“I’m not just making things up as I go along.” Mirroring him, Riley scooped her own dirt, the two of them beginning to douse the fire. “My gran had a process for curse breaking. A system of analysis and elimination.”
Heat from the rapidly dying flames warmed Clark’s hands, his arms. “What kind of process, exactly?”
“Why should I tell you?” A scowl sat wrong on her features. Her rosy apple cheeks and softly dimpled chin were made for exuberance. “I don’t care whether you believe me or not.”
It was starting to seem impossible that they’d ever spent a whole evening sharing drinks without arguing. Let alone just two days ago. At this rate, Riley Rhodes would never smile at him again without malice. It was a shame. She had a remarkable mouth.
Clark thought of the care she’d taken with her website. The business card. How defensive she’d been when she handed him that salve this morning.
“I think you do,” he said slowly.
Riley bristled. “Excuse me?”
“Your whole attitude is armor.” Clark let the scientist side of his brain take over, giving in to the impulse to read her like a discovery. “Why do you think even innocuous questions sound like insults to your ears?”
“Because you’re a dick?” She threw her last handful of dirt into the hearth at such an angle that some blew back on his shirt.
“You care what I think anyway.” The blaze dimmed to smolders. Clark removed a handkerchief from his back pocket to clean his hands. “Even though it kills you.”
He extended the cloth to her, but with a storm brewing in her eyes, Riley wiped her filthy hands on her denims—the ones he hadn’t wanted her to wear.
“You want me to eat crow? Fine.” His curiosity about Riley, about the increasingly elaborate folds of her story, persisted like an itch Clark couldn’t seem to resist scratching, even as he knew doing so would only make things worse. “Tell me how curse breaking works.”
If he had to spend an indeterminate amount of time around her, he wanted to know what she planned to do. Even more, he found he wanted to know how she thought. How she’d built a compelling business proposition out of smoke and mirrors. Worst of all, he’d discovered an unparalleled delight in provoking her. His whole body hummed with anticipation for her next move. Would she strike or parry?
Riley shook her head at the ground, full lips pressed tight together, and Clark thought for sure the game, this game at least, had ended, but then—
“Every curse is different.” The hard edge in her voice said she’d make him pay for this, even as she kept talking. “But there are four main techniques, applied in isolation or combination, on an ascending scale of difficulty. Charms, cleansing, sacrifice, and rituals.”
“The fire tells you which one to use?” That sounded . . . remarkably practical.
If someone had asked him to describe artificial magical lore, he would have come up with something much more loosey-goosey. The way Riley described curse breaking was almost scientific.
“Sometimes. It depends on the age and origin of the curse—” Her next few words were cut off by a sudden, intense gust of wind, so strong it rattled the remains of the kitchen’s wooden shelving.
Both Riley and Clark turned toward the room’s set of busted windows, but the source of the current seemed to come from behind them, instead, from the doorway.
“There must be some kind of cross breeze coming from the other side of the castle,” Clark said, coughing a bit as the wind caught and carried ash from the hearth, scattering orange embers at their feet.
“You think this is normal?” Riley threw up her arms, protecting her face from the gray clouds as another gust tore through, this one seemingly from the opposite direction.
By the time they could both open their eyes, they had other problems.
“Something’s burning,” Clark said at the exact same moment that Riley looked down and screamed.
The second he saw the flame starting to lick up the loose fringe of her trouser cuffs, he didn’t think, just wrapped one arm around her waist and used the other to cradle the back of her skull as he threw them both to the ground.
He landed hard on his back in the packed earth, his teeth clacking together.
“Roll,” he commanded, flinging them both bodily to the side, hoping the combination of momentum and the coverage of his body worked to smother the small flame.
For several dizzy seconds he could hear nothing, see nothing, think of nothing but how blankly terrified he was and taste the dirt in his mouth.
They kept rolling until they hit the far wall of the room. Pushing up to his knees, Clark frantically checked to see if her black, smoking hem had gone out.
“Did it get you?” The damaged fabric didn’t appear to reach higher than her ankle, and she had on thick boots, but—
“No.” Her voice shook a little as she sat up on her elbows. “No, I don’t think so.”
Carefully, Clark reached for her, tugging up from the untouched part of her jeans to reveal the boots and the tops of her ice-cream-patterned socks, both unburned, as well as the smooth, pale skin of her lower calf.
He should have stopped there, but Clark caught a glimpse of pink scar, and his hand acted of its own accord, shoving the fabric higher toward her knee, heart stuttering.
“That’s old,” Riley protested, and Clark could see now that it was, jagged and faded. “I got caught in a barbed-wire chicken fence last year, helping a farmer whose crops had suffered several years of blight.”
Clark’s thumb traced another scar, small and white across her knee. “And this?”
“That was my fault.” She stared at his hand on her skin rather than look at his face. “I was gathering blackberries for a cleansing solution, and I knelt on a thorn.”
For some reason, Clark’s throat hurt, each swallow sharp and tight. “You get hurt a lot?”
“It’s part of the gig,” she said, finally tugging the fabric back down.
“Right.” Clark shoved his hands in his pockets.
She’s fine. Look at her, she’s okay now.
Everyone had scars. It didn’t make sense that he wanted to treat these old wounds as if they were fresh—as if Riley would have let him. She wasn’t his dad, coming home with bruises, laughing around a split lip. Telling Clark to grab the first aid kit so he could see to some sutures he’d accidentally torn.
You’re too controlling, Patrick had said, scolding at the end of another long day in the sun because he’d insisted on repackaging all the samples after an intern had used the wrong method. It was a weakness. And one of the reasons why Clark had bitten his tongue for so long in Spain.
For years he’d been told he was overbearing, relentless in his expectations for himself and others. Until one day Patrick said, Relax. Trust me. And out of love and a desire to be better, Clark had made himself do it.
Not anymore.
“There are rules on an archaeological site.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “In fact, I’m pretty sure there are rules on any job site—especially when that job site is a giant, ancient, crumbling castle.”
Riley nodded, the serious look she was going for slightly undercut by the mussed, dirt-laden state of her ponytail.