The Curse Girl (3 page)

Will pulled out her chair for her and then sprawled in his own without getting mine. Which was fine, of course—I was a capable, 21st century woman. Rose, however, looked scandalized.

Since nobody was really being forthcoming with the information I needed, I decided to just dive in.

“What are you going to do?” I wanted to say
to me
, but I couldn’t. It sounded too brutal.

Will raised one eyebrow, his mouth sliding up in another smirk. “I’m going to eat my dinner. And no, it isn’t you. I don’t know what you’ve heard in your little village out there, but I’m not actually a flesh-eating monster.”

Well, strike one against the village grapevine. I tried to look like I’d never considered this option. I probably failed miserably. Will’s eyebrow shot up higher in disbelief.

“Really? They think I eat people?”

“Will,”
Rose said, reprimanding him.

He sighed and settled back, dropping it. Rose cleared her throat, and he looked at me with a falsely polite expression. “So what did you do, Beauty?” He enunciated my name like it was a joke. “People are very busy now, in the modern world, aren’t they?”

“I’m a student. You know. High school?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

I realized he probably had only heard of it, and wasn’t just being snide. I didn’t know what he was, but I knew he’d been here a long time.

Okay, maybe he was still being snide.

“I’ve never really gone to school,” Rose said. She seemed determined to have a civil conversation, while Will seemed interested only in the opposite. I couldn’t tell if he deliberately didn’t like me personally, or if he just hated everyone. Both, maybe.

“What about you? What do you do?” I needed to ask questions, draw him out. I needed to find out all the information I could. My voice sounded strong and smooth, but my hands were shaking. I put them in my lap so he couldn’t see.

“I prey on innocent villagers and terrify their children,” he said with a nasty smile. “And sometimes when I’m feeling really evil, I read books or paint.”

“Will loves to read,” Rose put in. That earned her a sideways glance. Then that sharp gaze was back on me, challenging me to confirm another village legend.

“I get that you’re making a joke, but you preyed upon my father.” I was getting tired of his sarcastic references to the town. We had good reason to be afraid of this place. Some of the legends were true. My father was proof of that.

A muscle in his face twitched. His eyes, blue like lightning, rake across my face. Rose made a soft noise in her throat, like she was thinking of something sad. Neither of them said anything.

Just as the silence became unbearable, servants burst through the doors with steaming bowls. Hands placed soup before me, some kind of bubbling yellow froth that smelled savory but unrecognizable. I dipped my spoon in it. My appetite had fled, but I needed to eat. I needed to stay strong so I could escape.

“That’s pumpkin stew,” he said, dismissive.

I tried the bubbling liquid. It tasted delicious, but I wouldn’t tell him that.

“You never answered my question,” I said. “You never told me what—what you’re going to do to me.”

He raised one eyebrow. “Do I have to do anything to you?”

“You called me the Curse Girl! You forced my father to give me to you! You must want something.”

He gave me a look that made me blush all the way to my hair. “Not that,” he said, disdainful at the very idea.

Jerk. I hadn’t even implied anything like that. I ground my teeth together to keep back angry words. “What, then?”

“
If
you’re the Curse Girl, you’re going to help set me free from the curse I'm under.” He returned his attention to his soup.

No way, I wanted to say, but I was supposed to be acting cooperative. “Well, what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to say, accomplish? Pray tell, because I certainly don’t like being here. I’d like to leave as soon as possible, and if breaking some curse will let me—”

He glanced up once, eyes bored. “Please stop talking. I’m trying to eat.”

“Will,” Rose said.

He glared at her so forcefully that she withered beneath his gaze and went completely silent. Will returned his attention to his soup, and Rose started eating like her life depended on it. I got the feeling that he was like a big, nasty dog and she was like an annoying puppy, and occasionally she crossed a line and he snapped at her and then she cowered for a while and left him alone.

Now that it was quiet, I could get in a few words of my own.

“I gave up my entire life to come here—”

“I’ve seen what the village is like,” Will said, his lip curling. “You barely gave up anything. You’ve only exchanged one set of chains for another.”

Rage shot through me like lightning as Drew’s face flashed before my eyes. I would never see him again unless I found a way to get out of here. I’d given up everything and everyone I loved to save my family even though they hated me, and he’d spit on my sacrifice with his callused words. I wanted to scream.

“You know nothing about me, my life, or the people I love,” I snapped. “You really are a monster, just like all the stories say. You really are a ‘Beast.’”

He didn’t even bother to respond. He ate his soup.

Rose’s eyes shot from me to her brother. Her lip trembled, like she wanted to say something, but she just put her spoon in her mouth.

Throwing down my spoon, I kicked back my chair and headed straight for the door.

He was a monster. Not a monster in body, maybe, but definitely a monster in soul.

He’d better not mind his curse too much, whatever it was, because setting him free was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.

FIVE

I found my room right away this time. Maybe there was a pattern to the changing rooms. Maybe it was all random. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I stumbled to the bed and fell face-down on the blankets. I wanted to cry. My throat ached as if a giant hand were squeezing it. I threw pillows over my head and moaned.

The walls began to whisper my name.

Things rustled and stirred in the darkness above me. The bed curtains shuddered. The walls scraped and crackled like they were made of paper, and scuttling things were wriggling across them. Shudders worked up and down my skin. I put fingers in my ears and buried my head again, biting my lip to hold in a scream. I dragged the blankets over me as the muttering grew louder. Who was it? Ghosts? Spirits? Was the house haunted too?

Dimly through the hellish noise I heard something else.

Screaming.

It sounded like a man’s scream. He sounded like he was in horrible, tortuous pain.

I put my head under the covers and closed my eyes. I didn’t dare look for a way out tonight.

~

The sun woke me. I’d slept curled stiffly in a fetal position, a blanket wadded in my hands. My whole body ached. Uncurling, I climbed from the bed and looked around.

The walls, drenched in sunlight, were silent now. Did one of the painted flowers wiggle, or had my imagination started to get the best of me? My head throbbed.

Someone knocked on the door. Housekeeper. She bustled in without an invitation and started putting clothing in the bureau.

“Some clean things for you, dear. How did you sleep? Are you feeling well? You look a little pale.”

She didn’t look as frightening today. Maybe I had started to adjust. I watched, wordless, as she held up a mass of purple and black silk. A dress. Housekeeper smoothed the bodice and toyed with the skirt, getting the lace ruffles to lay right. “Isn’t it beautiful? Seamstress made it last night for you. She has little else to do besides make clothes for the Master when his—” She laughed uneasily and broke off. When I didn’t comment on the dress, her lips turned down. She put it on a hanger and hung it in my closet.

“Why are you called Housekeeper?” I asked. “It seems very . . . specific.”

Housekeeper’s hands fluttered to her hair, which was still piled on her head in an outdated bun. “We don’t remember our names,” she said after a long pause. “It’s part of the curse . . . the forgetting part. We don’t remember much of anything from before, except our duties and how to perform them. Do you still know your name?”

“Of course,” I said. “I’m Beauty.” I paused. That wasn’t right. That was what
he
had called me. That was what the curse called me. What my father called me. But was that really my name? Mine?

My name was something else. Something loving, something my friends used . . . The thought niggled in my mind, like a coin stuck in a crack. I bit my lip.

“Beauty’s a nice thing to be called,” she said, wistful. “
Housekeeper
is an ugly name. So plain and direct. Like being named spoon, or towel. I don’t like it.” She paused and leaned her shoulder against the wardrobe, reflecting. “I think I must have been called something nice once.”

“Bee,” I interrupted, remembering with a surge of relief as I remembered. “I’m called Bee. My mother came up with it when I was just a kid.” My mother. Thinking of her made my throat close.

“Bee,” Housekeeper said, brightening at the word. “That’s a nice name too. Cute. Like a little Bumblebee.”

I didn’t know how much I would like being called Bumblebee, so I hoped she wouldn’t find it
too
cute. I tried to change the subject. “Couldn’t you be called something else if you wanted?”

“Well, I suppose, but it wouldn’t be mine. You understand? I want my name.”

I nodded. That made sense. My grandmother always said there was magic in a name—significance.

“Wait—what about William and Rose? They know their names?”

Housekeeper shrugged. “The master is very strong-willed. He vowed he’d remember who he was if it killed him. But the mistress . . . they called her something else, before. But she’s Rose now. It suits her.”

I thought of her fragile skin, the visible veins beneath her cheeks. It did suit her.

Housekeeper opened the door to go.

“I heard someone screaming last night,” I began.

She paused, picking at a piece of lint on her apron. “The house makes noises. The curse turned it into a great, mechanical instrument, a shifting puzzle box animated into something strange and terrible just to torment us. Sometimes the walls talk, but they don’t say anything of consequence, just little whispers about the weather and things, echoes of words absorbed from the servants, that sort of thing...”

“It was very loud,” I said. “Was someone in trouble?”

Housekeeper’s eyes darted to the open doorway. “I don’t—”

“Was it . . . the house? Was it … someone he has prisoner?”

“No, no,” she said, anxious now, as if I’d trapped her in a corner. “Now if you’ll excuse me.” And with that, she fled.

A servant with keys for fingers brought me breakfast and introduced himself as Locke. I nibbled at the toast while I made my plans. Today I was going to find a way out. If the windows couldn’t be broken, then I’d find a door. A hole. A crack.

Anything.

I wasn’t staying in this screaming house another night.

After eating, I explored. Daylight made everything a beautiful ruin again. I wandered through endless rooms, trying every window. Nothing broke. Nothing opened. I found no doors that led outside. Only doors that led to more rooms full of broken furniture and half-melted candles. My frustration grew, along with my sense of panic.

I came to a library, the one from before. Sunlight poured through a stained glass window and made a puddle of red and blue on the floor. Dust motes drifted in the air. Hushed silence hung heavy. Stopping in the center of the room, I turned a full circle. Books lay everywhere in heaps. There were more books on the floor than on the shelves.

I picked up the heaviest tome I could find and hurled it at the window. The book crashed against the glass and fell to the floor with a thump. The window didn’t make a sound.

I sank to the floor, my fingers groped for something else to throw—a book, a paperweight, anything. I found another book, but instead of throwing it I just held it, thumbing the pages with my fingers.

Maybe I needed something heavier than books and stools. Maybe I needed explosives. Dynamite.

Almost without thinking, I tore out a page from the book and folded it into an origami rose. The methodical act of folding and refolding calmed me. I thought of my grandmother. What would she tell me to do?

She would tell me to be calm and observant. I could learn the most from my environment if I wasn’t panicking. Her blue eyes would smile at me and she would touch my hand with her own. She’d say,
Bee, you are the kind of girl who doesn’t run from things. Some people call that stubbornness, and some people call that stupidity. But I call it tenacity and I think it’s going to get you out of that house.

A door creaked behind me. Probably Housekeeper, come to call me to lunch.

“What are you doing?”

I spun around at the voice, the paper rose in my hand fluttering to the floor. Will. Outrage was written in every line of his body.

“Can’t I be in the library?” I snapped, because it was the first thing that came to mind. I couldn’t say I was looking for an escape.

“You’re ruining that book!” He pointed to the page I’d torn out. “That’s a perfectly good book!”

Holding his gaze, I reached down and ripped another page out. “I’m making roses.”

“Well, it’s my book.”

“Sorry.” I tore out another.

He clenched his hands into fists. “This is my house, and I order you to stop. Don’t you have any respect?”

I dropped the book, and it fell with a bang against the carpet. I folded another rose while I talked, my fingers flying. “None more than you do, apparently. How does it feel to be treated like dirt?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His mouth made an angry slash as he scowled.

“Let’s start with how you’re a complete jerk,” I said. “You told me I was ugly. You told me you didn’t care about the fact that I’ve been locked up in this house with you. You don’t care about other people.”