“No. No. Hell no,” I say. But Ben is still looking at me with these huge puppy-dog eyes from underneath his flop of golden hair. I feel like I might break. “Benjamin, you can’t. Just…no.”
We stand on Katarina’s porch, in a golden circle of light doing its best to keep the star-filled night away. An ocean of sound comes from the swishing leaves and the sway of heavy oak branches and the tall grasses, all of them hiding in the darkness. I want him to agree with me, to say that this is crazy. Instead he stands there with his fists tucked into his pockets. “Tell me why not. In words that have more than one syllable.” His wry little smile does nothing to lessen my panic.
I wonder if comfort would come if I could feel my heart pounding or my breathing becoming rapid or any of those normal signals of distress. I don’t think I ever knew how much I relied on those things. As if somehow my body’s reactions to outside forces made things easier to handle. As if trying to slow down the ragged beating of a nervous heart makes it seem like progress is being made toward solving the problem at hand. But all I’ve got is my twitching and a rising swell of panic that won’t let me stand still.
“Just because that crazy loon—”
“That crazy loon can probably hear you, you know,” Benjamin says.
“I don’t care. That crazy loon wants you to almost die, Benjamin. That’s what it takes. To voluntarily break your body. I can’t let you do that. What if she’s wrong? What if it doesn’t work?” What I don’t say is, what if you don’t really love me? What if those horrible things your mother thinks about me are true? And, possibly worse than either of those things, how can we be soul mates when we barely know each other?
“She had a hand in making the curse. Of course she knows how to break it.”
I shake my head, wanting desperately for him to understand. “We don’t know that. It’s not worth the risk. And it’s not just the risk, it’s… I’m scared of losing you.”
After a moment, he walks toward me and takes my hand, pressing my fingers to the side of his throat. As we stand in our circle of light I find myself soaking up the warmth of him, hungry for more.
His gaze doesn’t waver, not a bit. “Can you feel my pulse, Emma?”
I can, just barely. It’s a living, beating, breathing, dancing thing. It’s a bird under glass. It almost seems to sing alive, alive, alive with every steady beat. Heat comes off him in waves, and my jealous hand wants to press closer to steal it. And somewhere, somewhere vague and fuzzy, I remember what it felt like to be that warm.
His breath is a brush of warmth on my face. “I want you to have that again, Emma. Plain and simple.”
Slow enough that I can feel each finger lift from his neck, the heat disappearing with him, he moves away. He believes Katarina. He believes in me. As he walks back into the house, I can’t find it in me to agree with his plan.
And I’m selfish enough that I can’t find it in me to disagree, either.
Chapter Thirty-One
Emma
The carnival blooms on Katarina’s back acres like mushrooms after rain. More time and care goes into the setup than I’ve seen before. Leslie is careful to make sure we’re far enough away that Katarina won’t be bothered before she performs, and that her house won’t be disturbed. However, there’s only one gravel road leading to the property. Every night there will be a line of headlights waiting to get in, and a dense line of taillights crawling out again when we close.
Katarina’s old posters were plastered about town as instructed, and Leslie is expecting more of a draw than usual. Apparently, the woman is something of a local celebrity. She did readings at her home after she left the carnival, but even that grew taxing in her retirement, so she quit. But the locals remember her, and will flock to the carnival to get a reading.
Ben and I don’t talk about Katarina’s proclamation. Now that he’s spending his evenings and free time in my wagon, I see the stress eating away at him. He never says anything, but it’s there, all the same. There’s a permanent deep groove between his brows that had only made occasional appearances before, and I don’t know if the source is Audrey or breaking the curse or maybe even something I’ve done. Every time I gather the courage to ask, it slips away at the last minute, leaving me with all my unasked questions. He sleeps fitfully beside me as my anxiety gnaws away at my mind.
I feel twisted up in knots. Does he really love me? And if he does, does he love me enough? How can he be willing to almost die? What if it doesn’t work? Is what we’re doing now—sharing this small space and filling it up with all our worries and fears—going to put a wedge between us like it did Audrey and Sidney?
I glance over at him. He’s curled under a twist of blankets, his head on the pillow we share. The moon shines through the small skylight, making his hair a dull silver gray. My fingers slip through it like air. But something stirs inside me. I know what’s been left unsaid by his decision. Those three all-important words were never spoken aloud, but I know he’s not dumb enough to try to break the curse without being sure of how he feels.
About me.
The thought leaves me buoyant and ridiculously happy in between the waves of pure terror that hit me when I think about what it would take for him to uphold his promise—an act of almost dying. But as I watch his even breathing fill his chest, I don’t think that I can let him go through with it. He’s so vibrant, so alive. How can he exist any other way?
My options are now this—either dupe some poor sucker into taking my place by nearly killing him or her, or become exactly the monster Audrey assumed I was and have Benjamin take the fall for me, nearly killing him. I really wish there was a way out of this that didn’t involve nearly killing anyone.
And all the while, the charm is weakening.
His hand stretches out from underneath the blanket, and without even thinking about it, I reach for it. I run my hardened fingers over the ridges of his knuckles, the knob of bone at the side of his wrist. Already I know his hands better than my own.
I love him.
And I can’t let him do it.
Before he can try to break the curse, I’m going to pass it on to someone else.
…
The first night we’re open in New Orleans, it’s everything Leslie expected. The crowds are denser, louder, rowdier. Everyone here has a loud drawl; each woman and man and child crowding and pushing their way down the alleys is full of life. Crushed beer cans and soda cups litter the pathways, and the trash cans overflow; our maintenance crews can’t keep up with this boisterous crowd.
And trouble is on the wind.