He nodded in agreement and headed toward his front porch. He settled his huge frame on one of the steps, and she sat beside him.
“It happened about two hundred years ago,” he began. “My ancestor, Luc, was involved with your ancestor, Migisi.”
She watched him. “What kind of name is that?”
“Ojibwa, we think,” he said.
Sophie pulled the small notebook out of her jeans pocket, wrote the names down. “I was always told there was some Native American in my line, but no one knew much,” she said as she wrote. “Did she live in my house?”
“She at least lived on the land. We're not sure if she was the one who first lived in the house or whether it was family members from later.”
“Okay.”
“So they were involved, and from what I hear, she was completely in love with him. But Luc had a wandering eye, and she caught him with another woman. She was heartbroken. And pissed off.”
“Rightfully so,” Sophie said, raising her eyebrow.
“You'll get no argument from me on that.”
Sophie laughed a little.
“Anyway. The story goes that when he went to her to apologize, she had a curse waiting, and she did the spell, and that was that. She moved on. Married another man and had children. Luc spent the rest of his life cursed, mated, and the next generation was born. Cursed, just as he had been.”
“Can you tell me more about the curse?”
Sophie watched as he looked down at his hands. “Our line are shifters. You already know that.”
“What do you shift into?” He'd always, back then, been tight-lipped about his animal, and Jon had been the same way. She'd known early on that Layla, Cara, and Bryce were all wolves, but he'd never gotten into it, and it was clear Bryce knew but never even considered telling them.
“Bear.”
“A bear?” she asked, surprised.
He nodded.
“Are you the bear Layla and Cara keep smelling around my house?”
“Yeah.”
“So you were spying on me?”
“I was making it clear that's my territory.”
“Why?”
“To keep others away,” he said.
“Is there something I need to be worried about?”
He looked up, met her eyes. Her heart stopped at the intensity in his gaze. “No. Nothing's going to happen to you.”
“Except for you taking everything I own if I can't figure this out.”
He blew out an irritated breath. “I'm desperate, Sophie. It's getting worse, and it's only the last few generations that stopped being stupid about the curse and actually started researching how to break it. Started tracing her line. And what we kept finding was that for the most part, you're all powerless. Until you. I was prepared to make the move down to Detroit, but this is so much better. You came here for a reason, and it's clear you need this place.”
“Lucky you,” Sophie muttered.
“For what it's worth, I don't make a habit of bullying women.”
“Congratulations,” she said icily.
He took a breath, and she shook her head in irritation. One bright spot in the situation was that she had a couple more months in her house. Of course, that would probably be it, because her chances of breaking a curse as obviously powerful as this one were probably less than zero. “The shifter part isn't the curse, though,” she finally said, determined to at least try to figure it out.
He shook his head. “We were born shifters. And until we hit puberty, we can shift into our animal without any problems. After that point, shifting becomes a punishment of its own. When we take our animal form, we start to become more beast than man. You have friends who shift. You've been around them when they're in their animal form. You know that even though they have the senses, reflexes, and instincts of their animals, their thought processes remain human.”
Sophie nodded, watching him. Why did he have to be so good-looking? It was hard to hate him when he looked at her with that intense, serious gaze, or, worse, that tiny lift of the corner of his mouth when he was amused. How could she hate him when she could still see the boy she'd been so enamored with?
“Okay. Well, with the men in my family, we start losing that humanity. At first, it's just…” He paused, shook his head.
“Calder. I need to understand. Okay?”
“At first, it's like your beast starts taking control when you're in that form. It does things you'd never do, out of its mind, and all you can do is watch. You're still in there, but you're powerless to do anything other than wait it out. At first, it's really only a problem on full moon nights. The rest of the time, we hold it together, and it's almost normal. Full moons are a nightmare.” He paused. “And it's not that our beast is evil. It's just desperate. The real thing with the curse is that it makes you just endlessly dissatisfied. There is no such thing as enough food, enough water, enough violence, enough…” He trailed off, and she caught his eyes sweeping over her body before he looked away. She felt a blush rise to her face. “Never enough,” he continued. “We want it all, all the time, and getting it never satisfies. It's like having an itch that never stops, and slowly but surely, it drives you mad. And the more insane you get, the less of your humanity you can remember, until, even in your human form, when you can remember to take it, you're like an animal.”
She kept her eyes on his and listened, and the concern, the empathy in her eyes made it hard for him to breathe. Her scent surrounded him, and the warmth radiating from her body made him want to touch her so badly he burned with it. He forced his mind back.
“My father hasn't shifted back to his human form in over six months. He is likely lost to us. The best any of us can do is keep him contained, so he doesn't hurt anyone. Jon cares for him, but it's not easy on him. We agreed that I would be the one to… convince you to help us. And I can feel the curse strengthening in me as well.”
“And Jon?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “It only affects the oldest male in each family. And we've tried ending it that way. Tried not getting anyone pregnant, or killing off the eldest son before the curse begins. It either jumps to a younger sibling or to a male cousin. She wasn't messing around when she made that curse.”
She was quiet for several moments. “Your dad and brother. Do they live around here?” she asked, and the tremor of fear in her voice grated at him.
“No. They live in the middle of one of the larger state forests. Very isolated.”
She nodded, and he watched her. She seemed to be thinking.
“So, the hunger. That's the real part of the curse. Right?”
He nodded. “That seems to be it. That we would never be satisfied. That the constant dissatisfaction eventually drives us mad.”
She was watching him. Jesus, she smelled good. His bear, his beast, practically rumbled in ecstasy at her scent, just as it had a few nights before at Jack's. So close beside him, her curvy body warming his, her thigh almost touching his.
It was hard to breathe.
“And you say you're starting to feel the effects of the curse?” she asked softly.
He nodded. ”I still mostly have control of my beast.”
“Mostly,” she repeated, and her fear scented the air, made his beast raise its head in interest.
“It's bad around the full moon,” he said. And he knew, already, that this next full moon would be absolute torture. There was something he suddenly wanted more than just about anything else, and it would make his beast even crazier. “The equinoxes are hell. That's why I put that deadline in there. This is the first year I've started losing control, and I know from watching my dad that the equinox is a nightmare. Fall and spring,” he added.
“Why?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I think it has to do with the bear part of what we are. Fall, a bear would be preparing to hibernate. He'd be stuffing himself with food and getting sleepier. And spring…” He forced his thoughts away from that.
&
nbsp; “What's with spring?”
“That's mating season,” he answered, trying to keep his voice flat.
“Oh,” she said. She looked way from him, tapped her pen against the small notebook she'd been jotting things down in.
“So, Migisi. Do you know anything else about her?”
He shook his head. “The only reason we know her name at all is because there's this story that Luc ended his life in front of his own son, and he screamed, 'Is this what you wanted, Migisi?' right before he jumped off one of the outcroppings on Brock mountain.”
“Is that how it usually ends?” she asked quietly, and the compassion in her eyes made him hate himself even more.
“Sometimes,” he answered. “And sometimes, we go beyond the point where we even have enough sense to know we should end it. My father is there now. Even if he wanted to end his life, he's too out of control to even attempt it. It's like he's hardly in there at all anymore.”
“It seems like she went kind of overboard on the curse thing,” she said. “Is it possible there's more to it than that?”
He shrugged. “I don't know. It's possible. All I know is what's been passed down over the years. We lost track of her line for a while. Your place sat empty for decades in the early 1900s, I guess. And then we found Evie, which led us to you. Evie didn't know anything about anything. She knew you all have some magic, but she also knew that it was pretty much nonexistent in her.”
“My mom had no magic at all,” Sophie said. “I knew there were stories, that there was some magic on my mother's side, but it wasn't something we were really allowed to talk about. And then my dad found out I had some power and he freaked out. And then we moved away from here. I think he thought that would end it.”
He watched her, felt the almost irresistible urge to try to comfort her. It wasn't the words, so much. It was something behind them, some sense that she'd been through more than her share of bad.
He couldn't afford to worry about her feelings now.
He looked across the road, at her little cottage. “Have you found anything up there?” he asked, gesturing toward the small window in the attic.
She shook her head. “Not yet. But at least maybe I'll know it when I see it. If there's something up there that can help, I'll find it. And now I have names to work with. What was Luc's last name?”
“Same as mine. Turcotte,” he answered, watched her write it down. “Sophie,” he said, unable to take his eyes off of her and hating himself all over again.
“What?” She raised her gaze to his, and heat shot through him at just the meeting of their eyes.
He almost said it. Almost apologized for the mess he'd made of her life, for the way he'd strong-armed her into helping him.
“If you find anything out, let me know,” he said, aware of the short, gruff tone of his voice.
He watched as she withdrew into herself again. There was still that compassion in her eyes, but it was like watching a door close, watching her pull away from him.
What did he expect?
“I will. And I should get back to work,” she said, standing up.
He stood up, too, walked with her down his driveway.
“You don't have to come with me. It's not like I'm going to get lost or anything.”
He smiled a little. “I know. ”
“Having the names has to help, right?” Sophie murmured as they strolled across the road together. He got the sense she was trying to make herself feel better. Or trying to make him feel better, which just made him feel like even more of a bastard. They reached the shoulder of the road on her side, started walking toward her driveway. “Having Migisi's name especially. Because then if I run across—“
Her voice stopped on a strangled sound. Her heart pounded, and her adrenaline flooded the air. He shot a glance toward her. She stared at her driveway, and he followed her gaze.
A single yellow long-stemmed rose lay at the end of the gravel driveway.
And the look on her face, the defeat he saw there, made him want to hit someone.
“Sophie,” he said quietly, trying to shake her out of the panic he could see quickly overtaking her.
She was breathing hard, as if she was on the verge of hyperventilating. Her hands were shaking.
“Sophie,” he repeated, and she shook her head.
“No. Not again. Not already,” she said.
He reached out for her, took her shoulders in his hands and turned her toward him, away from the rose, which she couldn't seem to stop staring at.
“Sophie,” he repeated. “What the hell is going on?”
She shook her head, hard, her eyes unfocused, her breathing coming in soft pants now.
He leaned down so she had no choice but to look in his eyes. “Tell me. What the hell is this?”
“I need to go in. I need to re-set my wards.”
She was fucking terrified. “Who did this?” he asked. “What's going on?”
“I ran here to get away from him,” she whispered. “Please, let me go now.”
He wanted to do the complete opposite. He wanted to press her for more information, keep her with him. Disembowel whoever had upset her this badly, this “him” she'd referred to. But the way she'd asked, as if she almost didn't expect to have her wishes honored, the way she seemed to expect to have to fight for herself… he hated it. So he let her go, and the relief on her face when he did told him he'd done the right thing.
“If you need me, call.” He pulled one of his business cards out of his pocket. “Okay?”
She gave a tiny nod, walked up her driveway, giving the rose a wide berth, as if the damn thing was going to leap up and bite her. Calder watched her unlock her door, then go in. He could see her moving past windows. He waited a few minutes, her panic clearly having infected him as well. He was waiting for a scream, a shout. Something. After a while, there was no sound, and the lights in her house were still on. He looked down at the rose again, bent and picked it up. He took it back across the road with him, tore the bloom off and threw it in the ditch, followed by the stem.
He'd let his beast run that night, see if he could catch a scent. And maybe patrol around her property.
All in the interest of protecting the one person who could actually break his curse. At least, that was what he was telling himself.
Sophie locked the door behind her, including the shiny new deadbolt she'd added as soon as she'd moved into the house. She did the same at the back door, double and triple-checked every window. She lit three of her ritual candles, then grabbed one of the smudge sticks she'd made with herbs from her garden a few weeks ago. Herbs for protection and cleansing.
She absolutely and completely needed both.
She let the herbs ignite, and held a small stone bowl underneath them to catch any embers. She slowly walked through the house, letting the smoke waft through the rooms. As she did, she murmured the same spells she'd been repeating since she was sixteen years old, since the summer she'd learned what fear really was.
As she walked, and chanted, she tried not to think about those years. All of those years, fearful of the time she'd inevitably slip up. All those years of dark eyes following her every move.
Years of yellow roses left in places he'd known she'd find them. Not endearments.
Warnings.
Every one, a warning. Eventually, she'd forget to watch her back. She'd do something careless, forget to lock the door, get caught in a place where she couldn't protect herself.
And when it happened, the things he'd written to her would come to pass. Every violation, every bit of degradation.
At sixteen, she didn't even know what some of the things he'd threatened meant. She came to learn. And so much more.
At eighteen, she'd lost her family. At twenty-four, she'd lost the man she had hoped would protect her and give her something to hold on to, and, at twenty-eight, when she finally had a chance, she'd run.
Her mind went back to the yellow rose. Her hopes of living in pe
ace for a few years more had been stupid. She knew better. She always had.
Her home as protected as she could make it, she grabbed the small pistol she usually kept somewhere on her body and sat on her sofa, gun lying on her thigh, in her hand.
She knew better. He couldn't get through her wards. He'd try. His magic was more powerful than hers, and she'd spent years wondering when her wards would finally break under his assault. It hadn't happened yet.
So she sat, and she listened, and she hoped. And she tried not to think about how fast everything had fallen apart.
Chapter Seven
April 10, 1852
Migisi watched in amusement as the trapper bent and inspected his cages, low, muttering sounds meeting her ears from her perch on the rocky outcropping above. She watched as he baited the trap again, small pieces of meat. He re-set the latch, and moved on, still looking irritated.
He'd find every single trap the same way. The small cage traps he set for the minks, the larger ones he set for the beavers. Even the deadly-looking jaw traps he set for bears. Migisi grinned to herself and trailed him from her path along the hill. Each empty trap resulted in a new bout of grumbles, many of them curse words she'd heard often around the white men, the French voyageurs, as they called themselves. The missionaries never said words like those.
Migisi couldn't say why she found so much enjoyment in thwarting and observing the brawny Frenchman. If she was trying to be pious, she would say that she was saving the animals, doing her duty to her forest by protecting sacred beings from this man and his endless supply of traps.
And surely, that was why she'd started her campaign to see him fail. It had angered her the first day she'd seen him in her forest, forest in which she was the one and only human being for miles around. And he came stomping in with his big furry boots and acted as if he had every right to be there.
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