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“No,” I told her, hoping it was true. “I think she got all she could out of Fairwick.”
Nicky completed Mara’s charts, but she also made her own discovery from the notebooks.
“I think Dahlia LaMotte based one of her books on my family,”she told me in the last week of April. “It’s not one she ever published. It’s calledThe Curse of the Bellefleurs.”
When I read it I thought I saw why it hadn’t been published. It had little of the romantic tension that LaMotte was known for and it didn’t have a happy ending. It told the story of two ambitious men who join forces to gain control of the railroads in a small upstate town. Andre Bellefleur proves the more ruthless of the two and drives out his partner, Arthur Rosedale, and Rosedale’s wife kills herself. Before Rosedale leaves for the west he curses the Bellefleur women with an urge to kill themselves after they’ve given birth to a successor.
“It’s just like my family,” Nicky told me. “Except for the suicides. We Ballards prefer to decay slowly. My grandmother once told me when I was little that there was a curse and that’s why my mother acted the way she did. I never believed it…but lately…Well, there are a lot of strange things that go on in this town. A curse would be one of thelessstrange things. I just wish I knew how to make it go away.”
Nicky also noticed a marked number of correlations between the Bellefleurs and the Ballards—a wolf’s-head cane sported by Andre Bellefleur that she said was identical to one that had been in her family until her grandmother had pawned it, the antique pink sèvressecretairewith its pattern of frolicking cupids that still stood in her grandmother’s room, and the same brown freckle in their light blue eyes. I, too, found a family heirloom in the manuscript. Arthur Rosedale sported a black onyx intaglio watch fob inscribed with a tree which sounded remarkably like the brooch my grandmother wore. Once I’d thought of my grandmother I noticed some other similarities between Hiram Scudder’s story and my own family history. Hiram Scudder had gone out west to seek his fortune—so had my grandmother’s grandfather. Frank had told me that one of the aliases Scudder had used was Stoddard. I looked through my old copies of Dahlia LaMotte’s books and found the name Emmeline Stoddard written on their flyleaves.
It didn’t take a genius to make the next deduction. My grandmother was descended from the witch who had cursed the Ballards. Which meant she could uncurse them. If only I could convince her to, after telling her off the last time I saw her. The last person I felt like talking to right now was my grandmother. If her informants had told her about the incubus invasion on campus she wouldn’t spare me an embarrassing interrogation—or a gloating “I told you so.” But what choice did I have? Fate was offering me an opportunity to lift the Ballard curse, something Fairwick witches had been trying to do for decades. I’d just have to swallow my pride.
I recalled that my grandmother usually came into the city around the first of May for a board meeting at the Grove. I emailed her and asked if I could meet with her when she was in the city. She took so long replying that I thought I wasn’t going to get an answer, but then, a few days before the end of the month, I received a formal invitation in the mail inviting me to attend cocktails at the Grove on the evening of April 30. Overnight accommodations and all meals to be provided by the Grove at the request of Adelaide Danbury. My grandmother had written a note at the bottom:I’ll be free to meet with you half an hour before cocktails in the library. Staying overnight at the Grove was the last thing I wanted to do, but I understood that refusing wasn’t an option. Not if I wanted my grandmother to lift the Ballard curse.
On the drive down to the city I wondered what else Adelaide might ask in return for lifting the curse and how much I would be willing to give. The “request” Adelaide was most likely to make would be for me to leave Fairwick.
Fine, I thought, passing the big hex sign outside of Bovine Corners, I could live with that. In fact, it would probably be for the best. Although I’d finally gotten to the stage where I didn’t weep at every reminder of Liam (his favorite coffee mug, the last drop of Irish whiskey, the smell of honeysuckle) I was still sleeping in the downstairs bedroom and I still woke in the middleof the night reaching for him. I still hadn’t gotten up the courage to go into his study and clear it out. Just driving past the general store where we’d bought cheese, or the antiques store in Glenburnie where he’d bought me my ring, made me almost drive off the side of the road. Wouldn’t it be better to get far away from all reminders of him? Away from any temptation to go out into the woods, to the threshold between worlds, and release him? And wouldn’t it be better to teach at a college that didn’t attract life-sucking creatures? Although I’d told Liz Book she shouldn’t blame herself for failing to realize that Mara Marinca was a liderc—or that Liam was an incubus—shouldn’t the school monitor its faculty and student body better? Adelaide had been right; itwasirresponsible not to let people know what they were dealing with. So, I decided by the time I got onto Interstate 17, if my grandmother asked me to leave Fairwick as a condition of lifting Nicky’s curse, I would agree. No matter how much I would miss it.
Having made my decision I popped in an audiobook of the new Charlaine Harris novel and didn’t think of anything but Sookie Stackhouse’s troubles until I reached Manhattan. (At least I hadn’t fallen for a vampire! I congratulated myself, realizing that it had been four months since I’d made my deal with Anton Volkov and he’d never bothered me once.) Then rush hour Midtown traffic occupied all my attention until I pulled into a parking garage on Forty-third Street.
I wheeled my suitcase into the lobby, checked in, and was escorted upstairs by an elderly bellhop to a small but elegant room papered in blue toile and upholstered in a watery blue moiré. The mirrors were old and spotted, tarnished to faded silver. My reflected self looked like a stranger in them—a person I only half remembered. Was that pale thin woman with rust colored hair hanging loose like a drowning victim’s really me? I looked like an old photograph of myself that had faded in the sunlight. When had that happened? And when was the last time I had looked at myself in the mirror? I had been avoidingmeeting my own gaze for so long it was as though my reflection had faded with disuse.
I looked at my watch and saw that I had a few hours before I was due to meet Adelaide. Then I called my old hairstylist, Elan, and asked if there were any way she could fit me in even though I knew that she was always booked solid months in advance.
“Oh,” she said, “but someone just called to make you an appointment. A Miss Danbury. I told her there were no openings, but she left word to call you if there were any cancellations and we just had one…I was just about to call.”
I could hear the confusion in Elan’s voice—a common side effect of talking to Adelaide. I bristled at the idea of my grandmother arranging my life—how did she know I needed a haircut?—but what was the point of acting proud and looking horrible?
“What time is the appointment?” I asked.
“In half an hour,” she told me.
“I’ll be there,” I told her.
Two and a half hours later I was back at the Grove with a cut that brought the life back to my hair and a couple of shopping bags from Bergdorf’s. I had just enough time to slip into the lilac Jil Sander sheath and Christian Louboutin pumps I’d bought and freshen my makeup before joining Adelaide in the library—or rather just enough time to be five minutes late so I didn’t feel as if I were hopping to Adelaide’s orders.
Adelaide defeated that little rebellion by arriving exactlysixminutes late and found me gawking at the three stories of bookshelves that lined the library walls. The only other library I’d seen half this impressive was J. P. Morgan’s.
“I was unavoidably detained by the initiation committee,” she told me, presenting her cheek for me to kiss. “The new generation can’t make any decisions for themselves.”
Out of habit I touched my lips to her cool cheek before remembering I’d promised myself not to. She smiled and sankinto a silk-upholstered chair beside a crackling fire. Adelaide’s cream woolen suit, with the onyx intaglio pinned to its lapel, looked exactly right in the setting, while my lilac dress, which had looked fabulous at Bergdorf’s, suddenly seemed a bit showy.
“Have you been ill?” she asked, pouring tea from a china pot into my cup. “You look like you’ve lost weight.”
“I had a…bug,” I said, taking a sip of the strong smoky tea. “But I’m fine now. And there’s something I need to discuss…”
“I do hope you’re taking care of yourself up there,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard my reply. “Schools can be such a breeding ground of germs, especially with all theforeignersLiz Book lets in. I hear you had a bit of a run-in with one of the immigrants.”
I wondered if she meant Liam or Mara—and I also wondered who her informant was—but I wasn’t about to take the bait. “I would think you would have more sympathy with people who were forced to leave their homes. Your grandfather, Hiram Scudder, had to leave Fairwick.”
Adelaide smiled. “Good girl. I wondered how long it would take you to find out. But please, don’t confuse your great-great-grandfather Hiram with the flotsam and jetsam that wind up on our shores and expect a free handout. Hiram rebuilt the family fortune in a single generation. But look at those pathetic Ballards! Still mouldering away in their big old mansion.”
“Because Hiram cursed them. And you’ve allowed the curse to continue. Poor Nicky had nothing to do with what her great-great-great-grandfather did to Hiram Scudder.”
“Did you discover in your research what happened to Hiram’s wife, Adele? Your great-great-grandmother.”
“Yes,” I said, chastened. “She killed herself. I’m sure that was awful…”
