Chapter Thirty-Nine #2
Face expressionless, he walks calmly into the room and sets both mugs down on his nightstand. When he moves towards the closet, something reaches out of the depths of my brain and commands my feet to shift so that I’m standing in front of the doorway, blocking him.
‘It was you,’ I say. ‘You really did curse me.’ Except – that’s not right. None of the objects on the floor belong to me. The pearl hairclip, the guitar pick. ‘No,’ I say, a lightbulb flickering on in my head. ‘You cursed them.’
Elliott’s face twists with confusion. ‘Wh … curse?’ he says. He leans over to see beyond me and lets out a breathy laugh. ‘You mean with that?’ he says, gesturing to the closet floor. ‘That’s my mom’s old “spell” book from her “coven” days.’ He throws up air quotes. ‘I found it in the attic.’
‘Yes,’ I say, clarity giving me a jolt of energy.
I snap my fingers like a detective in an old black-and-white movie.
‘I figured you must’ve overheard our moms talking about Austin Taylor and the curse at some point, but I couldn’t work out how you got the magic part down.
But of course – you found your mom’s old spell book. ’
Elliott laughs again, though this one sounds markedly less certain. ‘That book’s a joke,’ he says. ‘Just as lame as your mom’s crystals. It’s not real.’
‘Maybe not in the wrong hands,’ I say. ‘I mean, no shade to your mom, but she doesn’t exactly have the vitriol you’d need to pull off a curse like that.’
His eyes are wide with puzzlement as he blinks at me. ‘Indie, I … I genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he says.
The bashful look on his face, the way he’s still trying to tell me I’m imagining things when the evidence is right here in front of me, floods me with anger.
‘See, that’s the second time someone’s said that to me tonight, except I believe the other guy,’ I say. ‘You? You’re full of shit.’ I throw an arm back towards the collection of objects on Elliott’s closet floor. ‘If that’s your mom’s stuff, then what’re you doing with Avery’s hairclip?’
‘Believe it or not, my mom also has hair,’ he says. ‘I just told you, that stuff’s hers.’
‘No, you said the spell book was hers. The other stuff – Tyler’s guitar pick, Avery’s hairclip.
Max’s …’ I chew my lip, think back. The third object is some kind of card.
Max didn’t mention losing anything, but maybe he didn’t realise it was gone.
‘His employee ID,’ I say suddenly. With him not technically working at F’resh any more, he wouldn’t need it.
‘You took those things from them. That’s why it didn’t matter if I loved them or not.
You only cursed them because – because – why? ’
The shift in Elliott happens so fast, I almost miss it. One second, his expression is all challenge and dismissal, but then I blink, and it’s gone. His face slackens, he looks down at his feet. He runs a shaking hand through his hair. He knows it’s over.
‘I didn’t know what else to do,’ he says, his voice close to a plea. ‘I’ve known you my entire life, shared a bedroom wall with you, and it was like you didn’t even know I was there.’
‘What do you mean?’ I say. All the birthdays, all the dinners. ‘You’ve been like my brother for the last—’
‘I don’t want to be your brother,’ he says.
‘I’ve never wanted to be your brother.’ He splays out his hands.
‘I tried to tell you. So many times, for so long. I kept secrets for you, I tried to be your friend, but you were so – so – preoccupied with people like Tyler and Avery.’ He spits their names like they’re rotten.
‘One of them was obviously too embarrassed to be seen with you, and the other didn’t even know your name.
It was like you were so determined not to see what was right in front of you.
’ Elliott steps forward. At his approach, it takes everything in me not to startle backwards, but he looks so devastated.
‘You and Sam are always talking about how pissed off you are that Jo doesn’t want to be with Laurie in Little Women because they’re too good friends.
That’s literally us. I thought if I could get everyone out of the way, just for a little while, you could give me a chance to show you how good we’d be as more than friends. And now I can!’
Don’t you dare compare yourself to Laurie, I can hear Sam hissing in my head.
It takes a few seconds for his words to sink in. What he’s actually saying. Does he really think—
‘Wait, wait,’ I say. ‘You think I could give you a chance now?’
Pink blooms on his cheeks. ‘Well, I …’ he says. ‘Now that you know how I feel about you—’
‘Elliott, you put a curse on people I care about,’ I say.
‘Tyler had to sleep in a cave. Max almost wrecked the zoo. One of them could’ve gotten really hurt.
’ I curl my hands into fists. ‘I’ve been going insane, these last few months, trying to figure out what I did wrong, blaming myself when they all turned.
You made me distrust my own feelings. We can’t come back from that. ’
‘But I did it to bring you here, to this moment,’ he says. ‘And look – it worked.’
‘Elliott,’ I say, exasperated. ‘Even if none of that had happened, it still doesn’t change the fact that I just don’t see you like that.’
‘But that night at the party – here.’ His voice is climbing, hands wringing the hem of his T-shirt. ‘There was something between us. I could feel it. I know you could feel it.’
‘I led you on, and I shouldn’t have,’ I say, though the words taste sour in my mouth.
Just because I might’ve considered making out with Elliott that night didn’t mean I was obligated to turn it into more.
I didn’t owe him anything. But maybe if I can appease him, he’ll understand why this curse – these curses – need to be broken.
‘I was lonely and sad and scared of what was going on, and it was stupid, what I did. I’m sorry.
But the fact is, you tried to manipulate me into choosing you. ’
‘Manipulate you?’ Elliott says with a surprised laugh.
‘I was helping you. Those were stupid crushes.’ He rubs the top of his head roughly.
‘You know, sometimes you’re so much like my mom, it’s insane.
Just blinded by a few guitar chords, or – or, a perfect face, when there are actual people around you that actually care.
It’s shallow and … pathetic.’ Angry red spots have formed all over his face.
‘And Max – you really think that was gonna go down well with your mom? Dating the son of the guy who broke up your parents? What does that say about you?’
‘I’m not your mom,’ I say quietly. ‘And Max isn’t his dad.’
‘Maybe not now,’ Elliott says. ‘But give it time. He’s got “rich douchebag” in his DNA.’
‘How did you even find out about him?’
His eyes drop to my toes, sliding slowly up the length of my body.
‘Well, you’re cute, Indie, but you’re not exactly subtle,’ he chides gently.
‘That Snap tonight …’ A muscle flickers in his jaw, but he runs a hand down his face, smooths it out.
‘It was obvious he’d done to you exactly what Austin did to your mom.
I wanted to protect you, because I care about you.
I do. And when you give me a chance to prove it—’
‘That’s never gonna happen, Elliott.’
His body stills. ‘You don’t mean that,’ he says.
‘Of course I do!’ I exclaim. Any desire to pacify him is waning quickly. ‘The fact that you ever thought I’d want to be with you after this shows you are, quite frankly, delusional.’
Elliott presses his lips together and bobs his head in a slow nod. The puppy-dog hurt in his face is gone. His expression has hardened, his mouth twitching with a stony smile.
‘Then maybe you haven’t learned enough yet,’ he says with a hint of amusement.
‘That spell book is far cooler than my mom ever realised, but no surprises there. She only joined that coven to hook up with hippies. But me – this was just my first try. If this curse doesn’t make you see how shallow you’re being, then I’ll try another and another and another. I’ll make you see.’
His voice is like ice, cold and biting. I inch backwards, fear clenching its fist around my throat.
‘I think,’ he closes the space between us with a slow step, ‘that with the right amount of pressure, you can break just about anything.’
Horror roots me to the floor as Elliott reaches up his hand, fingers soft and light as bird’s wings, towards my face.
As his eyes slide down to my lips, all I can do is stand still, paralysed, even as he leans in.
But it’s the feeling of his breath on my mouth, laboured and hungry, that snaps me from my stupor.
Almost without command, my knee lurches up and drives straight into his groin, so hard, I can hear the breath crushed out of his lungs.
Elliott collapses to the ground, moaning.
‘What part of I’m not into you isn’t connecting?’ I shout down at him as he rolls from side to side on the floor.
I spin away from him and slip into the closet. To his credit, Elliott is quick to clamber back to his feet, clawing at the doorknob just seconds after I’ve twisted the lock on the inside. When the doorknob doesn’t budge, he roars with rage.
‘You stupid-ass …’ He pounds his fists against the wood, so loud I can feel the reverberations in my bones. ‘You … you bitch!’
Falling to my knees, I tune out his voice and focus on the three objects gathered under the lamp’s faint light.
Tyler’s guitar pick is marbled purple and gold.
Max stares back at me from his picture, his smile big and goofy.
The pearls in Avery’s hairclip look yellowed and old, their cheap sheen faded.
As I run my fingers across each one, a charge meets my skin, almost like an electrical current.
These aren’t regular items – they’re filled with magic.
The spell book is open to the curse Changing Form to Thy Will. I scan the text, speed-read the section on unravelling the magic. It’s more or less exactly the same as Hexes on Lovers Past, in that the curse is held together with a binding object that must be broken in order to undo it.
Elliott’s voice is getting more and more frantic. ‘You really think they’re gonna care about you after what you did to them?’ he screams through the door. ‘After your stupid little crushes turned them into monsters?’
His words twist through me like a knife in my stomach, but Max’s voice is there too. Soft, but firm. Determined. You haven’t turned anyone. And I know, with my own sudden certainty, that he’s right.
‘They’re not monsters,’ I say through gritted teeth. ‘You are.’
Picking up the tall Yankee Candle, I bring down its heavy glass base against Avery’s clip.
It takes two whacks before the top triangle cracks, sending a handful of pearls pinging across the silk scarf.
As soon as the splinter appears in the plastic, a wisp of green smoke curls out from within it and dissolves in the air.
That’s Avery, free.
Elliott must sense the break somehow, because his hammering on the door intensifies. Only a few more solid thumps and it might cave in.
I quickly pick up the guitar pick and push one of its tips against the closet wall until the plastic bows. When it finally snaps, the same curl of smoke twists out. That’s Tyler free too.
And finally, the ID card. Max. I bend the plastic between both hands, crushing the halves together until the card splits down the middle. Max is free.
They’re all free.
Even without the sudden cessation of Elliott’s pounding, I can feel it in the way the air in the closet shifts. I slump against the door, breathing hard. The curse, the monsters – it’s all over.