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"There's a ceremony thing we found last time we were in here. It's called the Unleashing and should unlock my magic."
"Oh, that's exciting." She comes the rest of the way out and takes a seat at our table. "So why haven't we done it yet?" she demands.
"It needs five people," I say.
"Right, so you, me, Thomas here, Ryan, and you can persuade Caspian, right?"
"I'm not talking to him right now," I mutter. "That's not the point anyway. I'm not asking anyone to do black magic for me, no matter how much it might help."
"Now that's the wrong way of looking at it..."
"It really isn't, Daphne," I say, far more firmly than I intend to. "If we did this, you could go to jail. Actual prison. We all could. And that's if we're not completely consumed by black magic and turn into raving mass murderers."
"You have such a way with words," she quips.
I close my eyes and count to three, praying for some strength to deal with her misguided need to help.
"You can ask them..."
"Please, Daphne? I don't want to put people at risk."
She searches my face, clearly looking for some sign that I'll cave. "Fine. But we're not forgetting that the option exists," she says.
"Fine."
"You asked us to come here?" she says to Thomas.
"Well, actually I asked Mona to come here, you just happened to be there."
"I'm her best friend, that's basically inviting me to come. Why are we here?"
"I think I found something to explain what's happening to you," he says.
"What?" I blink a couple of times, trying to make sense of what he's saying.
"What is it?" Daphne asks, clearly as excited as I am at the prospect of learning more about what's happening here.
"A curse."
"A curse?" My voice wavers as I ask.
"I found this." He pushes a small leather-bound book towards me, the outside completely cracked and the pages yellow with age. "It explains exactly how to make a curse that will at first make the cursed think they don't have magic anymore, and then will backfire a spell they tried to do constantly."
Daphne gasps. "The cats..."
"What about them?"
"When were playing the animal game, what did you try and change your face into?"
Understanding dawns on me. "A cat," I admit.
"That's the spell that's backfiring on you."
"It sounds like the kind of thing described in the book. My guess is that the caster expects it to be a nastier spell the other person tries." Thomas looks kind of proud of himself for figuring out what's going on, and I'm not sure I blame him. I wouldn't have gotten here on my own. A curse had never even crossed my mind.
"That's true," Daphne observes. "If I was going to curse someone, I'd make sure they tried to do something like clean up animal dung right when the second part was about to kick in. Does it say anything about timeframes in there?" she asks, looking at the text.
"No. It's not time activated. It's put on someone when they eat or drink something," Thomas says. "And unless you read Ancient Greek, you won't be able to make sense of that," he says to Daphne.
