Chapter Thirty-Seven #2
‘I know how the curse works,’ I snap. ‘And I know that you’re lying. If you’d broken it and actually felt bad, you would’ve told my mom.’
‘But I … you just said she got my letters,’ he says. ‘It felt like the least threatening way to contact someone you’d hurt so badly. She could open them in her own time, when she was—’
The letters. He told her he’d broken the curse in his letters? But that can’t be right.
‘She never read them,’ I murmur.
‘Oh … oh no.’ Austin slumps back against the couch. ‘Do you mean – she’s thought she’s been cursed this whole time? What about your dad? What does he—’
‘He moved to California,’ I say. ‘To keep us safe.’
Austin buries his head in his hands, nails scraping through his hair. ‘Jesus,’ he mutters.
His distress looks so real, but he fooled my mom before, fooled everyone around him into thinking he was a nice guy, one with empathy and feelings. Remembering this reignites my anger, an injection of rage that has me balling my hands into fists.
‘Indie,’ Austin says, looking up. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am—’
‘If you say you’re sorry one more time!’ I seethe. ‘You’re not sorry, you’re a fucking liar. I know you’re lying.’
‘I’m not, I swear. I broke the curse straight after—’
‘Then why are people still changing?’ I yell. ‘Tyler. And Avery. They changed – turned. Into monsters. I saw them. I saw it happen, just last week.’
‘Tyler and Avery?’ Austin says. ‘Are those your mother’s—’
‘No, asshole,’ I fire back. ‘They’re mine.’
‘Yours?’
His forehead creases, and then it clicks – he doesn’t know the curse passed down to me.
‘Yeah, fun surprise,’ I scoff. ‘Me being in my mom’s womb meant that when you cursed her, it passed to me.
Except, plot twist, you suck at curses, so now even when I kind of like someone, they turn into a freak show whenever I come within a block of them.
Except I had, like, the most basic crush on Tyler and I mostly can’t stand Avery, and yet, boom, she went full Godzilla. So like, mind fuck.’
‘Indie,’ he splutters, shooting to his feet.
I startle backwards and Austin holds out his hands again in surrender.
‘I’m telling you the truth. I broke that curse fourteen years ago, when I found out your dad had started changing.
The curse was bound by a photo, of me and your mom, and I ripped it up.
’ He gasps. ‘I still have it, in fact. I can show you, it’s at my home. ’
The picture. The binding object is … the picture of Austin and my mom?
I rise to my feet, swaying slightly. ‘No, you don’t,’ I say, my voice suddenly sounding very, very far away. The torn-up picture of my mom and Austin – the one that bookmarked Hexes on Lovers Past. ‘I have it.’
I’ve had it all along.
‘You … you …’ Austin stammers. ‘You have it? How?’
I stumble back and sit on the table with a thud, my brain foggy. ‘I stole it from your office,’ I say in a daze. ‘Your locker combination was my mom’s birthday.’
‘You … you stole it from my … wow. Okay.’ He places his hands on his hips in perfect triangles. ‘But how did you get into my house in the …’ his voice trails off as the pieces of the puzzle slot together in his head. ‘Max,’ he whispers.
The picture. The binding object is the picture. My mom’s handwriting on the back, Austin 2008. Because the picture belonged to her. Magic didn’t pulse in it because the curse had already been broken.
‘That’s not important,’ Austin says to himself. ‘We can talk about all that later.’ He shakes his head and turns pleading eyes back to me. ‘But you’ve seen the picture, then. You know I’m not lying. Whoever’s doing this to you – it’s not me.’
It’s not Austin. It’s not – but how? The spots of white have returned to the edges of my vision, and a piercing coldness fills my head.
He could still be lying. Trying to confuse me until he can flag down security, get me kicked out, away from Max, so he can figure out his next move.
But doesn’t this all kind of make sense?
Why my curse was so all over the place, the way it never quite matched my mom’s.
Because it didn’t actually pass down to me. It was cast by someone else entirely.
But who?
With one swift click, the door swings open so hard it crashes against the wall with a loud crack.
Max stands in the doorway, his chest heaving.
His curls are flattened against the side of his face with a headset, but seeing it, I frown.
I swivel towards the table behind me, where another headset sits.
Max’s original headset. The one whose battery pack is still blinking green.
‘You lied to me,’ he says to the room.
‘Max,’ Austin and I say at the same time, then look at each other.
Max stumbles inside, slamming the door behind him. ‘You’re the one who’s been changing people into monsters?’ he says to his dad. ‘You did the curse? But … but why?’
Austin takes a step towards him. ‘Max, I … I was so broken,’ he says, his voice croaking. ‘After everything that happened with your mom, and then Indie’s. It was wrong. So wrong. But whatever’s going on with Indie, I’m not—’
‘Did you curse my mom too?’ Max says. ‘Is that why she left?’
His dad’s face falls. ‘I wish it was something that simple,’ he says. ‘But no. I only really got comfortable with magic when Maggie and I were dating. I just wanted something, anything, that could help me feel like my life wasn’t spinning out of control.’
‘You’ve always been Captain Logical,’ Max says. ‘No Halloween, no fantasy stuff. You wouldn’t even let me have a magician at my sixth birthday party. And all that was … what? A cover-up? A way to make sure I never found out you can do actual magic?’
‘Could,’ Austin says. ‘I don’t go near that stuff any more.’
‘And you.’ Max swivels to face me. Hurt and confusion burn bright on his face. ‘You knew the whole time where the curse came from. You broke into my dad’s office. You were … were you using me?’
‘No!’ I shout quickly, my voice high with anxiety. But he’s not wrong, exactly. ‘I mean, maybe at first,’ I amend. ‘And then, you know, a little bit more, towards the, you know, now. Ish. But that—’
Max snorts with derision. ‘Cool,’ he says. ‘No wonder I never turned into a monster. You never liked me at all.’
‘Yes, I did,’ I insist. ‘I do. That’s the problem. I didn’t mean for this to happen.’ I reach out for him, but Max ducks away as though my fingers are poisonous. ‘You weren’t supposed to be … you.’
He screws up his face and says angrily, ‘What does that even mean?’
‘It means I tried not to like you. Just let me explain,’ I say.
Plead. This wasn’t supposed to happen, this wasn’t supposed to happen.
I was so close. ‘All of this may have been why I started talking to you, but I genuinely like you. You’re hilarious, and kind, and, and, so caring.
I’ve never met anyone that cares as much as you do. About everything.’
Max reaches up and grips his hair in two tight fistfuls before folding forward and letting out an agonised scream into his thighs.
Austin spins around and fixes me with a furious look. ‘You have every right to be mad at me.’ He points at Max. ‘But you didn’t need to bring my son into this.’
I choke out a laugh. ‘Oh my God, you?’ I say. ‘Being Mr Self-Righteous right now? Are you serious?’
‘He’s right, you were using him!’
‘You cursed my mom!’
Austin and I are still staring at each other when it happens, but I can tell that he clocks the same movement I do out of the corner of my eye because we both turn towards Max at the same time. But it’s not Max in front of us – not any more.
Fear, icy and swift, surges through my veins. I step back until my spine connects with the wall behind me.
‘Wh … Maxie?’ Austin whispers.
The beast standing in Max’s place blinks down at us, its eyes a bright, bilious yellow.
‘See?’ I say to it, my voice trembling. ‘Told you I like you.’