Chapter 27
March
Two Weeks Until The Wedding
“Grandfather?” Trip’s voice is a rasp.
Even without Trip saying it, the face in front of me is unmistakable, buried somewhere deep in the grooves of my brain.
It filled family photos throughout the Coldwell home and the newspaper articles I found when trying to learn more about Trip.
He’s larger in person—nearly gargantuan.
Thick, gray eyebrows, dark eyes, strong jaw, a severity that was always so polarizing juxtaposed with Carter, Cynthia, and Kit in photos.
Trip. He looks like Trip. Or, more accurately, Trip looks like him.
“You—you’re dead.” I choke on the words.
“Ah, and you’ve never seen a ghost before, have you?” He raises one thick eyebrow.
It’s disorienting, the resemblance to Trip. My feet stumble backward, as though repelled by an invisible force. A buzzing feeling settles in the base of my spine. Trip is directly behind me.
“You can see him?” Trip whispers in my ear.
“I can…see him.” My incredulity cracks my voice. “Is this real?” I turn my head a couple of inches toward Trip. “How is he here?”
“It was strange, the tugging sensation I got only an hour ago. And the voice of a young woman saying ‘John Coldwell’ repeatedly, like a prayer. Imagine my surprise at following it all the way here. To my own home.”
My hand involuntarily moves to the stone in my pocket.
“The earring?” I mutter out the side of my mouth.
“Made from his old cufflinks.” Trip sighs.
Right. I close my eyelids and let my eyes roll toward the ceiling as Babcia’s warning replays in my mind. You run the risk of calling on more of the spirit realm.
Forgive me, Babcia. You were right. I never should have used that stone three times.
Trip clears his throat. It’s awkward standing between them. I step to the side, where I can see both their faces. Trip’s eyes are new moons—dark and round. Mist clouds them, but the hurt behind them is palpable.
“Why are you here?” he asks through gritted teeth.
“I should ask the same of you—”
“Why now? You mean to tell me that I could’ve seen you? That I wasn’t completely alone?” Trip clenches his jaw.
“It’s not that simple, son—”
“Isn’t it?” Trip throws his hands wide. “You let me think that the last thing I said to you”—he brings his fist to his mouth—“let me go on this wild goose chase just to feel like I was repaying you somehow.”
John Coldwell’s eyes widen. “Wild—?”
Trip speaks to the floor. “At least maybe you can help us find the card.”
Understanding flickers across John’s eyes. “You’re trying to break the curse.”
My tongue unglues from the roof of my mouth. “Tell us everything you know.”
“Elz.” My name on Trip’s tongue is a warning.
“What? He spent years looking into this. I can’t think of a better resource. And you two”—I move my pointer finger between them—“can figure the family stuff out later.”
I give Trip a pleading look and he nods, working out the tension in his neck with his hand.
I turn toward John. “We’re looking for a deck of cards. Perhaps a meaningful one to the Coldwell family?”
“Ah, the Coldwell heart, then.”
My body goes still. “You know about the Coldwell heart?”
“Like you said, my dear, I researched this for years. Our family and the Carmichaels had been close for centuries—business partners, friends, even marriages between the two families. Until something went sour between my great-grandfather and his old business partner, Gerald Carmichael.” He presses his fist into the desk.
“Though a century-long curse hardly seems a fair punishment. Strange family.”
They’re not the only ones. I shake my head. “Explain.”
He stands, looming over the edge of the desk.
“Diamonds and oil made for a natural partnership, but eventually it became possible to do what industrial diamonds can do for far cheaper. Business is business, and our family wanted out. Unfortunately, we’d signed on to a long-term agreement with the Carmichaels and let’s just say their contracts were… unconventional.”
“As in?”
“As in magic was involved, I’m certain. Not to mention stipulations and turns of phrase leaving the opposite party defenseless against retribution. But Gerald offered my grandfather an out—beat him in a game of Taxi and they would dissolve the contract.”
“Taxi?” I’m not sure I’m breathing.
“Yes, an old card game where—well, the details aren’t especially relevant. Though I’m sure the choice was made as a slight to my family’s history as cab drivers. Carmichael insisted on using his lucky deck—a garish thing with—”
“Gold leaf,” I choke out.
John raises an eyebrow. “Exactly. He was oddly attached to the thing. As I understand, it was a tic of his to take it out and thumb through cards at business meetings. I think the Carmichaels still believe the cards hold some sort of luck, some minor contribution to their success.”
I think of Sabrina being given the deck in advance of the wedding. Some sort of family blessing, maybe.
“Lo and behold, Carmichael won the game and the deal held. But my great-grandfather was convinced that he cheated, used some of the usual Carmichael trickery to rig the game. He threw a card from the deck into the fire and said To hell with your lucky deck.” He rubs his brow.
“Which is why I imagine we’re now tasked with replacing it. ”
“The king of hearts.” My ribs tighten.
“You do catch on quickly, my dear.”
“And what about the queen of diamonds?” Trip’s voice comes from behind me.
John runs a finger along the desk. “No one knows. The Carmichaels accuse the Coldwells of stealing it and the Coldwells call the Carmichaels liars.”
I scoff. “Sounds like an ideal partnership.”
“All business deals are tricky.” John turns to gaze out the window, clasping his hands behind his back. “No one is truly happy if the deal is any good. Keeping the Carmichaels close ensured I had access to them. Could search for evidence of the curse they put on our family.”
“But you were going off Ruby’s translation of the curse. How did you figure out it was referring to cards and not a marriage?” My chest is lighter. He’s corroborating our suspicions. Which means we are one step closer.
“Well, it so happens the Carmichaels had folded another one of their conniving stipulations into the contract.
Something about ‘should the other party destroy a piece of Carmichael property, they would face consequences until the debt was repaid.’ We assumed it referred to the mining equipment and the use of their diamonds, but when the playing card was destroyed, the clause—and the curse—was activated.
“The cards being destroyed and lost weren’t the only fallout from that argument.
Due to the fighting between our families, an advantageous engagement was broken.
My ancestors offered money, a replacement deck, no one quite knew how to repay the debt.
I myself thought it meant reuniting our families again through marriage until… ”
“Until?”
There’s a twinkle in John’s eye as he faces me. “I suspect, until your grandmother.”
“My—”
“You look a great deal like her.” He places two fingers on the side of his nose.
“Same features. Like you, she suspected the solution to the curse might be referring to cards, but we never had any proof. It wasn’t until after my accident and a year of living as a ghost that I realized she could be right. ”
I swallow a knot in my throat. “You knew my grandmother? How?”
John taps his fingers on the giant mahogany desk and purses his lips. “I wasn’t getting any further with Ruby, unfortunately. But I’d exhausted my options of fortune tellers. Turns out money can only get you so far. What I really needed was the right information.”
Kit’s words at the bridal shower. She only takes our money for her spells and potions.
My heart leaves my chest, my entire body still as stone.
“I put out feelers and started to hear word of a woman in the Bronx who had a knack for the occult.” He rubs his jaw. “Wasn’t something she advertised or even admitted to, though.” He chuckles. “Tough woman. It was clear I was going to have to earn her trust.”
He stands to his full height and it takes everything in me not to cower.
“Luckily, she did have a soft spot. A granddaughter. And I had a grandson the same age.”
No.
“Being on the school board, when your application for a scholarship came across my desk, it was an easy yes. And when you started in the fall, I made sure my grandson knew to seek you out.”
“You didn’t.” Trip’s voice is strained.
“It helped that you confided in him so willingly. He knew when things were hard financially and when your mother needed additional treatment. It made it easier for me to know which levers to pull with your grandmother. All helpful to her, of course.”
Babcia. The liquid in my eyes blurs everything in the room.
I try to blink it back, to hide the impact he’s having on me.
Carter’s smile. Peanut butter sandwiches sticking to the roofs of our mouths.
The planes of his face in the bluish glow of a movie theater.
The dusting of flakes on his eyelashes when we made snow angels in Central Park.
None of it was real.
The words are caught in my throat. Nothing will come out.
“Screw you.” Trip’s voice cuts through. “And screw Carter. For being so agreeable to your schemes. For using her like a pawn.”
John’s hands grip the back of the desk chair.
“You and your self-righteousness. Did you ever consider that love means sacrifice? That it takes more strength to compromise your own desires for what your family needs? You despise Carter for being weak and yet he’s always understood that sacrifice.
” There’s a shift in his pompous, arrogant tone.
“And now after all these years, here you are. Using her to break our curse.”
“It’s not like that.” Trip’s fist clenches in my periphery.
“Oh, it’s not? Do enlighten me.”