Chapter 6
JAMIE
She signs her name and slides the page back across the table toward me. The pen clicks closed and is placed on top.
“Happy?” She tilts her head.
“Thrilled,” I say.
The front room is warm from the fire. Shelves line the far wall, packed with glass jars of dried herbs and books so old that their leather bindings are cracked.
The oil from earlier is sweet on my skin, and every time I smell it, I think of her hands pressing it into my wrists.
Reading people is something I’m great at, but I’m struggling with her.
Overhead, a floorboard creaks.
I look up. She doesn’t.
“It’s Charlie,” she says.
“Ah, your boyfriend?”
“I do love him.” A sweet smile crosses her face. “But tonight isn’t about me. It’s about you.”
Wood pops, and our shadows rise across the walls. I’m here for the curse, but I also want to get my money’s worth.
“You’re right,” I say.
She interlocks her fingers, and I glance at the rings she’s wearing. There’s a silver band, and on her pointer finger, there’s one that’s a deep purple.
“Are you wearing a mood ring?”
“Tell me about the curse.” She places her hands in her lap, not answering.
“Guess we’re just jumping straight in?”
“Yeah,” she says, leaning back in the chair. “But please, take your time.”
I roll the stiffness out of my shoulder. Outside, the wind blows through the trees. The house creaks around me like it’s waiting for me to continue.
“How far back do you want me to go?”
“The beginning?”
“It started in the seventeen hundreds.”
She doesn’t blink. “Oh. Centuries.”
I lean forward in my chair. The light in the room makes her look like she belongs in a different lifetime. I’ve told three people this story, and every one of them laughed like I was telling a joke.
“One of my relatives was forced into an arranged marriage.” I stop, trying to recall exactly what my father told me when I was speed-dating through women. A log falls from the stack, sending a spray of sparks up the chimney. “And wasn’t faithful to his wife.”
“Men,” she says. “Unsurprising.”
I almost grin. “He had a lot of mistresses. One of them didn’t take it well when he ended things with her.”
Blaire crosses her legs. “Continue.”
“She cursed the firstborn son of his entire bloodline so they’d never find true love.” The words sit heavy between us.
She doesn’t laugh or smile, only blinks a few times and sits back. “Do you feel cursed?”
“At times.” I give her a tired smile.
The expression that I saw when she was reading my coffee cup returns. It’s almost like she’s looking through me instead of at me.
“Well, you are the common denominator.”
“Well aware,” I say.
“Why do you think your relationships end?”
“I didn’t pay for a séance for my personal life. Can we focus on the curse?”
Time slows, and my muscles tense like they used to a half second before I’d take a hit on the ice.
I move in front of the fire to warm my hands.
Logs are stacked beside the brick, and I place a couple more in.
Blaire shrugs off her robe, folds it over the back of the chair, and stands beside me.
The heat pushes against my chest, and the woodsmoke mixes with whatever she’s burning in the brass dish on the mantel.
It might be rosemary or cedar or sage. I can’t place the scent.
I’m surrounded by her, and I’m not complaining.
The new wood I added fully catches and crackles.
“Have you ever been in love?” she asks.
I laugh. “Yeah. But I’ve never been with anyone who’s made me want to truly give up everything.”
“When things get hard, you run?” she asks, clocking me.
“It’s not that I run. I just never want to stay.” I’m admitting more than I imagined I would.
Every woman I’ve dated and broken up with filters through my thoughts. It’s the same cycle, where I end things at the thirty-day mark. The shine wears off, or I find a reason why I can’t spend the rest of my life with that person. I fall hard and move on faster—isn’t that what Trena said?
Down the hall, a door bangs shut on its own, hard enough to rattle the window.
“Boyfriend pissed?”
“It’s the spirits,” she says, like she predicted I’d ask. “They’re responding.”
We go quiet, and she allows me to soak in the silence.
“Do you believe you can break a three-hundred-plus-year-old curse?” I ask.
Static from the radio fills the room. It rises and falls like the house is breathing through it. One word comes out of the hiss.
Love.
It’s clear as if someone leaned into a microphone and spoke.
Blaire unplugs the radio, not giving it another chance to say anything else.
“That’s enough,” she says. “You’ve worked them up.”
“Did it say … love?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she tells me.
It was crystal clear, in a deep, scratchy voice.
“Should I be concerned?”
“Not sure.”
“That’s not comforting,” I tell her.
“Honesty isn’t meant to be anything other than what it is.”
She returns next to me, takes my hand, and lowers me onto the thick rug in front of the fire.
“Trust me,” she says, crossing her legs and sitting.
We settle in front of one another, an arm’s length apart. Heat runs down my left side, and the rug is soft under me.
“Give me your hands.”
I put them in hers. Her thumbs work the oil into my palms in slow circles, and the warmth doesn’t stop where she’s touching. It rushes up my wrists and forearms. I can’t tell where I end and she begins.
The ring on her finger catches the light of the fire, and it’s turned a deep violet.
“Aren’t you a little old for a mood ring?”
She adjusts it. “Aren’t you a little old to be filtering through women like T-shirts?”
Fair.
“It was a different color earlier,” I tell her.
Her breathing isn’t as even as she wants me to think as she looks at my mouth.
I could close the space between us, and I think she’d let me.
She presses her fingers on my wrist. “I need you to close your eyes and visualize meeting this relative of yours.”
“Okay,” I say.
She inhales deeply.
Wanting to get the full experience, I imagine introducing myself.
“What is he saying?” she asks.
“That I’m handsome, just like the rest of the family.”
“You’re playing games.”
I open my eyes, and this time, she’s staring at me. Then she’s back on her feet.
I stand and take a step toward her. “You intrigue me, Blaire.”
The door creaks open, and the blonde from the shop sees us standing way too close, then immediately closes it.
“Great,” Blaire says sarcastically. “We’ll call our session here. That’s enough for tonight.”
She moves across the room and returns with a small bottle, placing it in my palm.
“What’s this?”
“Dab it on the inside of your wrists and behind your ears every morning for the next week,” she says.
“Okay.” I check my watch, and my eyes widen. I’ve been here for two hours, but it feels like only twenty minutes have passed.
“Everything okay?” she asks.
“Time slipped away.”
“That’s magic.” She places more wood in the fireplace, like she’ll be returning here after I leave.
I study her lips, then meet her brown eyes. “Give me your number.”
“You can contact the shop if you need to get ahold of me,” Blaire says.
“What if I want to discuss matters outside of business hours?”
“It’s best if we don’t. I’ll see you on Thursday at seven.” She nearly pushes me through the room and into the entryway before opening the front door.
“Wait, we’re not meeting tomorrow?” I step past her onto the porch.
She’s kicking me out—and not subtly.
The cold washes over me and bites through my clothes. Smoke fills the air from those running their fireplaces, and I catch the faint sweetness of the oil still on my skin.
Blaire leans against the doorway. The glow from the lit pumpkins catches the side of her face. “We covered a lot tonight. Visualize your past relative. Speak to him. Be direct about not accepting the curse.” She’s already closing the door. “Do something you enjoy tomorrow. Good night, Jamie.”
“Good night, Blaire.”
I go down the steps and walk along the decorated sidewalk that leads to Main Street. Once I’m through the gate, I turn around and look at the historic house.
Two hours passed by like nothing. Ten hours may not be enough. Right now, I just want to spend more time with her, and that’s not a sensation I’m used to.
What the actual fuck just happened?