He didn’t take it. The last thing he needed was to touch her right now.
Following his rebuff, Riley moved to pick up the manacles instead.
“It’s fine. I’ve got it,” he said churlishly, reaching for them himself.
As they each extended their hands, going for opposite circlets, two consecutive clicks cut the air.
“What the fuck?” Clark pulled his ensnared wrist back, only getting about ten centimeters because Riley was attached to the other end of the manacles.
“Oh no.” She started pulling too. “Oh no, no, no,” she said in time with the metal chain clanking as it extended and contracted between them with the force of her attempts to free herself.
They both yanked in opposite directions, swearing, disbelieving, until their wrists turned red, sore.
“Riley,” he said finally, trying to ground himself as his brain screamed. “Do these manacles have that curse-scent-signature thing on them?”
She nodded, biting her lip.
Bloody hell. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“You told me you were leaving!” Her eyes were saucer wide. “I thought it was about to go away.”
“Well.” He gestured at the cuffs. “You’re the curse breaker. Undo it.”
“Me?” Her voice had risen an octave. “I’m not Magneto. I can’t control metal.”
Clark closed his eyes. How had they come to this? Ten minutes ago, he’d been imagining how many sausage rolls he was going to pick up from the first Greggs he passed on the way back to England.
“No.” He tried to school himself to patience. “I mean use that framework you’re always blathering on about. Charm it, cleanse it. Whatever nonsense you have to do, I don’t care. Just fix this.”
He could not be chained to her. He just couldn’t. He was leaving. Clark was never, ever going to see Riley Rhodes again.
“The artifacts are just an extension of the curse,” she said, looking more freaked out even than he felt. “Until I break it . . . I think we’re stuck.”
“No. That’s unacceptable.” He tugged her forward. “Come along. I’ve got a series of picks in my kit.”
Something would work. It had to. He’d saw the chain links off with a nail file if he had to, priceless piece of history be damned.
Chapter Sixteen
Riley leaned against Clark’s desk, racking her brain, trying to figure out what the fuck was going on while he attempted his fifth (increasingly more frantic) lock-picking solution.
She didn’t get it. He’d been ready to leave. Had said himself that she’d driven him away. Yet the manacle around her wrist acted like a metaphorical horn blaring YOU GOT IT WRONG.
Her head throbbed. Had she really hurt Clark for nothing? It wasn’t like she’d felt noble or anything before. She just hadn’t realized she could feel worse.
That was until Clark jammed a penknife into his palm while attempting to MacGyver the lock mechanism.
“Fuck.” He brought the injured hand to his mouth.
“Don’t do that.” Riley walked him to the sink, flipping on the tap to rinse the cut instead. “You know, for someone who fusses over everyone else’s wounds, you could stand to be a little more careful with your own.”
She hadn’t actually meant for that to be a metaphor, but . . . yeah.
Grabbing the first aid kit he’d used to tend to her cat scratches (her right arm had really gotten the shit end of the stick this week), she took out a Band-Aid, pulling the thing open with her teeth.
“Listen, maybe we should call a locksmith,” she suggested while Clark tolerated her awkward attempts to apply the bandage with her nondominant hand.
“The type of drill they use would completely decimate the integrity of the artifact,” he said, as if Riley should know exactly how locksmiths worked. “We need something custom forged to unlock the device without damaging it beyond repair.”
“Fine, then.” She released his hand and tossed the plastic wrapper. “Let’s call a blacksmith.”
Those were the people who forged metal, right? Were they still around, like as a profession? She kinda assumed they were an old-timey relic like apothecaries.
After much agonizing and several “bracing” cups of tea, Clark agreed to call a colleague who studied ancient metalworking to see if she knew anyone who could help them.
“I’m going to tell her the question is theoretical, all right?”
Riley looked up at the wariness in his tone. He’d managed to say very little to her in the last few hours of forced proximity, but this sentence in particular seemed to cost him.
Clark was embarrassed, she realized, in addition to generally not wanting to be anywhere near her. That made sense now that she thought about it. As a curse breaker, zany shit happened to her all the time, but getting physically restrained by one of the artifacts he’d discovered was probably a first for Clark . . . though surely not for archaeologists in general?
“Understood.” She gave him a salute, feeling the bizarre need to make as much use of her free hand’s range of motion as possible.
Who knew how long they’d be stuck like this? Riley was very carefully avoiding her water bottle, since there was no way she and Clark were on good enough terms right now to discuss a system for when one of them had to pee.
It took a fair amount of conversational sidestepping, but eventually his colleague referred them to a friend of a friend who—good news!—could forge them a key. Unfortunately, the blacksmith (they did still exist) would have to come up to take a mold and couldn’t arrive from Manchester until tomorrow at the earliest. And that was after Clark had offered to pay an exorbitant price for a rush job.
He made her sit while he transferred money for their rescue on his laptop. Apparently, he couldn’t concentrate with her looming over him.
This was so inconvenient. She wanted to be back in her room at the inn. It was harder to brainstorm without being able to look at all the pieces. Riley went back to the language of the curse. An end to enemies. Language was always the key, no pun intended.
Assuming the power in the cave had fae roots, the curse might be wilier than most. Perhaps the wording was a trick? A play on words, even. Riley considered different interpretations. Really, this shouldn’t be that hard.
An end to enemies.
End seemed like the option with the most opportunity for interpretation. Hmm. If the curse didn’t want her to get rid of her enemy by driving him away, how else was she supposed to end him? Death was still, obviously, not an option. Besides the fact that Riley would never murder someone (despite her emotional dependence on Criminal Minds), it didn’t fit. If the curse wanted to hurt them, it would have by now.