Adversity (Cursed #2.5) Read online

  Kali stalked off, chest heaving with fear as the woman screamed insults after her. Had she lost her mind? She had broken the golden rule. The gaje left you alone if they thought you meek. They forgot to put you down if you acted put upon already. Now she had made an enemy out of a bitter woman with a broken heart, because she couldn’t swallow a cruel taunt, and that made her no better than anyone else. Why had she spoken so? Because she was distracted by a pair of blue eyes? Was she obsessing about her future?

  She could not throw everything away like that. She would have to move on again if Marusya caused a fuss. She would have to leave Drina because she opened her mouth.

  Sighing, she hurried back to camp, hoping to make up for the day’s mistakes.

  Chapter Four

  Amelia

  Another headache kicked in, so I napped before dinner. My dreams were disturbing, more unsettling than usual, even though not a lot happened in this last dream, aside from Kali getting all blushy-faced over a hottie. Oh, and losing the rag with his wife. Boundaries, Kali.

  Still, I felt more connected to her than ever. She had lost her mother, too. She also felt ostracised because of mistakes her father had made. How could I not relate to her? I carried guilt because I couldn’t remember my mother’s face unless I saw it in a photograph. I felt alone because my family members made decisions that kept me out of the loop. I had been in danger for perhaps my entire life, and not one of them had seen fit to warn me. They preferred to treat me like a child incapable of comprehending the situation. Even now, they weren’t talking. I still didn’t know where my grandfather was or how he had managed to fake my grandmother’s death certificate. I didn’t even know if I was still in danger. I was as frustrated as Kali.

  She, however, was determined to redeem herself. I couldn’t disagree with that sentiment.

  All of the talk of darkness and black magic sickened me. Kali—and I—had felt true fear in the dreams, and the memory of that sensation followed me around all evening, lingering in the background.

  Byron and Nathan were both lost in their own thoughts at dinner, and I felt so alone that I thought about the spirit board again. What if Nathan had been wrong? What if Mémère really wanted me to use it to contact her? I had to try, but I also had to make sure nobody would interrupt me.

  Byron excused himself quickly from the dinner table, barely meeting my eyes as he said goodnight. Nathan wasn’t much better, and I could see he was preoccupied with thoughts of Perdita again, which didn’t surprise me. He had become pretty one dimensional since he’d discovered his mate.

  Left alone at the table, I found it hard to force food past the lump in my throat. The night was silent, and all I had was a wolfhound and a view of an empty, dark garden. Shadows licked the window, and I had second thoughts about the spirit board. In my dreams, I knew what magic felt like. Okay, so maybe magic wasn’t real, but the darkness Kali had felt had crept along my spine, too, and I grew wary at the idea of messing about with it.

  I stood, almost falling as my knees suddenly buckled. Stabbing pains in my head had crippled me night after night, but I usually managed to cover the agony. This time, I struggled to breathe, gasping for breath as an invisible sledgehammer pounded at my skull.

  “Christ,” I groaned, half-crawling up the stairs and hoping nobody would see me.

  Half-hoping they would.

  I made it to my room without passing out. Something was definitely happening to me. Whether it was a brain tumour or something mystical, I needed help. I had wanted to talk to Nathan about the dreams and explain everything, but I couldn’t put into words how disturbingly realistic the dreams were. I couldn’t explain how bad the pain was, because I wasn’t a werewolf, and as far as my family was concerned, that meant I couldn’t handle pain or responsibility. Or, you know, the actual truth.

  With a plan in mind, I gathered up some candles and tried to calm myself. Negative energy would attract negative spirits, or so Mémère would have said if she’d been around. She had often told me of the old days, back before she met and was mated to Opa. She made a living performing psychic readings for people. Fortune telling was the more accurate term. Her mother, my great-grandmother, held séances, and was pretty much a psychic bad-ass. I wished I could have met her. I might have understood more about the magic in the world.

  Opa hadn’t liked Mémère telling stories of the past. He had warned her never to speak of magic to me, which meant he’d stolen it from me, stolen my heritage and my capacity to understand. Sometimes I wondered if I would ever again feel anything other than anger and bitterness toward him.

  Nathan and Byron might have been arrogant enough to think they were the only “special” people in the world, but there had to be other kinds of magic and folklore that were real. I knew it. Deep in my soul, I knew that the entire planet was full of forgotten magic, like veins of power under the surface. If I could only open one… maybe I could find a way to get my grandmother back to me. My parents even. And maybe I could find a way to stop Perdita’s death, because that’s what the curse was to her: a death sentence. That Nathan would mourn her was a guarantee, no matter how long my family all chose to ignore the consistent outcomes of our curse.

  My grandmother’s death had only confirmed what we already knew, that the men in my family were cursed with lycanthropy, with the hunt for their soul mate, and with the early death of their beloved, and the curse would remain until a girl was born to break it. My birth, though, hadn’t changed anything. We learned that, for sure, when my brother unexpectedly turned into a werewolf for the first time at the age of sixteen.

  Even if the curse didn’t kill Perdita, the werewolves who hunted us might. We weren’t sure if the wolves wanted to murder me so I couldn’t end the curse, or if they wanted to end Perdita’s life to lessen the chances of our family line continuing. Either way, they were out for blood, at least while the curse was active.

  That thought worked as an incentive. That I needed help was a certainty. I didn’t know enough about what was to come or enough about my role in ending the curse. My grandmother had known a lot more than we ever expected, and maybe there were secrets she still had to share.

  I lit the candles, shivering a little as the flames flickered and swayed as one. The tapers stayed lit, which was the main thing. I pulled out the spirit board and placed it on the floor in the centre of the candles. Mémère had once told me there was power in the flames, and more importantly, that they helped us focus. A lack of focus while dealing with a spirit board wasn’t a road I wanted to travel down, especially if its magic was real. All I needed to do was believe, and a whole new world would open up to me.

  Staring at the flames, I realised I had always been open to more than my fair share of the unexplainable. I had always had faith. It was the one thing that got me through the horrors of the past, and the only thing that pulled me forward into my future. My faith was not based on religion so much as it was an optimism that everything would work out in the end. I had faith that I would find my way through the darkness and come through the other side a stronger, better person. A faith that I could ask for help, and help would be given, one way or another.

  Something in my subconscious knew things I didn’t, and it was dying to let them out. I already held the secrets, and all I needed to do was find the key to opening them. I was ready for whatever I had been waiting for my entire life.

  Excitement squirmed in my belly as I touched the cup on top of the spirit board. I hoped the board would work with me. A shiver ran through me as the latent energy came alive against my skin. I sensed the energy there, a wriggling darkness dying to escape. I had to make sure it didn’t, so I spoke words I’d heard Mémère say when Opa wasn’t around—words I’d read in books that offered protection or aimed to soothe, not provoke. All of the candles’ flames extinguished as one and then rekindled. A thrill of anticipation had the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up.

  “I have respect for the board and respect fo
r the other side. Protect this house, and let me speak to the one I need. Mémère? I really need you right now.”

  The cup moved under my hands, hesitantly at first, then faster. Almost too fast, but I heard the words in my head and didn’t have to work them out as the cup raced from one letter to another.

  The time is coming.

  “Mémère?” I bit my bottom lip to stop a squeal.

  Watch carefully.

  “Watch out for what? What time is coming? My time? The curse?”

  No. Her death.

  “Whose death?” But I already knew, and a sinking feeling made me want to vomit.

  Too soon. Unless.

  “Unless what? What can I do? How can I help her, Mémère?”

  My voice rose in desperation, but it was too late. Feeling cold again, I felt the spirit leave me. I tried to call Mémère back a couple more times, but there was nothing there. Blowing out the candles, I mused on how unfamiliar the spirit had felt to me, and how her words confused me. But it had to be Mémère. Who else would want to speak to me?

  Then I remembered the message and the point of the whole spirit conversation. Perdita’s death was coming much faster than it should have been.

  And I was the only one who could stop it.

  ***

  Kali

  Heading home alone from the village, her pouch full of shah, Kali didn’t notice the gang of teenage boys crossing the fields until the whistling and jeering started in the distance. She lowered her head and hurried on, hoping to make it back to camp before the boys worked up the courage to approach her. Their feet were almost silent on the dirt path, and when the shouts seemed to come from right behind her, she knew it was time to run.

  “It’s the fortune teller!”

  “What else do you sell?”

  “Is this the witch?”

  Hitching her skirts above her ankles, she ran as fast as she could, hoping nobody from camp would see her shame. She hoped she wouldn’t fall and that they would leave her alone. Her people wouldn’t fight back openly if any damage was done. They might even banish her if they thought she’d brought trouble onto herself. Her father’s reputation brought a harsher reaction to her deeds.

  But as a novice chovihani and daughter to her father’s reputation, she might be expected to protect herself and dole out punishment by cursing the boys for their stupidity and ensuring they never harmed her again. As much as she wanted to scratch out the eyes of such ignorant fools, she knew she wouldn’t want the darkness of a curse on her conscience.

  She heard the rasp of a breath and spun around to face one of the boys, forcing him to look her in the eye. She wasn’t small or dainty, and from experience, she knew that sometimes these kinds of boys lost their courage when face to face with their adversary. This boy chose to leer at her defiance.

  “I bet she’s a wildcat, this one,” he said with a smirk, reaching for her. Horror left her unable to stop him. The chill of his dark, uncertain future swept over her, sickening her. He would regret his touch, she thought with a pang. She would have no choice.

  Neither of them noticed the man approach until he lifted the boy off his feet and threw him to the ground like a ragdoll.

  “Go home and learn some manners,” Marusya’s husband rumbled.

  “’Twas your woman who told us she’s keen,” the boy insisted but then scrambled to his feet as the man took one step toward him. All the boys, although they outnumbered him, ran off, and resumed their shouting but from a good distance away.

  She glanced at him again, watched his face tighten as he stared after them. He was beautiful, she realised. Truly beautiful. He was one of the few who were as good on the inside as they were on the outside. She felt the purity surrounding him and desperately wanted to touch it, absorb it, and take it for herself.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked, catching her openly staring.

  She shook her head.

  He stood in front of her, but avoided her eyes, and twisted his cap in his hands. “Well, you better get on, then.”

  She nodded, still in shock, not at the action of the boys, but at his assistance and her reaction to him. She jerkily turned to leave, and heard his footsteps behind her. She gazed back at him in surprise. He was following her.

  “I’ll make sure they don’t come back. I… I know your people, that your women aren’t allowed to get… close, so I’ll walk behind. If that’s all right by you.”

  She nodded, biting her lip as his beautiful, earnest eyes met hers fully for the first time and burned straight through her.

  Married eyes, she warned herself. Outsider eyes.

  She walked home slowly, fully aware of him the entire time. Some people had a presence that drew others in, and he was definitely that kind. She felt his eyes on her back and wondered why she couldn’t walk in a straight line, knowing he was there. He had helped her, even though his wife hated her and his people thought her less than nothing.

  At the camp, Drina’s husband approached suspiciously and bypassed Kali to move directly to the man. They spoke for a number of minutes, and Kali couldn’t help watching the man’s facial expressions which seemed so different when he talked to a man, rather than a woman. Chewing her thumb, she waited for Drina’s husband to return. He only nodded at her as he passed, and she wondered what they had been talking about.

  Most of all, she wondered why this married outsider had more of an effect on her with one look, than any of her own people had had on her in her entire life.

  Chapter Five

  Amelia

  Sitting alone with Perdita, while the rest of my family wasn’t there, brought back memories. I shifted uncomfortably, afraid Perdita might actually talk about what happened, for once, on the day the werewolves had come for me.

  Again, Perdita had been left to watch over me, which was testament to how little faith my uncle had in me. Nathan and Byron had gone hunting, a nice bonding experience that didn’t involve me. At least it meant I didn’t have to sit next to them and still feel completely alone, and I really did need to speak to Perdita. This time I wanted to talk about the dreams. I wasn’t even sure how to bring up the subject. Every single night without fail, I was another person. I saw her life through her eyes. I felt everything she felt, and none of it felt like a dream at all.

  I’d been racking my brain, trying to understand why I was suddenly carrying the burden of realistic dreams that made no sense in relation to my current situation. Kali knew about werewolves, too, and that seemed to be the only real connection. So what was up with the über dreams?

  A cushion hit me full in the face, startling me out of my thoughts.

  “I hate when you do that,” Perdita said. “Spit it out, already.”

  Where to start was the problem. The dreams didn’t feel dream-like. I lost myself to them. How could I explain how sick I was feeling and the headaches that made me feel as though I might be dying? How did I explain that a spirit had warned me of Perdita’s death coming sooner than expected? Yeah, where to start was definitely the problem.

  “This is going to sound stupid,” I said at last, still stalling.

  She gave me a “here we go” look, but when I began describing the dreams, she suddenly acted interested.

  “Soul mate?” she asked breathlessly.

  I wished. “No. Well. Not mine, anyway. It’s as if I’m in somebody else’s body, as if I’m living their life, and it feels so real, but then I wake up, and I’m me again.”

  That’s where I lost her. She didn’t believe me, as per usual. Perdita, the freaking sceptic. I knew the dreams weren’t normal, and even as I tried to explain the last one to her, she didn’t get it. Nobody would understand.

  “Maybe you’ve been thinking about the curse a lot,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Gypsies?”

  I realised I was forgetting what I had been born to do.

  “Maybe this has to do with breaking the curse,” I said.

  She gave me a carele
ss shrug in response, but I was sure of it now. My brain was forcing me to think about gypsies and gypsy magic, to think about the important things. Like Perdita’s face when I mentioned the curse-breaking, as though she wasn’t happy about it.

  That made no sense at all. The curse was her death sentence. I had to figure out some way of ending it. She knew quite well that had always been the plan, once the danger of an attack from other werewolves was over, except the danger was creeping closer to Perdita. The spirit board had convinced me I was running out of time.

  I didn’t want to remind Perdita of what being with Nathan would mean to her, so I saved it all up for him, instead.

  “I think they’re back,” I said, hearing a soft click marking a door closing.

  Perdita stood, but I held up my hands. “Trust me, you’ll want him to shower first.”

  She grimaced, and I couldn’t help laughing. There were a few good things about being the only one in my family who didn’t turn into a furry hunter.

  “So what exactly happens in these dreams?” she asked after a few minutes, but I could see her tensing as she waited for Nathan.

  “Lots of things. Boring things, mostly. But this girl is powerful. She’s like some kind of… witch… or maybe a shaman. She’s been learning about natural medicines and things like that for years, and she has this power under the surface. In the dream I can feel it. I mean really feel it. It’s kind of addictive. Waking up is a bit of a let-down.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t ever say that, Amelia.”

  Shrugging, I looked away. “I’m just telling the truth.”

  “I know, but I’m counting on you to keep waking up.”

  She laughed then, and I tried to shake myself out of the melancholy I’d developed. Another headache was setting in, which made it harder for me to act normal.