The Cursed Child
Chapter Fifteen
THE CURSED CHILD
Idris
T he door to the storage closet was unlocked but not by magic.
The lock had been clumsily picked, likely with a screwdriver and a hairpin, judging by the scratches.
“Idiot,” muttered Idris. He was thinking of himself as much as Leo.
He had been hard on Leo, but he had done it as much for Leo’s own safety as for everyone else’s. Curses were dangerous and often unpredictable, and the fact that Leo lacked the ability to sense the inherent danger meant he shouldn’t be trusted with his “enchanted” objects.
But Idris, having seen Leo’s dedication to his research, should have done a better job of locking them up. Things had just been so busy at the start of the term. The demand for his courses had far exceeded his expectations, and frankly he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to manage without some help. He had hoped that his intimidation, clumsy though it was, would have been enough to deter Leo at least long enough for him to get a handle on the job he was brought here to do.
Of course, there was another possibility. It was a stone he didn’t want to unturn, but with Ceri nowhere to be found, he couldn’t afford to ignore alternatives, no matter how improbable.
There were some curses that had a way of corrupting the mind. Idris hadn’t had a chance to study the objects Leo had collected, but it was very possible that one of them was cursed with something that could have overtaken his conscious will. He may have had no choice but to steal it back.
This was a far more dangerous notion. A curse like that could push him far past the threshold of what he was normally capable of. It could force him to remove any obstacle in his path.
Any obstacle, including one petite dragon princess with a taste for trouble.
The storage room had clearly been disturbed. Several cases had been picked or broken open, all of them with items missing. All of the objects he’d collected from Leo—the lighter, the dagger, the locket, the doll, and even the horn, which was the only object that Idris couldn’t immediately identify as cursed—were gone, as were two other items: an exceptionally old watch, with a curse Idris hadn’t yet identified, and a sapphire ring, which had the power to turn nightmares real.
“Godsdammit,” said Idris when he realized the ring was gone.
The ring was a particularly nasty piece of work. He was grateful that he had discovered its ability by showing up to class one day in his underwear rather than through any of the far worse things that could have happened.
Idris needed to get that ring back before Leo or Ceri fell asleep. Or sooner. In combination with the other objects, it could have done anything to anyone.
That was the other thing about curses: they liked to work together. A nightmare ring on its own was only as dangerous as the dreamer’s worst nightmares. Most dreamers tended to wake up before actually dying, so the ring only did its worst in rare cases. But in combination with something else, even something relatively benign like a spoon that made you eat after you were full, the results could be disastrous. The ring could make you eat something horrific: a pie made from a beloved child, or that awful porridge they served in the dining hall, and the spoon would force you to keep eating it until you no longer could.
Just as Idris had turned to catch up with Rinka, the door slammed shut. There was laughter in the air—high-pitched, girlish giggles.
“If this is some kind of joke, it isn’t funny, Ceri.”
Idris felt the movement in the room as the lights went out.
“Did you take the invisibility pendant as well?” he asked as he ignited the candle with his magic.
The box containing the invisibility pendant was undisturbed, but the laughter continued.
Not Ceri , he thought. Not unless she found an outrageously good magic teacher without Father knowing.
This was one of the many loose curses, almost definitely. Maybe some of the college’s own magic at work in there too. Places this old were always crawling with it, even if there were few left who could sense it. And there was always the chance it had been corrupted by another curse into something far worse than intended.
“Show yourself,” he said. He tried the door—held shut by magic, of course.
He tried to break through it but felt it fighting back against him. It was doable, maybe, but it would leave him with little energy to face anything else that might be thrown at him.
Or anything else that might be thrown at Ceri.
“You’re no fun,” said a voice. It was a child’s voice.
The doll, Idris guessed.
Children’s curses were often unintentionally created by young practitioners of magic who hadn’t gotten control of their powers yet. The curse that Keir had admitted to creating one whiskey-soaked night a few weeks earlier had a lot in common with a children’s curse. They had lessons like morals at the end of a story. Idris suspected this curse had something to do with sharing toys.
“I can’t play with you for long in this room. There isn’t much air in here, and the candle will burn through it fast. Open the door and we can play together.”
“No candle then,” said the voice. Idris’s candle snuffed out. “I want to play.”
“We can play,” said Idris. “But I need to be able to see to play. And I need to be able to breathe to play.”
He lit the candle once more. The curse was unlikely to be the entire spirit of a child; he’d heard rumors of such but had never found evidence of it for himself. But even if it was a fragment of it, it might respond to the kind of parental authority that children often craved.
“I don’t think so,” said the voice. It giggled malevolently and put out the candle again.
Idris didn’t like this. The voice was unusually confident for a child. And there was something sinister in the laughter that unnerved him.
“Alright,” said Idris. “What do you want to do then?”
“I want you to play with me forever, and I know how.”
Ah, there it was. A classic spirit request. The poor child that had cursed the doll may have done so as their dying wish.
It was sad, but the main issue was that the spirit wanted to kill him right now and was incredibly capable of doing so.
He was going to have to chance it and burst the door open. Hopefully by the time they’d found Ceri, he would have some magical assistance from Alison and Keir.
He focused his power on the door. It was incredible, the force that was holding it closed. It was like pulling against a crate of cannonballs.
“Where are you going?” asked the voice.
Not good. He needed to get out of here, now. He pulled with all of his power.
The door opened a crack. He grabbed onto the handle and pulled physically, inching it open.
“I don’t think so,” the voice said again.
It slammed the door shut.
There was another laugh, but this was a different laugh entirely. Older, male. An orc, maybe, or a dwarf.
“Who else is there?” asked Idris. He should have seen this coming. The children’s curse alone shouldn’t have been able to keep the door shut against the power of Idris’s magic.
Unfortunately, Idris had just used a ton of it to try to break free. He was immediately exhausted to the point of needing to sit down. He leaned against the shelves to avoid collapsing.
“My friend likes to play with me. You said you wanted to see.”
“Idris?” Rinka’s voice was muffled on the other side of the door. The enchantment let little through. “Are you in there?”
“In here—” began Idris, but his voice was cut off.
There were hands around Idris’s throat. At the exact same moment, the silk lining of the case that had held the lighter burst into flames.
“You wanted to see,” said the child’s voice. “Can you see now?”
Idris thrashed against the invisible hands. In the flickering of the fire, there was little to see in the room but sinister shadows. A pair of them, dwarf and human child.
“Idris? I can’t get the door open,” cried Rinka.
Idris heard the knob turning back and forth. Then there was a crashing sound of something colliding with the door: she was trying to break it open.
He couldn’t respond. The hands were cutting off his air. He didn’t have long.
He stumbled to his feet and threw himself across the room at the fire. He slammed the case shut.
The doll’s case caught fire instead.
Both dwarf and child laughed.
“You’ll play with us soon,” said the child in a sing-song voice. “Soon…”
There was a creaking sound from the shelves Idris had just been leaning on. Something was moving.
It was likely to be whatever physical presence the dwarf or the child had taken. Idris pushed against the hands around his throat with what was left of his power, freeing himself to take one more painful gasp.
He thumbed a hidden latch on a tiny case behind him. In it was a single silver coin. The curse on the coin was so slight that he rarely even kept it in its case—the coin always came up tails, no matter how many times you flipped it.
In Idris’s hands, it was no mere silver.
He had so little power left though. Could he stretch it into a sword without passing out from the effort?
The shelves stirred. There was something behind there.
He had to take a chance. He concentrated on the coin, and then—
The shelves swung open, blocking the door back into his office.
“Idris!” shouted Alison.
He dropped the half-formed sword. It hit the ground as the coin it had been and bounced, finally landing on tails.
He gestured desperately to his neck.
“He’s not breathing,” said Keir. “Alison!”
Keir took Alison’s hand, and Idris felt the incredible power of their combined magic smack into the room.
The hands around his neck were gone in an instant.
“The door—” Idris started, gasping.
“I know,” said Keir. “I was trapped the same way.”
Keir pulled the shelf that had concealed the hidden passage they had emerged from closed, and he and Alison tackled the door.
Just as they were swinging it open, the blade of an axe appeared through it, cleaving the old wood.
Alison screamed. All three of them jumped back, holding each other in the far corner of the closet.
The axe came free. Its wielder stepped into the light of Keir and Alison’s candles.
“Hello, all. Having a good night?” asked Rinka, slinging the axe over her shoulder.