Riley said the castle didn’t like it when they were chummy, but looking at the list again, Clark wasn’t so sure. Maybe it was because he physically couldn’t escape her at the moment, but another observation jumped out at him almost immediately.
“You realize that every one of these disasters resulted in us putting our hands on each other in some fashion.” He tried to sound calm about it, even though inside he was railing.
Riley had assured him the curse couldn’t impact free will, but his attraction to her certainly felt otherworldly, almost mandated. It would be a relief to blame the way he couldn’t resist her on something, anything, other than his own terrible taste in who to trust.
“What?” Riley practically croaked. “No. No way. Come on. We haven’t touched that much.” But she stared at the list too now, likely playing it all back in her head the way he was.
Riley backing him against the wall with the dagger pointed at his throat, him throwing her to the ground when her clothes caught flame, the way she’d grabbed his hand to run from the snake, him catching her as she fell from the ladder, their rain-soaked bodies in his bed.
“The opposite of enemies,” she said slowly, and then much faster, “Holy shit. I have to call my mom.”
“Pardon?” He barely had time to read the name of the last section, Attempted Strategies, and see that she had notes under Charms, Cleansing, and did that say Sacrifice?
Clark leaned forward trying to make out the words—the woman had abominable handwriting—he thought it said something about away—when she pulled him aggressively toward the desk where she’d deposited her mobile upon their entry.
“Mom,” she said when someone on the other line answered. Riley turned her back to Clark as much as she was able and kind of cupped her hand around the mouthpiece.
Why had she gone red all of a sudden?
If he hadn’t been intending to eavesdrop before, Clark certainly was now.
“Hi. Um, so this is kind of random, but you know those romance books you’re always reading where one person, like, killed the other person’s family and at first the protagonist is like, ‘Watch out. I’m gonna bathe in your blood,’ but then when they end up in a sword fight a few chapters later it’s suddenly extremely erotic?”
Excuse me?
Her mother must have answered in the affirmative because Riley nodded her head.
“Okay, yeah. What’s that called, again, like the trope or whatever?”
After another murmured sentence, Riley’s high color drained. “And just to clarify, when you say lovers that can mean like sex, right?”
Sex?!
“Shoot. That’s what I was afraid of.” Riley bit at the thumbnail on her right hand. “All right. Thanks, Mom. Yeah. I gotta go. I’m actually a little tied up right now.”
She made eyes at Clark like, What? The joke was right there!
“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? Love you too. Bye.” She put down the mobile looking shell-shocked, almost afraid.
“What was that about?”
Walking them awkwardly over to the nightstand, Riley opened the drawer and removed a faded leather journal. “I, uh, just need to check something.”
Clark bet that was the book from her gran. It looked well loved, and he noticed Riley’s note-taking method—the pages so marked by Post-its that the padded width stretched the heavily creased spine.
“You know, you don’t have to worry about this,” she said as she flipped through the pages with increasing speed. “It’s just some silly curse-breaking stuff. In fact, why don’t you look at your phone for a little.” She eyed his pocket meaningfully. “Maybe watch a funny video on YouTube?”
Please. The only things he watched on YouTube were archaeology seminars and season recaps of CSI.
He arched his neck to see what she was looking at.
“Listen.” She chewed her bottom lip. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
“The wrong idea about what?”
He finally spied the page over her shoulder, and . . . Oh.
The title was Sex Rituals, and the opening began, Like all bodily fluids, semen can be a potent part of . . . Clark stopped reading, looked up, faintly seeing stars.
“Is that . . . are you . . . er, doing that, much?”
“No. No, no.” She shook her head for good measure. “I’m not. I wouldn’t with a client. That would be inappropriate. And like I said, I work by myself, so no. I’ve never.” She moved her eyes meaningfully toward the book. “In fact, I’ve never even read this section before. Not exactly something I really wanna think about Gran exploring, ya know?”
Clark did. His nan had plenty of beaus in her retirement community in Kent. He certainly didn’t linger on their extracurricular activities.
“But now you think Arden’s curse might require . . .”
Nettles, fire, snake, ladder, storm, manacles. Had all these dangers actually been an unseen power using disaster to usher them together like some kind of malevolent matchmaker?
“I don’t know.” Riley returned to the Philippa section of the murder board, once again tugging him along, and took down a printout of a photocopy of what looked like a letter. “There might be some historical evidence to suggest the curse has a history of encouraging blue balls.” She winced, passing him the paper so he could read for himself.
According to this firsthand account, Philippa Campbell had taken Malcolm Graphm prisoner and found some creative ways to torture him.
“From her lips, death,” he said, suddenly remembering the sentence he’d found in the cell.
“What?” Riley frowned, “Does it say that somewhere?”
“No.” He lowered the letter. “In the dungeons of the castle, that sentence had been carved in a cell right next to scratch marks from a prisoner tally. I saw it just before I found the manacles.”
“From her lips, death,” she repeated. “You think those could have been Malcolm’s last words?”
“As far as we know, the curse has prevented anyone else from holding the castle long enough to take prisoners since he died.”
Between the two of them, they must have turned over every scrap of documentation that referenced Arden.
Riley tapped her foot. “So, do we assume he was referring to Philippa? To her dooming him with the curse?”
“Possibly, or . . .” How to say this without giving himself away? “It might refer to the dangerous temptation of an ill-advised kiss.”
“Oh,” Riley said softly. Her foot stopped moving. “Right.”
Why did she have to have the perfect mouth? Hadn’t Clark endured enough trials in his thirty-two years? All he wanted was to hate her, and if he couldn’t manage that, then at least the universe might have allowed him indifference.
“Wait,” he said, “earlier, you asked me about the opposite of enemies. That wasn’t for a crossword, was it?”
Riley quirked said perfect mouth like she was trying to decide how much to reveal. “I’m almost certain that an end to enemies is the language of the curse. Which means to break it, that vow must be fulfilled.” She took a long breath. “I thought, until very recently,” she said ruefully, “that meant one enemy had to conquer the other—send them away.”