He doesn’t fight. He only struggles beneath me as my hands tighten. White-hot rage sears through me. I’m in the abandoned house, stumbling back from the little girl’s ghost. I’m in the empty condo, seeing my worst fears play out in loneliness and failure. I’m in that basement, ducking and flinching from a sword, feeling it cut through my neck.
Now this. Now Zeus sends someone to kill me.
Kill me.
The rage licks hotter. Underneath it, though, a little voice whispers, cool and rational.
Something is wrong.
You’re overreacting.
My rage wants to incinerate that voice. Overreacting? This guy tried to strangle me. If I let him go, he’ll finish the job.
Overreacting? How many times have I heard that? How many times have I admitted that someone frightens me, a situation concerns me, and been told I’m making too big a deal of it. Being dramatic. Such a drama queen.
Except this time I am overreacting. This isn’t me. I wouldn’t kill someone unless I absolutely had to, and my attacker isn’t fighting.
Why isn’t he fighting?
Something is very wrong.
I jerk back, yanking my hands from his neck. Then I breathe. Deep inhales.
“Talk to me,” I say.
He only writhes and wriggles.
I rub my eyes. I blink hard. It’s still pitch black.
Is this the illusion? Or are the lights really out?
The illusion. The curse.
We asked Mercy and Athene what it was. They didn’t know what happened, only the outcome.
The murderous outcome. Two owners who murdered their spouses. One killed herself afterward. The other was committed for a mental breakdown.
A mental breakdown that caused the murder?
No, a breakdown when they realized what they had done.
“Oh!” I gasp, falling back.
My attacker doesn’t leap up. He just keeps struggling.
Not talking. Only struggling.
I crawl around and feel my way up his side. I reach his arm. It’s pinned behind his back. Tied behind his back. I feel upward until I find his face. There’s tape over his mouth. Something breaks then, some kind of spell, and I hear him making muffled sounds against the gag.
“I’m going to pull this off,” I say. “I don’t know if you can hear me.”
I start to pull, and he jerks his head, ripping the rest away. Then he gulps air.
“Aiden?” I say, tentatively. I know it’s him. I could tell when I moved my hands up his arm and over his face. That note in my voice isn’t fear that I’m wrong. It’s horror for what I did.
“It’s okay,” he croaks.
“No, it’s not,” I say, my voice cracking as tears spring to my eyes. “Oh God, I am so sorry. I thought—I thought—”
“I know,” he says, and I feel him rocking against the ground. “I’d give you a hug, but my arms are tied.”
I quickly find the rope and start untying it, explaining the whole time, how I’d seen the guard attacking me, strangling me, and then the curse did something, enraging me, making me think I had to kill him or be killed.
The moment his hands are free, he pulls me against him. “I know. I knew. That wasn’t you. You would never do that. I understood.”
His words hit me, and I’m slammed back to Vanessa’s house, the night a dream shaper made me think Connolly attacked me. I remember Connolly’s horror, even as I’d said I understood it wasn’t really him. The horror of realizing what “he’d” done to me, of knowing that image was now implanted in my brain.
“I’m so—”
His hands find my shoulders, squeezing. “No more apologies. This is something Zeus did to us. It wasn’t you.” He pulls me against him. “You figured it out in time.”
“What if I hadn’t?” My heart hammers. “What if I—? That sick bastard.”
“Agreed. This wasn’t a game. Vanessa has said he’s so much worse than Hector. I didn’t believe that. I do now.”
I’m untying Connolly’s feet when a voice whispers, “Little birdie . . .” and I freeze.
“Kennedy?”
“You didn’t hear that?”
“No. Is it the curse?”
“I think so. Either that or we’re not alone in here.” I pause. “It is dark, right?”
He chuckles. “It is.”
“Okay, well, in case you trigger the curse, I think it’s supposed to be the eldest son stalking one of the wives, maybe even attacking her. In her illusion-fueled rage, she fights back.”
“Killing her supposed attacker, who turns out to be her own husband.” He sucks in breath. “That is an abominable curse.”
“It is, and while I think it probably only strikes women, be aware of what it does.”
“I am. Our next step, then, is getting out of here.”
“Yeah, there’s a door. It’s locked.”
“It is if you don’t have the key.”
Silence.
Then he says, “That would be so much more impressive if you could see me holding up the actual key card.”
I feel around until I find the edges of hard plastic. “Oooh, very impressive. How’d you get that?”
“Two guards carried me down. I snagged it from one of their pockets as he was putting me on the floor. Took a bit of luck. Now we just need to figure out how to use it from this side of the door.”
Chapter Forty-One
Forty-one
The key works on both sides of the door, probably to keep anyone from getting locked in the storage room. After we escape, I pause two seconds to hug Connolly—now that I can see him—and then we make our way along the hall.
We get twenty feet before footsteps sound. We duck into a room using the key card. The footsteps pass. They’re light steps, not at all what I’d expect from the burly guards. On a hunch, I peek once the steps pass by, and I see Mercy’s back.
“Mercy!” I stage-whisper.
She turns. In one hand, she holds a key card. Seeing me, she sighs and waves the card.
“So much for my daring rescue,” she mutters. She catches a glimpse of Connolly behind me and exhales. “Good, you’re both fine. Now we need to get you off this boat.”
“The last painting is down the hall,” Connolly says. “We’ll want to take it if you can’t uncurse it quickly.”
She glances down the corridor, and then slowly turns to me. “That’s where he put you. Where he put both of you. What happened?”
She says the last two words slowly, as if she can already guess.
“I figured it out in time,” I say. “Right now, that’s all that matters, but it is a horrible curse.” I glance at Connolly. “Diabolical.”
“That bastard,” she hisses.
“What about Rosa?” I ask carefully. “Was he telling the truth?”
“I don’t know. He has video of her with today’s newspaper. Proof of life. Or proof of recent life. She isn’t on the ship, if she’s still okay, and if she’s okay, it’s because he wants leverage over me.”
She waves a hand. “My problem. I’ll deal with it. Get the painting. Get off the boat.”