The Curse Keepers (Curse Keepers series)

by Swank, Denise Grover

  “What?” he asked, irritated, but his earlier anger seemed to have eased.

  “Opening doors, Collin? One would think I wasn’t a slut.”

  He sighed, guilt straining his face. “I was out of line. What you do is your business.”

  “That’s right. Just like what you do is yours. Now let’s go.”

  He set my suitcase in the truck bed and climbed in, driving out of town, heading for the bridge to the mainland.

  I should have been prepared for the dead animals, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be prepared for such a sight. Especially since twice the day before I’d felt the Manitou and the loss from the animals’ presence.

  Collin must have felt it too. His grip tightened on the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white.

  “What happens if we don’t close the gate?” I tried not to look at the side of the road. The sight of all the carcasses made me ill. “Will the spirits kill every living thing?”

  He sighed. “No. They coexisted for thousands of years with animals and people. I think it’s because they’ve been locked away for so long. Like I told you, they need the energy. But I have to wonder if part of it is for show. To let the world know they are back.”

  “That’s not scary at all.”

  He shrugged. “If the gate doesn’t close, I think they would eventually settle down.”

  “After they killed half the population of every living species.”

  “You have to look at it from their perspective. They were jailed for hundreds of years for no reason. I’m not surprised they’re pissed.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Are you seriously defending them?”

  He sucked in a deep breath and stared at me for several seconds before turning back to the road. “No. But I am saying that everything and everyone has a reason for what they do. If someone hurts you, and you understand why they did it, hopefully that understanding makes the hurt easier to accept.”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass why a wind god wants my Manitou. I’m still going to be cursing him when I’m stuck in hell for eternity.”

  He cleared his throat. “They found a body in the botanical gardens this morning.”

  I sat up, the blood rushing from my head. “What?”

  “I wouldn’t necessarily think anything of it, but it was propped against the statue of Queen Elizabeth. A man, no visible signs of trauma. The police said he was from out of town.”

  “Maybe it was a coincidence. A drunk who got locked in the gardens and died of a heart attack.”

  “Ellie, he was frozen solid. In June.”

  I took a deep breath, worried I would pass out.

  “I think this was a sign. To you.”

  “Why do you say that? Why me?”

  “To scare you.” He cast a worried glance in my direction.

  My heart thudded against my chest. I needed to tell Collin about the visits from the spirit messengers. Yesterday I didn’t trust Collin, and while he wasn’t completely forthcoming, now I had no reason not to trust him with this. Especially after the ceremony and the mark of protection he’d given me.

  “Collin—”

  His phone rang, and he scowled as he pulled it out of his pocket. He answered and listened for several seconds before responding. “Why do you think I have the map? Are you saying it’s gone?” He was silent, anger furrowing his brow. His free hand tightened on the steering wheel. “If he wants the Ricardo deal taken care of, he needs to back the fuck off and let me do it.” Another pause. “Ellie’s not any part of this. That was all a coincidence.” He shot a glance in my direction. “I don’t give a shit what Marino wants.”

  My stomach tightened. Somehow with everything that happened yesterday afternoon and last night, I’d forgotten about Marino. How could I forget about Marino?

  Collin ended the call and shoved the phone in his pocket.

  I took a deep breath and released it. “Marino still wants me.”

  His face taut, Collin kept his eyes on the road. “He’s convinced you have some inside information and he wants it. Shit.” He ran a hand over his head.

  “Is there any way to convince him that I don’t?”

  “No.”

  This was bad, very bad. “And if he finds me?”

  “He won’t.” He shifted in his seat, staring straight ahead. “We need to talk about last night.”

  More horror rushed through me, as if that were possible. Which part of last night was he referring to? I didn’t want to talk about any part of last night, but especially one particular part of last night. I was stuck in a moving truck with this man, and I was pretty sure he wanted to rehash my humiliation. “No, we don’t.”

  “Ellie. I want to talk about your mark and how I strengthened it.”

  “Oh.” Is this better or worse than talking about how he rejected me? I wasn’t sure.

  “I meant to check it this morning.” He paused. “Did it get smeared or smudged?”

  Something inside me coiled tight. Before he sounded angry about the fact I might have slept with Drew; now he sounded like he was asking me about the weather. “Not to worry, Collin,” I said in a snotty tone. “I told you I like it on top.”

  His jawed tightened and he swallowed. “Ellie.”

  “Too much information for you, Collin? Maybe this is my way of sharing so you’ll share more information with me. Lord knows you keep most of it to yourself.”

  He looked as though he were counting to ten in his head. Finally, he said, “I simply want to know if your symbol is intact. If it’s not, I want to fix it before tonight.”

  Weary of fighting, I rested my elbow on the window, placing my forehead in my hand. “When I checked it this morning, it looked fine.”

  His hands twisted on the steering wheel, barely enough to notice. “I realized that I never told you how to care for it. That’s why I was there so early.”

  “I looked it up on the Internet. I saw you could remove the dried stain after five to six hours with olive oil.”

  “How did you reach it?”

  I laughed, short and ugly. “You have to ask? I had help. And I was shirtless.”

  “Ellie, I was out of line—”

  “Shut up, Collin.” God, this was going to be a long couple of hours.

  He was silent for several miles, before he started again. “When I was marked at eighteen, I had a ceremony, but it was only to cleanse my soul to receive the symbol. I had the actual tattoo done by a tattoo artist.”

  “Is that what you did last night? Cleanse my soul?” What we’d done last night had sullied my soul more than cleansed it. I hoped the stupid mark took.

  “Some, but not most of it. We have a power now, individually and together. I hoped using that power would increase the strength of the protection symbol.”

  It did more than that. The entire ceremony had stirred some ancient power in my blood, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to confess that to Collin yet, especially when lusting after him seemed to go hand in hand with it. “So how will we know if it worked or not?”

  “I guess if you get attacked and a spirit or god tries to take your Manitou.”

  “Yay,” I mumbled. “I can’t wait.”

  Collin turned toward me, his face serious. “I’ll be with you, Ellie.”

  Something about his expression and the huskiness in his voice set my stomach aflutter. Damn him. “What? Are you going to be with me every minute of the day until this thing is done? And then what about Marino?”

  “Marino won’t care about you after the Ricardo deal is done.”

  “And how long will that take?”

  “A few weeks. Maybe a month.”

  “What the hell is the Ricardo deal?”

  He shot me a glance. “The less you know about it the better.”

  “Easy for you to say. If I’m being hunted by some criminal, I’d at least like to know what it is that I’m supposed to know.”

  “Seriously, Ellie. In case Marino does find you somehow, the les
s you know the better. If he thinks you know anything, he’ll assume you’re lying about the rest.”

  My anger exploded and I clenched my fists to keep from hitting him. “Why the hell didn’t you take me to Oscar? Why did you take me to Marino?”

  “I told you to stay in the car!”

  Tears burned my eyes, but I’d be damned if I’d cry over this.

  Collin released a sigh. “Marino doesn’t know anything about you. You live a quiet life in Manteo. There’s no chance he’ll find you. You’ll be fine. I promise.”

  There was no way he could guarantee that, and we both knew it. “Be careful what you promise, Collin. I don’t tolerate broken promises very well.”

  Marino was a situation that couldn’t be fixed at this moment, so I decided to focus on a situation where I had some control, even if it was very little. I had to feel like I was in control of something. “When you placed your palm on my back, just before you drew my henna tattoo, you were infusing me with your power?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about when you put my hand over your tattoo?”

  “It was the same thing. You have power, Ellie, whether you realize it or not.”

  I realized it now, but I couldn’t help wondering if there was more to the power infusions. Collin had said he thought I could send lesser spirits back to the spirit realm without his help. Where and how would I learn how to do that? Would the ability just come to me like the words of protection had last night? Did I really want to chance it to find out?

  “And our power together?” I asked. What I’d felt with our palms touching, with our marks connected—it had been unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

  He looked at me again, still serious. “True magic.”

  “Do you know how to use it to close the gate?”

  He nodded, but shifted in his seat. “Manteo performed the original ceremony so I’ll perform this one. I’ll tell you what I need you to do.”

  “When we touched last night…” I refused to bring up the surge of desire we’d both obviously felt, but there were other things I needed answers to. “I was aware of things I didn’t know before. In fact, things I don’t think were even told to me when I was little.”

  “I didn’t know some of it either.”

  “But you knew about the Manitou?”

  He frowned. “Yes, but not that we’d be aware of its presence.” Why did that bother him? Other than getting answers and additional power, experiencing the Manitou was the best part of this entire job.

  “Did you know I was the daughter of the sea and you were the son of the earth?” Which I found ironic, given that Collin was the fisherman.

  His jaw dropped as he shot me a quick glance. “You found that out last night when we were connected?”

  “Yes, and that the curse was born of an ancient magic that flowed through the universe before the birth of the world.”

  He scowled. “What else did you find out?”

  “Did you know this stuff already?”

  “It’s part of our stories, Ellie. It’s our tradition.” The hint of arrogance wasn’t lost on me.

  “But you didn’t experience those things last night? You didn’t feel… connected to everything, or like all the origins of the universe were right in front of you?” His grimace was my answer. “So what did you feel last night when we touched hands?” It was a loaded question, and I hesitated to ask, but he was surprised I’d found out what I had. I knew he’d felt something, experienced something. The expression on his face last night had told me so.

  “I felt the Manitou.”

  “But did you feel everything else?”

  “We need to talk about what happens in Morehead City.”

  “Okay.” He’d dug his feet in and wouldn’t answer any more of my questions. I might as well let him change the subject.

  “We’ll go to the museum and check out the security measures as well as the location of the exhibit with the bowl.”

  “We’re just going to walk in as us?”

  “Sure. Why not? When the bowl goes missing, who would suspect that you or I took it?”

  He had a point.

  “Do you have a plan to get it?”

  “I need to check the situation out first.”

  We drove the rest of the way in silence. Collin’s damned unair-conditioned truck was hot as hell. If I’d been thinking straight, I would have offered to drive my car. It wasn’t in the greatest shape, but it had air-conditioning and it couldn’t be much worse than Collin’s Red Death mobile.

  The last few hours of the drive had been hot in other ways. Sitting next to Collin, my mind kept drifting to the night before. The more I tried to refocus, the more my mind latched on and refused to let go. The breeze lifted my gauzy skirt a few times, and I had to put my hand on the fabric to keep it from showing my sexy lingerie, although some deep and sinful part of me wished that I didn’t take the precaution.

  Collin’s face pinched with irritation. “Do you ever wear pants?”

  “Do you ever shave?” Not that I was complaining, despite my irritated tone. My traitorous mind thought about his five o’clock shadow under my fingertips the night before. I needed to think about something else. Anything else. Like scrubbing toilets.

  We stopped for lunch in Morehead City before we went to the museum. I realized this was the farthest I’d ever been from Roanoke Island and not felt the debilitating pressure on my chest. If the feeling was curse related, Collin was sure to know about it.

  “You’re right.” He nodded after I asked, looking down at his plate of food. “It was a way to make sure the Keepers never got too far away to fix the curse.”

  “But if they lived hundreds of miles apart, there was little chance the curse could be broken.”

  “Checks and balances, Ellie. The curse locked away the spirits, but there was a price to be paid.”

  “Steeper than the colony disappearing?”

  “The gods needed a chance to be free.”

  “But who set the rules? Obviously, not the gods or they wouldn’t be locked up.”

  “Not all of the gods were locked away.”

  My eyes widened. “What?”

  “Ahone rarely dwelled on the land. He lived in the heavens. He escaped the curse, but tradition says he lent his power to it. He made the rules.”

  “He wanted the gods and spirits locked up. Why?”

  “Jealousy? Pride? Who knows. But the other gods are liable to seek their own revenge.”

  So did that mean Ahone’s messenger couldn’t be trusted? Was Ahone really trying to save humanity or was he trying to save himself? “But that doesn’t explain why I can get so far from Roanoke Island now. With the curse broken, you’d think I’d feel the pressure now more than ever.”

  His mouth lifted into a soft smile. “Isn’t it obvious, Ellie? You can leave because we’re together.”

  It was early afternoon when we got back into the truck to drive to the museum, and I was tired after two nights with little sleep. I dozed, my head leaning back on the headrest. When I realized the truck had stopped, I opened my eyes, surprised to find Collin watching me with an amused grin.

  I sat up and smoothed down my skirt. Was he grinning because he’d seen my panties? I frowned. “What?”

  “You snore.”

  “What? I do not!”

  “You do. I never would have guessed.” He opened his door and hopped out.

  I grabbed my purse and followed him. “I do not snore!”

  He laughed and pulled out his phone. “I have a video if you’d like proof.”

  “You didn’t!” Livid, I ran for him, reaching for his phone. “Give me that!”

  He stopped and held it over his head. “Why? It’s cute.”

  Growling, I grabbed his arm and tugged. “You delete that right now!”

  A wicked grin spread across his face. It was a challenge. “Make me.”

  I had multiple options. Most of them involved some type of kicking or
striking him in the groin. I could only come up with a handful of other ideas after that. But it wasn’t lost on me that we were in the parking lot of the museum we planned to rob. It was probably a good idea to keep a low profile and not cause a scene. My hands dropped, and I put a hand on my hip. “Fine. Keep it.”

  His grin never wavered. “Giving up so easily, hotheaded Ellie Lancaster?”

  I lifted my chin and gave him a haughty glare. “I’ve decided to be the bigger person.”

  Disappointment flickered in his eyes for a half second before he smirked. “Suit yourself.” He lowered his arm and I darted for the phone, catching him off guard.

  I got a good hold on it but he held tight, my hand over his.

  “If you wanted to hold my hand, Ellie, you only had to ask.”

  That was the second time he’d said that to me. I gave him a saucy grin. “Fine. I want to hold your hand.”

  His eyebrow arched. He shoved his phone into his pocket, then took hold of my left hand with his right. He tugged me closer so my chest was against his. “Happy now?” he teased.

  I stared into his face, trying to catch my breath. This was ridiculous. I was getting hot and bothered holding Collin Dailey’s fucking hand. No, I wasn’t happy now. There was only one thing that was going to make me happy at this point, and it involved his hands touching intimate parts under my clothes.

  Collin’s grin faded as his eyelids lowered slightly, his pupils dilating. His grip on my hand tightened, keeping me next to him as his dark eyes searched mine. And he seemed to be struggling to breathe normally.

  A car horn blared, and I jumped. We were standing in the middle of the parking lot. What the hell was wrong with me? I needed to get myself together.

  Collin pulled me out of the way, then dropped my hand. I regretted the loss instantly. Damn. I was in so much trouble.

  He started for the museum entrance, leaving me to trail behind, and I was glad. I couldn’t face him. What was he thinking? He had to know that I wanted him. I hadn’t hidden my desire, practically offering myself to him on a silver platter. There was no way he missed it. He read people. He knew.

  But I was pretty good at reading people too. Especially when a guy was interested in me. Collin Dailey was interested, yet he held back. Why?