The Curse Keepers Collection (108 page)

I groaned in frustration. “DNA was never the issue with the other women he used, David.”

He shook his head slowly. “I completely disagree. Okeus seems to think he was too powerful for the women who gave birth to his monstrosities. He thinks your Curse Keeper blood and power, along with the fact that you’re a witness to creation, will make you strong enough to give birth to a child who inherits both your powers. But what if we can convince him that he’s wrong?”

I gave him a blank stare. “You want to convince a malevolent, egotistical, arrogant god that he’s wrong?” I climbed out of his lap and shook my head. “Good luck with that, David. I’m going to bed.”

He stood and grabbed my hand, twining our fingers together. “Ellie, don’t get frustrated with me,” he said, sounding tired. “I’m doing my best.”

I felt like a bitch. After being out in the heat all day working at the colony site, he’d returned home to help with the bed and breakfast. Then he had spent the rest of the evening researching for information to help me. I locked my hands around the back of his neck and rested my cheek on his chest. “I’m sorry. You deserve better.”

“Ellie.” He tilted my chin up so I was looking into his face. “We’re both exhausted.” He paused and his eyes turned serious. “Why don’t you quit working at the restaurant? My university salary isn’t a lot, but it’s enough to cover our expenses here. Especially if I sublet my house in Chapel Hill.”

I released a heavy sigh. “We’ve discussed this before. You don’t owe me anything. I can’t let you do that. It’s bad enough that you’re working at the inn when I’m not here. Not to mention the money you spent buying back my father’s pocket watch.”

“You’re protecting humanity,” he said with a small smile. “The financial strain shouldn’t fall squarely on your shoulders.”

“And it shouldn’t have to fall on yours either.” My voice rose in frustration. I needed to be quieter. Several researchers visiting the colony site were staying in the main house, and I didn’t want to wake them.

“Ellie,” he whispered gently. “It’s okay.”

I took a deep breath and pressed my cheek to his chest again. Just his tender voice helped center me. What would I ever do if he grew tired of me and my crankiness? I’d become so dependent on him in such a short time. I didn’t know how I’d survive without him. My boss at the New Moon was awful, and I’d have loved nothing more than to quit. Still, being totally dependent on Collin had bitten me in the ass. Granted, this situation was totally different, but it was difficult enough to accept that I needed David so much emotionally—I wasn’t sure I could give up my financial independence too. “I need to take care of myself.”

He stroked the back of my head. “I know, love. I know. But you’re getting worn out and you haven’t even really had to battle anything yet. Just consider it, okay? You would have your hands more than full with the B&B.”

“Okay. I’ll consider it.”

“Let’s go to bed.”

I nodded my agreement and we headed upstairs to my childhood bedroom. When I let go of my apartment and moved back home, David had suggested we sleep in Myra’s room, but her things were all still there, awaiting her return in December. But I knew deep in my gut she wouldn’t be back. She’d just started her dream job at Duke University—working in the history department—and had begun a relationship with one of the professors. Myra had spent the past several years caring for my father as his illness slowly stripped him away from us, so I was grateful that she had found happiness and love. She was also so much safer two hundred miles away than she would be at home. But I missed her like crazy, even if she’d been avoiding my calls lately.

After I stripped off my clothes and put on a short nightgown, I climbed into bed, snuggling into David’s side.

His fingers lightly stroked my arm. “Ellie, I think you should stop taking guests in the main house, even if they are researchers.”

I propped up on my elbow, searching his face, which was spotlit by the full moon. “But we’re bringing in extra money.”

“I know, love, but let’s be honest: it’s a drop in the bucket. You said yourself you’re about to go into foreclosure. What if you lose the house before finding all of the clues your father left? It’s next to impossible to search when there are guests staying here.”

A heaviness weighed down on my chest. He was right on both counts.

“Not to mention there’s someone on the other side of this wall behind us.” He laughed softly. “We have to make sure we’re quiet if we want to be able to face the guests the next morning at breakfast.”

“Very funny.”

“You have to admit we were much more liberated in our sex life when we were living in your flat.”

“My bedroom was on an outside wall.”

“Exactly,” he teased, lifting the edge of my nightgown. His hand slid up, over the z-shaped scar on my abdomen, tracing the underside of my breast. “Before I forget, one of the boarders said he smelled something bad in his room. Maybe we should get someone out here to look for rodents. It could be a dead mouse or maybe a squirrel or bird that got trapped in the attic.”

“Great,” I grumbled. “Just what I need. To spend more money.”

His fingers soon distracted me from my financial woes and had me panting with need. His lips skimmed along my neck and up to my ear. “What do you think about going out of town for a few days?” His voice was low and husky.

My eyes widened in surprise. “You’re seriously suggesting a vacation? Now?”

He laughed again as his hand concentrated on making me squirm. “No, not exactly a vacation. More like a change in scenery.”

“I’m listening,” I forced out, trying to focus.

“You know how I’ve asked several of my colleagues to keep an eye out and an ear open for anything about the Ricardo Estate? Well, I heard back from one today.”

I grabbed his hand to stop his torture. “What did he say?”

“
She
e-mailed tonight to tell me she’d been invited to see a collection of antiquities, and it was all very secretive.”

I bolted upright. “Is it what we’re looking for?”

He rolled to his side and propped his head on an elbow. “She can’t be sure. She already went to see the collection in Charlotte. She said it was mostly an assortment of weapons and pocket watches. It didn’t contain the candlesticks or other paraphernalia that you saw in those photos from Marino’s guy.”

“So it’s not the estate?”

“Not necessarily. She says she saw a watch similar to your father’s. I sent all of my colleagues a photo of it when I put out word about the collection.”

“The four-century-old pocket watch?”

“Yeah.”

That didn’t make sense. “So if it
is
the Ricardo Estate, what happened to the other stuff?”

“I don’t know, but there’s something I should mention about Allison.” He paused and waited for me to meet his eyes. “She’s a history professor at Chapel Hill and she’s an expert on old weaponry, particularly from the Middle Ages. The curators of the collection asked her to examine one of their swords.”

“Swords? And isn’t that the wrong time period?”

“She says they told her this particular sword was rumored to have been blessed by priests for a knight to carry into the Crusades.”

I shook my head. “I’m confused. What would that have to do with the curse?”

“Ellie, the sword was blessed to fight
demons
.”

A chill ran down my spine. “Oh, shit.”

“She took several pictures of the sword. And she says she has something she thinks I’ll want to see.”

I fingered the gold band on my right middle finger. “What is it?”

“She wouldn’t tell me.”

“And you want to go see it?”

“If you’re open to it. I won’t go without you. I’d be sick with worry the entire time I was gone.” He pulled me back down to him and placed a sweet kiss on my lips. “And I thought I’d check on my house. I haven’t been back in over a month. You’ll get to see where I live, and I can pack up most of my things so we can start renting the place out. Maybe we can stop and see Myra too.”

I only hoped Myra would
want
to see me. “That sounds like a good idea.”

His hand resumed its previous task on my breast. “So we’ll go?”

“I’ll have to get off work.”

“If your boss won’t let you off, then quit.”

“David.”

His mouth replaced his hand as his fingers glided over my abdomen and between my legs, making me squirm. “Promise one way or the other that you’ll get off work.”

“You fight dirty.” But he didn’t have to convince me. Wild horses couldn’t keep me from going to Chapel Hill this weekend. If Allison had seen a sword capable of killing demons, I needed to figure out how to get it. And if I had to quit my job to go, maybe that was the catalyst I needed to get me out the door of the New Moon for good.

“When it comes to your safety, I’ll use
all
my resources to protect you.” Then he proceeded to show me how talented some of his resources were.

Long after David fell asleep, I lay awake in his arms. My mind returned once again to the old woman’s premonition, and a feeling of dread weighed down my limbs and kept my eyes open late into the night.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

“You can have Saturday off over my dead body,” Phoebe, my new boss, said, brushing past me and heading into the back room.

I stood in the middle of the dining room of the New Moon ten minutes before we opened, wondering how that could actually be arranged. Phoebe and I had butted heads ever since I showed up two minutes late for our first mandatory staff meeting right before the reopening of the restaurant. While Marlena, my old boss, had believed in firm authority, she’d also possessed a heart. Something Phoebe Willington seemed to be without.

A sudden wave of grief and guilt washed over me. The two emotions were usually hand in hand when I thought about my old boss, who had also been my friend. She’d died because of me, because I’d refused to side with Okeus.

Now Marlena’s husband was a widower and her three children were motherless. The only thing I could possibly do to make things right was to make Kanim, the bastard spirit who had killed her, pay. Only I hadn’t seen Okeus’s messenger spirit since Collin opened the gate at our ceremony, and I didn’t know where to look. Collin had given me a map that documented the sanctuaries of a dozen Croatan spirits, along with the gate to hell—a location with which I was all too familiar. But there was no mention of the wind gods, Okeus and Ahone, or either of their messengers. David and I had visited at least half the marked sites, but always during the day. They were difficult to find since the landmarks had all changed, not that we could get too aggressive anyway. No sense flushing them out if I didn’t have the means to permanently destroy them on my own. Perhaps that would all change if we could manage to secure this sword.

I followed Phoebe into the back, my voice firm. “Look, Phoebe, I know it’s short notice—”

She turned to me with blazing eyes. “You’re damn right it’s short notice. Not to mention it’s on the weekend. You already have Sunday off.”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

She shook her head. “You already have special privileges. No one else gets away with only working day shifts.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. You made me work last night after I worked all day.”

“And that’s because Nina quit. It was a special circumstance.”

“That seems to happen every week. And whose fault is that, Phoebe? Maybe if you were nicer, your employees would stick around for longer.”

She put both hands on her hips. “If people bothered to do their jobs, they might keep them. And as for the answer to your question . . . ” She lifted her eyebrows, her eyes bugging out like a pug’s. “It’s a firm
no
.”

I reached for the knot that tied my apron behind my back. “Then I quit.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Do you think I’m bluffing?”

“I don’t care if you are or not.” I pulled the apron over my head and spiked it onto the floor. “I’ve worked my ass off for this job, but dealing with your attitude just isn’t worth it.” I grabbed my purse off the desk and headed for the back door.