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Taking his hand, we ran through the carpark back to the stage door of the venue. When we got to the greenroom, Archer, Fox and Charlie, along with Dawson, were crowding the doorway as an angry lead singer from one of the support acts was yelling nonsense about her and Archer being together.
Nee mumbled something before passing out and hitting the floor.
“She deserves everything she gets,” the woman spat out angrily, and I saw red. My friend had been through so much. She’d just found Archer again. They’d found their way back to each other, and now this bitch was spewing lies and hatred. Fox had tried to hold me back once, but this time I was too quick. Lunging forward, I punched her in the nose, making her scream. Fox dragged me back, and that’s when I noticed Nee fitting violently on the floor, while Archer and Marshall kneeled around her as they phoned for help.
I knocked on her door.
“Come in,” Archer called.
I pushed the door slowly, nervous about what I was going to find. Although Archer had texted to say Nee was awake, I hated that my best friend was in the hospital again.
She was in bed, pale but with a huge smile on her face. Archer curled up next to her.
“Hey, Rocky,” she giggled. “Did you really punch Eliza in the face?”
I nodded. “The things she was saying to you. No one gets to talk to you like that.”
She turned to Archer. “Be warned, Arch.”
He cupped her cheek. “I wouldn’t dream of crossing Lea. She’s a force to be reckoned with.”
She patted her bed and Archer slipped off the other side, taking a seat, obviously not wanting to be too far from her.
I sat, pulling her for a hug. “Don’t go scaring me like that again.”
“I won’t. I promise, but enough about me. Tell me about this…” She ran her fingers over my tattoo, and I let out a sigh. We’d not told anyone what happened.
“We met a witch in that club you didn’t want to come to. She got annoyed and cursed us. We woke up with these.”
Nee and Archer laughed. “But you can’t believe you’re really cursed, can you?” she asked, looking at me like I’d lost my mind.
I shuddered, thinking about the memories I had of the night. “I mean, my rational side is telling me no, but then…”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. I get this feeling when I think about being apart from them.”
She shook her head. “That’s lust… or love maybe, but it’s not dark magic binding you together.”
“We tried to sleep apart on the bus the night after it happened.”
“And?” Archer asked, looking as invested in this story as Nee.
“And the aircon went off everywhere but the room where Fox and I were sleeping, so we had to stay together.”
Archer’s brows pinched together. “That’s just a coincidence.”
“Maybe, but she was adamant about it being our undoing if we tried to leave each other. And where did the tattoos come from? I mean, I could blame the cocktails, but I’d stopped drinking and Dawson and Marshall didn’t touch a drop. One minute we were there, having fun, then I remember this black butterfly-moth coming out of her mouth and then her words.”
“That sounds spooky.” Ionee’s eyes widened.
“It was. And maybe it was the building we were in, because it was freaky as hell or the things she said, or the way she looked at us or maybe it’s that four grown adults can’t remember someone tattooing them, but we’re all a little weirded out, even if we don’t believe we’re really cursed.”
“So, you don’t believe it?” Archer clarified.
I stared down at the bedsheets. “I feel different.” God, it sounded ridiculous. It wouldn’t even make a good plotline in the romance novels I loved to read.
“Different how?” Archer leaned in closer.
