by Parker Foye
“You’re dangerous. I think I like you.”
Rob’s cheeks burned at the compliment. He heaved himself into a sitting position and unstrapped his feet from his bindings, then unclipped his helmet chinstrap and pulled his goggles over his helmet’s peak, yanking both off at once. Cold air immediately bit him, and he scrubbed a gloved hand through his hair to salvage whatever state the helmet had left him in. Snow stuck to his gloves, but that only helped cool him down. He pulled at his gloves with his teeth and tossed them into his helmet, then tucked the bundle under his arm. His reflection in Luc’s goggles was ruggedly windswept. Eight out of ten.
I think I like you. Worth a try, surely? Rob was on holiday, and Luc hadn’t looked at him with any kind of recognition, which meant he’d have no ulterior motive other than some mutual fooling around.
Decision made, Rob offered Luc his hand. “You don’t seem so bad yourself. Nice to meet you.”
Luc clasped Rob’s hand in his gloved one. His cheeks were flushed with cold. “You too.”
“Fancy a drink?” Rob asked before he changed his mind. “Call it medicinal, if you like. Unless you want to be back on the hill. First day and everything,” he tacked on as an easy out. Rob had no idea how to flirt; he was more of a nod and a wink, let’s-get-out-of-here kind of man. Why hadn’t he ever learned to flirt? Not that it mattered. He’d never see Luc again, in all likelihood. No strings, no problems.
Then Luc beamed. “Definitely. I’m here for the season, so there’ll be plenty of chances on the mountain. A drink sounds great.”
As Rob blinked and recalculated, Luc removed his helmet and oversized goggles to reveal dark eyes, a nose that had been broken before, and curly hair that made Rob’s fingers itch to tangle it even further. Rob tugged at the collar of his base layer and unzipped it slightly. He tried to gauge the angle of the sun. Was it noon already? He felt warm all of a sudden.
Oblivious to Rob’s predicament, Luc pushed to his feet and gestured for Rob to follow him to the nearby terrace, where he pulled off his gloves and dropped them and his helmet onto a table. Rob watched Luc’s black fingernails as he swept crumbs from the table, kicking out the bench for Rob to sit at the same time. Rob pulled his gaze from Luc’s nails when Luc gestured to the warming charms on the lantern.
“Here, take a seat. You need to rest your knee,” Luc said. “If you get the charms—they’re premade—I can get in the first round, or a menu, whatever you like. Have you been to L’Arbre before?”
“If you’re sure it’s all right, I’ll have a lager. Whatever’s good. I’ve cash, if you want?” Rob’s liver protested, but his liver had no appreciation for Luc’s long-fingered gestures or the way he nervously tucked his curls behind his ear. He looked like a Renaissance poet sponsored by L’Oréal. “Or I can get the next round.”
Luc waved away Rob’s offer and headed into the bar, his ski boots clunking across the wooden slats of the terrace. Rob reached to activate the charms in the interim, then rubbed his hands together as they warmed beneath the lamps. When Luc returned with a glass in each hand, Rob thanked him and was refused again when he offered reimbursement. He took a healthy swig, using the movement to watch as Luc edged slightly away from the charmed lamps before settling with his own drink.
Rob swallowed. Figured. Between the lack of fixers, avoidance of the charms, and the “painted” fingernails? Luc Marling had a curse.
Rob’s family had been cursebreakers since before the ravens were in the Tower. They made money breaking curseboxes, solving riddles, advising high-and-holies, and doing whatever side hustle would keep them fed. They even worked with hunters in their time, though—Rob was happy to say—not for centuries. As Rob’s father was fond of repeating, no one outside of Lentowiczs cared about Lentowiczs, but they had to keep the lights on somehow. Yet after they lifted the curse on Ava Gloss, it seemed everyone Rob met was an amateur craft-using something-or-other desperately in need of his family’s opinion… and a ride on their coattails.
Like she revealed in her tell-alls, Ava Gloss had been victim of a classic Rapunzel. The signs were present for a few weeks before the diagnosis, but it wasn’t until she tripped over her own hair and fell into the security pit at a concert that people realized she hadn’t suddenly gone in for charmed ever-long extensions. Another family in the business, lacking the resources to tackle the complications of Ava’s case, had recommended the Lentowiczs. Everyone had given their best efforts, determined to uphold the Lentowicz name.
Rob had broken the curse. His first one.
He’d regretted it ever since. Because then came the tell-all and the Curses Anonymous special, and suddenly the Lentowiczs were the go-to experts for every craftumentary show on television.
There was a reason Rob didn’t go dropping his surname lately, and it sat on the opposite side of the table from him looking like a dream he’d had at seventeen. Rob consciously relaxed his hold on his glass and smiled in response to Luc’s nervous expression.
“Everything all right over there?” he asked.
Luc nodded, ducking his head as he tucked hair behind his ear again. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to a clinic? It’s mixed. Meant to be good.”
“Trying to get rid of me already?”
“Trying to avoid Eloise yelling at me when she hears what I’ve done, more like,” Luc said with a groan. His cheeks took on a rosy hue. “She’ll never let me hear the end of it. We work together, so it’ll be ‘did you hear what happened to Luc on his first day of the season?’ until the sea rises to take us all. Which won’t be soon enough.” Starting, he met Rob’s eyes and blushed more deeply. “Sorry. My sister tormenting me is really not as important as your health. I’m being selfish.”
Rob curled his toes in his boots, enough to make his knee twinge. He needed the pain in order to focus on anything besides Luc’s eyes and the way his lips moved when he spoke. He could blame the warming charms for the heat in his face, but the staring? That was all Rob.
“I told you, don’t worry about it. Anyway, I owe you a drink, don’t I? You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t want.”
After he spoke, Rob glanced at his glass, still over half-full. What did France put in their beer? He hadn’t been this confident sober in years. Luckily Luc only smiled in response to Rob’s unintentional come-on.
“That sounds like exactly what I want, but I shouldn’t. I’ve a shift this afternoon.” Luc eyed his own glass and laughed. “Shouldn’t have had this one, to be honest.” He angled a look at Rob. “You won’t tell on me, will you?”
After such a look, Rob wasn’t sure he could do anything but stare. That had to be flirting, didn’t it? Rob might be rubbish at it, but he could recognize it in such close proximity.
But the curse.
Deciding to hedge his bets, Rob grinned. “I won’t tell… Eloise, wasn’t it?” Luc’s groan confirmed Rob had remembered the name correctly. “So long as you let me pay you back this drink sometime. I’m here until Solstice.” He hadn’t meant to say that. It as much as confirmed he was in the craft community.
Luc grinned. “I won’t argue the drink. Once you’re better, we can get a few runs in. On the bunny hill, if that’s easier for you.”
The cheek of it! Rob jabbed the table between them, pride flaring even as he recognized the teasing note in Luc’s voice. “Who crashed into who? Look, you and me, the next time you’re free. We’ll see who’s laughing.”
“It’ll still be me.” Luc’s eyes flashed in challenge.
Rob laughed. He couldn’t help himself. When had he last met someone who could make him laugh like Luc did so easily? Not since before the whole thing with Ava bloody Gloss, for certain. Before that, his life consisted of traveling and research and wondering if he’d ever be good at the magic his family insisted was in his blood, leaving scant time for laughter.
He smiled at Luc. “You know this place, then?” Luc nodded. “What’s the best piece of insider knowledge?”
For t
he next hour Rob heard about blue and red runs and the best bars they held, which blacks were better avoided, and which greens would send him to sleep. He learned which bakery had the best pastries and which shops would give a discount if he said he knew the Dufours. In return he shared his best—and least curse-related—travel stories until Luc checked the time on his phone and jerked upright.
“I’ve got to go. Eloise’ll kill me.” Luc scooped up his helmet and yanked it on, then slid his unlocked phone across to Rob. “Here, give me your number. We’ll do pistols at dawn or whatever you like.”
It was the strangest circumstance under which Rob had ever exchanged numbers with somebody. And the first time in years he didn’t consider leaving a fake number. Curse and all.
After Luc left, with a backward glance that Rob felt in his toes, Rob sat at the terrace long enough that the warming charms faded. When he noticed the cold, he also noticed he still held his long-since-empty glass. Not wanting to force his liver to process another and adrift without Luc’s warm presence across the table, he gathered his snowboard gear and limped his way to the hotel. He’d forgotten about his knee while talking, and fortunately it held well enough, nothing rest and elevation—and maybe one of his mother’s remedies—wouldn’t cure.
His phone vibrated when he got in the elevator. This is Luc. Don’t forget: pistols TBD.
Rob didn’t know what expression he had on his face, but he was glad the elevator was empty. His cheeks hurt.
OLIVIA, one of Rob’s cousins, sighed down the line. “And you’re sure this bloke is cursed?”
“Didn’t activate the charms, didn’t carry any fixers on the mountain, and he had those nails like the woman had out in—Bogota? Arkansas? One of those.”
“Those places are on different continents.”
“They rhyme. That’s how I remember them.”
“That’s how you failed geography, you mean.”
The problem with working with family was the part where you worked with family. It left nowhere to escape, and what one person knew, everyone knew. Exam results and otherwise. Rob wondered if Luc had the same problem; he worked with his sister, he said. They had that in common.
Realizing the turn his thoughts had taken, Rob rapped his forehead with his phone before tossing it on his bed. He tucked in his other wireless earbud and crossed toward the window, which looked over the piste. In the early evening, light reflected from floodlights onto the snow and made the piste seem enormous. On the other end of the line, he could hear Olivia typing.
“What are you doing?”
“Searching for possible curses,” she answered, not bothering to pretend otherwise. Olivia and Rob were born a week apart and raised closely as part of the traveling Lentowicz circus. They were currently friends. A few years back they were creating curseboxes to use on each other, Olivia with distinctly more success. Yet when he finally returned one of his missed calls, Rob chose Olivia first. He likely always would.
“He’s nothing to worry about, I promise. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.” Rob’s attention caught on the chairlift cabin from that morning, which seemed ominous in its switched-off state. Thick cables ran from the anchor and disappeared into the dark of the mountain like an invitation.
High above, small red lights winked like eyes as groomers arranged the snow into corduroy lines. It was hard to gauge in the dark how high they were. Above the tree line somewhere. Beyond the red lights stretched an ocean of darkness. No moon, even. Rob touched his choker, rubbing his thumb across the cat’s eye gemstone where it rested in the hollow of his throat, and was glad to be indoors.
“Rob?” Olivia said his name like she’d said it once already.
“Sorry. Did you find anything, then?”
“Nothing came up in the usual places. It’s not something like the Rapunzel, at least. More specialized. If you get more information, I can dig deeper? If you’re looking to break it—”
“I’m not—” Rob cut himself off and turned away from the window, limping toward the bed to sit on the edge. Olivia was the only person in the family who knew the truth about Rob’s famous cursebreak. “You know I can’t break curses.”
“That’s not what the internet says,” Olivia said in a singsong. “And you’re giving an exclusive about your method, aren’t you?”
Rob groaned. “Don’t remind me.”
Caught up in the excitement of his first successful cursebreak, Rob agreed to give an exclusive to Curses Anonymous about the Ava Gloss case. As time passed and the rest of the family “training” curseboxes remained stubbornly sealed, he realized his success truly was more accident than design. Rob didn’t want to straight-up lie for the show, but he couldn’t admit he’d stumbled across the answer either; his family was relying on him to refresh their coffers, hence his “special” being scheduled to coincide with Ava Gloss’s album release.
Faced with the prospect of continuing to lie to everyone—and possibly endangering other cursebearers wanting to try his “method”—or letting down his family and destroying their reputation, Rob opted for a third route: run away. He walked out of a meeting in London and flew to Les Menuires on an early season deal. Les Menuires had snow on the ground and the hills were open, but he would’ve gone anywhere his budget allowed.
Time to change the subject. “Look, I only mentioned the curse—the possible curse—as, like, another thing I know about him. He’s beautiful, he broke his nose once, and he’s probably cursed. Very probably.”
The sound of typing stopped. “You have a crush.”
“I’m twenty-four! I don’t have a crush, Olivia.”
“You definitely do.”
Rob pulled out his headphones and drew the mic away from his mouth. “Looks like I’m losing signal—it’s the altitude—so sorry!” He held the button down to turn the headphones off and dropped them on the bed beside his phone. A moment later he lay down next to them and closed his eyes.
His phone vibrated. Rob didn’t bother checking.
A crush, she said.
Rob grabbed one of the pillows and pulled it over his face so it would muffle his yell.
Why was Olivia always right?
Chapter Three
DURING the next week Luc barely had time to think about anything but the chalet. Well, the chalet and Rob. He found his imagination returning to their meeting as he cleaned and repaired and drove under the instruction of Eloise and Amandine. He wanted to go up the mountain again and not crash into anything this time. And, okay, he wanted to show off. Whatever the skiing equivalent of having antlers was, he wanted to flaunt it.
And he wanted to know what Rob’s hair looked like, underneath his beanie. He wanted to know what Rob’s everything looked like. Had Luc imagined Rob having freckles? Luc nearly dropped the stockpot on his foot when he tried to recall, and Audrey sent him away with a low mutter of French no one taught at school.
But as much as Luc wished otherwise, there was no time for anything but the chalet. Getting it ready for occupation took all his energy until the mere act of crawling into bed at the end of the day seemed like climbing the Alps. The activities even tired out his curse, as his cuffs barely twinged in protest each sunset.
Yet “barely” wasn’t the same as “didn’t.” More than ever Luc was certain the magic in the cuffs was failing. He didn’t know what to do about the situation, and the internet wasn’t helpful, but he couldn’t ask Eloise or anyone in the family for advice. They’d worry, and Luc didn’t need help on that front; he’d chewed his fingernails to jagged black stubs already, and taken to hiding them more than usual.
Rubbing his face, Luc shook his head like negativity would fall off if he pressed hard enough. He tugged his sleeves over his hands and hooked his thumbs into the holes in the hems, then headed outside. Amandine had tasked him with chopping more wood for the braziers in the chalets, and Luc figured if he started early, he might get enough firewood together by… what? Solstice?
He stood with his hands on
his hips and regarded the axe, mentally amending his target to Summer Solstice. “They look much bigger in real life.”
“Can I use a ‘that’s what he said’ joke, or is that inappropriate?” Eloise asked from behind him. When Luc glanced at her, he did a double take at her sweater, which had a triskele on the front, with each spiral wearing a green bobble hat. Luc didn’t know where Eloise got so many ugly sweaters from, much less how she carted them from England to France. A 23 kg limit on checked luggage didn’t allow much wiggle room even with the most expensive weightlessness spells, and those were notoriously poor at altitude.
Belatedly he answered with a shrug. “If you want to pretend like it’s the nineties out here, go right ahead—hey!” He laughed a protest as Eloise shoved him playfully. He feinted toward the axe. “Don’t make me use this on you.”
“Hells. Are you sure you don’t want me to do it?”
“I can do it. It’s my job, right?”
Eloise sometimes looked at him the way their mother did, like at a colt learning to walk that had teetered too close to the road. Luc shoved down the instinct to bristle. Older siblings might always look at younger siblings like that. He’d have to ask someone. Rob, maybe. Any excuse to check on those freckles.
“Wait, what’s that look?” Eloise’s eyes widened, and she grinned, leaning closer to inspect whatever Luc’s face was doing. “What are you thinking about, baby brother?”
Alarmed, Luc scrambled backward, lifting one hand to cover his face. But then he couldn’t see past it. He used his hand to fend off Eloise’s attention instead as he circled around the yard. “What? Get lost! My face didn’t do anything!”
