The surprised expression on Glory’s face is enough to have made my day. Every ounce of me wants to gloat that I got one up on the “psychic,” but I don’t. I need her help, and in my experience, people only help if they feel like they’re getting something out of the deal.
“Marshall’s on his way,” I say then lift the bag in my hand. “I brought doughnuts.”
In Hello Kitty PJs, Glory runs a hand through her long mane of unruly bed-head hair, pausing to scratch near her ear. It’s near nine on Saturday morning. For as long as I’ve known Glory, she’s a late-night, sleep-in psychic. I’m betting her tricks work better in the dark. Daylight has a way of ferreting out lies.
She yawns as she holds the door open for me, and I step into her cottage. It’s the same combination of neat, clean, yet cluttered with books, rocks and crystals.
I head for the kitchen, but Glory doesn’t follow. Instead she goes into the bedroom and closes the door. There’s shifting and dresser drawers opening and closing. Minutes later, she’s in the bathroom. Water runs from the sink, a toilet flushes, more water from the sink, and I’m impressed when she returns to the kitchen that she’s in full Glory mode: a shimmering skirt, and an off-the-shoulder white blouse. There’s only a hint of drowsiness from my early morning wake-up call.
Glory fills her teakettle with water, sets it on the back burner of the stove, then lays out three china cups with saucers on the counter. “It’s about time you kissed Scarlett. You’ve been wanting to do that forever. But it’s better you waited. It’s not like a boy knows how to give a girl the proper toe-curling first kiss she deserves before he grows facial hair.”
She sits in the chair across from me at the table and gives me a smug smirk. “Don’t try to deny it, Jesse. The proof is all over your face.”
I lean back in my seat and cross my arms. “Are you stalking me? Her? Or both of us?”
“I don’t have to stalk you. I have angels who like to do it for me. But don’t worry, no one was there for your first kiss. My spirits caught the giddiness of young love radiating off the both of you last night. If it makes you feel better, Scarlett couldn’t go to sleep for a few hours either because she was thinking of you, too.”
I have to look away because hearing that does worm its way into my heart, and I don’t want Glory there. Letting Scarlett in is hard enough, but I can’t keep her out. Fighting it was futile. I tried protecting her from me before, and that backfired. Now, I have to change tactics to protect us both. “I have to keep this land.”
The land will protect me and it will protect Scarlett. Since we’re together now and I’m not giving her up again, retaining ownership of the land is the only way to keep her safe from the Lachlin curse. Is it real? Is it not real? I don’t know, but I’m not taking chances. Not with Scarlett.
“So you’re going to build a relationship with Marshall to win his vote.”
“The pastor won’t give me his vote unless I make nice with Marshall. This vote will be all or nothing.” Sucks, but it’s how it is.
“Why bring Marshall here?” Glory asks. “He doesn’t like me.”
“Being alone with him doesn’t sound like a good option. Going to his home turf with his family is unfair on my side. I’m relying on you to switch subjects or to kick me under the table if I go rogue.”
“I’m to play referee?”
“Yeah, and I’m betting he doesn’t like you more than he doesn’t like me.”
Glory laughs. Long, loud and hard. Enough that it feels good when I chuckle along with her. Steam shoots out of the teapot, and she returns to the stove. She pours the hot water into two cups then slips a basket of tea bags to the middle of the table. Dropping the bag she chose into her tea, she returns to her seat and draws her knees onto the chair. “You’re going to need to be careful with Scarlett. Her life is complicated.”
“I know.” Scarlett and I talked last night. She explained her home life and her fears, and I told her that I didn’t need to be the boy holding her hand in the hallway. I’m not a dog that needs to piss on a fire hydrant to mark that she’s mine. If being with me—someone not on her father’s approved list—creates problems then we don’t go public. “Thanks for helping her.”
“I need you to come by with her sometime this week. She needs to practice reading palms. I’d prefer for her to use someone else, as reading you is like assigning advanced calculus to a kindergartener, but considering she’s keeping so secret on things, you’ll have to do.”
“You’re teaching her how to be a con? I didn’t know there was a mentoring program.”
“I like giving back. Good karma and all. And not that you’d know, but Scarlett has great potential. I’ve seen it in her since she was a child. She has a special connection with the land, and she has gifts that can’t be taught. She has closed off her abilities because that is what society has told her to do. The benefit of being friends with you is that her little acts of rebellion are opening up her senses. She has the makings of being a great psychic should she choose.”
I don’t say anything because I’m not going to complain if Glory teaches Scarlett how to make a few extra bucks by conning until she can settle down with a real job. Money is money, especially when you’re hungry.
“You don’t believe she has talent, do you?” Glory raises her cup to her mouth.
“I believe she has plenty of talents.”
“You perplex me. Always have. How you can believe you are cursed yet not believe in anything else baffles me.” She sets her teacup on the saucer and meets my eyes in defiance.
A muscle ticks in my jaw at what she’s inferred. “I don’t believe in the Lachlin curse.” At least not the curse she believes in. I’m not going to lose what I love. I’ll break this curse by keeping the land and staying.
“You can call it a water chicken all you want, but when it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s still a duck. A curse is a curse—you give it a different name.”
“You’re a lunatic.”
“Listen to me good, Jesse. There’s a curse, and it’s real. Someday, you’re going to have to make a choice as to whether or not you’re strong enough to defeat it.”
Anger leaks into my blood, and I point at her. “If it’s real, if I believe, if you believe, then stop talking in circles and help me. If you’re all-knowing, if you’re psychic and talk to spirits beyond the dead, then you tell me how to defeat the curse. Scarlett’s in my life now, and I need to know how to keep her safe!”
“I am helping you.” Glory looks at me as if she’s amused, and it makes me want to smash my fist through the windowpane.
Rocks crackle outside along with the sound of a motor purring. Marshall’s here and Glory stands. She keeps her faded blue eyes on me as she walks past. I hate her faraway expression. The one that’s supposed to make me think she’s seeing more than she should.
“I’m helping you by creating the best weapon—to be honest, your only weapon. This family has been cursed for hundreds of years. It took all that time for someone to be born who could break the curse, but it finally happened. This means you have a chance to do what no Lachlin has ever done before. If you have courage, you have a chance to be free.”
“What are you talking about?”
Her mouth edges up in a daring smile. “Scarlett felt the land breathe, didn’t she?”
Blood drains from my face. There’s no way anyone knows about that beyond me and Scarlett.
“There are only two other people alive who have felt this land breathe, and we’re both in this kitchen. Scarlett was born on the land, she has a connection with you, with me, and when she laid down on the earth, it came alive for her when it breathes for nobody else.
“Even if you don’t want to admit it, you two have always been connected. After what happened to your mom that bond scared you, and I don’t blame you for that. You pushed Scarlett away in what you believed was an attempt to protect her, but you can’t stop fate. Pushing her away only hurts you and devastates her. Your bond, even when you tried, can’t be severed.”
“She was born on the land, but she’s not cursed,” I say with finality.
“No,” Glory says, “she’s not. But you are and so am I. Whether I want it or not, our destinies are intertwined. I’ve searched my future and yours. If you lose all that you love, then so do I. I don’t know the exact role Scarlett plays in all this, but I do know that if she becomes strong enough and you become strong enough then you can break the curse.”
A knock on the front door and neither of us moves to let my uncle in. My brain swims. This isn’t real. None of this is real.
“At Scarlett’s earliest convenience, please bring her by. She has a lot to learn and not much time to do it.” Glory heads for the door, but I stop her.
“The vote isn’t until May,” I say. “We have time.”
Glory glances at me over her shoulder, and the sadness washing over her punches me hard in the gut. “Both of you will be tested before May. I don’t know when, but it will be soon. I need to make sure that you will be strong enough because that’s what the two of you will need—strength, not for yourselves, but strength to give the other. You will both be drained by what’s ahead. You will be left empty, and you will need to trust the other enough in order to survive. Nothing about this will be easy.”
Another knock on the front door, and I slump in my seat. “None of what you say is real.”
“Not all of it,” she says. “Just the true and important parts.”