room—so at odds with the bomb Mercer had just dropped. The sizzle of noise coming from that skillet—covering up the pounding of her heartbeat. In a daze, Elita walked over and switched off the burner, then moved the cast iron pan to another one. The whole time, she blinked and shook.

  “Why didn’t we know that?” Pryor finally asked.

  “Because our father didn’t want you to know. Elita’s grandmother had come here and he and our uncles had tried to break it and couldn’t. Couldn’t. Not with all three of them and not here.” His own struggle with that knowledge was so obvious in his tone. “Apparently, even though they’d failed, the backlash was horrible. Lasted for weeks. It’s why he always insisted we keep trying until something works.”

  “How is that possible?” Pryor sat back down on the stool, cradled his beer between his hands. “All three should have been able to do it here. We had all the right supplies growing up. Everything they would have needed.”

  Wyatt nodded. “He’s right. I was told the Bernaux could always break every curse out there. But what would have made them try away, then? If they knew it couldn’t be done here? I know we were young, but I don’t remember them—” He stopped talking and slumped. “I think I know what happened.”

  Elita did too. “They were asked outright while away from here,” she whispered, her heart starting to beat even harder as her anxiety level rose. Something told her she knew exactly who’d asked because Ma’man had specifically told her she’d come here. “My mother?”

  Wyatt nodded. “The other Elita Raisonne. She ran into them in a bar and I don’t know the whole story, but some kind of accident hurt her badly that night. She asked for help. They didn’t make it back.”

  Elita reached out to hold on to the counter, and shut her eyes. “I remember this. I remember her getting hurt in a bar.” Her eyes flew open. “That’s when she changed. She always had trouble keeping a job before that, but she’d dealt with things just fine. After she got hurt, she just seemed to give up. She became—” She choked on the tangled lump of grief and memories in her throat. “She quit trying.”

  “This doesn’t make sense.” Pryor stood up again, then walked toward her. “If all three of them couldn’t break the curse, how did I do it with her?” He pulled Elita into his arms and held her tight to him.

  She clasped her arms around his back because she couldn’t stop shaking. He could have died. Sounds like he should have—breaking the hex all by himself like that. “What if they hadn’t come home last night, Pryor?” she asked, her mouth against the T-shirt over his chest.

  “But they did.” He cupped the back of her head, stroked her hair.

  “If we hadn’t, Pryor, you would have died. Do you know our rental car broke down two miles away from here? We had to walk. Something was keeping us from helping.” Mercer turned, leaned his hip against the counter and crossed his arms. His scowl was dark. “That’s why I asked you—”

  “Told me,” Pryor broke in, anger lacing his tone.

  Mercer growled. “Asked, told, it doesn’t fucking matter. My reasons were important.”

  “Then you should have shared those reasons,” Pryor insisted, his voice rumbling against the ear she still had to his chest. “You’re still trying to protect us.”

  “He’s right, Merce,” Wyatt said. “We’re grown damned men. You should have told us all of this a long time ago.”

  Mercer’s big shoulders slumped. “You’re both right. Okay? Both of you. If I’d told you this maybe you would have waited until we got here, Pryor.” He held up his hand when Pryor started to speak. “No, I know. Not after the boat crash. Not with her unconscious like that.” His bark of a laugh held no humor. “And both Wyatt and I would have done the same damned thing.”

  Elita smiled at Wyatt when he nodded at her.

  “Maybe I broke the spell from her because it’s weaker now.” Pryor walked back to get his beer, but tugged her along with him like he wasn’t ready to let her go.

  “Yeah,” Wyatt agreed. “The curse was actually put on the grandmother, so it would be strongest there.”

  “And more than likely, it’s even stronger now that you got it off one of the women who shared the burden,” Mercer finished.

  Elita gasped and pulled away from Pryor to face his brother. “Stronger? Like it will hurt them more?” She put her hands over her mouth. Ava hadn’t answered her phone.

  He nodded. “Maybe. I hope not. I don’t know. If we knew exactly what kind of curse Rattrap used in the beginning, we’d be better equipped to fight this.”

 
She sank onto the stool Pryor had sat on earlier, her elbows hitting the granite counter top hard as she raked her hands through her hair.

  “Elita,” Pryor said, touching her back. “We have to help them.”

  “Oh no.” She shook her head. “You heard him. Your uncles died trying to help us. Maybe Audrey’s shaman can help. She’s bound to call any day to check in.”

  “My uncles died because they did it away from here. I helped you and lived.”

  “Barely,” she choked out. She turned and held on to his arms, stared up into his face. “You don’t understand. I saw you. Saw you! What you and your brothers go through. Maybe there’s another way. Plus, Mercer just said they tried to get it off Ma’man and failed. What if by taking it off me, it’s worse on Ma’man? He said it took weeks for them to recover after they tried to help her.”

  He cupped her cheeks. “But what if we just needed to start with the threads and work our way back to the center?”

  “Yeah,” Wyatt said, coming around the island to stand next to his brother. “What if taking it off the cousins, where the curse is weakest, will let us to destroy it at its source?”

  “But Mercer said it’s probably stronger on them now.” Elita couldn’t stand the images going through her imagination like wildfire. More ghosts, more painful accidents…and what about the smudge man? Was he more now too? She shuddered, worried to death about her family.

  “I didn’t say it would be easy,” Wyatt quipped, flashing her a grin that was too much like Pryor’s for her peace of mind.

  She shut her eyes. “I bet my mother figured out that’s why your uncle died. She used to be such a good person before she changed. Knowing something like that? It would have destroyed her. I knew she’d walked in front of that truck on purpose.”

  Mercer came around the island to stand with his brothers. “I heard about her death a couple of years after all this happened here. I always wondered.”

  She wanted to ask how their father died but knowing everything she did now, it was easy to figure out. His brothers had died and someone had come here, asking for help. She had this image of a man, looking so much like Pryor—a man broken from the loss of his brothers and knowing what he faced—walking out alone into that swamp. He’d probably lived through smaller hex breaking spells for a while, each time wondering if one would be too strong, if he’d be there in the morning for his sons.

  Hot tears scalded her eyes and she turned away from the brothers.

  “Hey now,” Pryor said, pulling her back around.

  She blinked up at him, trying to stop the rising tide of wretched sobs flowing up her throat.

  He turned his head, looked at his brothers, and barked out an order. “Give us a few minutes.”

  Mercer clasped his shoulder and squeezed before offering her a quick smile and nodding. She closed her eyes and kept them closed, even when she heard the screen door close behind them.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Pryor, her voice low and husky with effort to hold back the crying. “I started thinking about your father and oh, your poor grandmother. No wonder she looked so sad in those pictures. No wonder she cries.” She shut up, not knowing if Pryor could hear the woman’s sobs that she could no longer make out.

  “You heard Mamere, huh?” Pryor pushed hair off her face. “I hear all of them and have since you came here. We all, my brothers and I, used to sometimes hear them after she died. For years, the whispers and her cries had stopped. We always believed it was because they heard us make the pact that we’d never have families of our own and let this curse die out with us. All that noise went away when we did that.” His smile was rueful. “And it all came back the second you walked in this house. It was like they instantly knew that pact was no longer gonna hold. When that awful hope came back.”

  She frowned, not understanding. “Hope is a good thing—it’s what keeps most of us going. You have to believe things will get better or what else do you have?”

  “But sometimes, having no hope is the ultimate comfort. You let things go and you accept your fate. That’s what my brothers and I did. We let our wishes for families of our own go. Before then, we looked for ways to stop it, thought maybe if we had just one child—” He looked away from her before swallowing hard. “We weren’t living while we were hoping. It can be paralyzing. Even my father said that hope was what made him think his curse wouldn’t move on to us. He never planned to have Wyatt or me, you know?”

  She stared up at him, understanding exactly what he was saying. “You’re telling me that you can’t risk being with me.” She briefly shut her eyes as hot tears scalded the backs of them.

  “I can’t.”

  “I’m in love with you, Pryor.” She blinked back the tears. “Your brothers think you feel the same.”

  “They know me.” He reached up to touch her cheek, then tucked her hair behind her ear. “I love you too. I knew I would right around the same time the ghosts of my family did. But Elita, if we stay together, you’d have to give up so much. You’d have to live here, for one.”

  “Eventually, I’d like to. It’s beautiful here. Why would I hate that?”

  “This monster of a house needs a lot of work still. Outside of this kitchen, a lot of things break down, a lot of folks are still wary of us, we can never be away from here for very long, and it takes a good hour to go into town for shopping—”

  She put her hand over his mouth. “You’re taking a while to get there, but you’re talking about having children, really. Right?”

  Pain streaked through his expression, tightened his lips. He nodded. “You could never have children with me.”

  “So you were ready to push me away on the chance of possible children who might never have existed?”

  “It’s asking a lot, Elita. Trust me. I want children pretty badly. Always have and I know for a fact my brother Mercer does as well. Wyatt already made sure he’d never have any and he didn’t talk for nearly a month after he did it. It’s like having families are wired into our souls.”

  She winced. To be that young and to have to make that kind of decision already.

  She went still.

  Pryor was telling her she’d have to make that very same decision. She could never have children if she stayed here. Could never put them through the absolute hell these brothers went through. Just the thought of watching a child of hers go through that made her ill. She touched her suddenly churning stomach, trying to calm it down.

  “You thought of it, didn’t you? What it would be like if me and my brothers died and your children were dragged out to that swamp to suffer.” Pryor walked to the other side of the island, his movements stiff. “I’ve pictured that very thing more times than I can remember. I will never let that happen. And I can’t ask you to give up the possibility of a family. There’s nothing more important in this world than family. So I can’t.”

  “I never planned to have kids because of the family curse that plagues my own.”

  He watched her silently for a moment. “It’s not just that. There’s also the problem with your attraction to me being caused by the magic.”

  She scowled, shook her head. “That’s stupid bullshit and you know it.”

  “I don’t. My mother walked away from all of us because what she felt wasn’t real.”

  “How do you know that? Maybe she was just a bitch, Pryor.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t belittle what I feel for you as nothing more than a reaction to your hands on me. Wait.” She stopped, felt heat blaze in her cheeks. “That didn’t sound right.”

  His laughter was deep and full and it warmed her heart.

  “Oh, you know what I mean,” she snapped. “Trust me. What I feel is real and I can’t see anything making me walk away from it.” She paused, looked at the window over the sink, at the black of the night beyond. “You talk as if we can never have a family and you haven’t once brought up adoption. Right now, I’m interested in being with you and you only, but at some point, why couldn’t we
adopt a child?”

  He shook his head, tugged at the neck of his T-shirt. “Who’s to say the curse wouldn’t move on to that child? And if each of us adopted there would be at least three. I certainly can’t have a child and not let my brothers have that. It’s better if there is no chance whatsoever.” An owl hooted somewhere close to the window. “Elita, you can have kids now. Your curse is gone.”

  He was right. She could. Everything had changed. Or had it? She shook her head. “Do we know that? I could have a child and the stupid curse could snap right onto him or her.”

  “Not if we take care of the rest of your family. Not if we take it all the way back to your grandmother.”

  “And at what cost to you three?” She buried her face in her hands a moment and let out a frustrated sound. “This is a damned mess, is what it is.” She looked up. “And you know what? I called Ava last night while I was waiting here for you guys to get back. She never answered and my grandmother probably told her to come here. I’ve got to call her again. Tell her to stay away.”

  “Let her come. With all three of us here, we can help her and it won’t be as hard.”

  “Do we know that, Pryor? Do we really know that?” She walked to him. “If your brother is right, it’s grown stronger on the ones left. That’s Ava, Audrey and Ma’man.” She placed her hands on his chest. “But besides all that, do you truly think what we’re feeling could be something lasting?”

  He nodded, raised his hands to place them over hers.

  “Then don’t worry about children. Not now.”

  “Not ever. I won’t change my mind about that.”

  “And neither will I. I couldn’t watch my sons go out there like that. I don’t want to be another ghost crying in this house. But I do know that I care about you, that I’m in love with you and everything in me is saying that will only grow stronger as time passes.”

  “What would you do here?”

  “I didn’t say I’d be moving right on in.” She smiled. “I think I need a bit more time before I let that happen. But I could find a place in town. A place and a job—hopefully a good one because I still plan to pay for the repairs on that room—and we’ll see what this becomes. This thing between us feels pretty damned special. Too special to just let go.”