5. The Buried Curse
Chapter five
The Buried Curse
Fate
The Necropolis Supernatural Archives are located beneath a funeral home, behind a locked iron door, under three layers of warding, and past a receptionist who looks like she has personally rejected Death’s application for emotional intimacy.
So, naturally, I feel welcome.
“This place has a vibe,” Mina whispers beside me as we descend the narrow stone stairs. “And that vibe is absolutely knowledge buried before it could scream.”
The stairwell curves downward, lit by glass globes filled with pale blue witchfire.
The air grows colder with every step, damp and mineral-rich, threaded with the dry-paper scent of old books and the faint bite of grave soil.
Somewhere below us, something ticks with the slow patience of a clock that has outlived everyone who cared about punctuality.
I tuck my hands into my coat pockets and keep walking.
Because apparently, when a murdered couple’s red thread knots itself into a warning and a haunted painter slips you a napkin that says ‘The walls have ears,’ the sensible thing to do is visit an archive under a funeral home before lunch.
My life has become a cursed scavenger hunt with very poor lighting.
Mina bumps her shoulder gently against mine. “When you said emergency research trip, I pictured the town library. Maybe a latte. Possibly a scone.”
“The public library has a children’s reading circle at ten.”
“And?”
“I am not emotionally prepared to research murder curses while toddlers sing about ducks.”
“Fair. Ducks do lack gravitas.”
At the bottom of the stairs, the hallway opens into a vaulted chamber carved straight into the cliff rock beneath Necropolis Bluffs.
Shelves rise from floor to ceiling in dark, leaning rows.
Scroll tubes rest in brass racks. Glass cases hold brittle maps, sealed grimoires, bone-white tablets, theater programs, marriage ledgers, curse registries, and one perfectly ordinary-looking recipe box labeled DO NOT OPEN UNLESS YOU ENJOY CONSEQUENCES.
Mina follows my gaze. “Do not open that.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Spiritually, you have raccoon hands.”
“That is profiling.”
“That is history.”
Unfortunately, she has a point.
But I am more fox than raccoon, which makes me somewhat cautious and highly intelligent. So there!
Mina came with me today partly as support and partly because Fate D’Amour in a sealed supernatural archive alone is considered a public safety concern by people with no appreciation for investigative enthusiasm.
We cross to the central desk where an elderly archivist with silver hair, black gloves, and eyes like polished river stones waits without looking up.
“Name,” she says.
“Fate D’Amour.”
Her pen pauses.
That is never comforting.
“And this is Mina Zavara” I add. “She’s here to prevent me from committing academic crimes.”
The archivist finally looks up. “Will she succeed?”
Mina answers before I can. “Historically? No. But I slow her down.”
“Acceptable.”
Rude.
And no smile.
The archivist slides a ledger toward us. “Research subject?”
I hesitate.
Walls have ears.
The phrase sits behind my teeth, cold and alert.
“Old Everwilde enchantments,” I say. “Architecture, performance spaces, and matchmaking customs.”
The archivist’s gaze sharpens. “Annual performance records?”
My heart gives a small, unpleasant kick.
“I didn’t say annual performance records.”
“No,” she says. “You said Everwilde.”
That is not an answer.
It is, however, accurate…and deeply annoying.
She rises. “Table three. Gloves on. No ink near the vellum. No blood near anything. If a book whispers your name, do not answer.”
Mina raises a hand. “What if it whispers someone else’s name?”
The archivist considers. “Depends whether you like them.”
Then she walks away.
Mina stares after her. “I love her. I fear her.”
We take table three. The surface is carved with protection sigils so old the grooves have gone smooth at the edges. A small brass lamp flickers to life, casting honeyed light over dust motes that drift like tiny ghosts.
The archivist returns with three stacked boxes.
Everwilde Bay: Founding Customs, Mating Rites / Civic Performances and D’Amour Line — Restricted Fragments
The last one has a red cord tied around it.
Of course it does.
My family apparently never leaves a normal paper trail. We leave restricted fragments, emotional liabilities, and generational curses with decorative string.
Mina goes still. “Maybe start with the one not actively judging you.”
“That is cowardice.”
“That is sequencing.”
Fine. Sensible. Horrible.
I pull the first box closer and lift the lid.
Inside are brittle programs, handwritten notes, old sketches of the town square, and yellowed broadsheets advertising seasonal festivals. For several minutes, nothing leaps out, bites me, glows, or accuses my bloodline of poor choices.
Then I find a faded broadside from 1893: THE ANNUAL RED THREAD MASQUE
My breath catches.
Beneath the title is a hand-drawn image of two figures on a small stage, hands almost touching, a painted moon behind them. Around the border, tiny red lines loop through the audience, connecting couples, families, strangers.
Mina leans in. “That looks like matchmaking.”
“In public.”
“Which sounds like one of your nightmares.”
“With a bonnet.”
I turn the paper carefully. The description is half advertisement, half ritual record: annual performances honoring fated pairings, staged reenactments of legendary bonds, matchmaker blessings before the final act.
There are more. Programs. Notes. Marriage ledgers marked after performances.
Customs older than my shop, older than my parents’ warnings, older than the polite lie that matchmaking in Everwilde is only business.
Perhaps these customs were even the precursors for the annual 'Romeo and Juliet' production at Harborlight Playhouse.
At the bottom of one brittle page, written in narrow brown ink, I find the phrase that makes my magic go still.
When love is witnessed, the town remembers.
Mina’s humor fades.
The walls have ears. Maybe that was not a metaphor.
For the next twenty minutes, we search for ears, listening walls, witness paintings, architectural enchantments, theater wards, old matchmaker customs. Nothing direct appears. No curse named The Walls Have Ears. No spell labeled ‘How to Make Paintings Nosy.’
But then the ears start appearing.
The first is in the margin of a marriage ledger from 1902: a tiny ear sketched beside a couple’s names, half-hidden in a curl of decorative ink.
The second appears in a theater renovation plan from 1911, carved into the drawing of a balcony support.
The third is tucked into the painted border of an invitation to the Red Thread Masque.
The fourth is barely visible in the corner of a photograph: a wooden panel behind the stage, carved with a pattern that might be leaves if one is emotionally committed to denial.
I am no longer emotionally committed to denial.
Fine. I am always emotionally committed to denial. But even denial has limits.
Mina lays three pages side by side. “Those are definitely ears.”
“I dislike plural ears as a research development.”
“Same.”
More show up the longer we look. Beside names in old mating records. Hidden in flower borders around blessing certificates. Scratched into an architect’s note about the Harborlight’s original foundation. On the back of a faded playbill, where someone has drawn an ear inside a heart.
That one makes my stomach tighten.
Mina goes quiet.
“These are not random,” she says.
“No.”
“They’re markers.”
“Or warnings.”
I turn over another brittle page and find a sketch of the old town square, pre-harbor expansion. At the center is a raised platform surrounded by watchers. Above it, in faint brown ink, someone has written:
Let all bonds be witnessed. Let all witnesses remember.
The archive feels colder.
Mina’s fingers close over my wrist. “Some threads are not meant to be pulled.”
She says it gently, which is how I know she is scared.
I should stop.
Instead, I pull the next ledger closer.
“Good thing I’m a matchmaker,” I say, though my voice sounds too thin. “Pulling threads is literally my brand.”
Mina groans. “I hate when your death wish has marketing language.”
I open the ledger.
At the top, in fading ink, is a heading that makes every light in the archive seem to dim.
Customs Concerning the Weaver.
For a moment, I do not touch the page.
This is what personal growth looks like.
Probably.
Mina leans over my shoulder, then immediately leans back. “Nope.”
The word Weaver pulls at something under my skin. Not recognition, exactly. More like a hook sliding behind my ribs and tugging toward a memory I do not have.
The first lines are written in a cramped hand, the ink browned with age.
Of the Weaver, let none speak lightly. She who sees the red road between hearts carries the town’s joy in one hand and its ruin in the other.
My mouth dries.
The next sentence is half-blotted, but enough remains.
When her own thread stirs, let the witnesses be veiled. Let no house, hall, stage, or painted eye take measure of the bond before its choosing.
My pulse ticks once. Then twice. My gaze skims down the page, hungry despite the dread.
A buried curse. A silenced custom. Matchmaker rites altered after an unnamed catastrophe. I catch fragments: blood through bonds, audience becomes altar, love observed becomes love owed. The words feel old, personal, and wrong.
“Mina,” I whisper. “This is about matchmakers.”
“Then close it.”
“That is not how research works.”
“That is exactly how survival works.”
I keep reading.
The buried curse shall wake when—
The ink shivers.
Not metaphorically.
The ink actually moves.
A thin black line lifts from the vellum like smoke rising from a snuffed candle.
I jerk back. “Oh, I hate that.”
Mina lunges for the ledger, then stops before touching it. “Is it supposed to do that?”
“Do I look like an expert researcher?”
“You skipped orientation.”
“Beside the point.”