Midnight Curse

She’d gone silent, staring at me so long that one of my hands automatically twitched toward the knife in my boot. Was she going to come after me? God, I hoped not.

Finally, Molly said in a low, resigned voice, “It’s okay, Scarlett. You didn’t kill him; you just gave him rope to hang himself. I can’t blame you for that.”

“Really?” I said, hope lifting my chest.

She nodded. “Now that I have some distance from the situation, I can see what he’d become.” She closed her eyes, and I knew memories were flitting around in her head. Old, bittersweet memories. “He wasn’t always like that, you know,” she said softly. “Back then it was common to view women as possessions, and Oskar wasn’t any worse than any other young man his age. He was always arrogant, but he was also kind, once.” Her head dropped into her hands, and although I generally suck at feelings, I understood she wanted to talk for a moment about Oskar when he was still good.

“How did you meet?” I asked, the first question that popped in my head.

Her face lifted, and she brushed away tears. She gave me a shaky smile. “I lived out on a farm, but my father and I would go into town each spring to sell our calves. I bumped into Oskar there. He was a shopkeeper’s son, but he was very taken with me.”

“Did you love him?” I regretted the question the instant it was out, but she didn’t seem offended. She just considered it for a long moment.

“I thought I did,” she began slowly. “Now I suspect that I was just very young. I ignored his flaws, because he paid attention to me and he was courteous, and I wanted to get off the farm.” She shrugged, smiling again. “Oh, I was so happy when he began inviting me into town, escorting me to dances, to the theater. I felt like a princess.” The smile dropped off her face. “That was most likely how Alonzo first saw me. Anyway.” She straightened up, smoothed down her black pleated skirt.

“I’m so sorry, Molls.”

She shook her head. “I still can’t believe how much Alonzo twisted him,” she whispered. “Maybe if I’d . . .” She gestured helplessly. “I don’t know. Said something differently.”

“He wasn’t going to change. He didn’t even want to.”

In that moment, I knew she was thinking of those girls: the ones she’d killed, the other ones she’d almost sentenced to a terrible fate. I’d hugged her, and then asked her to move in.

Now, I finished the box of dishes and opened up one that said Blu-rays, rolling my eyes at all the Julia Roberts. Before I could lift out any movies, however, Jesse came back inside, holding up his phone. “That was her,” he said, eyes bright with excitement. And maybe a bit of anxiety.

“Lex?”

He shook his head. “Kirsten. It’s time.”

Oh. Right. I just nodded, butterflies spontaneously moving into my stomach. “You sure you don’t want me to come?” Molly said, worry in her voice.

“No. The more people there, the more hyped up everyone’s gonna be,” I assured her. “Besides, Dashiell flew in Stephanie Noring, that doctor from Minnesota. We got this. Everything’s going to be okay for Team Null and Void.”

Jesse gave me a good-natured smack on the arm. The good arm, not the one with the bandage.

Kirsten hadn’t wanted me to try changing Hayne back to human right away. She had insisted that he take a couple of weeks to actually try being a vampire, which came with its own undeniable perks: no more aging, no more pain from old injuries, no more fear that he would be easily overpowered by one of Dashiell’s enemies.

Hayne had taken the two weeks, complaining for every minute of it, and at the end of them, he’d got down on one knee and re-proposed to Kirsten, begging her to let him come back to both her and humanity. Kirsten had laughed and cried a little and called me to set up a time.

I’d gotten the whole story from Abby—she’d given me official permission to call her that—who seemed to have developed a reluctant . . . well, respect is too strong of a word for how she felt about me. Let’s say I was growing on her. The handful of conversations we’d had since the night Hayne died had been a magnitude friendlier than all the conversations we’d had before it.

Damn if I wasn’t actually acquiring something close to friends.

I went through the open front door. “Shadow!” I yelled. “Time to go!”

The bargest woofed and trotted over from the far edge of the property, where she’d probably found a rabbit to chase. She beat Jesse and me to the van, wagging her tail impatiently until I opened the back for her to jump in. I climbed into the driver’s seat.

“You ready for this?” Jesse asked, buckling his seat belt. “Seriously. The last two times . . . didn’t go so well.”

I gave him an exaggerated wink, faking a confidence I didn’t necessarily feel. The truth was, I was terrified. There was a lot riding on tonight. If I could “cure” Hayne, and the consequences weren’t too terrible, I was planning to offer the same to the four women Molly and I had rescued. If I could cure them too, I could undo at least a little of the pain Oskar had caused. Louisa and the others could be returned to their families. “That was Old Scarlett,” I informed him. “Things are different now.”

Jesse turned the radio to his favorite preset and leaned back in the passenger seat. “Can’t argue with that.”