I open my mouth to protest, but she shakes her head.
“It’s the truth, plain and simple,” she says. “I only hope it doesn’t hinder our purpose.”
She returns to her chair and closes her eyes. “When I was still identifying and analyzing curses as a way of making a living, I could sense the lingering power of magic on the victim. The aftereffect of the curse, if you will. It was like looking at the negative image of a photograph, but a blurred negative at best.”
“But you said you can’t undo curses,” I say.
She opens her eyes. “Yes.”
“Then why would anyone pay you for your services?”
“Cursecasters are a prideful lot.” Her laugh is bitter. “By identifying the curse, spellseekers don’t have difficulty tracing steps back to its creator. Many of the cursecasters will take a larger payment than the original fee if they made the curse on behalf of someone else. If the curse is personal, it often only takes groveling on the part of the victim in order for the cursecaster to break their own spell.”
“So you helped people find the cursecasters?” I ask.
“It was the most I could do,” she says. Then she waves her hand in the air as if batting away a fly. “But my skills only take us so far. You can do more. Tell me what you saw when you discovered the spells.”
I rest my forearms on the table, as if I might need the solid wood to steady me. “It’s like I fade out of the real world and into . . . I don’t know what or where it is. I’ve been calling it the background.”
Millie nods, but when she doesn’t speak, I keep going.
“When I’m in the background, I can see the spells.”
“What do they look like?” she asks in a very soft voice that makes me think she’s worried about spooking me.
“I saw three when I was out walking around with Laurie,” I say. “Each one was kind of the same, but also different.”
“Tell me about them.” Millie is folding and unfolding her hands, willing herself to be patient.
“They had specific forms and sometimes a sound,” I say. “The first person I saw was a woman trying to get a cab and she couldn’t.”
She startles me with a chuckle. “Sorry. That’s a very common petty curse in the city. And they’re usually temporary, set to wear off in a matter of days. What else?”
“The space around her body was filled with moving pieces, like bits of straw falling around her,” I say.
“And the sound?” she asks.
I frown. “There wasn’t a sound. Well, actually, I think there would have been if I’d waited a little longer. Every time I did it, there was more detail.”
“Then tell me about the next one,” she says.
“She looked like she was walking through a snow globe that had just been shaken.” I pause long enough to roll my eyes. “And it sounded like fairy bells.”
“That wasn’t a curse,” Millie says. “That was a fortune spell.”
“I kind of got that,” I say. “She was making all kinds of good deals. Work stuff.”
Millie purses her lips. “Some spellcasters make profits by offering their services to the public.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” I ask. “This woman seemed pretty happy.”
“So are people who win the lottery—but usually it just sends them back for more,” Millie says. “Magic is tricky, unreliable, and bears unintended consequences. People who rely on it for success are playing a game of Russian roulette. Eventually one of those spells will bring a bullet with it.”
I shudder. “Even the good spells?”
“There’s no such thing as a good spell,” Millie says. “There are spellcasters and cursecasters. Spellcasting may seem benign, but it’s still dangerous. People like us guard free will for a purpose; bending nature to your own will carries a price. The more you ask of it, the more it will cost you in the end. Curses are simply the furthest down the spectrum of that danger.”
“And someone couldn’t just hire a spellcaster to undo a curse?” I’d been keeping that thought in my back pocket.
“No,” she says. “One caster can’t undo the work of another. Only the originator of the spell or curse can remove it.”
I swallow hard. We have no choice but to find Maxwell Arbus. Though it seems like the road we’ve been walking on has been leading in this direction, I’d been secretly hoping we’d find another route. Or a bypass.
I think about the artist with red threads binding his creativity, making him miserable. Who would do such a thing? Who would he have to beg relief from? What would it cost him?
“I think it’s time you told me about Stephen’s curse.” Millie is looking directly at me. “For me, curses are like silhouettes or shadows, but the details elude me. I need to know what you see.”
I shudder.
“I know it’s horrible,” she whispers. “Any curse cast by Arbus is horrible.”
Keeping my gaze locked with Millie’s, I recall the monstrosity I saw clinging to Stephen in the background. At first she sighs with regret, then as I shiver while describing the tentacles, her breath hitches and she nods.
“Is something wrong?”
She looks away and my blood freezes in my veins.
“I can’t help but wonder how he could do it . . . to his own kin,” she murmurs. Her already paper-white skin has taken on a gray cast.
“Millie, what did Arbus do to Stephen?” The words feel thick and gummy on my tongue.
I hate the sorrow I see in her eyes. “Do you remember when I told you I was surprised Arbus would cast such a powerful curse on Stephen?”
“Yes,” I say. “Because he’d have to give up so much of his own power.”
“He wagered that the curse would transfer from mother to child,” she says. “But he couldn’t control what would happen in that transfer. A curse like that takes on a life and will of its own. It generates its own power.”
“What does that mean?” I ask. But I don’t want to. I want to cover my ears and close my eyes and hopefully wake up so this nightmare ends.
When she looks at me, her eyes are shining with regret. “It means he will probably end up killing his grandson.”
Chapter 17